OMG! 'I'm A Conservative' - Given Enough Time And A Little Push, All Progressives End Up Right

The political aphorist Lowell Frampton once famously said, 'Give a liberal long enough, and he will become a conservative', and while of course this is not completely true - there are those for whom liberalism has so defined their character, their persona, and their very being, that no dose of reality will cure them of the hopeless idealism which has been their calling card for decades - it is generally true. 

Even the most hardened liberal will take a deep breath, open a history book, look around him, and say, 'Phooey'. 

Addison Taylor was one of these committed progressives who never thought that he would ever change from a profound commitment to social justice, the environment, and the black man.  That would simply be unthinkable.  After all, he reasoned, there are such a thing as absolute truth.  The black man, descendant of the forest and legatee of tribal wisdom, sentience, and native intelligence would always be fit for the top of the human pyramid.  Heterosexuality would always be a bad choice, an outdated, crippling imposition of white straight males.  The climate was warming due to man's obtuse ignorance, etc. etc. 

The life he lived was an immersion into liberal values, liberal thought, and liberal friends.  He had no patience nor time for anyone who did not espouse the canon - those political troglodytes who refused to see the truth or even having seen it, retreat into a defensive ignorance. 

Addison was the Chairman and CEO of Scientists For Humanity, a small liberal advocacy group which had been on the front lines of every liberal cause since the first notice of melting Antarctic ice.  He had marched on the National Mall, delivered fiery speeches on college campuses, written op-ed pieces for The Nation, was a member of every women's organization in Washington, and a fierce champion of black rights. 

'Not this year, Addie', said Artemis Phipps, new President of the Radical Women's Caucus. 'Maybe another time', referring to his taken-for-granted speaking engagements before this group of radical feminists.  His presence had been considered important, for his view - the accommodating, respectful, understanding liberal male view - was needed to complete the inner circle, and show the nation that the fight for women's equality was also a men's affairs. 

Phipps, an imposing woman from Bernal Heights, chosen to lead the Caucus because of her dyke righteousness, high-toned bitchiness, and relentless, virulent, outspoken hatred of white straight men who, she said, were responsible for forcing women to spread their legs while they went off philandering, raping, and sucking the lifeblood out of them. 

 

Understandable, thought Addison, an expected evolution, a necessary radical turn; but at the same time he felt, for the first time in his life, left out.  He was in perfect solidarity with lesbian women, with women in general, and in consonance with their suspicions of men like him; but he had shown them that he was as much of a woman as they, as militant, and as committed. 

He was allowed to attend the annual Caucus conference in Washington, but during Phipps' tenure, the whole atmosphere had changed.  Not that he wanted protest to return to the days of Martin and Ralph, black-and-white, ebony-and-ivory solidarity, but this was a slugfest.  It had turned from a reasonable colloquy of thinking women to a riot.  'Cunts For Castration'...'Twats Forever'...'Bull Dagger Power' were just a few of the signs he saw. 

Now, the women's movement had always been palatable - girls he knew at Yale from Smith, Vassar, and Holyoke refusing patriarchy while marrying well; girls from fine families endorsing the harshest penalties for discrimination in the workplace while remaining caring, thoughtful, and loving wives and mothers. 'Our kind', Addie often said, proud of his and their ancestral tradition of reason and leadership. 

This...this mosh pit, this offensive freak show, was beyond the pale; and it had happened without him realizing the change.  Overnight, it seemed, feminism had gone from propriety and discipline to gang warfare.  

It was that scene that first disturbed Addie's convictions, and when the image of Heather Morgan, blonde, demure, and loving came back to him after many years.  She was a perfect, charming, quiet, intelligent Smith girl who adored him.  Their future - a home on the North Shore, children, an extended family, wealth and privilege within a solidly liberal worldview - was real, possible, and only awaiting graduation. 

 

'You women don't want pricks up inside you, do you?', shouted Artemis Phipps from the podium.  'You want cunts, pussies, hot, slathering FEMALE juices!!!' 

The crowd roared. Women ripped off their shirts, fondled each other, kissed, and shouted, 'No pricks...No pricks....No pricks!!!' until the rafters shook. 

Addie, nonplussed, taken aback, revolted and disgusted, left by the fire door, sat on a bench in Lafayette Park and wondered what the political world was coming to. 

The final loose hinge on what had been a solidly constructed and maintained political framework, came off when his political aide and advisor suggested a trip to Anacostia, the heart of the Washington inner city where he would see first hand the vibrant street life of the black man so limned and championed in Addie's speeches.  In Anacostia he would see first hand the virility, the community, the vital street life that was so absent in white, uptight, hidebound, racist neighborhoods of the city.  He would hear a carnival of music, dance, and effusion. 

Addie readily agreed but rolled the windows up as they crossed the Anacostia River into a potholed, rutted, trash-strewn neighborhood.  The outskirts of any community are always sketchy, he knew, whether tacky strip malls or yet-to-be-developed modern neighborhoods; but as he drove further south, down MLK Avenue to Fernwood Circle, there was nothing vibrant, soulful, or uplifting.  There were only derelicts, Fentanyl addicts, shirtless men with Uzis, and stoops where men smoking dope and drinking Colt45s sat and shouted at his car. 

This was he famous inner city?  This was the community of the prized, cherished, New Man? Where had he been all his life?

If all this wasn't bad enough, Washington had its coldest winter in fifty years - feet of snow, pummeling north winds, and brutal below-zero temperatures...and worst of all the polar ice caps were gaining ice.  For the first time in decades, the Ross Ice Shelf was increasing by a kilometer per year.  

Why was this such a surprise? If he had listened to anyone but the Armageddon cabal of the progressive Left, he would have heard compelling arguments about the cyclical warming and cooling of the planet, the modest if not indifferent effect of human activity on environmental temperatures, and he would have at least been apprised of another view. 

With that the ball of yarn began to unravel quickly.  Suddenly, everything became clear - the militant COVID response was nothing but government presumption and political chicanery; the open door immigrant policy was tantamount to the rapid dissolution of polity and ethos; the gender spectrum was an illogical, twisted, distorted fantasy; capitalism was the engine of remarkable growth everywhere and had raised hundreds of millions out of poverty in China and India.  Africa was nothing but a continental shithole run by corrupt big men, dominated by Paleolithic tribalism, and mired in abject  underdevelopment. 

He was much happier now that he had jettisoned all that worthless progressive baggage, stopped listening to the portentous claptrap mouthed by his former colleagues, and for once in his life said a great big 'Fuck you!' to anyone within earshot. 

Ol' Lowell Frampton, the political aphorist was right as rain when he said that all progressives become conservatives if given enough time.  Some take longer than others to see the light; but they all eventually come around.

A Life Of Social Justice - A Long Haul With Frightful Women

Robert Finley had given his all to social justice. There were the Freedom Rides, marching with Martin and Ralph across the Pettis Bridge, Bull Connor and his dogs, sit ins, protests on the National Mall, and Negro friends. 

Later there was the glass ceiling, the environment, climate change, the gender spectrum and capitalism itself.  There had never been a moment of doubt or hesitation.  He and thousands of others were joined in a political consensus - progress was real, Utopia was not only possible but around the corner, and if there was meaning to life, it was giving to others. 

Now in his later years, Bob sat disconsolate and wondering as he watched the parade of beautiful, blonde, young women step brightly down Pennsylvania Avenue to and from the White House - a White House that should have been his and the legions of those who had fought so long and so hard for graciousness, compassion, and harmony. 

He shook his head as he nibbled at his sandwich, shaking the crumbs for the pigeons who clucked and cooed at his feet.  How could this have happened, he wondered?  How could this moral reprobate, this arrogant, divisive, unprincipled man have made it to the Oval Office?  What tear in time-space had let this braggart come to earth?  

Decades of discipline, hard work, patience, and love were gone.  The black man was relegated to the ghetto, the lesbian consigned to Bernal Heights, the farm worker sent back across the border, and every last brake, bit, rein, halter, and trace with which he had harnessed Wall Street gone in a flash, setting free once again the monopolistic, predatory, arrogant robber barons of America. 

'Need a friend?', said a well-dressed man in blue suit to Bob. 'You look like you could use one'. 

Bob looked up from his sandwich and smiled at the man, one of the genteel male escorts who routinely cruised Lafayette Park.  By rights - after all he had fought long and hard for the gay man - he should have offered him a seat; but he was in no mood for the kind of casual intimacy that the man was offering. 

No matter how militantly he had taken up the cudgel of gay rights, he was privately disgusted by what fagg...Here he stopped himself, about to think an unutterable slur.  He revised his thought, composed himself and tried to right his ship, yet the thought completed itself...I'm disgusted at what these (blanks) do with each other. Reaming, water sports, buggery, cornholing, bathhouse sex. 

'You've got the wrong man', Bob said to the young man in  the blue suit, tossed the end of his sandwich to the pigeons and walked quickly away. 

This was the whole problem with social justice, he thought as he walked towards his office - espousing, endorsing, committing to political causes that offended him. Lesbians, dildoes, and scissoring was just as repulsive as the gay thing.  The black man had, despite decades of generosity and support remained in the same stinking, pestilential, drug addled, dysfunctional shithole ghetto he started in. 

Worst of all, he had for all these years been surrounded by nothing but frightful women - short, unwashed, ugly, frizzy haired, Jewish women he had seen before only on Brooklyn subways.  These were his cohorts, his colleagues, his sisters in arms.  Meanwhile all the bright young things he had had squired at Yale before his political days, were things of the past. 

 

Ahh, Heather Morgan, he remembered. Soft, pliant, wealthy, and with a fresh Midwestern blush and in love with him.  Where was she now? Who did she marry? Why wasn't she, still in the full blush of the bloom of the rose not here with him now?

Instead there was Esther Pilchman, finishing a rancid sardine sandwich, smears of mustard and horseradish still on her lips.  'Bob, we've got to talk', she said as he walked through the door. 

This time it was about immigrants, ICE pogroms, and Trump's planned genocide. She howled about Auschwitz, Soviet ethnic cleansing, the barbarity of Union soldiers as they exterminated Native Americans.  'You see?', she shouted, holding last of her sardine sandwich.  'You see??', she said. 'It's Kristallnacht all over again'. 

No, it was Esther's putrid, ugly ranting all over again, overblowing, inflating, inventing, and doing a St. Vitus' dance, wailing and twitching, turning blotchy, smelling badly and as ugly a woman as Bob had ever seen. 'Stop it!' he shouted silently, unwilling to challenge the clearly unhinged creature bouncing around the airless, cramped office. 

'Sorry to run', she said.  'I'm off to protest' and with that grabbed her stained and saggy Hopi cloth bag, and walked out the door leaving Bob alone, disquieted, and unhappily looking at his inbox, an old fashioned relic of the halcyon days, filled with flyers, announcements, screeds, and torn copies of The Nation. 

Bob sat heavily in his chair and stared at the portrait of MLK, the poster of Che Guevara, the stale bagels, dust devils, and bookends holding Marx's Communist Manifesto, Engel's The Coming of the Proletariat, and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. 

A Presbyterian born and raised, Bob still wished that he could go to Confession.  He was having bad thoughts, traitorous, devilish thoughts, and he could live with them no longer.  He hated black people, gay men, lesbians, freeloaders, and especially the unholy ugly women who harped on about them.  

Right now, his Yale classmate Hetherington Adams (Addy) was sitting on a St. Bart's verandah overlooking the harbor, lovely young mistress at his side, not a care in the world, a satisfied life of investment banker behind him, scion of one of Boston's most well-known families, father, grandfather, emeritus and model. 

Had it all happened the way Bob had planned - a progressive revolution which would have turned America into a socialist union of shared values, equal benefit, and harmonious inclusivity- he might be enjoying his later years.  Instead he was still at his cheap steel desk in a third-rate office, pursuing a stale, outdated, hapless agenda. 

'Yes, but it had to be done, and someone had to do it', he shouted, but it was empty valor, a last hurrah, a desperately off tune swan song. 

No one can ever admit that they have wasted their life - that would leave them horrifically empty before death - but Bob came close.  'There's still time', he thought; but of course there wasn't.  He had played his cards, no more were to be dealt, and he was left only with a few scattered dollar chips. 

'Goddamn it!', he shouted.  'Goddamn it to hell'. 

Diary Of A Madwoman - Taken For A Visionary, She Matched Her Madness With The Liberal Agenda And Succeeded Brilliantly

As a toddler Phoebe Nelson had shown signs of the mental ferocity that was to be her calling card in later life, but her parents simply took her seemingly irrational behavior as 'the terrible twos'.  She would wail and flail, tear up her books, spit on the Audubon print in the hallway, throw her food, and smear her face with gravy. 

'Wow, she's really something', said her father, admiring God's creation - such a volcanic temperament in a two year old was remarkable, for it showed the limitless power of the human will. 

Frank Nelson was a Nietzschean who had read all of the philosopher's works, and was convinced that his daughter was an Übermensch, a being destined to ride above the herd. 'The only validation of the individual in a meaningless world is the expression of pure will', Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Phoebe Nelson was showing the first signs of such willfulness at a very early age.

'Frank, be serious for a change', said his wife, a practical woman who saw Phoebe as a spiteful, intolerable girl who needed a good thrashing. She might have will, but there was nothing philosophical about it. She was obdurate and antisocial. 

As she grew older, she lost that infantile, inchoate rage, but never lost the intent behind it.  For there was, despite the seeming unbridled anger, a purpose - a defiance of the world around her; and she was never at a loss to show it.

'Bobby Nevins is a fat, ignorant, bullying imbecile', she shouted at the principal of her school as she stood before him accused of 'antisocial behavior'.  The school was in the throes of diversity, inclusivity, and equity, and the principal went to great pains to harness youthful energy to communitarian well-being. 

'We do not say such things about anyone', the principal admonished her.  'Ever'. 

'But he is an obese moron', Phoebe went on, 'and an ignorant bullying retard to boot.  Like it or not, you can't deny it.'

The principal thought for a moment about how to be principal-like, temperate, understanding, and helpful; but he couldn't avoid the truth spoken out of the mouths of babes.  Bobby Nevins was indeed a doltish clot, a stupid, vain, and imbecilic piece of work, the offspring of equally backward, moronic parents. 

'Perhaps we might be a bit more tolerant', the principal managed, 'and a bit more kind'. 

'Give that halfwit an inch, and he'll take a mile', she replied. 'Nip him in the bud'. 

As much as he hated the idea of having been intimidated by a student, he knew she was right.  Bobby Nevins was a disruptive, interfering, empty-headed twit; and the school would be better off without him.

And so it was that before long, Bobby tripped himself up, crossed the line, passed the limits of tolerance and inclusivity, and was sent packing. 

This was to be the first step of Phoebe's political activism, and the principal, long retired and reading about Phoebe Nelson's rise to power, said to his wife, 'I knew it'. 

There were many intermediate steps between middle school and Washington, defining moments in Phoebe's career, moments when her voice became more forceful, mature, and resonant.  

Her classmates at the Brown University Young Progressives Association were in awe at the young woman.  They had many firebrands in their midst.  LaShonda Evans, an uppity, loud, borderline hysterical black woman from Washington's worst slum and admitted to Brown on affirmative action, couldn't hold a candle to Phoebe who combined eloquence, intellect, reference, and determination with brutal, savage ad hominem attacks. 

President Phillips is a cowardly, buggering, idiotic lowlife - a drunk pedophiliac moron in power only because of a craven board of directors on the take.  His administration of university policy has been nothing but a drooling, lobotomized joke. The man is mentally flatulent, a farting, disgusting prick, a gutter-dwelling piece of shit...

She took on every campus cause - gays, black people, the climate, immigration, the gender spectrum, Wall Street - with the same venomous passion. She went from revival tent to revival tent, podium to podium, lectern to lectern without missing a beat. She was the Miss Universe of campus progressivism. 

When she was at her best, she was poetic. 

The black man, descendant of the rainforest, the savannah, and the veldt, home to the wild things and God's first human creation, is the legatee of that native sentience, that natural intimacy, that primordial understanding, that universal brilliance. He belongs on the very top of the pyramid of human society, not on the lowest rung where he has been relegated by generations of white slavers. We who understand his greatness, his superiority, his genius will fight to the last to see him become the model for civilization, the brightest shining star in the human firmament...

She was able to dismiss conservative cavils - the persistent, perennial pestilential slums of the inner city, consistently bottom of the barrel test scores, academic performance, intellectual ability, and lack of socialization, abandoned children, dereliction, addiction, and violence. 

'How dare you?', she shouted at her critics, launching into another fiery, intimidating, brutal reprisal.  She was unbeatable, unstoppable; and best of all she could make the most untenable, historically inaccurate, wild, febrile, nonsensical claims sound reasonable!  She was brilliant, a master, a genius at winning the public.

She believed nothing of what she said.  Everything was a product of her madness - for now even she admitted that madness was the engine that propelled her - and she found the progressive agenda perfectly suited to her rage. 

Liberals hated things, found everything wanting, found despicable, nasty bits everywhere.  They were already a hysterical lot, so stepping in and adding nuclear fuel to the fire was easy. 

Politicos in Washington took note and visited her before her graduation from Brown.  Mightn't she be interested in an internship, or even an associate aide to an influential Democratic Congressman?

And so it was that this Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate from a premier Ivy League school became one of the House's youngest aides, in the office of the representative from her home district in Ohio. 

She, despite the age-old rules of decorum in the Capitol, became a whirling dervish of passionate conviction for all the Congressman's liberal policies.  He was the most radical of the white members of Congress, never as bulldozing and scuttling as the Squad, that cabal of assaulting women of color, but far left nonetheless. 

'I can help you, Congressman', Phoebe told him. 'I'm the white bitch who'll put you on the map', and so it was that she went after AOC, the Somali, and the Affirmative Action Queen with a vengeance. She was merciless in her demeaning, insulting, scurrilous attacks on these cunts'.  She staked out territory to the left of all of them, uncharted political land no one even knew existed; and before long the Congressman had become the Great White Hope of radical liberalism. 

She felt good at night, emptied of her bile, her virulence, her anger, and her madness.  It was a time for recuperation, regeneration, and rebirth. Tomorrow was another day, a better day, a more bitterly angry one.  The demon inside her must be fed. 

She made the news.  The liberal media gushed with praise.  A woman was not just making waves.  It was a tsunami!  She was written about, featured, and interviewed; so when the suddenly quit, everyone was caught unawares.  There had even  been talk of her running for office. 

'I don't give a shit'', she openly and characteristically commented to a friendly reporter. 'Don't you get it?' 

Of course the reporter had no idea what she was talking about and was unwilling to surmise the worst, the truth - that the whole Phoebe Nelson thing had been a show, a vaudeville act, the Madwoman of Chaillot come to Washington to fret on the stage and then disappear. 

But it was just that - a marvelous circus act, a high wire performance, a stunning trapeze act of glitz and glamour but without any substance whatsoever. 

Observers on the Right saw her act as a metaphor - the whole progressive movement was nothing but a vaudevillian act, a rabbit out of a hat, smoke and mirrors, Sturm und Drang, signifying nothing; and they were sorry to see her go. 

'Wasn't she wonderful?', said the editor of The Federalist, a conservative journal; and so she was indeed. 

After she left Washington, she disappeared. Some reports had her in Tallahassee, others on St. Bart's; but not even the most sensitive surveillance instruments could pick up even a trace of that magnificent, mad voice.