No More Bearded Ladies And Two-Headed Dwarves - What Next After The DEI Side Show?

'Whew, I'm glad that's over', sighed Mavis Porter, sipping sweet tea on her porch overlooking the Red River in Natchitoches.  'That Biden was a doozy', she said to her sister Belinda who herself had had more than enough and for good measure had spiked her tea with a shot of Jack Daniels.  

'What were they thinking?', Belinda remarked. 'Pregnant men, can you imagine?' and went on to recall the political freak show that 'was far better than Barnum & Bailey's.' 

 

'Remember the parade on River Road?' she asked her sister.  'Disgusting! Marching all do-dadded up, perfumed, flouncy dresses and stumbly high heels, making the sign of the cross on the steps of St. Aloysius' Church in some kind of voodoo ceremony, making fun of Our Lord and Savior, and...'

She would have gone on as she often did when she got all wound up over something, tight as a drum and whirling like a dervish until Mavis stopped her with a 'Now, now, Belinda, calm down' note of reassurance; but this recent display of outrageous balderdash was clearly the last straw, the final, ultimate insult to Southern gentility, propriety, and good taste. 

'We never should have moved from the Delta', said Belinda, referring as she often did to her childhood in Indianola, an idyll of good Christian faith, white values, and a respect for history.  Louisiana was a mixed race, Cajun hodge-podge, close to the devil, insidious in its shameless pagan ways. 

'We had to, Dear.  It was father's choice', replied Mavis referring to the bank's repossession of their modest farmhouse and few acres of cotton, their long trek down the river to New Orleans, the bayous, and finally to Natchitoches. 'At least we have this nice house that Daddy built'. 

The two old maids fidgeted and groused on the porch until sundown when the went inside where Beulah had set out the dinner, lighted the candles, and turned on the Mantovani, the whole tableau exactly as she had done for years. 

The horrible nightmare of the Biden years was finally over, and the ladies could relax.  There would be no more gay parades and pride flags festooning St. John Street.  The American flag would be back, flown high and proud atop city hall and up and down Main Street the way it always had been especially on the Fourth of July.  Sense, sensibility, and order was returning to Natchitoches. 

This, it turns out, was the sentiment of the land, a great whooshing sigh of relief that the miasma of gay, black-this-black-that was over and the country was returning to the way it had always been until those bilious imposters moved into Washington.  It had only taken three months, and the new President had washed the streets of the Capital and those as far south as Natchitoches clean of the muck and mire that had befouled them for four years. 

Ronald Reagan had said that his inauguration meant that it was morning in America, that beacon of freedom, that shining city on a hill, and Donald Trump was his successor.  In one fell swoop, everything had changed, and never before had the country seen such a quick, dramatic reversal of policy, ethos, and atmosphere.

Billy Landry, Mayor of Natchitoches and longtime supporter of Donald Trump was not so sure. 'Those idiots are sure as shootin' cooking something up', but for the time being he happily made a clean sweep of City Hall, got rid of any and all Biden diversity detritus, put back the oversized In God We Trust placard which had been removed as racist by the Democratic claques in  Baton Rouge, and played martial music to start the day. 

Mayor Billy was right, however, and as humiliated and dismissed as Democrats had been, they were indeed brewing up more of the same.  It was in their blood, the Mayor said, thickened by all those years of chicanery, and nothing but a good blood-letting would quiet them. 

They couldn't flog a dead horse - the black man, gays, and transgenders were on the run - but there had to be something still unsettled in the progressive canon, anything to revive flagging spirits and inject some adrenaline into the party. 

The elite campuses of the Northeast were as wacky and unhinged as they were in the Sixties; but there were too few Jews in Natchitoches or in the state of Louisiana for that matter to rile things up down here; and the only Arab Mayor Billy and the old ladies of St. John street knew was Ali Baba, the Lebanese Seven Eleven manager who featured shawarma pita sandwiches and gooey baklava, and he was no terrorist, although dress him up in a balaclava and keffiyeh and he could easily pass for one. 

Bob Muzelle, old social justice warrior, now faded and increasingly senile, had been on the Freedom Rides of the Sixties, heady days of solidarity and camaraderie.  He had always hoped to be beaten by one of Bull Connor's thugs or be bitten by one of his Dobermans and come back with a red badge of courage, but no luck.  All he got for his troubles were limp collards and fatback, shuckin' and jivin', and the back seat of the bus; but he had convoluted the experience into something existential, and would still do anything for the black man. 

 

'Natchitoches', he mused when the Washington Post wrote a Style Section feature The Trump Revolution In The Old South featuring the racist shenanigans of Mayor Billy. 'I've been there', for while the locus of the civil rights struggle had been Mississippi, enough was happening downriver for Bob to investigate.  

He had been spat upon, jeered, and humiliated, and vowed then and there to teach those right wing racist thugs a thing or two when the time was right; and now was that time; but he was too 'round the bend to get on another bus, so was content to fire off a few letters to Mayor Billy promising that his retrograde bullish actions would not stand and others urging his political claques to do the needful and go down there. 

'Another gay parade', laughed Mayor Billy when he got the letters from up North, and now that the Biden era censorship and restrictions on free speech were over, he let forth a spewing torrent of invectives.  'If those fa--ots, those butt f--kers, those Communist corn-holers think they can bully me, they've got another thing coming', all of which was reported verbatim in the local papers albeit cleaned up but getting the message across loud and clear. Not in Dixie. 

So, really, now that the woke bullshit was over, what would the Democratic party come up with next?  It seemed as though they had shot their wad with the grotesquerie of transgenderism, the lionization of the black man, Palestine Forever, and open borders, but with these fools, you never knew.

P.T. Barnum was a genius, and knew that he had to freshen up his side shows every so often to keep the public's interest. There was no such thing as something too freakish, too absurdly deformed and inhuman to hawk to customers; and so it was with the progressive Left, inimitable in their ability to come up with the most unthinkable weirdness possible. No, mused Mayor Billy, these fools would be back, and maybe this time they will charge admission. 

Cloning Donald Trump - DNA, Genetic Engineering, And The Guarantee Of A Horrific Living Legacy

The Boys From Brazil is a film starring Gregory Peck and Lawrence Olivier about the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, who performed experiments on Jews at Auschwitz.  In this fictional account of the whereabouts of Mengele after the fall of the Third Reich, the doctor is in Paraguay where he has successfully cloned 100 Hitlers from the genetic material of the blood of Der Fuhrer taken before his death. 

 

It is a Hollywood tale of suspense, mystery, and adventure in which a Jewish Nazi hunter tracks Mengele down but not before the Hitler clones are all fourteen years old, living all over the world, and thriving. 

The story of course is not as far fetched as it would seem. Since the early days of cloning, genetic engineering has come a long way, and in the not too distant future, prospective parents will be able to select prize DNA from a catalogue and have designer babies.  The DNA of celebrities of particular talent - Michael Jordan for pure athleticism, Marilyn Monroe for seductive, alluring beauty, Oppenheimer and Einstein for intellectual genius - will get top dollar and the designer market will flourish. 

The American Left has been obsessed - no, possessed is the better word - with Donald Trump for the ten years he has been on the American political scene and over this time have come to believe that he is the incarnation of Hitler, an evil, murderous, inhuman creature who has set out to exterminate blacks, gays, and transgenders no differently than Hitler did to the Jews. 

Of course this is all poppycock, fevered nightmares of discombobulated progressives on the run.  Trump, far from the genocidal maniac painted by the Left, is out only to restore the nation to its original, unique, and influential origins - the America of Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, and Adams.  Yet, with little else to go on, no platform to speak of, nothing but discredited ideas of race, gender, and ethnicity, progressives still hammer away at the Hitler thing, the demonic thing, the incarnation of evil in the White House. 

 

So it is not surprising that a rumor is spreading throughout progressive ranks that in secret laboratories deep beneath the Utah desert, scientists are reproducing the spitting image of the President and storing hundreds of him in cryogenic crypts for revival and maturity in future after the man himself has passed away. 

Absurdist Theory is the latest of many recent developments in psycho-social research.  It postulates than in environments of mass hysteria, not unlike the current progressive one which confabulates theories of armed insurrection (the Viking helmeted, face painted, clown show of January 6th when two hundred frat boys from the Idaho panhandle and along the way to Washington staged a three ring circus), a return to Robber Baron economics (twisted notions about free enterprise, consolidation of American wealth, and a money-fueled boom), and a Soviet style pogrom of undocumented asylees (deporting illegal aliens) into a universal ethos of doom. 

Consistent with Absurdist Theory, why wouldn't this neo-Hitler concoct a means to assure that his predatory, destructive, horrifically genocidal ambitions would continue, in fact be permanent? As crazy as the idea sounds, progressives give it credence.  

'Couldn't possibly be', said one of the few moderates in the party, but those on the far left, already unhinged by their humiliating defeat and believing more than ever that the Trump victory meant social Armageddon, were not convinced.  

There were enough examples of his defamatory, anti-social, hateful programs and his frightening arrogance (the Left circulated pictures of Trump standing defiant, the image of Il Duce, Mussolini, standing imperiously, chin out, above a crowd of roaring Fascists) to warrant concern. 

Subscription to this, the most outrageously ridiculous conspiracy theory ever, was a sure sign that it was curtains for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  They could never come back from this. 

On the QT progressive operatives began to investigate, first interviewing scientists at NIH to see if there was anything whatsoever to the possibility of such advanced genetic engineering. A transcript of a top secret meeting with Prof. Armand Liggett, senior scientist at the Institute for Genetics in Bethesda unearthed recently was concerning but reassuring.  Liberals were not wrong. 

'Ah, yes, cloning', said Prof. Liggett, smiling at the old fashioned idea and remembering The Boys of Brazil. 'Possible of course, but we've come a long way from that quite prehistoric way of asexual reproduction.  'Now', he said, warming to the question like Dr. Strangelove did in Stanley Kubrick's movie, holding down his crippled right hand so that it would not fly up in a Nazi salute, 'we have come a long way and is genetic identic reproduction possible? Of course it is, of course', now a whirling dervish, a latter day prophet, a crazy Union Square mad evangelist. 

The interviewer left unsettled but convinced they were on the right track.  The President with all the levers of power available to him, and with devilish intent and American innovative technology behind him, there was no doubt that he was preparing for an unlikely but certain future. 

In order to cover their already noticeable instability, Democrats requested and were granted a subcommittee hearing on genetic engineering, and there within Roberts Rules of Order and the privileged sanctity of the Senate managed to get at the truth.  Was it possible, etc. etc. and might it be, yada yada, and could we possibly see, etc. etc. the questioners asked Dr. Liggett brought down from Bethesda to testify, and off he went as intemperately as before.  'Yes, yes' he fairly shouted to the panel, and went on until time was called. 

None of this proved a thing, only that designer babies would soon be here, but nothing about anything so sinister as generations of Trump babies being born to realize his satanic vision. 

When asked if he had heard the rumors and was there any truth to them, the President smiled at the CNN reporter, and said, 'Yes, of course', which sent the entire press corps tapping away at their phones, until they realized that the President was just joshing. 

Bob Muzelle, a veteran of the old civil rights bus rides down South, perennial liberal advocate, and espouser of all progressive causes, a tireless sponsor of doing the right thing, was at sixes and sevens, dazed and confused as never before.  Visions of Hitler, a thousand Hitlers shook and rattled in his brain, a terrifying sight of Sieg Heil, SS storm troopers, the Gestapo, and torchlight parades washed before him.  It was happening, the thought, really happening.  All that we feared has come true.  Evil is in our midst, we are...

 

Here his wife Jeannette called him to dinner.  'Pot roast, dear', she said. 'Your favorite', so Bob stumbled to the table looking wilder and more mad than the zany NIH professor. 'It's coming', Bob shouted over the carrots and mashed potatoes.  'It's here.  We're...we're...', but he couldn't finish, got up from the table, petted the dog, and walked out the door, and was later picked up by Montgomery County police, escorted to Suburban Hospital, and then admitted to a private facility in Connecticut for the well-heeled mentally ill. 

A metaphor for the Democratic Party, nastily reported Republican critics who had gotten wind of the 'transfer' of this senile old fool.  Harsh, perhaps a bit unfair, but alas, true as a hammered nail. 

When One Hysteria Replaces Another - Trump Derangement Syndrome In, Climate Armageddon Out

It had been almost four months since the Trump inauguration, and there were no signs of the revolution letting up.  Piece by piece the progressive agenda was being dismantled, dismissed, and left on the curb.  

DEI, the centerpiece of its platform, the sine qua non spiritual fulcrum around which all other policy initiatives revolved, was on the run, a scattered, discredited, shambles; and black-this-black-that, gayness, Palestine Forever, transgenderism, open borders were finished, detritus, flotsam and jetsam floating on the tide. 

'This cannot stand', shouted Bob Muzelle to a small but enthusiastic claque of supporters gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House.  Bob was surprised that there was no police line, no SWAT team, no sawhorse barriers, no yellow tape - the last straw, a sign of the diminishing returns of a proud progressive legacy.  

At least one mounted Secret Service agent would do, a sign that Bob and his friends meant business, but no, only a few tourists in Washington for a glimpse of the White House, distracted by the whoops and hollers coming from Bob's corner of the park.  

Undaunted, in fact fired up by this desultory environment, by this mildest of all possible attentions, and by this message of indifference sent by the man across the street, Bob raised his voice to a fevered pitch.  More tourists gathered to watch.  Bob was a whirling dervish, a madman, one possessed, something to be videoed and sent back to Chillicothe. 

The group cheering Bob was not the diverse one he had hoped - one raggedy keffiyeh, a gay man, and a mulatto dressed to the nines was all the diversity present, and for the most part the gathering was dismally white and old-looking, mainly Bob's civil rights friends who had come down with him from Bethesda to show support, one last hurrah before packing it in and heading for condos in Sarasota.  

Finally the DC police came and shooed them away. 'Time to move on, folks', the officer said, a young man, probably new on the beat with no bullhorn, billy club or taser.  A few old women, veterans of the Sixties, shouted 'Pig' at him, but no one joined in.  He looked like their sons; and so it was that the tourists and the demonstrators drifted off leaving Bob with microphone in hand, disconsolate, looking for shelter, disassembled, and wondering what to do next. 

Yet in other quarters hatred for Trump seethed.  Every day that he signed an executive order reversing years of social reform, the angrier they got. By the time he closed the southern border, wiped out every last trace of DEI, started digging on the North Slope, unleashed the private sector, restored every Confederate statue and every slaveholder street name, virtually unplugged every electric vehicle, and let loose millions of tons of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, they were knackered.  They expected some blowback on their most progressive initiatives but not this yard sale. 

All that was left was pure, unadulterated hatred for the man - a bitter, deep-seated, bilious vileness that was full-blown, indivisible, and white hot.  There was still time for Americans to know whom they elected, what villainous evil they had unleashed on the world.

Individual issues melted in the incendiary ferocity of their hatred.  They must transform themselves from political opponents to latter day prophets.  The must go out into the land.  The time for parsing and deconstructing was over, and nothing less that Biblical rage and injunction would do.  In a feverish St. Vitus' dance, they blazed with righteous anger and holy purpose. 

 

Now that their goody bag of good ideas was empty, and the road to a more verdant, compassionate, and considerate future blocked, they were stymied. The tide was turning from righteousness to villainy as lengths of pipeline, volumes of particulate coal-fired emissions, number of deportations, and predatory Wall Street buyouts increased. Individual protests were of no use, only distractions, diversions from the central truth.  The madman must be stopped, and that was that. 

Fergie Lampo had been one of the first to sound the alarm about climate change, and with the first millimeter of loss from the Antarctic ice shelf onwards, he was on the front lines.  It was not just global warming he said, but climate change.  An irreversible, devastating, existential crisis putting the human race within seconds to midnight on the doomsday clock.

 

He was indefatigable and unstoppable.  With every fluctuation in bird migration, bee population, sea currents, and weather patterns, he was on the air, on every stage that would have him, and in the news.  He had found a home in the Biden administration, a minor player in the White House Office for Climate Affairs but an important one nonetheless.  There among likeminded passionate advocates, he could be himself, feeling good about doing good and making a difference. 

Then, all of sudden Biden was on the street, the Trump juggernaut was in Washington, and climate change was no more than a footnote.  The hatred for the new President and everything he stood for had completely erased any trace of concern for the changing patterns of the world's climate.  Armageddon was as close as it had every been, but no one was paying attention.  What gives? Fergie asked. 

Social psychologist Abraham Silberstein, resident scholar at the Maastricht Institute Of Social Sciences, had this to say about collective hysteria:

The origins of hysteria are well known - a combination of genetic, social, and environmental factors which produce an initial intellectual febrility which quickly becomes an inchoate distortion of reality.  The hysteric, in the popular lexicon, has lost the ability to know what's what. 

The literature amply shows that such hysteria is also a feature of groups and societies at large - majorities who incorporate the most aberrant, unbelievable notions into their psyches and turn them into universal expressions of uncontrollable angst. 

What one observes in America now and what has been popularly but aptly called Trump Derangement Syndrome is occurring.  The bilious, fulminating, inchoate hatred for the man is what scientists call Psychic Universality, a state of mind where all normal, cognitive functions are shut down, and the medulla oblongata, the seat of primitive emotions takes over. 

There is no stopping the transformation once it has started and like rabies it inevitably kills its victims; but before it does, the feral hysteria jumps from one imagined issue to another like a three-legged squirrel... (Maastricht Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 22, 22-100) 

Not that this was any consolation to Fergie who had simply and practically been lost in the shuffle; but at least it explained why his progressive colleagues had gone from diffident to distracted to dismissive about his continued plaints and demands.  If this continued, he knew, climate disaster would be a forgotten issue consigned to the style section of the Washington Post ('Gardeners - Prepare Your Sprinklers for Summer').  

As it was, Trump himself had debunked the issue, saying from a balcony overlooking the White House South lawn on a unexpectedly balmy April day, 'If this is global warming, I'll take it'.  The demission of the issue had already started; but that, Fergie treasonously thought as he too enjoyed a particularly delightful day of early Spring, might not be a bad thing.