The Senator And His Courtesan - An Unapologetic Libertine In A Censorious Age

Haley Windham grew up on a farm in a small farm community of Presbyterians who had moved there in the early years of the 19th century, prospered thanks to hard work, faith, and singular ambition.  Hiram Windham, the family patriarch, had settled on land newly platted thanks to the Lewis and Clark expedition that explored and laid initial claim to the lands west of the Mississippi.  Plat 454 once bought and titled became the Windham family homestead, five hundred acres of fertile eastern prairie on which Hiram husbanded livestock, grew corn, and tended to goats and chickens.

By the time Haley was a young woman, the rural life of the Midwest no longer held any interest.  She had had her fill of eggs, milking, drawing water, and tending to her five brothers and sisters, and after a spell at Franklin Pierce junior college, headed east to Washington to seek her fortune. 

Haley was a modest girl and 'fortune' was not a mythical wealth of Croesus, a spectacular marriage, or good fortune.  It was only getting what any young, bright, attractive young woman deserved.  She had no particular long term goal in mind, but had the good sense to approach her Senator and apply for an internship.  She would be loyal, diligent, and patient; and he would find her a most able and apt assistant. 

Now this Senator was unusual for his times - a censorious, accusatory, puritanical era of MeToo supposition of male deceit and misogyny - for he cared nothing for such rectitude.  Women were women who all looked alike with their clothes off, who all had a peculiarly female ambition, but who were still in the thrall of male protectorship - easily seduced by men who took them seriously, explored their inner rooms, and treated them with respect and dignity. 

The Senator had been gifted with a silver tongue, useful both for the seduction of young women and for political election.  The constituents of his state loved him, and his career from state legislator to attorney general, to Congressman to Senator was one of easy elision and happy outcomes.  They liked him for what he did for their state, but loved him for his charm, easygoing sexual confidence, and sincerity.  As such they not only forgave him for his sexual dalliances, they loved him for it. 

Now every Senator since Alexander Hamilton's day has had lovers, mistresses, and concubines.  One remembers the origins of the august Upper Chamber and Alexander Hamilton's debate with his colleague Thomas Jefferson over the dangers of populism. 'One must be wary of the mob, my dear Thomas', he wrote in a letter to Jefferson, 'lest they enslave us and send us back to Africa along with the Mandingos here to pick cotton'.  S

Such respect for breeding, education, and intelligence provided a buffer to the ragged peasantry that Jefferson so loved, and gave a certain privilege and social immunity to those who legislated there.  Sexual pleasure was by and large the currency of the realm. 

Times change, and such patrician privilege went by the wayside as the Senate became much like its little brother the House of Representatives, 'a bunch of rubes' said Hamilton, 'hayseeds, chicken farmers, and wool gatherers'.  Along the way these Senators got infected with the same puritanical fervor as their friends in the Longworth building and led - at least in public - lives of moral rectitude and self-censorship. 

Things went from bad to worse, and by the time that Joe Biden was president, the country - let alone the Senate - was dominated by a cabal of shrewish vixens who lambasted men and their misogynist intentions at every turn.  Men, whether Walmart greeters, plumbers, or Senators were to hew to the same moral line.  Keep it in your pants or there will be hell to pay. 

But these Congressional vixenish bullies were still women, and they gave the Senator a royal pass.  He not only gave them the time of day but convinced them that he was firmly in their camp. Gender must be aligned to protect women, chastise men, and allow for freedom of sexual choice. 

Of course this was all a contrived scam. The Senator neither believed this feminist cant or paid it any mind.  Women were women, a distinctive, historically consistent class, to be used when convenient, praised when advantageous, and seduced whenever possible. 

It was tribute to the Senator's canniness and ingenuity that he led the live of a Lothario, a Casanova, a Count de Valmont in the midst of such hysterical sexual fol-de-rol.  So when he took the lovely Haley Windham as his lover, every single one of the watchdog harridans on Capitol Hill looked the other way.  If they had any second thoughts it was because the handsome, desirable Senator had not chosen them. 

The Senator was married of course to a charming woman in her own right who, both seduced by her charming, irresistible husband and politically ambitious also looked the other way.  A marriage of convenience; and only by taking lovers of her won did she escape the opprobrium of deceived wife. 

Remarkable for 21st century American politics, the Senator acted no differently than Francois Mitterrand, former President of France at whose gravesite mourned his legitimate daughter and wife and his lover and illegitimate adult child.  He was as open as Mitterrand, Sarkozy, and presidential pretender Dominique Strauss-Kahn, famous sexual libertine and sexual adventurer. 

He was the very epitome of 'diversity', that overmarketed, hapless, divisive, and rudely ignorant deformation of heterogeneity. As much as many progressives hated to admit it, he occupied one of the  sexual points on the gender spectrum - not only a straight, white male, but one aggressively so, a virtual sexual wolf on the prowl. 

Haley Windham was well taken care of by the Senator, often seen at his side, but never demanding attention.  She was his consort, concubine, lover, and confidant and she wanted no more.  There is chivalry in adultery and the Senator treated Haley like a princess, and for that his constituents loved him even more.  He was never dismissive or disregarding of his wife - on the contrary she was always with him at official functions, respected as his partner and sexually liberated individual.  

It was a bit like the English Victorians Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson who enjoyed the pleasures and privileges of an open marriage and were accorded no censure for it. 

The affair between the Senator and Haley Windham lasted longer than anyone - particularly he - expected, but when it did there were no tears shed.  They parted friends and both went on to successful individual lives. 

It all goes to show you - there is no such thing as absolutes.  Life is a series of comings and goings and the most able, morally accommodating, and considerate people will not only survive but profit. 

As for the MeToo harridans of Washington, the old maids, shrewish, embittered women of the Left, they were left to whoop and holler, castigate and excoriate to no avail.  They had been so snookered by the Senator that if not for his charm and warm, engaging manner, would be the hated enemy.

And so it would always be.  Savvy men have never taken feminist screeds seriously, and used the perennial feminine desire to be taken seriously to good advantage.  No harm, no foul.  The Senator went on as if the brouhaha on the Left never existed, and the cabal of wicked sisters never knew how unimportant they were. 

Donald Trump's Mistress - Joining Putin And Xi In A Geopolitical And Sexual Triumvirate

Vladimir Putin's mistress, Christina Belenkaya - or at least his No. 1 mistress, his favorite and mother of two daughters, is well taken care of by the state, no questions asked.  Not only is this care a product of Russian security, but Russian tradition.  The Czars since Ivan the Terrible all had mistresses, considered the most beautiful women in the land, above comparison, prized possessions part of the royal treasury. 

So it was no surprise that President Putin had his choice of beautiful, desirable women - nor was it a surprise that these young women readily agreed.  Although they knew that their time in the palace would be short - an emperor has the right to exchange old goods for new - the riches, cachet, and sybaritic life would be memorable.  Better to have loved and lost, etc., especially when it comes to the concubines of the czar.  

For all this sumptuous royal tradition, President Putin is far more sexually recondite than, say Presidents Mitterrand and Sarkozy of France, men who invited their mistresses to live in their own chambers at the Elysees.  The French public thought nothing of these affairs - it was only normal for a French president to take his pleasure after a long day of looking after the Republic, and in fact, having a mistress was de rigeur for the normal, healthy French male.

Even the working class had their cinq-a-sept liaisons more often than not with the ladies of Pigalle - a working man spent his salary on food, wine, and women; and just like President Sarkozy, after a hard day at the factory, deserved a bit of a respite from metro, boulot, dodo. 

The Chinese imperial tradition was no different.  The emperors of every dynasty for thousands of years enjoyed harems of the most beautiful women of the realm.  The Emperor Tzu-Ling was particularly proud of the women in his charge, chosen from each of the many distinct regions of China.  Every night he took out his map of the Middle Kingdom, circled his finger with his eyes closed, placed it blindly on the map, and selected a woman from the region on which his finger had landed. 

The long Communist regime under Mao Tse Tung was a peculiarly chaste one.  There was no room in the Communist canon for sexual dalliance.  Work was the ethos of the era, work, work and more work; and the forced labor, internment camps, and failed agricultural communes made life so penitential for the Chinese peasant, sex was the last thing on his mind. 

However with China's entry into the modern capitalist world, money, time, and leisure became once again coins of the realm, and the members of the politburo were free to choose their lovers.  In fact, the current President, Xi Jinping, not unlike his Russian counterpart, has a reverence and respect for his imperial past where concubinage was part of the royal tradition. 

The President's mistress, Fei Fei Wang, is a young woman from Shanghai who came to the President's attention during a routine tour of the provinces.  Polite inquiries were made, respectful overtures advanced to the girl's parents and grandparents, and a generous donation made to the memory of the family departed. 

Fei Fei was installed in the Royal Suite of the Presidential palace, provided all the perks of her station but kept out of sight.  Things had changed in China since the dynastic emperors - the sexual conservatism of the Mao years still had currency, and so Xi found himself betwixt and between - anxious to enjoy the privileges of the old emperors, but cautious because of still modest populace. 

American Presidents have not had mistresses as much as they have had sexual dalliances.  Only Franklin Roosevelt had a longtime mistress with whom he developed a special, loving relationship.  The other presidents had no interest in sexual fidelity and picked and chose as they went along.  JFK, thanks to his youth, energy, and beauty had his pick of the most beautiful Hollywood starlets, and Marilyn Monroe was the jewel in the crown. 

LBJ used the Secret Service to pimp for him, and he was known as much for his herculean sexual appetite as for his workaholic approach to the presidency.  Even dour, sour, jowly Richard Nixon was reported to have a mistress - a woman in Dupont Circle who visited Camp David and spent long weekend with him.  

Henry Kissinger, a fat, rumpled, ugly Jewish man had his pick of the litter.  He famously observed that power was the greatest aphrodisiac and he benefitted mightily from it.  Women who ordinarily would have paid him no mind were anxious to share his bed once he was Secretary of State. 

Bill Clinton lowered the bar.  From trailer trash to fellatio under the Lincoln Desk with an intern, he was the laughing stock of the world; but at least he didn't suffer painfully like his successor Joe Biden who, with the scourge mentality of MeToo and under the watchful eye of a cabal of censorious progressive shrews, made fidelity a point, not just a circumstance. 

Which leads us to Donald Trump, a man who loves beautiful women, has squired and bedded them as long as he can remember.  He had women from Hollywood, Las Vegas, and New York - actresses, producers, real estate giants, call girls, and international beauty queens; but now that he is a second term president and nearing eighty, would that fire still be burning?

Konstantin Levin, a principal character in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina lamented God's irony for creating an intelligent, sentient, creative, insightful being, given him a scant few decades to live, and then consigned him for all eternity in the cold hard steppes of Russia. 

A worse irony say many is that God gave men a lifelong desire for women, but granted them but a few years to satisfy it; and so it is that Donald Trump, like the rest of us, thinks about women all the time, and given Presidential authority, a mere gesture can have them in the White House. 

The man is politically incorrect, dismissive of the uppity, censorious women who consider men a predatory evil, and is unconcerned about his political or economic future.  He cannot run for president again, has no particular concern for historical legacy, and has billions in his bank accounts for when he retires. 

Eliot Spitzer, former governor of New York who was caught in flagrante delicto with a high-priced call girl in the Honeymoon Suite of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, said that he had done nothing wrong. 'I'm too busy running the state to chase women, he said, so an hour or two with Mrs. Longworth's ladies is all I can afford', he said or words to that effect, but was dunned out of office by a critical, censorious public. 

So Trump could have his way with any one of Mrs. Longworth's girls - she runs an absolutely tight ship and with the one exception of the New York governor, has maintained complete secrecy for the afternoon affairs of Washington's power corridor elite. 

This, however is not Trump's style. He wants his own arm candy, female admirers, women who love him, so why not?  In the few years remaining in the White House, he could certainly become an octogenarian Al Pacino or Robert Di Niro who have young lovers and children by them. 

There have been rumors about Trump's sexual dalliances, and few doubt them. If Trump has joined Putin and Xi in a geopolitical triumvirate as powerful as the world has seen, then why not join them in enjoying the perks of Emperors, and Czars?

Not only does Trump want to feel his oats for perhaps one last time, he could care less if he is caught with his pants down.  The tone deaf presidential candidate Gary Hart dared the press to catch him in an adulterous affair and they did.  Hart withdrew from the campaign and was forgotten. 

Not so Trump.  In fact he would love to be caught - 'Powerful man with beautiful woman not his wife' would be just the headline for him. 

Mariposa Robbins And The End Of Days - Why Progressives Secretly Hope For Armageddon

Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's movie Taxi Driver says, 'Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets...I think someone should just take this city and just… just flush it down the fuckin’ toilet'.  Mariposa Robbins agreed, but secretly wanted more - the incineration of the planet in a fiery judgement that would allow new life, a good life, a pure and simple life to regenerate, populate, and thrive. 

Now, Mariposa was mixing her metaphors.  Revelation prophesies a fiery Armageddon but there will be no regeneration.  The world has been a sinkhole of rot, sin, and apostasy for so many millennia that there can be no turning back.  The end of days is exactly what it means - the end. 

Of course given Biblical history, God's past annihilations may simply go awry.  The Flood, his first attempt to rid the world of infidelity, injustice, and inhumanity did little good, for when the waters subsided life returned no different than before - pitiful, abhorrent, and faithless.  He tried again and destroyed the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  That too was little more than divine pique, destroying what he could not control, but the lesson was not learned, and the world went on in its sinful, deceptive, godless way. 

Then, realizing that annihilation, total destruction led nowhere, God changed his approach and sent his only begotten son, Jesus, to earth to preach the gospel of forgiveness and salvation.  Jesus would take the sins of the world on his shoulders and die so that men could be redeemed.

That too did not work, for the world is as sinful, faithless, and desperately violent and sadistic than it ever was. 

Be that as it may, Mariposa was not an orthodox Christian who believed in the received word of God, and took the Bible as metaphor, allegory, and principle.  Yet there was something appealing about The Book of Revelation, the thundering hooves of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, the magnificent incendiary end to the world, the cataclysmic final accounting.  

T.S. Eliot in The Hollow Men says that the world will end not with a bang but a whimper, but that lambent, discrediting idea did not appeal to her. She wanted Sturm und Drang. The world as defiling, godless, hopelessly and shamelessly ignorant and arrogant as it was deserved better. 

Now, Mariposa was a lifelong progressive, a tireless fighter for Negro rights, the black man, gender fluidity, refugees, climate change, and the distribution of wealth.  She was a progressive's progressive, a warrior, a soldier in the cause of progress, a crusader for a better, more verdant, more peaceful, and communal world. 

But now after so many decades of liberal purpose, Freedom Rides, days and nights at the barricades, marches on the National Mall all without success, her thoughts turned more to a final solution - end the troubled, pestilential, sick world and start over again. 

A remarkable percentage of Americans believe that Armageddon will come within their lifetimes.  The Bible never specified when the end of days would occur, but said there would be unmistakable signs - natural disaster, war and civil conflict, famine and disease, and moral decay; and who could doubt the appearance of these signs. 

At first Mariposa dismissed such prophecy as religious chicanery - more prayer, more money in the collection basket, more churchgoing - but there was the niggling retainer, the impossible-to-ignore likelihood of destruction. 

After all she and her fellow progressives had talked of nuclear and climate Armageddon with conviction. If the human race were capable of self-destruction, then imagine what God finally exasperated and fed up with his own Creation could, would, and might well do. 

Just when Mariposa thought that there might be progress towards a more gentle, forgiving, and charitable world, in comes Donald Trump, harbinger of disaster, undoer of good, arrogant fool. Every reasonable policy and program put in place by progressives was being dismantled, discarded, and trashed.  Liberal reformers would have to start all over again; but if such reversals had been so easy, as easy as a few votes at election time, then it would be better to scrap the whole electoral system, eliminate the fanatics who put the man in office, and release a virus that would leave America a desert, a void. 

 

There have been mad prophets throughout history, unhinged, mentally untethered zealots who demand repentance before it is too late. Mariposa passed one every morning at Farragut West as she left the Metro for her office.  The man was as wild looking and deranged as could be, the very image of an Old Testament prophet in loin cloth and weeds, shouting Biblical verses and holding signs of extinction and the end of days.  He was gaunt, almost skeletal, fiery-eyed and tireless.  She couldn't look him in the eyes, for the one time she did, he smiled and gestured to her.  Was that a sign?

Meanwhile Mariposa never gave up her advocacy for social reform.  Without immediate action, she shouted at a climate gathering, the human race is doomed.  We were never intended to be mired in heterosexuality...the black man will soon be atop the human pyramid, his rightful place...war is evil...and so on and so forth; but at each outing she looked around her and saw, like Travis Bickle, nothing but filth, scum, ordure, and rot.  Let a hard rain come and wipe it out, wash it down the sewer.

Progressivism is itself an unhinging affair.  There are some who have become so addled by Trump hatred that they literally come apart at the seams, become obsessed, knowable to husbands, wives and children.  They cannot believe the visitation, the evil residing in the White House, or that a viral pestilence could spread so quickly through the land.  His every action, every utterance, every policy was antithetical to justice, compassion, reason, and goodness.  

There are others like Mariposa who looked more systemically - the retrograde policies of conservative administrations are more expressions of a universal American sickness - a bourgeois lassitude and bottom-feeding cultural anomie.  It is this cultural obtuseness, this adamantine ignorance which is ineradicable by normal means.  Annihilation is the only answer, removal and regeneration. 

So, by and by Mariposa became just as crazed and unhinged as her Trump-hating colleagues.  Both had gone around the bend never to return. 

Mariposa wondered if Armageddon would be anything like the scenes from Terminator II.  Probably, and about time.