The Saga Of The White House Ballroom - Sturm Und Drang, Trump Hatred, And The Clown Show Of Gossipy Women

Marge Ellen Talbot threw the Washington Post on the table and shouted at her husband, 'Do you know what Trump just did?'. 

By now Harper Talbot was used to his wife's Trump hysteria, so he took another bite of toast, smiled, and waited. 

'The ballroom', she spluttered. 'The White House ballroom.  To get it through Congress he declared it a military facility! Can you imagine?'

Of course he could.  The man - Donald Trump - was a genius at driving the Left completely batshit over nothing, having a gay old time of it, watching their apoplectic Saint Vitus' dances, hip-hopping, flailing, and howling like the demented souls of Bedlam and Broadmoor. 

Harper was amazed that his wife - intelligent, the best schools, professional occupation, responsible mother had been so taken in by Trump's hilarious chicanery. How had she had so completely missed the point and gone so far  'round the bend with a million other middle class matrons over trivialities - the ballroom, the Victory Arch, the Field of American heroes, the Kennedy Center, etc.?

How could anyone not see what this vaudevillian impresario was doing?  He was in his second and last term, a billionaire, happy to retire to Mar-a-Lago and live out his life in luxury, unconcerned about legacy, history, or the yapping, carping street dogs that had pursued him without success for years.  

The Presidency was not exactly the Big Top, but along with reconfiguring foreign policy in a Machiavellian, America-first policy to match the nationalism and realpolitik of Russia and China; along with closing the borders, untethering the private sector from punitive regulations, rolling back woke idiocy, and dismantling the bureaucracy, he was having his jolly way with the Left. 

He loved to watch them squirm, loved to call out the stupidity of media shills at press conferences, and above all loved creating havoc with liberals’ sanctimonious, airy, impossibly foolish agenda.  Quite the guy, thought Harper Talbot. Quite the guy. 

Of course Harper kept all this to himself.  No reason to get into an argument with his wife who, like her colleagues, was fixed in stone when it came to Donald Trump.  Nothing he did, ipso facto, could be right, reasonable, or just.  He was an autocrat, an elitist Wall Street goon, a mountebank, a racist pig. 

Harper Talbot had been married long enough to overlook his wife's growing eccentricities.  They had had a good life together, had produced two children and many grandchildren, so let her rant and rave if it feels good.  

God only knows she wasn't the only one.  All he had to do was walk out the door, greet his neighbors, and get harangued over something that Trump had done.  

Women were the worst - something stuck more chokingly in the female craw than in the male, and these ordinarily sedate and centered women kept trying to cough up the bolus of Trump cat hair day and night. 

What was it about women, Harper wondered?  Why should they be so infected by this virus of insensate hate, this persistent animus, this emotional plague that kept them awake and kept them caterwauling night and day?  How was it that men saw through the Trump charade, the marvelous side show that was his Presidency, the over-the-top hilarity of his barbs, ad hominem arrows, and politically incorrect and rude behavior? 

Of course there were men and plenty of them who opposed Trump policies.  Harper had gone to Yale with a number of former North Shore, Piping Rock conservatives whose heads had been turned by the infamous William Sloane Coffin, Yale Chaplain, civil rights activist and first on the bus to Selma to march with Martin and Ralph.  

Anson White, scion of the White shipping conglomerate, brought up in solid patrician, dutiful patriotic ways, turned against family legacy and rode alongside the Reverend to do the right thing. 

But even he never went into the whirling dervish apoplexy that so characterized Harper's wife and her friends.  He harped on incessantly about the black man, the warming planet, the rights of asylees, the place of women, and the distortions of the capitalist markets, but he left all the rest aside. The ballroom, the arch, the reflecting pool, the gilding of statues were distractions from the real business of the day - radical progressivism. 

'How could he?, Marge Ellen wailed, looking around for something to grab.  She wanted to pick up Aunt Tilly's Victorian cruet - an ugly, ungainly piece that had stood as a centerpiece to the dining table for years - and throw it shattering against the wall.  'That man...we must...he's...', and with that she stormed off to the kitchen where she blew off steam by banging the pots and pans in the drainer. 

Tonight was her bi-weekly political meeting - a group of like-minded women who gathered together to commiserate and consider ways of protest; but it was really little more than a girls' night out, a gossipy affair which rarely got down to business.  

The women bitched all evening, but only with a half-hour before closing time did they get down to Donald Trump, and by then they were all spent what with Betty Helander's drinking problem, Louise Banner's afternoon dalliances, Felicity James' total parking disrespect, and the scrofulous Fletcher twins. 

Harper was no misogynist by any means.  He admired, respected, and loved strong, determined women; and so was initially befuddled and perplexed by their cattiness and gossipy flightiness.  The ballroom?  The arch? In his view, a male view, a subscript in the Trump text perhaps, but nothing more.  

The girls' nights out were what made the whole Trump thing crystal clear.  These women - and here Harper hated to generalize to all women, but again and again during the Trump Derangement Syndrome phase it was women who jumped around like mad chickens.

Women loved to gossip, to find fault, pounce on peccadilloes, to take their pound of flesh in small bites, to nitpick, insinuate, and cavil. Why shouldn't they take this spitefulness to the top?  The ballroom was no different than Hermione Baxter's depression or Randall Ives' run-in with the law. 

So much so that liberal women had become a laughing stock - a caricature, a freak show, a predictably and hilariously unhinged lot of clowns - and they, decked out in warpaint, dyed hair, piercings, and thrift store ensembles, played the part to a 'T'.  

Now, Harper's wife, Marge Ellen had not gone that far, although one day not long ago she and her coffee klatch friends boarded a school bus and went down to the Mall to demonstrate for abortion and against Trump's vile, misogynist, Bible-thumping posturing.  Best left to the younger generation they concluded after a hot, sweaty four hours in the sun; but they had at least put their money where their mouths were. 

When Marge Ellen had come in bedraggled, knackered, and ready to cry, Harper knew that she had overstepped her limits.  Better stick to Trump hatred from Bethesda, couched in girly gossip and righteousness. 

When Diversity Means Conformity - A Clown Show To Hide Serious Political Intent

 No rational observer takes the progressive canon on face value.  Diversity, equity, inclusion - the liturgy of social reform - is nothing more than a cover for a more serious political intent.  Who every thought that the Biden open border policy was a humanitarian gesture, a reprise of Ellis Island and multicultural early 20th Century America?  Anyone paying attention saw it for the calculated policy to engineer redistricting and ensure Democrat majorities; and to fill non-ID voter rolls with those thankful for Democrat generosity and largesse.  

 

Does any progressive who publicly champions the black man and commits to raising him atop the human pyramid, recognize his forest-sentient origins, his closeness to Nature and the Environment and his native power really believe in such cant?  The African diaspora is immured in dysfunctional urban cells - 'inner city' neighborhoods of crime, truancy, drugs, and violence; and the mother-lode, Africa itself is a failed continent on all points of the compass.  Black-love, the overrepresentation of black faces on television, cinema, political office, and public affairs, is nothing more than a convenient coverlet, a mantel of respectability to keep the black electorate in tow. 

Who in the progressive ranks actually believes that the basso profundo, ex-telephone lineman, barrel-chested femme teaching kindergarten is actually a woman? Or that late-term abortion is nothing more than removing an unwanted clot of phlegm and preserving the sanctity of women? Who, once they have returned from the barricades shouting down Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires in a loud endorsement of socialism has ever looked at the murderous, destructive, inhuman regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and the Korean Kims?

'Idealism', say those who although in partnership with the Left, are more reserved about its current extremism.  Socialism appeals to the young because it promises equality, a communal end to unearned privileged, a utopia of good will, harmony, generosity, and compassion; and they are not expected to look further.  It is their idealism which is important for the nation, principles to guide democracy to a new, more verdant, understanding, and peaceful world. 

The same socialist ethos - assuring that every individual regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity, rich or poor is welcomed into the big tent of communalism and equality - underlies all verses of the progressive canon.  

'Stick to your own kind', the refrain from one of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story has never been more true.  Ever since the first human settlements difference has been the rule - suspicion of the outside, the interloper, the curious.  Every society has been hierarchically defined, the most intelligent on top, the least able on the bottom and a scramble to move up and out. 

The Communists knew this like everyone else, but saw that their version of 'inclusivity' resonated particularly well after centuries of the czars.  With enough determination, will, and military power, Russian society could be re-formed into a socialist paradise.

Once American progressives achieve their goal of diversity and inclusion - i.e. all citizens espousing the same theology, singing the same hymns, and reciting the same prayers - political control will be easy.  The Soviets tried this but ruined the country, eliminated the most promising and productive of its citizens, and threatened world peace. 

Eleanor Potter who considered herself a thoughtful, reasonable person - after all, what was a Vassar education worth if not to instill the principles of analysis, objectivity, and exegesis? She had never thought of herself as liberal or progressive - at least not in the reformist way - and went through her college years and beyond acting out her own interests.  She married well, was professionally successful, and socially engaged, all of which pointed to a life of political moderation. 

Something happened along the way - perhaps a dalliance with a Fifth Avenue Jewish matron who despite her wealth and premier New York cachet, was a committed but secret socialist.  Their love affair - as quiet and closeted as Mrs. Rubenstein's politics - lasted only a summer, but the woman was as seductive about her ideas as she was about her body, and before back-to-school, Eleanor had become a believer. 

'You must come to New York again' said Mrs. Rubenstein at the train station, but of course neither woman believed in that promise; but neither regretted the affair, particularly Eleanor who had come away not only with the buds of her sexuality finally opened, but her mind as well. 

It was this fundament - the socialism so eagerly endorsed by her lover - that was at the heart of her turn to progressive politics.  As she listened to the blandishments of liberal advocates about immigration, abortion, climate change, gender fluidity, and racism, she understood what this potpourri, this grab bag of disparate causes, was all about.  Although the women who stormed the barricades in protest thought they were fighting for individual reforms, they were simply chess pieces in a much larger game. 

This was what Esther Rubenstein was all about - the fundament, the infrastructure - the need for revolutionary social change.  All the rest was just window dressing, attractive political shawls.  As Stalin knew, the state had to make the individual believe that his bit for social justice fit within the overall transformation of Russian society. 

Yes, the Jews were not well treated by the Russians, but they did defeat the Jews' worst enemy, the Nazis and for that Esther and her family would be eternally thankful; but that was now part of history, when the real struggle, the neo-socialist caliphate, was far more urgent.  And yes, Stalin overstepped his bounds with Siberia and the gulags; but his salutary vision was undimmed.  The world could simply not survive the divisive, separatist, Paleolithic world of greed and aggression. 

Esther saw the progressive potpourri - the smorgasbord of tasty bits on the reform agenda - as necessary treats for the unwitting faithful.  Let them dream of a transgender world, a mass of multiculturalism, a cooling, temperate, paradisical climate, she thought, while their efforts would eventually be stitched together into one, unified, perfect quilt. 

Eleanor, once back in Washington, never forgot Esther Rubenstein and became her political devotee and like her a secretive one.  No one in Eleanor's milieu - well-to-do McLean, Georgetown, and Great Falls matrons - would have tolerated a socialist in their group.  Progressive sympathies were as far as these women went; so Eleanor kept her own counsel.  

However, behind the scenes she supported those in the intellectual socialist underground - the Harvard, Duke, and Berkeley professors who were at the avant-garde of what they called 'revolutionary underpinnings'.  In their courses, their writings, and their public addresses, they were careful about overplaying their hand but carefully and seductively couched their revolutionary message in acceptably progressive terms. 

The movement was one of genius - the fragrant potpourri for the acolytes, the true believers in individual progressive causes; and the heady intellectual substance for those responsible for true intent.  It was a marvelously orchestrated, brilliantly conducted symphony.  The American Right simply fought battles with the minions - gender reassignment was imagined, open borders was destabilizing, climate change was fiction - but never honed in on the more insidious, seditious socialist intent which underlay all these disparate causes.  As such it was fighting a losing battle. 

Eleanor did meet Esther Rubenstein again after many years, a nostalgic reunion at the Plaza, afternoon tea of reminiscences, expressions of mutual affection; but Eleanor felt blessed that she had the opportunity to meet her benefactor, a true hero, a woman of merit. 

America’s Morality Police–Iran, The Qur'an, And Doctrinal Purity

Before the American-Israeli invasion of Iran, the regime had cracked down on the increasingly hostile public protests against its authority and was reported to have killed 30,000 peaceful protesters.  The Iranian people had had enough of the theocracy, Sharia law, and the punitive codes of behavior.  Women were to be completely covered, men's beards were to conform to that of the Prophet's, alcohol consumption was cause for imprisonment, and even the slightest insinuation of apostasy was punishable by death. 

Progressives in the United States were stymied.  They had always condemned the treatment of women and criticized the regime as medieval and heinous, but at the same time they were reluctant to endorse a white, privileged regime - that of the United States - in its intention to topple a legitimate regime which ruled a country of diversity. 

As importantly but far less well know was progressives' admiration of the Iranian state for their successful imposition of a strict moral codes.   The state had a right and responsibility to promote, assure, impose moral principles on its citizens, and police their observance.  

The United States under Donald Trump, say progressives, had devolved into a radical, seditious, and immoral nation which rejected transformative notions of sexual equality, racial justice, and economic fairness.  Not only were these deep state, MAGA, reactionary sentiments politically dangerous, but morally wrong.  The progressive agenda of transgenderism, black supremacy, the dismissal of religious fundamentalism, and the dismantling of capitalism were anointed, absolutely right, and morally above debate. 

Anyone who disagreed with this agenda was ipso facto an apostate, a heretical denier, an immoral, self-serving reprobate.  Nothing but a casting out, a torturous death, a purifying boiling in oil, flogging, and burning at the stake would suffice.

American progressives were clear and unequivocal about their agenda and their means of enforcement.  They intended to secure their agenda by intimidation, threat, and public censure.  Any university president who did not subscribe to MeToo campus injustice in the name of women’s rights would be exposed for his backward, hateful, and ignorant ideas, and calls for his summary dismissal would be incessant and determined.

Anyone who suggested that the black man was anything other than naturally superior, enslaved only because of barbarous collusion of European and American capitalists, and denied his right and his dignity because of the innate inhumanity of the white man would be labelled racist and marginalized to the far periphery of orderly society.  

Those who suggested that a woman’s right to choose abortion was not an absolute, undeniable right were dunned and called out for misogyny; and anyone who challenged the idea of gender fluidity and the right of every child to choose his or her own sexuality was pilloried and expelled.

Every young person recruited into the ranks of progressive liberalism was not only schooled in the catechism of right behavior, but armed with the materiel to engage the enemy.  They were taught the correct lexicon, the language of inclusivity and diversity.  Language was the first and most obvious offense of the morally idle.  Instances of retrograde English usage were to be called out and censured and correct forms and terms indicated.  

Homeless people were to be outdoor urban dwellers; prostitutes, sex workers; an insult was emotional rape; and shoplifting was irregular shopping.  Recruits were taught revisionist history – those American icons irreducibly tied to racism which were to be discredited and their names and likenesses removed from public view.  They memorized the doctrinal catalogue and the automatic responses to denial – climate change, racism, misogyny, homophobia, predatory capitalism, environmental sanctity, etc. They were taught to recognize moral escapism. 

Once ordained, these new recruits were sent out like militant, door-to-door Jehovah’s Witnesses. Armed with an indoctrinated sense of righteousness, they were unafraid to speak out, to be heard, to criticize and reveal moral depravity when they saw it.

In the early days of the pandemic, COVID evangelists formed vigilante groups, neighborhood enforcers of masks and six-foot spacing.  In a reprise of Eastern European secret services, they recruited, trained, and encouraged children to call out those who did not comply. It was a j’accuse moment,  the howl of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers the cry, and Stay At Home! was the injunction.  

Children were the avant-garde of the movement, Stasi-like informers of the East German state.  They were ideal recruits because they were too little and too uninformed to question the bald intrusiveness and anti-social behavior of their parents.  They were taught only to discover, point, and report pandemic deniers. It was a fearless, righteous time of humiliating public censure.

It was not so much that these street preaching vigilantes were worried about getting sick themselves; it was the shameless disregard for others that posed the greatest threat to the body politic. If we are all to reach a better, more perfect world, progressives say, one with a mild, pollution-free climate, complete tolerance and inclusivity, and a gender-neutral society, naysayers, doubters, and stubborn individualists must be gelded.  The brave, new world can never be realized while the noxious gasses of hyper-conservative radicalism are in the air.

The environmental movement is no different.  It believes in the sanctity of Mother Earth which was at the center of many ancient pagan religions.  Mother Earth is Gaya, a sensate organism with a life of its own.  She reacts to pain, to rape and mutilation and sheds the tears of Jesus Christ who asked in disbelief at the evil of Mankind,  “My God, my God.  Why have You forsaken me?”.  

Environmentalism is not a secular movement, dealing only with atmospheric computer models, the delicate measurement of ultra-violet light penetrating the ever-thinning ozone layer, the build-up of toxic and nuclear waste, fracking, and clear-cutting.  It is a religious movement with a profoundly spiritual core.  It is no more fractured by the various issues confronting it or by its multiple enemies than religious fundamentalism.  Whether one joins the fight for clean water, clean air, toxic waste clean-up, alternative energy, or forest preservation, the fight is for Mother Earth, the preservation of her sanctity.

It is as though environmentalists actually want the planet to heat up.  This is understandable enough given the time, effort, and money they have invested in the cause. Environmentalism has become a secular religion no different than the Bible Belt evangelism Southerners had witnessed as children.  In fact when they heard speeches given at the National Conference on Climate Change and replayed at length by NPR, churchgoers were reminded of the sermons given every day in the hot, airless churches in the Mississippi Delta. In those days the pastors were was speaking of carnal lust, abandonment of God, and the fiery breath of the Devil, but they sounded very much like the wild-eyed evangelical Climate Changers of today.

Religions, whether secular or spiritual, have a field day with existential uncertainty. Church coffers are replenished every Sunday, and the cash registers of Climate Change International ring like music on a merry-go-round with every fiery sermon about the end of the world.

One has a moral right – an obligation, a duty – to call out, censure, punish, and remove those who flaunt the truth.  While today’s American secular evangelists have no insignia or official identity cards, they are no different from their Iranian religious counterparts.  They march to the same drummer of conformity, true belief, righteousness, and absolute authority.