The Modern Witches Of Salem - The Evil Within Searches For The Evil Without, The Tale Of A Political Harridan

Frances Lent stood up before the group - Women For Social Justice, a non-profit advocacy group in Washington, DC - and started in on the litany, the misogyny, misanthropy, and dishonesty of Donald Trump. She spared nothing, so savage and brutal were her attacks on his person, his presidency, and his entire political philosophy. 

She was a woman possessed as demonically as a witch of Salem, women who were accused of Satanic seizure for whom nothing but burning at the stake would do.  No amount of recanting, remission, or penance would rid the soul of evil, and so one woman after another was set alight in the town square. 

Now, modern revisionist thinking has the whole affair one of male patriarchy, fundamentalist religion, and native primitivism; but there were definitely witches in Salem who met their fitting end.  They were not actually possessed by the Devil, of course, but were as close to demonism as one could get.  These women were harridans, vixens without any sense of propriety, social modesty, respect, or civility. . 

That too was an exaggeration, for these women were merely proto-feminists who refused to labor under the yoke of male patriarchy, whose sexuality was not to be denied, and for whom motherhood was yet one more link in the chain of oppression.  

For all intents and purposes, at least those of the Puritan clerics of Salem, Abigail Penn was possessed.  No woman in her right mind or of God-fearing piety would ever think of such unholy, godless impurity as she did.  She demeaned, unmanned, and drove her first husband to death, so intimidated her second that he disappeared without a trace and probably took his own life so belittled and soul-battered was he.  

Abigail knew she was not long for this world, Salem's prosecutors being what they were, but such was her ire, spite, and undaunted commitment.  She would not be harnessed, tethered, and trapped by these pigs. She went to her death defiantly, shouting obscenities and horrible, hateful reproaches to God and men until the fire consumed her.  

She was truly a woman possessed, just not by the Devil.  In fact her misandry focused especially on the town's clerics, those pompous, self-righteous, self-assured fools who claimed to be anointed by God but were only ignorant, unsexed, blathering fools. 

Frances Lent railed on, her voice raised to a higher and higher pitch, her whole body wracked with violent, hostile, untoward and untamed meanness.  She became unhinged, one bolt after another loosened, screws falling out, latches opening, until she was a maniacal, possessed whirling dervish of animus and hate. 

She stopped, mopped her brow, ran her trembling fingers through her hair, took a deep breath, calmed herself until the volcanic eruption had spent itself, and sat down to riotous applause. 

The women in the audience were all as deeply committed to political activism as Frances, but had none of her intimidating power.  They hated Donald Trump and his brutal, murderous policies; felt that he was the very incarnation of evil, a man possessed by insidious, devilish intentions who must be stopped.  They just didn't have Frances' calling. 

They all filed out of Baker Hall, congratulated themselves on their commitment to progressive action, energized by the words of Frances Lent, and increasingly eager to see justice in the world. 

Now Frances did not stop with Donald Trump. Her possession had a broader, wider ambit. Every item in the progressive canon was so existential in nature that unless action were taken, the world would be incinerated by global warming, diversity erased, equity abolished, and the unwanted exiled to gulags and concentration camps. 

She saw evil everywhere, could not sleep because of its miasmic, encroaching presence.  She saw shadows on her nighttime walls, sat up with a start, and felt them closing in.  In the morning after a fitful sleep she went out, unsteady in gait but rock-solid in purpose and intent. 

Now, secular witches like Frances Lent don't just happen.  Psychiatrists would have a field day parsing her attitudes and impulses, delving into her past, and constructing a meme of disordered but potent neurosis.  In fact she started off well, dutiful daughter of loving parents, nothing unsavory happened during her childhood.  

 

Something snapped in adolescence. Not only did she become as surly, disrespectful, spiteful, and angry as her peers, but hostile.  It was as though her lymphatic system had been injected with alien hormones that caused a total short-circuiting of her behavior.  She became uncontrollable, savagely critical of her classmates, calling out every imperfection, snidely accusing them of the most ignorant desires, belittling their paltry intelligence, and sending them home in tears.  

This hostility, this seemingly inbred, ineluctable meanness could not be explained by the usual psychological analysis, but it might be by tracing her family legacy.  There simply had to be someone in her ancestry who was as wildly possessed, as untamed, bitter, and misanthropic as Frances.  All to no avail, which is why the Salem witch comparison was reasonable and valid. 

Everything in life is on a bell curve - intelligence, creativity, beauty, compassion, insight, and the like - and just as there are geniuses on one asymptote, eight-year olds who can solve infinitely complex equations, masters of chess before they are out of diapers, violin virtuosos at three, there are people like Frances, unexplained, native, fiendish personalities that arise out of nowhere. 

Frances was the perfect advocate for the progressive movement, for it by nature was naysaying, righteously reformist, and absolutist.  Reason was an unnecessary addendum when true belief was at stake.  Climate change, the continual male oppression of women, racism, and capitalist greed were obvious to anyone who looked.  There was no need to weigh alternatives or to subject arguments to rebuttal; moreover, because these issues were undeniable and existential, the more passion and zeal commanded, the better. 

At the heart of these imposing problems was the inherent evil of those who refused to see them.  Americans were dupes, seduced by politicians and preachers, locked into ignorance which metastasized into hate. Progressives were bound not only to confront this ignorance but to do everything in their power to neuter and eliminate those who opposed them - to cancel them, to consign them to irrelevance. 

Progressives' revisionist history was part of the same ethos.  It wasn't enough to condemn slavery.  One had to expunge all traces of it from the historical record.  Confederate statues must come down, the names of schools and public institutions changed to reflect the contributions of people of color.  The political volubility - the incessant hammering of civil ignorance and the insidious actions of government leaders - was extended to the past.  Everything past and present was caught in the net of liberal anxiety. 

So Frances Lent with all her hysterics, her wild, untamed hostility; with all her meanness, cruel intentions, and totally unhinged animus was perfect for the movement.  She was cover girl, poster child, first and foremost, and heralded as a princess of peace.  

She was the most perfect clone of Salem witch Abigail Penn that ever lived.

Sydney Sweeney, Naked Women, And Feminist Hysteria Over Nothing - Women Want To Show It, Men Want To See It

Barbery Bennett was a plain woman, nothing to write home about, homely but not ugly, not a prize but not cold meat.  Her mother, Elise, had been a beauty back in the day, sought after, photographed and admired.  She was also an intelligent woman with talent, but these qualities were only fair and would never get her the publicity and recognition her looks would. 

She appreciated men's admiring looks.  After all what was beauty if not recognized?  Moreover, she had a special, hard to find quality - sex appeal.  While never appearing in salacious or provocative photos, her indefinable but irresistible sex appeal was evident and alluring.   It was the difference between Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner or Mary Astor, beautiful women but without that inimitable, natural, innate sexual appeal that Marilyn expressed the minute she stepped before the camera. 

She dressed accordingly, and even within the severe fashions of the Forties, she was able to project a desirability that no well-tailored, trim, and elegant suit could hide. 

They might have been corseted by the conservatism of the times - the price of a woman hard to get was higher than that of one who gave up her treasure too easily. Femininity was a delicate balance of saint and whore, available but demanding, inner vs outer beauty, canniness and opportunism vs soft and pliant.  Men had none of these conundrums.  They wanted only one thing and rutted their way through life without a second thought. 

The standards of feminine beauty have not changed in millennia.  The ancient Greek and Roman statues of women portray the same symmetry, perfect alignment, and alluring features of beautiful women today.  Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but a universal, perennial, unchanged standard. 

 Sexual allure, that special, evolutionary advantageous quality which adds value to standard beauty, is what all women understand and want. Women have always wished they could have what Elise Bennett had, and tried their best to look sexy, alluring, and available, but failed. It is a gift, a given, a genetic prize. 

It is interesting to note that the covers of both women's and men's magazines are the same and feature beautiful, young, sexually alluring women.  Female readers want to look like the models on the cover of Elle and Cosmopolitan and men reading GQ and Men's Health want to have them in their beds. 

Why is this so surprising? A beautiful woman has always meant more than just superficial, idle, sexual interest.  Underlying beauty, that symmetry, perfection and classical order indicates health, wealth, and well-being.  Evolutionary survival demands the perpetuation of these qualitiees.

Since most women are not beautiful, sayings like ‘Beauty Is As Beauty Does’ or ‘Beauty Is Only Skin Deep’ reflect a cultural compromise.  It is within that one should look for beauty; for the intelligence, compassion, consideration, talent, warmth, humor, and energy that are far more important than superficial looks. These qualities do not level the playing field, but they help adjust it.  

Sydney Sweeney is a model and actress, a woman with the sexual allure that Barbery and all women wish they had. She is controversial because, in an age of feminism where overt female sexuality - i.e. overtly, publicly, shamelessly appealing to men and their particularly aggressive sexual desire - is condemned, considered retrograde, demeaning, and socially destructive, she refuses to buckle.  Women are sexual objects, always have been and always will be; so why hide one's sexual appeal under a bushel?

The women who are most critical if not hysterical about Sweeney's new ad for sports gambling where she appears naked and in sexually provocative poses, are members of the progressive Left who have insisted that beauty is bourgeois, anti-revolutionary, and is as destructive to the progressive agenda as Biblical fundamentalism.  These progressive feminists are proud of their obesity, their homeliness, their profoundly unappealing looks because such traits express their political philosophy - only the internal woman, the intelligent, willful, creative, strong woman matters, and the rest should be spayed. 

And so it was that Barbery Bennett had a tough uphill climb.  She started off at the back of the pack and could never make up ground. Men never gave her a second look, and despite half her paycheck on cosmetics, the right clothes, facials, hair styling, and the most expensive clothes, jewelry, and perfume, she was still ignored.  She was missing the genes that gave her mother incomparable sexual appeal. 

She could not help but be affected by the progressive cant of progressive women, deterred from her desire to make herself into the sexually appealing, attractive, and desirable woman her mother had been; but she dismissed their claims.  Whether because of her mother, her father's political conservatism, or her susceptibility to popular not political culture, she never budged from her trajectory. 

Diana Vreeland, the doyenne of American haute couture told of growing up, an ugly girl sister to a classic beauty, a double edged sword.  She wanted to be like her sister but knew that she never could or would be.  As a result she decided to make women like herself, dealt a a particularly bad hand, winners.  Dressing th physical features would be ignored. 

 

Vogue and Harper's Bazaar were never more successful publications, and American fashion was raised to the quality and stature of Paris and Rome.  This was all well and good, but it did nothing to increase the sex appeal of ordinary women - that could never be taught or designed. 

Barbery eventually gave in and led the life of a very pleasant, reasonably intelligent, conversational woman. In her retirement, she was particularly amused by the flapdoodle over Sydney Sweeney.  These brutally unattractive women were howling and barking up the wrong tree.  Sweeney opened the doors to reality after so many generations of trying to keep them closed, and Barbery was delighted that Sweeney and her supporters never gave in.  Not one demurral, explanation of apology.  They had taken off their clothes, invited everyone to look, and smiled. 

Jefferson's Concubine - A Founding Father's Perk, A Given Of No Historical Importance

Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome had a concubine, many in fact, some slaves some not but his favorite was Ayla from Addis Ababa brought to Rome by the Emperor's legions looking to quell the tribal uprisings and consolidate the empire's holdings in East Africa. 

Ayla was by all accounts a beautiful woman.  Pliny wrote in his Histories of 'A Nubian slave of remarkable beauty..' and other references in informal journals of the Emperor's courtiers reported the same thing - 'a dark, sylph-like creature of stunning beauty'. 

Ayla was the jewel in the Emperor's crown, for he enjoyed the company of beautiful women every night - slaves from Nubia, Egypt, Sudan, and the Levant.  He was married to Anna Galeria Faustina The Younger, a beautiful woman in her own right; but the pleasure of an Emperor so august, powerful, and respected  could not be satisfied by her alone

The concubines of the Triumvirate - Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian - were known for their seductive charm, stunning beauty, and sexual charm.  Antony, of course, was Cleopatra's lover but that did not exclude his passion for other women of the empire. 

Xerxes and Shapur, Shahs of Persia, had harems of luxuriant slaves taken during their many military campaigns.  Under Shapur I, the Persian Empire expanded far to the East, and part of the spoils of his campaign were the most sought-after women in Anatolia and Palestine. 

Peter the Great was known as a connoisseur of women, and his harem was filled with the blonde, blue eyed women of Russia that he so favored.  The Chinese Emperors of early dynasties were no different, and favored women as far west as the Uighurs and south to Vietnam. 

Women have been commodities since the first human settlements, and in countries which still practice arranged marriage still are. They are valued for their strength, health, caste, wealth and fertility and negotiations to assure the right match for eligible suitors can involve considerable assets.  English kings traded in such valuable commodities, Henry VIII being perhaps the best known, and great store was put on strategic international marriages and marital arrangements. 

Only in slaves were beauty, sexual promise, charm, and sexual experience valued.  These women had no other importance than servicing the king so they could be chosen for these non-strategic, non-procreative qualities. 

And so it was with Thomas Jefferson, American Founding Father, author of the Constitution, and third President of the United States of America.  He married well, of course; but slaves were for his pleasure.  Sally Hemmings was the most famous of his extra-marital lovers, but he had others, both casual and longer-term.  Slaves did their masters' bidding as they always had throughout history.  Slavery was by no means a recent institution and certainly not the discovery of early Americans, and slaves were by no means always African.  Roman slaves were taken from all parts of the Empire, and while an Emperor might fancy a Nubian slave, he also had his choice of any from Europe. 

A great deal has been made by the American Left of Jefferson's relationship with Hemmings, but the motivation - as in all political fancy - was not entirely clear; or what exactly was the point of the criticism?  Surely it couldn't be concubinage, a practice of the high and mighty for millennia.  It couldn't be miscegenation - sex between white and black - for that too was as old as the hills, as old as the first Greek and Roman explorations of Africa.  It couldn't have been feminism - that had to wait two hundred more years; so it must have been something about slavery, but what?

Hemmings was a privileged slave.  After all bedded by the master and treated as his unofficial queen was not something to be ignored, and Hemmings was admired by the other slaves on the plantation as having a good thing, the only seriously good thing they could have in 1803. 

'She was abused', said Ellen Brady of the Women's Feminist Caucus, despite clear indications that she was in fact treated quite well. Abuse, as Brady defined it, was a lack of agency. Slaves could do nothing but submit to the master's will even though they hated it with heart and soul. Yet even slaves could be privileged, and so was Sally Hemmings.  Although not quite consensual the relationship with Jefferson offered mutual rewards. 

Under the institution of slavery few slaves prospered.  There were those in the Upper South who learned trades and were given some commercial independence, House slaves in the plantation Lower South benefitted from congenial surroundings, good food and lodging at the manor, and lovers like Sally Hemmings had all they could want and more.  Freedom was not an issue, advantage was. 

There is no doubt that real abuse existed in the slave-owning south.  The overseers in particular, uneducated hill people recruited for their discipline of not savagery, would routinely abuse, rape, and kill slaves.  However, this barbarity was not within the wealthy, educated class of men like Jefferson or his ancient ancestors. 

The days of slavery are over, but the sexual perks of office are not; and every President with the likely exception of Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden has had his affairs.  John F Kennedy was the best well-known, sleeping with Marilyn Monroe and other lesser but no less beautiful Hollywood starlets.  Lyndon Johnson used the Secret Service as procurers, FDR had a long-term relationship with a woman not his wife, and the list goes on.  Nothing remarkable or surprising there. 

America has always been a censoriously Puritanical country and Presidents and elected officials are supposed to be monogamous, faithful, and celibate.  Leadership demands honesty, rectitude, and faith; and hose politicians who stray outside of marriage should not be trusted with the reins of power. 

When liberal American women learned of President Bill Clinton's affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, they turned against him, said they would never vote for a philanderer.  If he cheated on his wife, he could just as easily cheat on the country.

Only in America was Clinton's dalliance taken seriously. In Africa where continuous, weekly extra-marital sexual relationships are not only common but expected, men guffawed when they heard of what Clinton did and how he did a little dance around the truth.  'It all depends on what is, is', the President said.  The reaction in the American ghetto where baby mommas are the rule was the same.  The only issue was that Clinton 'did not fuck that bitch'. 

Meanwhile, to nobody's notice or concern, Vladimir Putin has his share of beautiful Russian, Caucasian, and Ukrainian women, Xi of China is known for his eclectic taste.  China is a big country with different ethnic groups throughout, and he is known of his sophisticated taste in women. 

So, there is not a lot of difference between Sally Hemmings who knew a good thing when she saw it and the many concubines of Presidents, Emperors, Kings, and Shahs.  They all lacked 'agency' but what was that in real terms. It was like a former President of China who rejected American demands for electoral reform and to encourage freedom.  'Freedom', he said, 'is freedom from poverty' and his reforms would accelerate that goal. 

President Bukele of El Salvador has felt the same.  'Freedom', he said, 'is to be free from crime, insecurity, and fear'.  The civil rights of the people not those who do them harm. 

And so it is with sexual favors, a woman's fundamental, ineradicable agency. Looked at that way, the perks and advantages of both Hemmings and Jefferson in a commercial arrangement, the Left should not be upset. 

More than that, Jefferson was perhaps the country's most influential, transformative leader - statesman, philosopher, inventor, educator, man of letters.  No one in American history has been like him.  Even if you find some obscure reason to question his 'infidelities', should his historical legacy be enough to settle your conscience?