The Folly Of Overeducated Old Men - Never Giving Up On Doing Good, The Tale Of A Fading Flower

Bob Muzelle was getting old - was old, actually, if you looked at the actuarial tables, but never felt better.  Yes, a new hip and a new knee, trouble sleeping, and the odd stumble, but he felt as fit as a fiddle.  He was proud of his straight, confident gait as he walked to his office past stooped old men shuffling along, sitting on window ledges to catch their breath. He was in fine fettle, had all his marbles, and there was no reason why he couldn't rule the roost at Scientists For Social Action - the non-profit he had founded. - forever. 

'What's on the agenda today?', he snapped at a minion already at his desk.  There were always a million things to do, so many pressing problems; and now that Donald Trump was in office, they became more urgent.  The many strides that Bob and his colleagues had made regarding the warming climate were being set back decades.  

The President was opening gas and oil fields, investing in new refineries and pipelines, promoting data centers, and rescinding all former subsidies on electric vehicles. He alone had advanced the Doomsday clock to dangerous, catastrophic territory. Their hard-fought victories for gender equality, racial identity, and a more equitable economic system were being denied, set back, and ridiculed. 

His first appointment was waiting for him - Bettina Evans, a transgender woman who wanted Bob's organization, known for its progressive stance on gender equality, to lobby for her and other sexually reassigned men and women and to ensure continuation of federal legislation to protect and promote their cause. 

Her perfume, floral and cheap, filled the small conference room.  The windows in the building, an old Victorian brownstone, were sealed shut as part of the retrofitting for central air, and her cloying, gagging perfume recirculated. 

She was dressed to the nines.  She was one of those men who when they became women felt it important to flaunt their new sexuality but having no practice always overdid it and turned themselves into tarts - all the eyeliner, lipstick, and costume jewelry their new persona could take, and they looked very much like the hookers of the Rue St. Denis in Paris. 

Bettina was waiting surgery on her larynx, and so her gruff, chain-smoking, piper fitter voice was still hers.  The contrast was unsettling. Seeing her sitting in the chair before him, legs demurely crossed and an expectant smile on her face, Bob was unprepared for the dockyard voice which, despite being as gay as she could make it, growled at him.  

'And what can I do for you, Miss Evans', Bob began, emphasizing the 'Miss', and ginning up all his reserves to act the attentive, interesting listener.

Bettina croaked on for ten minutes about the persistent discrimination that she felt, how she was met with dismissive, curt refusals at every job interview, was cackled and smirked at at singles bars, and was politely told that the resonant, classically bass notes of her register were not quite what the Westmoreland Church of Christ choir was looking for. 

She got the picture  - discrimination - and she wanted recourse, justice, and reparation.  After all, she had spent thousands of uncovered medical costs for her transition, and now, unemployed, was having trouble paying back her loans.  Action must be taken. 

A loophole, thank God, thought Bob.  She wants legal counsel not Congressional action, so he might quickly dispose of this petitioner; but no, Bettina insisted when Bob gave her the name of his friend, a prominent gay attorney who took such cases.  She wanted 'to go to the top'.  

She sniffled, took a dainty lace handkerchief from her sleeve, and dabbed her eyes.  'This has been such a nightmare', she growled.

Bob promised he would do his best, would put together a joint plan of action, and would get back to her soonest.  Bettina seemed calmed and restored, thanked Bob profusely, and left his office now chokingly filled with the awful scent of Eau de Lilac. 

'I never would have behaved like this as a younger man', Bob thought as closed the door behind the sashaying Bettina.  He would have marched with her, joined arms with her, burst his lungs for her; but instead he had looked at this pathetic, unreal creature and couldn't even manage an iota of sympathy.   

The old Bob kicked in tat the most inappropriate and untimely moments - the propriety, conservatism, and stability of his small New England community - and try as he might, he couldn't shake the thought.  She was a freak who belonged in a Barnum & Bailey side show along with two-headed babies and bearded women. 

 

He told his aide to follow up with the woman in a few weeks time, suggesting again that she consult a lawyer, and although he hesitated to send anything like this the way of his Yale classmate, anything to relieve him of the clown show he had just witnessed. 

The day turned out to be no easier. Why was it on some days the sun shone on him, and on others the day was nothing but stormy tempest?  He had long ago parted ways with his Calvinist upbringing and like most progressives saw religion as the obstacle to social progress, so prayer was impossible. 

So he put up with the troupe of angry black men who filled his office with their particular scent - some rancid, unfamiliar body odor mixed with expensive cologne and cigar smoke-filled Armani suits - and treated their appeals just as diffidently as he had those of Bettina. 

This diffidence was particularly troublesome for Bob who had cut his social justice teeth on civil rights - with the Reverend Barker Stone Cutter, Yale Chaplain on Freedom Rides to Selma and Meridian; alongside Martin and Ralph on the Pettus Bridge; first at the barricades, first to be handcuffed to spend a night in a Tuscaloosa jail; but now he was frankly and shamefully tired of all the cant, fulminations, and dilatoriness of the black community, still beyond dysfunctional, mired in crime, absent fatherhood, drugs, and violence. 

'Haven't I given enough?', Bob shouted out loud when the black men had left his office.  'Haven't I given them my best years?'

And then came the global warming concession - young men and women like he used to be clambering to be heard, appealing to join forces with an organization which had always been at the forefront of climate sanity.  The first name that came into the heads of climate activists was Scientists for Social Action. 

The looks on their faces as they crowded into Bob's small office, reduced to almost nothing compared to the old days when he commanded corner office space high up on a glass tower on Massachusetts Avenue, were telling.  The scepter had been passed from this sorry old man they saw creaking up from his chair to greet them. 

Bob listened patiently to their presentation, but to his mind, usually sympathetic and open, it was they whom time had passed by.  Polar ice was increasing, not decreasing.  The sea had not poured over the seawalls into Manhattan and Miami.  There was no unexpected, violently increasing hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis.  More and more geological evidence collected from deep core samples of ice, trees, and earth showed conclusively that the world's climate had never been static, but went through periodic warming and cooling periods.  Man's contribution to these cycles was negligible.  Al Gore and other climate doomsday-sayers looked like fools. 

 

Old age has a way of smoothing things out, providing the calm perspective that earlier ages lack. Mortality provides insight and calms the nerves.  It wasn't the warming climate that kept Bob up at night, but the irrevocability of his death. 

He cared little about lesbians, the ghetto, and the polar ice pack.  As hard as he tried to recapture his old piss and vinegar, he failed.  He was an old man, a fading flower. He couldn't get it up either for Annie from Accounting or the climate. 

'You've done all you can, dear', his wife Corinne said to him as he shared his thoughts with her, 'and maybe it's time to retire'.  To be honest she had put up with more than any wife should have with her husband's increasingly feral activism - much of it was nonsense and at best a willing suspension of disbelief.  Who could continually champion the black man as the savior of a crass, indolent, money-obsessed American culture when the ghetto was more of a shithole than ever?  What blinders did it take to ignore the obvious? 

'And don't let me get started on...'.  Here she held back the nastiest slur in the lexicon for the otherly-sexed Americans her husband had fought for.  She was sick and tired of their 'nobility', their cherished place in the new, sexually indeterminate age. 

Bob hung on, received the few desultory petitioners that still came his way, gave up on his speaking engagements, and eventually shuttered the doors of Scientists for Social Action.  Nobody noticed, of course, certainly not since the conservative volte face of the President; and there was indeed 'a time to live and a time to die' - at least there was that homily from the Beatles? Joni Mitchell?  He was dated, alas. 

The Fourth Of July, Patriotism, And Love Of Country - Do They Really Mean Anything Today?

Despite the fireworks and the spectacular drone displays, the Fourth of July seems a rather tepid holiday compared to those of the early post-WWII years when there really was something to celebrate.  America had single-handedly won the war against Japan in the Pacific.  After landing at Normandy, American forces pushed the Nazi armies back to Berlin and forced the unconditional surrender of Germany.

                    
Despite a seemingly implacable and resolute enemy,  American soldiers fought their way from island to island across the Pacific to Japan.  Against an equally determined military force, they fought their way across France to final victory in Germany.  Over one million American soldiers were either killed or wounded during World War I, but Asian and European imperialism had been defeated.

In the post-war period, America was universally respected and admired for its collective courage, determination, and will.  Not only was tribute paid to the American military, to the civilian leaders who had quickly mobilized industry and managed the economy in difficult times, and to the American people who had joined the war effort on the home front without complaint or cavil.

Americans felt rightly proud of themselves.  They had given their lives to defeat Hitler and his genocidal, arrogant, and mad effort at world domination, and had fought back against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor with an absolute will to annihilate the enemy. 

The Fourth of July was a celebration of American victory, but also a loud cheer for the greatness of America itself.  The world was a better place after  George Washington and his colonial armies defeated the British and the Founding Fathers declared independence.  From 1776 until 1945 the history of the United States was one of unparalleled economic growth, social ambition and diversity, and military strength.  Commitment if not devotion to the principles of democracy and private enterprise never wavered and America was indeed exceptional.  Not only did the national economy recover quickly, but thanks to American aid and support, both Germany and Japan were helped back on their feet.

After 1945, world acclaim became more muted and tempered by American misfortune.  The Korean War ended in stalemate after nearly 150,000 casualties.  The Cold War intensified and the possibility of nuclear war increased the more nuclear warheads were aimed at the enemy. 

Vietnam was a military and political disaster.  American supremacy had not been challenged by a superpower but by a small Asian nation.   Americans were stunned that ‘a nation of pajama-wearing little men who crawled through tunnels and ate rat meat and cold rice’ could have beaten them.  Ho Chi Minh and his loyalist supporters were having nothing of American arrogance and exceptionalism and neither were people back home.   The Sixties and early Seventies were a time of political and social upheaval, animated by what many thought was an unnecessary, brutal, and mindless war.

No longer economically premier, the US struggles to find common ground or at least conciliation with a newly-confident and powerful Russia and a China whose economic, political, and military power grows stronger every year.  Radical Islam remains a potent enemy, although military action with Israel has neutered Iran and its clients Hezbollah and Hamas. North Korea rattles its sabers but is chronically poor and despotic. The United States is at best primus inter pares and at worst simply one of an increasingly competitive international mix.

At home, the once-celebrated principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights have become eroded by political and social divisions.  The polity of the nation has fractured.  The individualism that Jefferson envisaged – individual enterprise within the context of community and civic responsibility – has been replaced by a more venal and selfish one.  Alexander Hamilton would be abhorred by the radical populism that characterizes the United States today. He deeply suspected Jefferson’s ‘will of the people’ and argued strongly for a buffer of elite, intelligent, and insightful men against it.

The chaotic America of 2026 is a far cry from that of 1945 when America was indeed whole, solidly united, and visionary.

Once patriotism is delinked from the reasons for it, it becomes dangerous.  Patriotism in an era when a nation is weak, threatened, and no longer great is a rallying cry for leaders who are befuddled by world events and a refuge for their constituents who feel threatened by them. Patriotism soon becomes xenophobia, and xenophobia always leads to war.

It is no wonder, then, that the Fourth of July has become an empty celebration of fireworks, cookouts, parades, and flags.  Most Americans have only the dimmest appreciation for the nature of their Revolution, the philosophical principles instituted in the Bill of Rights, or the vision of the Founding Fathers.  More importantly, many feel adrift in uncharted geopolitical and cultural waters.  What is there to celebrate except celebration itself?

Today freedom, justice, the pursuit of liberty and happiness, fairness, equality – all 18th Century principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – have been co-opted and misused.  Little thought is given to what they really meant or mean.  The words alone are enough when couched in the call to patriotic duty.  The words to Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton were not empty but vital:

The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it.  While, on the other hand, if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners, though the form of our Constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves (Samuel Adams).

Freedom was not just a vague concept, a given right, part of an American’s legacy.  It was a responsibility, and there was always the danger of falling from freedom to ‘abject slavery’.  Adams and others, particularly Jefferson who was influenced by John Locke, believed that freedom and ‘the pursuit of happiness’ had little to do with personal satisfaction or venal interests.  They were the foundation for civic liberty and justice to be nurtured and cared for.

This nurture and care was everyone’s responsibility.  If freedom, justice, and fairness were to be guaranteed for all Americans, then each American had a duty to promote them, secure them, and protect them:

I know of no safe depositor of the ultimate powers of a society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.  This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power (Thomas Jefferson).

Patriotism has a sorry history. Henry V rallied his troops before the battle of Agincourt with calls to patriotism, the greatness of England, and the absolute rights of the English to the French throne.  In his famous ‘band of brothers’ speech before the final battle, he not only appealed to nationalism and country, but said that fighting together in this most righteous of causes would unite both nobles and common men.  It was not only duty and honor to which Henry appealed, but the communion of English souls.

Later in Shakespeare’s play Henry in disguise discusses his decision to fight the French with some of his troops, common soldiers commandeered into service.  He looked for approbation from them on the rightness of his cause – one which was tortuously and tenuously justified through long academic history.  

He hated the fact that his grandfather, Henry IV, might have been a usurper, and now he might also be an illegitimate pretender to the throne of France; and so when the common soldiers suggested that he was committing thousands of Englishmen to a probable death because of his rarified, barely justifiable, and esoteric noble goals, Henry was shocked.  Weren’t they part of his valorous band of brothers, together in goal and spirit?

Despite his reflection on the questionable nature of his cause and on the moral question of sending thousands to their death for such an improbable claim, he  executed his plans.  He took Agincourt, secured French lands and power, and went on to be a great English hero.

He relied on patriotism – the ideal of fighting for the glory of country and the rightness of its cause – to consolidate the support of his troops; and the call to action in the service of one’s country was no more than a silver-tongued, impassioned exhortation to take the first bullet.

Patriotism was the South’s call to arms in the Civil War and it fought to preserve the plantation- and slavery-based, aristocratic system of the English cavaliers.  Like the soldiers of Henry V, those of the Confederacy knew or cared little about the patriotic sentiments expressed by their commanders.
They were sent to the slaughter under a banner of regionalism, the causes and principles of which they only vaguely understood.

All wars coalesce public opinion and strengthened the morale of fighting men through patriotism, and the honor and duty to country; and in all wars the principles enunciated by political leaders mean little to the common man.  It was only through emotional appeals to patriotism that these leaders were able to pursue their ends. 

How else would doughboys have poured over the trenches in World War I into a withering hail of bullets, dying at a rate almost matching that of the most deadly of conflicts, the Civil War?  Who understood the real reasons for the European conflict, Archduke Ferdinand, and petty border differences between the descendants of ancient kings?  Very few; but all understood the meaning of the tocsin call to arms.  Which of the 70,000 men who died at the Battle of Borodino understood Napoleon’s grand imperialistic schemes or the nature of Russian aristocratic claims to Europe?

            
Religious patriotism sent hundreds of thousands to their deaths in the Crusades.  All had to fight for Christianity against the infidel and to rid Europe of the scourge of Islam.  The Mexican-American War was not fought defensively or over issues of survival but Westward expansion, and many criticized President Polk for his aggressive attempts to take over Mexican lands in his march to the Pacific.  

The death toll and cost of the war were considerable; and yet the war was fought to support American interests.  A call to patriotism in this questionable cause was heard throughout the land.
President McKinley prosecuted the short Spanish-American War because of similar ‘national interests’, i.e. fighting to eliminate Spanish influence in the Pacific.  Again, a questionable war, with many dead and more wounded.

The War of 1812 had more justification, and despite the fact that it was fought over a simple issue – the impressing of American seamen – it really was about ridding the United States once and for all from English influence.  Once again, it was a war about territory, influence, and power, and patriotism was the now wearying call to arms.

Patriotism is even more corrosive in peacetime, for it appeals to a primitive, emotional center with even less justification than going to war.  In this election year, it is patriotic, say the Republicans, for Americans to stand up for liberty and individual rights.  It is not enough for citizens to reflect on the principles, policies, and programs of the Right; they must vote patriotically, casting a ballot for higher principles.  Such appeals to patriotism plays on the ignorance of many voters, or their inability to sort through the complexity of today’s socio-economic and political world, and is manipulative and exploitative.

Patriotism was not an issue at the time of the birth of the nation.  Everyone  fought the British, and all suffered because of the harsh, rigid, and unfair administration of our occupiers.  There was no clarion call to arms for abstract reasons of patriotism, but to free our country from the yoke of British rule.  The revolt was real, immediate, and understandable. 

By inference, the responsibility of assuring an honorable and just nation is the role of both leaders and citizens; and that if the body politic weakens, both must act to strengthen it through reason and reasonable arguments.  What happens today is far removed from Jefferson’s sentiments. 

Why Love Demands A Second Opinion - The Tethers That Bind The Modern, Liberated Woman

Betsy Bennett was at the top of her game, Senior Vice President of a well-known Washington international consulting group, first woman elected to the board of the Cosmos Club, Washington's most prestigious social club and previously a men-only enclave, touted as The New Woman on the cover of Forbes magazine, and not far from the pinnacle of success.  What that success was, Betsy was not sure, but she was confident that the clouds would part and the future would be made clear. 

She was still unmarried, although she had had her share of lovers, all of whom had left before she had had her fill. There was something simply too forward about the woman, too demanding, and too insatiably hungry for them to tolerate for too long. 

Even Roland, aide to the House Ways and Means Chairman, Lothario, and Washington's boulevardier, could put up with only so much of Betsy's offerings.  Yes, at first her clawing, hungry sexual appetites fueled his, but after a week of this, charged and recharged in antiseptic parlors of Washington, he wanted no more.  He felt used, handled, bought and sold by a woman who was motivated by nothing but a willful desire for 'expression'. 

'Let her find it elsewhere', said Roland for whom the complaisant, nubile, and impossibly willing young blonde women who had come to town on the Trump juggernaut were more than enough. 

Meanwhile Betsy kept camping out, roughing it in the wild with willing young men who at first thought she was a prize but soon, wilted by her excesses, and finding nothing post-coitum even marginally companionable, left. 

Betsy was at sexual sixes and sevens after Roland's abrupt departure.  She thought she had one, an equal, a Lawrentian epiphanic partner, if not a soulmate; and was bemused and troubled by his leaving.  Hadn't she given him every possible sexual delight?  Pleased him more than an Arab princess in the Arabian nights or the consort to the Sultan Suleiman the Great?

'Still working it out?', Abraham Katz, her psychiatrist asked at their next session, referring to the age-old, classic female conundrum of reverse Oedipus love.  Betsy had adored her father, wanted to be with him forever, loved by him, by his side; but was caught up in the fang-and-claw feminism of the day and had to dismiss father-worship as a pathetic throwback to the woman of yesteryear. 

'Not really', Betsy replied, pulling a tissue from the silver box placed  on the console next to the psychiatrist's couch for his best, most troubled patients.  

'Go ahead, have a good cry', said Dr. Katz, looking at his watch.  He had had quite enough of these coddled, privileged women who wanted sex and their fathers, and left men hanging on the possibility of more.  

He corrected himself, restored his professional propriety, and tried to listen patiently to Betsy's increasing despondency. 

There was no hope for these women, he knew, brought up in privilege, educated to be the best they could be, challenged to outdo men in every way, but tethered to an old arriere garde, persistently Victorian way of marriage, fidelity, and social eminence. 

 

He yawned and asked again how Betsy was doing; but by this time she was at loose ends, unraveled by conflict and compromise.  Here she was at the top of her game but still looking for Mr. Right?  How ridiculous, how demeaning, how discouraging.

There it was. After board meetings to decide hundreds of millions, after internal shuffles to increase productivity, and after Wall Street meetings to decide her future, here she was still looking for some romantic novel fantasy, her Prince Charming, the glorious young man who would joust and defeat all suitors, and take her to bed his prize and her marvel. 

She couldn't even bed Arnold from HR a lithesome, desirable young man from Ohio when her male colleagues daily reaped the harvest young women come to Washington for opportunity, fortune and love.  She was a tethered, cosseted, moored woman in a sea of undesirable mates. 

She was heir to a misogynist culture - the men around her wanted only sexual pleasure and ignored women's essence, and her innate, ineradicable worth - but now in her early forties she found herself willing to settle for less.  Apostasy, travesty, treachery, and a traitorous abandon of feminism as it was, she wanted to be loved. 

She read Victorian romances, dreamt of being taken away by a knight on a white charger, let herself be swept by an impossibly seductive vision of castles, handmaidens, and the love of her life. 

Imagine! Betsy Bennett in the romantic thrall of treacly Victorian novels? A strong, defiant, indomitable woman at the feet of a handsome suitor? God forbid, and yet in her heart of hearts and in the middle of the night, yes, that was what she wanted. 

Was this the final judgement?  Were women destined to be the playthings of man? Was there no finality to feminism? 

'Calm yourself', said Dr. Katz to a particularly agitated Betsy Bennett. He had seen this before and had counselled and cured many women who had come to him.  The answer was not to fight socio-biological destiny, but to accept it. 

Betsy had taken out her sexual frustration on her minions who railed at the thought of a one-on-one with 'The Harridan of K Street', but thanks to Dr. Katz she had come to a compromise  She needn't take out her sexual frustrations on her inferiors - they had enough on their minds - but try to live with contradictions and, if possible, give way to her femininity. 

Katz had been dunned within the profession for his Freudian sexual premises, but he was on solid ground,  Millennia of history had shown the way.

Betsy spent many nights tossing and turning.  Sexuality, especially in these halcyon days of gender recovery, was not an idle pursuit; nor was it the simple heterosexual algorithm it had been in her youth.  it mattered.  If she was still a daddy's girl, umbilically linked to an outdated, discredited sexual identity, then how could she hold her head up in feminist councils? How could she even pretend to be a liberated modern woman?

 

Nature-Nurture the old perennial conundrum - what was more important to your being, your life, your future? Were girls ineluctably tied sexually tied to their fathers? Or would mother-love right the balance?

A moot point Betsy concluded, what's done is done, what is to be will be; and however much she was sexually determined by Daddy, she had foundered, stumbled, but found her way to her own sexual identity. 

Be that as it may, and sexual epiphanies being the apertures to maturity as they also may be, one was stuck with the cards one was dealt; and for better or worse Betsy was a calculating, succubus for whom men were only targets on a proving ground.

She sought  second opinion - a young man of strong progressive instincts who was reported to blend Freudian origins with New Age dynamics who was able to look women in the face, listen to their psycho-social conflicts, delve into Freudian antecedents, but come out with an accommodating, practical solution.

In Betsy's case it was Dr. Cassius Barnum with whom she fell in love - a no-no in Freudian analysis, but encouraged in today's psychiatry.  Cass Barnum was a purveyor of good counselling, intimacy, friendship, ketamine, and professional fellowship; - and above all he was a canny, sharp entrepreneur who saw a bonanza in this demographic bubble of unhappy women. 

At first Betsy was wary of visiting him in his one-room office off Dupont Circle, but eventually gave in to the blandishments of well-meaning friends.  Dr. Barnum was a dreamboat, and he changed her life. 

They went on trips to Barbuda together, then St. Bart's, and finally Aruba where they decided that ying and yang belonged together, after which Betsy was no longer the boardroom matriarch of, Fletcher & Co., and New Age wanderer on Haight Street, no longer the nexus of hippiedom, but still counterculture enough for her to put down post-capitalist roots.

 

The doctor soon left her - her injured histrionics were fine and dandy on his couch but not in his bedroom; and with a wave over a carafe of Sonoma rose overlooking the Bay, he was gone. 

Once a cunt, always a cunt, goes to the English cockney adage, and after years of reform, rehabilitation, and social resetting Betsy had not changed an iota.  She might have some intimations into her distant past but she was still the partnerless, childless, spinster she had always been destined to be. 

A sad tale?  Far from it.  Betsy swallowed the bitter pill, kept intact, and was known as the Harridan of Stony Hill, her retirement home.