The Making Of A Politician - The Abject Dishonesty Of A Man Without Principle And His Remarkable Rise To Power

Nick Carraway, the narrator in Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, 'I am one of the few honest people I have ever known', a self-assessment made without pride or arrogance, but just a true statement - more a comment on a world he finds deceitful and duplicitous than any supposition of his own superiority. 

He is also one of the least judgmental, for he has always adhered to his father's advice, 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you have had'.  

Nick, however, draws the line.  Tom and Daisy are despicable people at heart. 'They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made'. 

'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together', Nick says to Gatsby about the hundreds of people who fill his mansion every weekend to attend his fabulous parties - guests with no thoughts other than about themselves, with no interest, feeling, or compassion.  Nick again suspends his reticence and admits a judgment.  Despite the fact that there is nothing about Gatsby that he likes - his association with Wolfsheim, his confabulations, his deliberate deception - he can't help but admire the man's optimism, his marvelous embrace of life, and especially his romantic sense of the unrecoverable past. 

Bradford Lane, son of a clothier and a nurse, a precocious child and one from an early age had little of Nick Carraway's moral vision.  While most children grow out of the demanding, self-centered, survivalist mode of infancy, Bradford never did. 

While most children gain a sense of empathy for others and have at least some of Nick's sense of value, Bradford never did. 

He was, if one looked at him individually and narrowly, an impressive boy, smart, talented, good looking, and proper - the most likely to succeed, the dean of his peers.  If one looked at him in the context of those peers, with a perspective on how he treated them, one would come to a completely different conclusion.  

Yet Bradford's unshakeable self-confidence, his conviction that he was an Übermensch, his amorality, and his sense of inevitable destiny made him the ideal politician. 

 

Now, politics has never been a sissy's game.  Blood has been shed over trifles, opponents have been bulldozed, trampled upon, stomped, and tossed in the gutter for slights, lack of proper respect, and simply getting in the way.  Political campaigns have displayed the worst political vanity, the worst, most offensive slander and ad hominem hatred that one can imagine. 

Yet the most successful politicians get rid of their enemies and leave them swinging in the breeze without their knowing who strung them up, or who thrust the dagger in their back, put the poison in the drink; and Bradford was such a politician.  With this admixture of conceit, absolute conviction, and absence of even the most off-kilter moral compass, Bradford was able to clear the path to higher office without attracting notice. 

Bradford was the perfect example of the Nietzschean Superman who rode over the herd, and the philosopher would have delighted in following his exploits. 'The expression of pure will is the only validation of the individual in a meaningless world', said Nietzsche, and without any such reference or intellectual understanding, Bradford Lane was a Caesar. 

'Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves', says Cassius in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, reflecting the theme of the insignificance of ordinary men in the face of a powerful leader like Caesar. 

Bradford, unlike Caesar, never reflected on his own greatness and for that lack of arrogant self-importance his naked ambition was overlooked.  Bradford felt no need to express his scorn for the masses as Coriolanus did. He was the offspring of Richard III who was unaffected by moral doubt or indifference.  Richard killed when it suited him in his pursuit of the crown.  He had not one iota of compassion, consideration, or valuation of others. 

Bradford, like Richard, was singular of purpose, determined, and unstoppable; and shared with Richard a silver tongue.  Richard's wooing of the daughter of the man he murdered and his marriage to her despite her well-founded suspicions of his complicity, was brilliant - the coup de grace for a supremely willful man. 

Where did this indomitable will come from? What in the past of Bradford, Richard, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mussolini were the predisposing factors to this result?  Circumstance, environment, conditionalities alone cannot explain such profound, amoral ambition. 

Clyde Griffiths, the main character in Dreiser's An American Tragedy, comes from humble beginnings.  His parents are street preachers, evangelists who had out flyers on street corners. He is at first accepting, then questioning, then resentful, then dismissive and goes off on his own to find his own way and to have the wealthy, beauty, and glamour of the rich.  His ambition and desire is so great that he murders a factory girl whom he gets pregnant. While neither ambition nor murder in the pursuit of it are unusual, the question of how and why anyone becomes so devoid of human respect is the issue. 

Nothing in the upbringing of Bradford Lane suggested such an indifference to others and such a dismissal of ordinary moral rectitude.  His parents were generous, considerate members of the community and had brought up their son in the same vein.  Nothing in Bradford's background would suggest such a callous moral indifference. 

As much as the idea of innateness is dismissed by progressives who believe like their Marxist predecessors that environment alone is responsible for the direction of all human actions, one cannot ignore it.  Some people are simply born without the native civility common in others. Although Conrad excuses Donkin, the disruptive, dangerous crewmember onboard the Narcissus, because of his destitute, homeless life in the poverty of East London, he cannot ignore the fact that there is something malignant and unrepentant about the man.  He is innately evil. 

So Bradford went about his business without pause or deterrence.  He was a suave, persuasive, engaging Genghis Khan.  Instead of sweeping down from the Central Asian steppes to conquer all in waves of barbaric, savage violence, slaughtering all in his path and leaving their heads impaled on spikes, Bradford conquered through savvy - an understanding of the willing complicity of the people, their gullibility, and vulnerability to charm, promise, and idealism. 

Nor was he a snake in the grass - a hidden, camouflaged predator waiting to strike.  He was always open and transparent, so confident was he in his ability to win over the complaisant, the followers, and the emotionally hungry. 

His appeals were not empty ones - or at least such was the packaging of his nostrums.  They all seemed right and proper and in the interest of all; but his marvelous Christmas wrapping was just the finesse on his purposeless ambition. It all sounded so good, and the man simply radiated good faith.  How could anyone resist; and so it was that Bradford rose higher and higher in electoral politics. 

As of this writing, he is being talked about for the highest offices in the land, so complete has been his marvelously, brilliantly confected persona.

Ivan Karamazov's Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov says that he is a vaudevillian, a tummler, a jokester and without him life would be bloody bore.  Without his tricks and legerdemain, his shell games, and cons, his makeup and finery, his appeal to the worst in the garb of the best, life would be insufferable. 

 

And so it is that we need the likes of Bradford Lane, vote for him every election, listen to him, quote him, and share his wisdom.  What you see is what you get, a man for all seasons, a chameleon, an empty suit but an elegantly tailored one.  What's not to like?

OMG! 'I'm A Conservative' - Given Enough Time And A Little Push, All Progressives End Up Right

The political aphorist Lowell Frampton once famously said, 'Give a liberal long enough, and he will become a conservative', and while of course this is not completely true - there are those for whom liberalism has so defined their character, their persona, and their very being, that no dose of reality will cure them of the hopeless idealism which has been their calling card for decades - it is generally true. 

Even the most hardened liberal will take a deep breath, open a history book, look around him, and say, 'Phooey'. 

Addison Taylor was one of these committed progressives who never thought that he would ever change from a profound commitment to social justice, the environment, and the black man.  That would simply be unthinkable.  After all, he reasoned, there are such a thing as absolute truth.  The black man, descendant of the forest and legatee of tribal wisdom, sentience, and native intelligence would always be fit for the top of the human pyramid.  Heterosexuality would always be a bad choice, an outdated, crippling imposition of white straight males.  The climate was warming due to man's obtuse ignorance, etc. etc. 

The life he lived was an immersion into liberal values, liberal thought, and liberal friends.  He had no patience nor time for anyone who did not espouse the canon - those political troglodytes who refused to see the truth or even having seen it, retreat into a defensive ignorance. 

Addison was the Chairman and CEO of Scientists For Humanity, a small liberal advocacy group which had been on the front lines of every liberal cause since the first notice of melting Antarctic ice.  He had marched on the National Mall, delivered fiery speeches on college campuses, written op-ed pieces for The Nation, was a member of every women's organization in Washington, and a fierce champion of black rights. 

'Not this year, Addie', said Artemis Phipps, new President of the Radical Women's Caucus. 'Maybe another time', referring to his taken-for-granted speaking engagements before this group of radical feminists.  His presence had been considered important, for his view - the accommodating, respectful, understanding liberal male view - was needed to complete the inner circle, and show the nation that the fight for women's equality was also a men's affairs. 

Phipps, an imposing woman from Bernal Heights, chosen to lead the Caucus because of her dyke righteousness, high-toned bitchiness, and relentless, virulent, outspoken hatred of white straight men who, she said, were responsible for forcing women to spread their legs while they went off philandering, raping, and sucking the lifeblood out of them. 

 

Understandable, thought Addison, an expected evolution, a necessary radical turn; but at the same time he felt, for the first time in his life, left out.  He was in perfect solidarity with lesbian women, with women in general, and in consonance with their suspicions of men like him; but he had shown them that he was as much of a woman as they, as militant, and as committed. 

He was allowed to attend the annual Caucus conference in Washington, but during Phipps' tenure, the whole atmosphere had changed.  Not that he wanted protest to return to the days of Martin and Ralph, black-and-white, ebony-and-ivory solidarity, but this was a slugfest.  It had turned from a reasonable colloquy of thinking women to a riot.  'Cunts For Castration'...'Twats Forever'...'Bull Dagger Power' were just a few of the signs he saw. 

Now, the women's movement had always been palatable - girls he knew at Yale from Smith, Vassar, and Holyoke refusing patriarchy while marrying well; girls from fine families endorsing the harshest penalties for discrimination in the workplace while remaining caring, thoughtful, and loving wives and mothers. 'Our kind', Addie often said, proud of his and their ancestral tradition of reason and leadership. 

This...this mosh pit, this offensive freak show, was beyond the pale; and it had happened without him realizing the change.  Overnight, it seemed, feminism had gone from propriety and discipline to gang warfare.  

It was that scene that first disturbed Addie's convictions, and when the image of Heather Morgan, blonde, demure, and loving came back to him after many years.  She was a perfect, charming, quiet, intelligent Smith girl who adored him.  Their future - a home on the North Shore, children, an extended family, wealth and privilege within a solidly liberal worldview - was real, possible, and only awaiting graduation. 

 

'You women don't want pricks up inside you, do you?', shouted Artemis Phipps from the podium.  'You want cunts, pussies, hot, slathering FEMALE juices!!!' 

The crowd roared. Women ripped off their shirts, fondled each other, kissed, and shouted, 'No pricks...No pricks....No pricks!!!' until the rafters shook. 

Addie, nonplussed, taken aback, revolted and disgusted, left by the fire door, sat on a bench in Lafayette Park and wondered what the political world was coming to. 

The final loose hinge on what had been a solidly constructed and maintained political framework, came off when his political aide and advisor suggested a trip to Anacostia, the heart of the Washington inner city where he would see first hand the vibrant street life of the black man so limned and championed in Addie's speeches.  In Anacostia he would see first hand the virility, the community, the vital street life that was so absent in white, uptight, hidebound, racist neighborhoods of the city.  He would hear a carnival of music, dance, and effusion. 

Addie readily agreed but rolled the windows up as they crossed the Anacostia River into a potholed, rutted, trash-strewn neighborhood.  The outskirts of any community are always sketchy, he knew, whether tacky strip malls or yet-to-be-developed modern neighborhoods; but as he drove further south, down MLK Avenue to Fernwood Circle, there was nothing vibrant, soulful, or uplifting.  There were only derelicts, Fentanyl addicts, shirtless men with Uzis, and stoops where men smoking dope and drinking Colt45s sat and shouted at his car. 

This was he famous inner city?  This was the community of the prized, cherished, New Man? Where had he been all his life?

If all this wasn't bad enough, Washington had its coldest winter in fifty years - feet of snow, pummeling north winds, and brutal below-zero temperatures...and worst of all the polar ice caps were gaining ice.  For the first time in decades, the Ross Ice Shelf was increasing by a kilometer per year.  

Why was this such a surprise? If he had listened to anyone but the Armageddon cabal of the progressive Left, he would have heard compelling arguments about the cyclical warming and cooling of the planet, the modest if not indifferent effect of human activity on environmental temperatures, and he would have at least been apprised of another view. 

With that the ball of yarn began to unravel quickly.  Suddenly, everything became clear - the militant COVID response was nothing but government presumption and political chicanery; the open door immigrant policy was tantamount to the rapid dissolution of polity and ethos; the gender spectrum was an illogical, twisted, distorted fantasy; capitalism was the engine of remarkable growth everywhere and had raised hundreds of millions out of poverty in China and India.  Africa was nothing but a continental shithole run by corrupt big men, dominated by Paleolithic tribalism, and mired in abject  underdevelopment. 

He was much happier now that he had jettisoned all that worthless progressive baggage, stopped listening to the portentous claptrap mouthed by his former colleagues, and for once in his life said a great big 'Fuck you!' to anyone within earshot. 

Ol' Lowell Frampton, the political aphorist was right as rain when he said that all progressives become conservatives if given enough time.  Some take longer than others to see the light; but they all eventually come around.

A Life Of Social Justice - A Long Haul With Frightful Women

Robert Finley had given his all to social justice. There were the Freedom Rides, marching with Martin and Ralph across the Pettis Bridge, Bull Connor and his dogs, sit ins, protests on the National Mall, and Negro friends. 

Later there was the glass ceiling, the environment, climate change, the gender spectrum and capitalism itself.  There had never been a moment of doubt or hesitation.  He and thousands of others were joined in a political consensus - progress was real, Utopia was not only possible but around the corner, and if there was meaning to life, it was giving to others. 

Now in his later years, Bob sat disconsolate and wondering as he watched the parade of beautiful, blonde, young women step brightly down Pennsylvania Avenue to and from the White House - a White House that should have been his and the legions of those who had fought so long and so hard for graciousness, compassion, and harmony. 

He shook his head as he nibbled at his sandwich, shaking the crumbs for the pigeons who clucked and cooed at his feet.  How could this have happened, he wondered?  How could this moral reprobate, this arrogant, divisive, unprincipled man have made it to the Oval Office?  What tear in time-space had let this braggart come to earth?  

Decades of discipline, hard work, patience, and love were gone.  The black man was relegated to the ghetto, the lesbian consigned to Bernal Heights, the farm worker sent back across the border, and every last brake, bit, rein, halter, and trace with which he had harnessed Wall Street gone in a flash, setting free once again the monopolistic, predatory, arrogant robber barons of America. 

'Need a friend?', said a well-dressed man in blue suit to Bob. 'You look like you could use one'. 

Bob looked up from his sandwich and smiled at the man, one of the genteel male escorts who routinely cruised Lafayette Park.  By rights - after all he had fought long and hard for the gay man - he should have offered him a seat; but he was in no mood for the kind of casual intimacy that the man was offering. 

No matter how militantly he had taken up the cudgel of gay rights, he was privately disgusted by what fagg...Here he stopped himself, about to think an unutterable slur.  He revised his thought, composed himself and tried to right his ship, yet the thought completed itself...I'm disgusted at what these (blanks) do with each other. Reaming, water sports, buggery, cornholing, bathhouse sex. 

'You've got the wrong man', Bob said to the young man in  the blue suit, tossed the end of his sandwich to the pigeons and walked quickly away. 

This was the whole problem with social justice, he thought as he walked towards his office - espousing, endorsing, committing to political causes that offended him. Lesbians, dildoes, and scissoring was just as repulsive as the gay thing.  The black man had, despite decades of generosity and support remained in the same stinking, pestilential, drug addled, dysfunctional shithole ghetto he started in. 

Worst of all, he had for all these years been surrounded by nothing but frightful women - short, unwashed, ugly, frizzy haired, Jewish women he had seen before only on Brooklyn subways.  These were his cohorts, his colleagues, his sisters in arms.  Meanwhile all the bright young things he had had squired at Yale before his political days, were things of the past. 

 

Ahh, Heather Morgan, he remembered. Soft, pliant, wealthy, and with a fresh Midwestern blush and in love with him.  Where was she now? Who did she marry? Why wasn't she, still in the full blush of the bloom of the rose not here with him now?

Instead there was Esther Pilchman, finishing a rancid sardine sandwich, smears of mustard and horseradish still on her lips.  'Bob, we've got to talk', she said as he walked through the door. 

This time it was about immigrants, ICE pogroms, and Trump's planned genocide. She howled about Auschwitz, Soviet ethnic cleansing, the barbarity of Union soldiers as they exterminated Native Americans.  'You see?', she shouted, holding last of her sardine sandwich.  'You see??', she said. 'It's Kristallnacht all over again'. 

No, it was Esther's putrid, ugly ranting all over again, overblowing, inflating, inventing, and doing a St. Vitus' dance, wailing and twitching, turning blotchy, smelling badly and as ugly a woman as Bob had ever seen. 'Stop it!' he shouted silently, unwilling to challenge the clearly unhinged creature bouncing around the airless, cramped office. 

'Sorry to run', she said.  'I'm off to protest' and with that grabbed her stained and saggy Hopi cloth bag, and walked out the door leaving Bob alone, disquieted, and unhappily looking at his inbox, an old fashioned relic of the halcyon days, filled with flyers, announcements, screeds, and torn copies of The Nation. 

Bob sat heavily in his chair and stared at the portrait of MLK, the poster of Che Guevara, the stale bagels, dust devils, and bookends holding Marx's Communist Manifesto, Engel's The Coming of the Proletariat, and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. 

A Presbyterian born and raised, Bob still wished that he could go to Confession.  He was having bad thoughts, traitorous, devilish thoughts, and he could live with them no longer.  He hated black people, gay men, lesbians, freeloaders, and especially the unholy ugly women who harped on about them.  

Right now, his Yale classmate Hetherington Adams (Addy) was sitting on a St. Bart's verandah overlooking the harbor, lovely young mistress at his side, not a care in the world, a satisfied life of investment banker behind him, scion of one of Boston's most well-known families, father, grandfather, emeritus and model. 

Had it all happened the way Bob had planned - a progressive revolution which would have turned America into a socialist union of shared values, equal benefit, and harmonious inclusivity- he might be enjoying his later years.  Instead he was still at his cheap steel desk in a third-rate office, pursuing a stale, outdated, hapless agenda. 

'Yes, but it had to be done, and someone had to do it', he shouted, but it was empty valor, a last hurrah, a desperately off tune swan song. 

No one can ever admit that they have wasted their life - that would leave them horrifically empty before death - but Bob came close.  'There's still time', he thought; but of course there wasn't.  He had played his cards, no more were to be dealt, and he was left only with a few scattered dollar chips. 

'Goddamn it!', he shouted.  'Goddamn it to hell'.