Idealism - The Faint, Bleeding Heart Of American Liberalism

American liberals are quick to say that the country is in deep trouble - not that it is beset by racial division, inner city dysfunctionality, and a feral, punishingly partisan, venal, and obstructionist Congress but because its ideals have been doubted, its march to a more verdant, compassionate, peaceful, and harmonious world blunted, and its hopes for Utopia stymied. 

Most of the rest of the world is far less sanguine about its chances.  Europe has been through two recent devastating world wars, and throughout its history countries, clans, and regions have been almost perennially in battle.  The Mongol onslaught, The Hundred Years War, the War of the Roses, the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian Wars are only some of the conflicts seen on the continent.  The French and Russian revolutions, the monumental upsetting of civil order by the Soviet Union, and the constant struggles for national sovereignty and expansionist hegemony have been common. 

China throughout its dynastic history has been a country at war - savage, brutal conflicts to decide rule, territorial control, and ethnic dominance. Successive Japanese shogunates have battled for imperial power for over a thousand years.  Africa after independence has become an unrulable, uncivil place with civil war, harsh, interminable dictatorships, and savage tribalism. 

It is not surprising that Europeans, Asians, and Africans are bemused by the optimism and idealism of America.  They know the lessons of history - history repeats itself over and over again and humankind is acquisitive, territorial, and violent. 

The Shakespearean critic Jan Kott wrote that if the Bard's Histories were laid down in chronological order, they would be chronicles of the same, predictable, repetitive events - palace plots, murders, and coups; wars, civil conflicts, brutal leadership, and perennial conflict.  Only the actors change, and they in their marvelous diversity, are at the center of his plays.  Richard III, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus and their women have all been of the same ilk but fascinatingly different.  Goneril, Regan, Tamora, Dionyza, and Volumnia are all have the same indomitable will and hunger for power. 

Europeans are waking up to a radical remake of their societies and culture as millions of Muslims have been let in under permissive immigration policies and are now insular, restive, hostile, and radical.  Yet no European can say that any Utopian dream has been shattered, or that progress towards a more equitable, generous world has been blunted.  This is the way European history has always been - one group always wanting what another has and is willing to fight for their share. 

There is no political group more blind to and dismissive of history than the American Left.  Progressivism by its very name suggests progress, the inevitable path to a better world.  Yet nowhere in history has any country, regime, or empire ever come close to creating such an idealistic place.  The closest mankind came was Pax Romana, a long period of Roman control of the vast territories of its empire. Such complete, authoritarian, and autocratic rule kept the peace - no breaches of Roman hegemony were allowed. 

Yet this was not the Utopia that American progressives look to for inspiration, for it was colonialism writ large.  Rome was an occupying force which maintained power through might, intimidation and collusion. 

The Cold War was another period of peace, for it was an example of the only other modality to geopolitical reserve.  The Soviet Union and the United States had thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other, and fear of nuclear holocaust kept them in their silos. 

American liberals refuse to look at history's principal lesson - wars, military might, and the permanent desire for control are common to all eras and generations.  Wars only stop when one side wins, there is a standoff, or one side has managed complete dominance.  There is no such thing as human peace, only settlement. 

The American Left has made the now-discredited climate change the centerpiece of their political philosophy. Any and all means to slow or stop global warming must be used so that the world can achieve its potential as a heavenly place - acres of forests, glades, wetlands, and woodlands.  Other countries, particular America's adversaries, Russia and China think differently.  

China absolutely, unequivocally must acquire the natural resources for the production of energy - key to continuing economic growth and geopolitical dominance. It is not the fate of the Earth which concerns them, but the fate of China. 

These same countries looked at the social agenda of the Biden Administration with glee.  Its policy of diversity, equity, inclusivity, and identity politics drove the nation apart rather than brought it together around a central, universal ethos.  There was no Confucianism at the heart of the American Republic, no guiding moral philosophy; nor was there any hearkening to an imperial past, the history of civilizing empire.  There is nothing concentric about America, just individual groups divided by race, gender, and ethnicity fighting for recognition and their share of the pie. 

Such fanciful, anti-historical myopia bled over into Republican administrations.  The neo-cons of the Bush administration believed in American exceptionalism and that just wars to promote democracy and capitalism are worthy enterprises.  No Machiavelli or Kissinger realpolitik for them.  Good was at stake, idealism once more to the fore. 

Modern Russia and China are on the contrary committed Machiavellian nations. Wars are fought only when a clear self interest is at stake - territory, resources, populations - not some idealistic notion of goodness. 

Donald Trump has joined the group and has dismissed exceptionalism in favor of self-interest; and that amoral stance, that conviction that wars are inevitable and must always be fought places America in the best geopolitical position possible. 

American liberals today have gone beyond simple historical ignorance.  Their idealism has led them into untenability.  They have ignored history, culture, and society and claimed that the black man, sentient superior being of the African forest, attuned to nature and the environment and endowed with a special, intuitive greatness is the model for modern society and must be helped to rise to the pinnacle of world culture.  This despite the tribal primitivism of Africa, the dysfunctionality of the inner city and the bottom-dwelling socio-economic indicators of the African diaspora on any scale. 

These same liberals have insisted that heterosexuality is merely a cultural choice, and that there exists a gender spectrum on which are found hundreds of distinct sexualities.  Reproduction is fungible, mothers and fathers have been replaced by 'gestational influencers' - completely insane attempt to reconfigure biological reality. 

They cling to socialism as the modality of progress when it has failed miserably everywhere.  Redistribution of wealth has always led to a decline in productivity and assured more poverty not less.  Yet because socialism hinges on a strong central government - the kindly caretaker of the people -liberals have embraced it. 

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Perhaps Americans cannot rid themselves of such fairytale idealism; perhaps it is in their history of Manifest Destiny, Westward Expansion, the expeditious settlement of lands from coast to coast, and heroic victory in WWII.  Or in Calvinism, Puritanism, and Protestant fundamentalism. 

In any case the Trump revolution will do much to send such fantastical, idealistic liberalism to the political margins, but history has shown it will not go away. It has become endemic, part of the national character, deeply embedded and permanent. 

Adultery, The Sport Of Kings

Rafferty Adams had grown up in a modest, middle class home - Main Street pharmacist father, second grade teacher mother, catechism, mass on Sunday, Fourth of July parade, and Cub Scouts; but none of it took  There was something always scratchy and irritating about his family, their friends, and their horrible parties.  

 

'Raffy, darling, please help Mommy set the table' was his hated Saturday bugle call.   There had to be a purpose to it all, some definable end other than the mink stoles of Mrs. Fox, Mrs. Taylor, and the hideous Mrs. Proctor. 

Harry the optometrist took his wife's wrap and hung it in the hall closet next to Bill's wife's ermine, and Sendak's wife's cloth coat.  Rafferty was in charge of taking umbrellas if rain or galoshes if snow, and wiping up the drippings. 

 

Then came Mrs. Lind's Swedish canapes, hot delicacies wrapped in light, nearly transparent phyllo, Arctic char, and truffles-and-egg; and then the refills, the spilled drinks, the cinder burns on the rug, and the farewells. 

There are many ways a young boy can leave home - hopping a freight to St. Louis in the 40s, joining the Arch Street crowd dating across the tracks in the 50s - but Rafferty held his own, biding his time, sussing things out, vetting, deliberating, and waiting. 

He was a star at Yale - dean's list, first team football, Fence Club - but in all this he still felt tethered to his unsavory past.  Yes, he had done well for himself, but along greased rails.  There was still time and opportunity to diverge from this prescribed path, and to be...well, at this point he was unsure what that 'to be' was, but it would come. 

Graduation, business school, Wall Street, and then it all became clear.  Not only was money to be made through innovative, creative instruments, but women were to be had by the same means.  They were as easy to seduce as the credulous investors who believed that their ships were in harbor ready to come in and only in need of a river pilot like Raffy. 

There is a time for everything, and after years of delightful seductions and millions of dollars in the bank, Rafferty thought it time to settle down, marry, have children, and leave a legacy; but given his current trajectory, far from the New Brighton rectitude from which he had escaped, settling down meant only a social pied a terre from which he could continue his unassuming but wholly satisfied life. 

He married Elizabeth Cabot Harrington, heiress to the Cabot and Harrington fortunes, debutante who won everyone over from Beacon Hill to Palm Beach, a lovely, educated suitable prize.  She was taken with Rafferty's charm, absolute confidence, and his unmistakable love of women. They were married that summer at the Gardiner Estate at Rolling Rock overlooking Long Island Sound. 

'I love you', Rafferty said as he looked over the lawn to water's edge and watched the last turns of the Barcroft regatta.  The Cabot estate where they were married had been passed down from generation to generation - a family legacy that the last living patriarch, Lodge Harrington Cabot, left to his great granddaughter to keep in trust. 

He loved Elizbeth more for the way she loved him than for anything unique or special about her; and so retained his aloofness and emotional distance, and went on enjoying women just as he had before marriage. 

Why couldn't a man have both?  His harem of women had not been disassembled when he married; those who had shared bed before were just as happy to share it now and his wife, loving him without question never interfered.  

Of course there were wardens - his wife's maiden aunts who, straight out of an Edwardian set piece were the duennas tapped to assure fidelity - but Rafferty was fully aware that his sexual adventures would only add to his allure for both his wife and his paramours.  As many lovers as he had, all were seduced by his infidelity.  Each lover tried even harder to make themselves more appealing, to his blue ribbon prize. 

Rafferty never set out to become a libertine lover.  It came naturally and he thought no less of women for their complaisance, their credulousness, and their breathless fall for his attention. That was women's nature, and he was quite Lawrentian in his pursuit of sexual compatibility and equilibrium. 

Many men of his generation had fallen under the sway of feminism; and believed that women had never been taken seriously; that they were only sexual objects and looked at only for mating and reproductive potential. Women's inner worth had been overlooked by men in their single-minded pursuit of sexual satisfaction; and feminists were determined to return that notion to the Stone Age where it belonged. 

Rafferty had never paid attention to this canon.  No matter how well crafted the feminist argument might be, the truth of the matter was that women had never changed.  Yes of course they had shown their ability to lead and had broken through the glass ceiling but when they punched the clock and returned home, they returned to the tried and true.  Perhaps not slippers and martinis by the fire but some semblance of feminine submission.

Simply out of pique and challenge, Rafferty wooed Eliza Wood, chairwoman of the Washington chapter of The Feminist Alliance.  A woman of determination and principle, Eliza had championed the MeToo movement designed to teach men a look-but-don't-touch lesson in sexual propriety.  Sexual intercourse was entirely a woman's domain, hands off until otherwise instructed. 

Their affair was brief but passionate; and more importantly his domain.  She was the one who rolled over when instructed, who obeyed his rules of pleasure, and climaxed at his command.  She left the hotel room as satisfied as she had ever been.  He had never once asked permission for anything, just took what he wanted and she gave willingly. 

He came home at night to keep order and civility in his marriage. Prostitutes are paid not just for sex, but to leave; and for male lovers the rule was no different.  Spending the night other than at home added something unintended to the relationship, something unwanted and unnecessary. 

His wife knew very well about his liaisons and said nothing.  She knew that his appeal was the same for all women, and that without it he would be a dull boy; and that she did not want.  As long as he came home at night, all was forgiven. 

Many men who have fallen into the trap of fidelity cannot imagine anyone like Rafferty, a man without moral conviction, a strayer, a man without an ethical core.  He, they said, despite his avowed love of women was actually the worst kind of misogynist, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, respectful of women on the surface but deeply mistrustful of them at heart.

Not at all. Rafferty took women as they were, was as honest as the day is long, and still successfully invited legions to share his bed. They loved him for his no-frills romance, his unalloyed, unmitigated, irremediable desire for them. 

A cad? A misogynistic predator, a testosterone-fueled Paleolithic throwback?  Hardly.  Rafferty was old school and new school, old guard and new guard - but only the trappings were different.  Beneath the wrapping was the same unchanged, native, natural, and uncontrite male. 

Trump And Putin Talk About The Health Of The Planet - This And Other Geopolitical Jokes

Bob Muzelle was ecstatic at the rumors circulating in Washington - the President and Putin of Russia were to hold a mini-telephone summit on the state of the planet, its health and well-being, the preservation of forest land, biodiversity, and clean air. 

 

Bob had been an environmentalist for decades and a climate change activist for many years.  He was on the board of directors of the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society.  He had been an associate of Partners in Parks, the movement to save the snail darter and the woodland feather-tailed grouse, and in the phalanx against the expansion of AI data centers. 

He had been encouraged by the policies and programs of the Biden Administration, but was angered at Donald Trump's rollback of most of the former president's reforms.  Under Trump it was an energy free-for-all - oil pipelines now back in operation, new refineries being built, oil shale and gas fracking well underway, coal fired power plants reopened, and more. 

It was a catastrophe, bemoaned Bob, commiserating with his colleagues in a small conference room in his non-profit organization, Americans For Social Responsibility, a catch-all place for climate activism, gender equality, and civil rights; but he had gathered his associates to discuss what would be a historic meeting between two adversaries who agreed on almost nothing.  Ever since the Cold War days America and Russia had never seen eye to eye, but here in the offing was a meeting of the minds of historical significance. 

Repeated calls to the White House press office, direct lines to the Press Secretary, and attempts to reach high-placed officials in the Administration proved futile.  No one was available to take Bob's calls, and confirmation of the historic mini-summit would have to wait. 

Just think of it, Bob mused.  First Russia, then China without whose support hope for climate sanity would always be a chimera.  Was it time to let the foot of the gas and pause Trump hatred? To give the President space to formulate his agenda and prepare for the conversation with the Russian?

This, however, would mean dismantling the entire machinery of the Left where Trump hatred was an industry. The inertia of anger, spite, and poisonous attacks was such that slowing it would be like trying to turn the full speed ahead Titanic away from the iceberg; and to claim that the President was actually doing something right would be tantamount to political treason and reason for expulsion from the party. 

Now, of course the last thing this president who had closed down EPA, opened the country to energy exploration, granted generous easements to logging companies to operate on federal land, and dismissed climate concerns out of hand, would ever do was to put environmental concerns on the geopolitical agenda let alone to discuss them with the enemy. 

Calls to the Russian Embassy were summarily dismissed.  'America is one crazy place', said Anatoly Karpov, Kremlin Deputy Assistant Secretary in Washington, amazed that amidst the initiative for tsarist revival, the patriotic war in Ukraine, and the progressive modernization of the country's nuclear arsenal, the idea of an 'environmental summit' as the caller had called it could even have been suggested. 

'Like mosquitos in Novosibirsk', Karpov added. 'Nobody pays attention'. 

Hope springs eternal, the old adage too Christian to be put in an embroidered sampler on Bob's office wall, was exactly the right notion for Americans for Social Justice.  Yes, such a bi-presidential discussion was indeed far-fetched, but if only the rumors were true, all Bob's hopes and dreams would be realized. 

The fact that Bob actually gave credence to the idea - as impossibly fanciful as it was to anyone living outside the hermetic progressive world in which Bob lived - was no surprise to many on the inside, for Bob had been on the front lines of environmentalism forever, and his willingness to believe in supposition was part of his advocacy.  

Al Gore, former Vice President in his book An Inconvenient Truth predicted the end of the world because of human indifference to climate change.  Sea levels would rise and swamp New York and Miami, soy bean crops would sizzle and die in Iowa, choking heat would kill millions of the poor trapped in non-airconditioned tenements and tarpaper shacks.  In short Armageddon. 

Bob took every word as gospel truth and renewed and energized his environmental advocacy.  He became a man possessed, a whirling dervish, an Old Testament prophet, a streetcorner preacher, a televangelist, a political firebrand all rolled up into one.  He was on fire. 

Every suggestion that the climate was not behaving as Al Gore said - that the geological record was more suggestive of natural cyclical changes in temperature than any human intervention - was tantamount to heresy and would not be tolerated.  Bob became not only an advocate for climate sensibility, he became a j'accuse vigilante.  

Any and all discrediting remarks were to be called out and the speakers cancelled.  'There can be no opposition to the truth', Bob said, 'when the truth is existential', a line that came back to haunt him once reliable data showed an increase in polar ice, not a decrease; that sea levels were remaining steady, and that catastrophic storms predicted had not materialized. 

He was increasingly being seen as a wild-eyed Cassandra, a bitch with an agenda, a crazed weirdo, and an intellectual degenerate.  Of course not by his inner circle or those close to the epicenter of the climate change movement; but still his solid reputation was being questioned.  All of which only fired up his boiler to high heat, and gave him a St. Vitus' dance persona - a man jumping and bouncing with demented energy - or a Tourette's Syndrome sufferer barking out obscenities at random. 

This cockamamie rumor about the presidential environmental summit pushed him over the edge.  For a while he stood firm, hopeful that that the international high-profile conversation would take place; but once he realized that belief in such specious, unbelievable rumor was tantamount to dementia, over he went. 

And so it is in Washington, climate activists toppling over the cliff left and right  along with Bob. Journal after journal called out the climate hype for what it was, and if the so-called 'crisis' got any ink, it was to laugh at it and its true believers. 

Bob was no longer fit to work after the rumor was outed and dispelled.  The wind had been taken out of his sails, the fire in his heart dampened and doused, and his moral compass sent spinning.  He was a shell of a man, an empty suit, and a deranged soul simply trying to regain his balance. 

He couldn't of course. There was return from such depths.  'A fool and his money are soon parted' said English poet Thomas Tusser, and so it was with a fool and his beliefs.  Without the foundational belief of an imminent climate Armageddon, this particular fool was left with nothing.