A Good Hand - How Mrs. Linder's Dancing School Taught A Natural Beauty The Art Of Deception

Mrs. Linder's Dancing School, a relic of the now distant past, was the place for all proper, well-brought up children of New Brighton to learn social grace. On Mrs. Linder's polished floors, boys and girls learned how to dance and the courtesies of courtship. 

Every Saturday morning Artemis went to Mrs. Linder's Victorian home on Lincoln Street, adjusted the bow in her hair and her crinoline dress, smiled at the reflection on her patent leather shoes, and walked onto the dance floor. 

Mrs. Linder - a wealthy Victorian widow with time on her hands and a love of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, decided that a dancing school for the well-to-do children of the West End would be just the thing to occupy her time and add to her already comfortable financial portfolio. 

Mrs. Linder, a tall, imposing woman with a turn-of-the-Century aplomb, had more than just the fox trot and rhumba in mind when she opened her doors.  She was a fierce conservative, a believer in survival of the fittest, competition, and the raw sexual ambition which propelled it and meant to probe its meaning.

Boys sat impatiently on one side of the dance floor, girls on the other; and at the sound of Mrs. Linder's clicker, the boys slipped and slid over the polished, waxed floor, and picked their dancing partner.  It was a free-for-all, a charge, a stampede, a pure, unadulterated show of male ambition and desire. 

To today's inclusive, compassionate eyes, the scene seems barbaric, a throwback to raw human tribalism and sexual aggression.  No one today would even contemplate such an untoward show of boys stumbling over each other to be the first to grab the most desirable girl and would never allow - as Mrs. Linder deliberately did - more girls than boys, leaving wall flowers who danced with each other.  

 

No, that would be unconscionable today, but to Mrs. Linder it was the apogee of the day.  She waited until near the end of the class to stage the happenings.  She whetted the children's appetite with waltzes, instructing girls to seductively embrace their partners and boys how to take them firmly and closely in their arms and then engaged them.

By the time the moment of the gantlet approached both boys and girls had been primed and prepared, and were not just expectant but aroused. 

Mrs. Linder reveled in the moment - the boys lined up like hurdlers in a 200 yd. race, on their toes, arms ready to pump and propel them across the floor, the girls making last-minute adjustment to bows, hair, and frills. 

Artemis was the one girl that all the boys wanted and for whom they tussled and fought over the floor to her, a tangle of them until the lead boy took her hand and the rest dispersed. 

She knew she had 'It' as her mother, a flapper of the Twenties had called it - some mysterious combination of pheromones, beauty, allure, and come-hither seductiveness that men could not resist.  Even at a very young age, she had this preternatural sense of sexuality that comes to a very few. 

Vladimir Nabokov wrote about it in Lolita where Humbert Humbert is irresistibly attracted to the 'nymphet', a pre-pubescent girl with an uncanny sense of her sexual power; and was definitely a Lolita clone. 

More than that, the stampede at Mrs. Linder's was epiphanic - a bolt of understanding not only of male sexual behavior but of their vulnerability. Men could be had, she instinctively knew, and felt a power over them that only the most beautiful, limitlessly desirable women could know. 

She had no compassion for the girls who were left behind, the plain, unappealing ones that no boy wanted; and felt only confidence and pleasure at her own success.  She had done nothing to attract the horde of boys who had stumbled over each other to reach her, done no act, no performance, had no conscious intent so common in every other pursuit.  If her simple being had so much power, imagine what she could do with it?

It was almost too easy, this business of sexual conquest.  No flirtation or innuendo was required, no parlor tricks or subterfuge, nothing. Men buzzed around her like bees to a fragrant flower which had done nothing to attract them, had no intent, purpose, or desire. Flowers just were, and so it was up and down the phylogenetic scale with the most attractive of the species the most successful. 

The women of Shakespeare's Comedies - Rosalind, Viola, Portia, and Beatrice - ran rings around the men who courted them, not because of anything they did, but simply because of who they were and how they used the stuff apportioned unequally at birth. 

 

So with very little effort, Artemis made her way up through the ranks - college, the law, courtroom victories as decisive and cruelly delivered as Genghis Khan's, and a Georgetown matron, arbiter of political influence and kingmaker.  Washington had never seen anything like her, and she had done little to achieve her success.  

She understood male weakness - men's fragile egos, native presumptions, dependency, and desire for youth, beauty, and sexual conquest. They were easy targets, so much so that promise alone was a leveraging tool. To be sure, she entertained men in her quarters, an interlude in the more important business of Washington politics but only with men who deserved a reward, or for whom sex exacted a promise.  

Men have always underestimated women, and been duped by them even when their guards were up but still remained hungry for their attention. Men were helpless when it came to Artemis who with a gesture, an innuendo, a nod, a posture, a pose brought them in line, kept them in tow, and pulled them along until it was time to cut them loose. 

From a more liberal, compassionate, kind and considerate perspective, Artemis was an Amazon, a vixen, a woman without principle; but that was to misunderstand the nature of women.  Gifted with this unexpected, gratuitous sexual power, specially endowed women like Artemis used it just as any other animal in the forest would - in a moral vacuum.

It all started with Mrs. Linder's Dancing School.  As she expected the boy who won the race and took her hand was the head of a Wall Street investment bank; and Janie Fisher, Mrs. Linder's wallflower, never married then married badly and was last heard of living alone in Burlington. 

Darwin was right, and so were Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Strindberg who got the picture and created women of agency.  It isn't a war between the sexes so much as it is feral competition. 

'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, [my father] told me, 'just remember that all people in this world haven't had the advantages you've had', says Nick Carroway in the first few lines of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - a conservative statement of inherited worth. 

There is such a thing as natural ability, superior intelligence, talent, and insight.  Nurture helps, but little improves on the hand that one has been dealt at birth. 

The lesson of Mrs. Linder's Dancing School was that, too; but rather than turn the gift into something of communal importance - the importance of giving back - Artemis took it as an unsolicited endowment; and to squander it was to deny Nietzsche ('The only validation of the individual in a meaningless world is the expression of pure will').  Artemis owed nothing to no one. 

Comeuppance? Never.  Coming a cropper? Hardly.  Anyone with such a natural endowment, such indefinable but irresistible sexual power, can never fail.  Artemis could no sooner end up like Janie Fisher than the sun never rising.  Her fate was predetermined, inevitable, unstoppable and enviable. 

For all those who thought that privilege implies noblesse oblige, thousands more took it as a desirable if unattainable right. 

The New York Times made an exception for her obituary which ran far longer than most.  Despite her ineffably conservative credentials, The Paper of Record felt bound to give her the space her eminence deserved. 

Trump, Iran, And Genghis Khan - Unleashing Hell And Total Uncompassionate Victory

Genghis Khan was a charismatic and fearsome figure.  He and his armies were known for their cruelty and barbarity, and the sight of them advancing across the battlefield in a storm of dust, the earth shaking with the thunder of 50,000 hooves, was enough to send enemies into retreat. The thought alone of this terrible, bloodthirsty, and mighty warrior was enough to rout enemy armies. Genghis Khan was a man of absolute will and power, a frightening presence of power and vengeance.  He was a horseman of the Apocalypse. 

 

There have been many successful armies in the world.  Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Agrippa were as brilliant generals as Genghis Khan, and brought Roman organization, discipline, and management to the battle.  They won because of superior ability, armaments, and military thinking; yet it was Genghis Khan who, with an almost untamed savagery, conquered the world.  At its height the Mongol Empire extended from far eastern China to the Danube, the biggest empire the world has ever seen. 

Khan had no qualms, moral reservations, or ethical hesitancy.  Wars were for winning, civilians were complicit enemies, and total annihilation of any opposition was his modus belli. Not only would defeated populations be without the wherewithal to mount a resistance or counterattack, they would never dare to incite the bloody, murderous, savage wrath of the conqueror.

The same spirit of total conquest inspired Harry Truman at the end of World War II when he dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events which would bring the Japanese to surrender and would send the Soviets an unmistakable message - 'You're next'. 

Wars were for winning, civilian populations were not collateral damage but complicit in their nations' politics.  The firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo as well as the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima caused tens of thousands of civilian lives but contributed to the final, total victory of the Allies over  Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. 

Something happened to American resolve after the war, and in Korea stalemate was the result.  Despite the pleas of General MacArthur to march into China, North Korea's patron and growing Communist power, and to decisively end the Korean War in America's favor, Truman fired him and kept American troops in place.  The result was an emboldened North Korea, a rogue nuclear power and a constant threat to its neighbors, the US, and South Korea. 

Things got worse in Vietnam during America's war with Ho Chi Minh, General Giap, and the North.  President Johnson's policy of 'Win Hearts and Minds', designed to win the Viet Cong and its South Vietnamese supporters to the American cause was a complete failure.  The Viet Cong also fought to win over South Vietnamese villagers to their cause, but did so with brutality, intimidation, and horror and did so successfully. 

Much later in the Second Iraq War when after a successful invasion of Baghdad and the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein, President George Bush declared victory and withdrew his troops, leaving the door open for radical Islamic militias to assume power.  Bush was convinced that the Iraqi people would assure that the country would transition seamlessly from dictatorship to liberal democracy.  

His generals advisors counseled military rule - a severe, uncompromising period of total control and elimination of anti-American, Islamist, and anti-democratic forces - but Bush declined.  'The people are now free to decide'. 

 

Bush's war in Afghanistan against the Taliban was no different.  He held back on policies of total victory, hoped for carrot-and-stick diplomacy and measured military action, totally misjudged the will, determination and guerilla mentality of the enemy, and left the country to them. 

In the current America-Iran war, President Trump began the campaign with decisive miliary strikes which killed the Ayatollah and his inner circle of advisors and dealt a serious blow to Iran's military infrastructure; but after what looked like an easy military victory, the President - eyeing the coming mid-term elections at home and the country's hope for a peaceful end to the war - began negotiations. The Iranians, of course, more militarily able than the President thought and in possession of tens of thousands of drones and a seemingly limitless supply of missiles, took advantage of he hiatus and began to rebuild, rearm, and deploy.  

Trump signed a conditional peace treaty which the Iranians ignored, and is now threatening massive retaliation.  Given America's hearts-and-minds record, it is doubtful. 

General Curtis Lemay, Vice Presidential candidate for a third party during the 1968 American presidential election said of the North Vietnamese enemy, 'Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age' which of course neither Republican nor Democrat candidates could endorse; but in the end, Lemay was just as right as Truman was in World War II - immeasurable power and destruction will bring any war to a quick end. 

In Ridley Scott's movie Gladiator the Russell Crowe character, general of the Northern Armies, says before his forces attack the barbarians in the forests beyond, 'Unleash hell'.  A great barrage of slings of fiery oil, a rain of punishing arrows, the advance of armed phalanxes, and the attack of armed cavalry followed.  Hell was indeed unleashed, and the barbarians, the last enemy of the Roman Empire, were defeated. 

General William Tecumseh Sherman knew that his Union forces were superior and would eventually and ultimately prevail, over the Confederate South in the American Civil War, but he understood complete and total military conquest was the only victory which would assure that the South would never rise again.  

His goal was to humiliate the South – to show its people that the heralded aristocratic Cavalier was nothing compared to the tough and gritty farm boys from the North; that its leaders were inept and incapable of stopping the Union advances.  His brutal trail of destruction and devastation as he marched through Georgia to the sea and his punitive march up through the Carolinas made it abundantly clear - The days of the Confederacy were over, done with, and consigned to history. 

Sherman understood – like the Israelis in their war against Hamas – that complete military victory would not only destroy enemy military capacity but would destroy the will of the enemy and its civilian population.  

Sherman said, “War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, so let’s give them what they want.”   Sherman understood that such complete capitulation could only be achieved if he “traversed holy ground” and captured cities which were symbols of the Confederacy and what people were led to believe was Southern supremacy; and if they were easily taken or destroyed, the will of the people would be further eroded. 

Sherman was very clear about his march through the Carolinas.  He knew that the journey would be arduous and physically demanding; but he wanted to burn a trail through the very heart of the Confederacy – the place where the rebellion had started – to show the South once and for all that not only had their armies been beaten, but that their whole culture had been destroyed.

A total, annihilating war against Iran would mean thousands of civilian casualties, among whom are thousands who protested in the streets and demanded an end to the theocratic regime.  Yet just as in Nazi Germany and Japan, the complicity of the Iranian people - or at least its complaisance - has contributed to the persistence and longevity of the regime.  Total victory would send the same unequivocal lesson to the Iranian people that Israel sent to Gazans and that Truman sent to Japan - never again will you ever dare to repeat the errors of the past. 

For terrorist regimes like Iran and its clients - ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah, the death of civilians, has no relevance since the ends of battle are religious and spiritual.  The ends justify the means far more than any secular struggle. What Americans consider heinous crimes – blowing up school buses, crowded markets, and residential neighborhoods – have no moral implication per se.  They are only necessary measures to assure the final and ultimate moral end.

In this war with Iran, the United States' ally is Israel, the  only country that has understood the dangerous, aggressive militancy of Islam, and they fight with the same moral rectitude and purpose as their radical Islamic opponents.  They will brook absolutely no threat to the Jewish homeland, and civilian Palestinian and Iranian deaths are the price the enemy must pay for its aggression and permanent hostility.  The Israelis know that they are fighting an enemy who uses a territorial imperative – a Palestinian state and the creation of an Islamic caliphate – only as pretext for the annihilation of Israel, the ridding of Arab lands of the infidel, and in preparation for universal Islamic rule.

Under these circumstances, total, uncompassionate war is completely justified. 

'The Bitch Set Me Up' - Politics And Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle In A Delightfully Faux World

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle  asserts that certain pairs of physical properties cannot be measured precisely at the same time. If the position of a particle is measured very accurately, its momentum becomes highly uncertain, and vice versa.  

This principle at the heart of quantum mechanics describes the basic organization of matter.  In layman's terms, you can never know what's going on.  In the world of sub-atomic particles, there is no truth, fact, or absolutes.  It all depends on who's looking and what one chooses to see. 

Heisenberg of course was only describing an esoteric world of bosons and muons, particles which not only cannot be fixed in time and place but which exist for only fractions of milliseconds - evanescent bits of matter that sometimes are and sometimes aren't.  This theory paired with Einstein's Theory of Relativity - another now you see it, now you don't world of surprising uncertainty - describe the universe as unknowable, or knowable as long as you can put up with probability. 

These scientific theories, like Darwin's theory of evolution have necessarily been applied to life above ground, the normal, pedestrian life of solid matter, solid observable things beneath which the particles of the quantum world go whirling. 

As much as we might like to claim the absolute truth about an idea, a premise, an observation, or a conviction, we quickly find that it all depends on who's looking and through which lens. Five eye-witnesses will see the same event in five different ways. You may be convinced that what you see is undeniable, but it is a function only of perception. 

Philosophers like Hume have pondered the metaphysical nature of the question  'If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?'  Is errancy or consistency the rule of being? 

This conundrum should lead us to confusion and a terrible state of indecision or quandary, but of course it doesn't.  We observe, conclude, and pass on the information as the truth.  The information makes the rounds, changing character and veracity each time it changes hands, and by the time it has come to a dead end it no longer resembles its first telling. 

No one seems to care about this maybe, perhaps state of affairs.  As long as we believe what we see, read, or hear, the story ends there.  What happens to the information when it leaves our intellectual property is someone else's business. 

Ivan's Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov admits that he is a vaudevillian, and without his antics life would be a bloody bore, three hundred and sixty five days of Sunday Mass, a predictable, dull, and sodden state of affairs.  And so he makes things up, lies, distorts, discombobulates until there is nothing left but fiction, fantasy, and likes and dislikes. 

What would life be like without rumor, gossip, and innuendo?  Getting at the truth, the principle of our judicial system, is nothing more that getting at the most plausible fiction.  The dead body might be lying there ashen and cold, but how it got there, under what circumstances, and why is another question altogether. 

Murderers plot their killings in intricate ways, and one only has to watch a few episodes of Miss Marple or Poirot to see how the intricacies of the crime are discovered, sewn together to form a conclusion. 'He couldn't have...Of course he could...Why wouldn't he...' are all part of the marvelously wicked pursuit of the truth. 

Former Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC was caught in a sting where he was found smoking crack with a prostitute.  'The bitch set me up', shouted Barry as federal officers handcuffed him and took him away.  He was smoking crack and the girl was a hooker, but beyond that guilt and innocence were figments of perception. 

A bank of television monitors at the gym, tuned to Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC when covering the same incident, portray it in different ways, configured according to their political philosophy and the profile of the audience.  'US War Planes launch destructive strikes on Iranian regime infrastructure' is the headline on one channel while 'Trump's destruction of civilian infrastructure causes civilian deaths'.  Viewers assume that their preferred source is correct, when any less biased observer can only conclude that an attack happened. 

History has a way of moderating events. Does the fact that slavery has existed since Ancient Greece and Rome; that the capture, purchase, sale, and barter of conquered, captured enemies was a way of life in sub-Saharan Africa; that 19th century ethnography placed Africans lower on the phylogenetic scale than white Europeans; and that the unusual co-existence of labor and capital in each slave ensuring his protection and care obviate the moral opprobrium so common in America? and give a chance for practical assessment, integration, and social evolution to happen?

The American Left states with certainty and absolute judgment that European colonization was inherently bad - a manipulative, exploitive, arrogant, and inhuman oppression - and that as a result any of the laws, traditions, principles, and practices derived from empire must be erased, expunged, and discarded.  Yet, the advances in the governance of civil society, the flowering of arts, science, and literature thanks to the right and power of kings cannot be dismissed. They happened just as surely as labor, resources, and wealth were taken as rights of the colonists. 

If this one principle - the Uncertainty Principle - were understood and adopted as a prevailing social ethos, the world would be far less of a contentious, contested, and disruptive place.  A measure of Heisenberg, one of Epictetus and the Stoics, one of Sartre and the Existentialists, and one of Dostoevsky's Devil would make for a much more civilized place. 

Ah, yes, say those Darwinians who contend that human nature is and always will be aggressive, self-defensive, territorial, and self-interested and that metaphysics and phenomenology have little bearing on desire and ambition. 

Yet the result is the same.  If one believes that human nature is as described and hardwired, then there is no point in getting exercised about true belief.  True belief is the heart and soul of politics, and if one accepts that the hysterical claims of the Left are Darwinian in nature - an expression of selfish identity, absolutism, and violent defensiveness - one can easily dismiss them. 

Which is why politics is such a circus, a marvelous freak show, a three-ring event, a vaudevillian act, an impossibly hilarious Borscht Belt comedy routine.  With the notion that such inarticulate hysteria is par for the course, as silly and preposterous as that of previous administrations and those to come, life can be worth the price of admission.