Double Double Toil And Trouble - Lady Jill And Kamala, A Witches' Coven To Reelect The President

Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most famous villains.  No one - not even Tamora, Dionyza, or Goneril and Regan - can match her vicious ambition. 'What are you waiting for', she shouts at her husband.  It is time to kill the king. 

Yet Macbeth demurs.  He has none of his Lady's resolve and her unmatched ferocity.  She is a fearsome vixen, a harridan, a woman with no compunction, hesitation, or doubt.

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. 

Lady Macbeth could be the fourth weird sister of the coven of  witches who meet the Thane of Cawdor and prophesy the murder of Banquo and the King and Macbeth's accession to the throne

Fillet of a fenny snake, / In the cauldron boil and bake; / Eye of newt and toe of frog, / Wool of bat and tongue of dog, / Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, / Lizard's leg and owlet's wing, / For a charm of powerful trouble, / Like a hell-broth boil and bubble 

 

All of which brings us to  Kamala Harris who along with the President's wife, Jill, will stop at nothing to keep the President alive, upright, and running for re-election.  Double double toil and trouble Kamala says as she and Jill stir their witches brew, and prophesy Biden's succession, his immediate fall, Kamala's rise to power, and Jill's sinecure in the White House. 

'It will take that', said an aide to the President when someone reminded him of Shakespeare's weird sisters and their unholy brew. The idea of Kamala Harris as the chief witch in the coven was not farfetched at all.  She need only assure Biden’s return to the White House, for it would only be a matter of months for the President to drift irretrievably into a doughy future.  She, demonstrating public concern, but with Lady Macbeth's resolute, unholy ambition would see to it that the President be declared unfit for office and removed. 

Finally she will be in her rightful place, the President of the United States, a black woman of intelligence, intrigue, and limitless resources - a woman of power and authority.  She will have the fiery will of Margaret Thatcher, the canniness of Indira Gandhi, and the fierce courage of Golda Meier and will stand astride the world like a Colossus. She will be supreme, unstoppable, and legendary. 

The aide was worried because The First Lady joined the Vice President in stirring the witches brew.  With a failing, inconsequential, and lost President, she could be more powerful than Nancy Reagan, a first lady whom everyone knew ran affairs in the Oval Office.  She, after she comfortably seated Joe in his comfortable rocker with a cup of chamomile tea, would take over the affairs of state.  She would no longer be ridiculed as Doctor Biden, PhD, doctor of letters from a third rate school in a fourth rate discipline.  She would do the ridiculing of those who demeaned and isolated her husband.  She would show them. 

The two witches would battle - Lady Jill to keep her husband in office, and Kamala to send him packing. A cat fight of epic proportions.

The men in the White House, veterans of the worst that the Capitol, Foggy Bottom, and the Presidency could offer, were afraid of the vixens hovering around the President.  Harris might be rambling, weird, and incomprehensible when she spoke, but Lady Macbeth was not famous for her brains or elocution either. It took no intelligence to unman her husband and assure the crown; and so it was with the Vice President and her coven sister Jill. 

The President's re-election would be a good thing, keeping advisors and aides in their jobs and padding their resumes; but it would be a bad thing because of the certainty of a Harris presidency.  That woman would certainly trash the lot of them, and replace them with a vixenish cabal of her own. 

'Remember how she ended up', reminded one aide referring to Lady Macbeth who went mad with guilt and kept washing imagined blood off her hands.  'Our Lady Macbeth is not exactly a Richard III', meaning of course that for all her vile ambition she had nothing of Richard's brilliance.

Actually they all forgot King Lear as the most apt metaphor for the Biden situation.  Lear was an old, foundering, and increasingly feeble king given to fantasy and illusion.  He was an easy mark for his daughters Goneril and Regan who, like Lady Macbeth and Kamala Harris want the demented old man out of the way. 

You see how full of changes his age is. The observation we have made of it hath not been little. He always loved our sister most, and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appears too grossly.... 

The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then we must look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of a long-ingrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them 

 

Which is why the moves of Democratic Party insiders in Congress and their media shills to assure his withdrawal from the presidential race before it was too late had to be encouraged.  At least the Buttigieg would stay the course without the incendiary and self-serving intrigues of the Vice President.  No bright light himself, the Buttigieg would at least increase the chances of Democratic victory and at least four years of moderate progressivism. 

Who knows? Right now the White House is as gaudy as a Shakespearean tragedy - or rather a Renaissance melodrama; and perhaps it is a good thing that President has no clue what's going on.  If there's any upside to dementia, it's that.  Poor Joe's fate will be decided while he dreams of his mother and playing in the sand at Rehoboth Beach. 

Post-Debate Reality - Why The American People Prefer Donald Trump's Bombast And Fantasy To 'The Truth'

Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election to JFK because on the debate stage, the five o'clock shadowed, sweating Nixon looked like a refugee from a Polish shtetl while John Kennedy looked handsome, young, and virile.  It was his disreputable prison look that did him in.  Viewers could not get past the image and listen to the policies, programs, and principles that the man was presenting to the public.

 

And today, sixty years later, nothing has changed.  It is image that wins debates, wins at campaign whistle stops, and wins on election day.  

There is much more bundled in political image today - Donald Trump's obvious exaggerations, fantastical assumptions and misstatements are deliberate, planned, and part of his persona.  Despite the howls and cries from the Left about Trump's lies and deceptions, his supporters have learned to parse what he means out of what he says and enjoy the bombast, the cannonade of insults, one-liners, parodies, and characterizations of a tummler - a Borscht Belt comedian as funny as Shecky Greene or Jackie Mason. 

No one actually believes that thousands of criminals deliberately freed from Mexican prisons are being given a free lunch and bus tickets to El Norte; nor are rapists, pedophiles, and gang bangers pouring across the Biden border.  It could happen, given the consequences of limitless open immigration. When everyone is let in willy-nilly, thugs, shooters, and drug dealers will certainly be part of the mix.  The message - open borders are bad for America.  

'Insurrectionist, tyrant, anti-democratic dictator' shout the Left, but the allegations don't stick.  Trump's revolution, which he readily admits, is nothing less than a counter-offensive against the policies of race, gender, and ethnicity that polarize and fragment the nation.  His dismissal of COVID - it will pass - was not so much a 'live and let die' callous policy of indifference, but a premonitory warning - the government will do its best to assert and consolidate its authority, restrict and abuse the individual rights of American citizens, and build the foundations for authoritarian statism. 

His constant reference to voter fraud is not, as his opponents claim, a viral, insidious effort to discredit the American electoral process but to state a fact - every citizen must show proof of identity everywhere and every day.  There is nothing politically intrusive about it; and since many jurisdictions are allowing undocumented immigrants to vote, and when the opposition historically has rigged, gerrymandered, and abused the voting process, Trump's message is simple and clear - show proof of citizenship. 

The one-liner, attributed to any number of ward-heeler Democratic politicians in Chicago - 'vote early and often' - the dead men on the voter rolls, the busses of bums and derelicts given a hot lunch and a dollar to vote are as American as apple pie.  The message once again is clear - it has nothing to do with false claims of election theft, but all about electoral vigilance. 

 

He is not racist in his claims to aggressively dismantle all traces of affirmative action, but democratic.  The Left has gone far to far in its exaggerated efforts to raise the black man to the pinnacle of the social pyramid despite persistent, inherent, and resistant dysfunction in the black community.  He is not homophobic when he laughs at Biden's hilarious transgender appointments as though they actually represented America. 

The point is not to assess the truth of Trump's statements.  Everyone knows or should know that much of what he says bears little relationship to facts and figures; but all but his detractors know that to get at Trump policy and political philosophy, one only needs to parse the hyperbole. 

Deconstructionism has had its day, although because of tenure there are many academics who will preach this secular animism until the day they die.  All texts are equivalent, they say.  There is no such thing as artistic genius, and the works of Shakespeare, Aeschylus, and Dostoevsky should be read only within the narrow context of  race, gender, and ethnicity.  Hamlet and Macbeth are nothing more than plays about political power, the corrupt nature of elites, and the alienation of the many to serve the powerful.

If one reads text carefully, deconstructionists say, one will discover the true meaning behind the words which are mere and artificial constructs of individuals who can but express political zeitgeist and the particular configurations of social, economic, and cultural conflict.

So where are these deconstructionists when it comes to parsing the stump performances of Donald Trump? Why are they so literal in their interpretation of his words?  How could they assume that his hot button rhetoric is anything more than getting sinners to walk up the aisle and accept Jesus as their personal savior?

Trump voters are good Deconstructionists.  They know that language has little do to with describing actual facts - reality - but all in its configuration of the world as seen through a progressive lens.  There are no geniuses in literature, only men who have been influenced and conditioned by culture and society and who reflect this influence in their writing.  In other words, pay no attention to what the words seem to mean, go beyond, beneath, and above to extract meaning. 

 

America if anything is a country of image - of vaudevillian comedy, Las Vegas girly strip shows and sequined runway entrances; of soap operas, melodrama, impossible Hollywood fantasy, improbably optimistic advertising, comic books, and virtual reality.  The 'truth', if there ever was such a thing has never mattered much; and in fact the more society becomes virtual, the less the truth, fact, and objectivity will matter. 

So, looked at through this historical, cultural perspective, Donald Trump is the most American of any President in recent memory.  He is an old-fashioned stump politician, riling up a crowd, getting them to cheer and toss their hats in the air, clambering for more.  He is snake oil salesman, evangelical big tent preacher, and auctioneer all rolled up into one. 

His policies are simple and unchanged from those of the first conservative president in modern electoral history Ronald Reagan.  Reagan was for small government, low taxes, less regulation, a firm embrace of the freedoms of the Bill of Rights, and a militant patriotism.  He was a respectful, self-confident, quiet but assured president - a man with a devilish sense of humor who never varied from his principles and moral code.  His missteps are well known, tangled as he got in the weeds of Foggy Bottom, but his principles were sound.

 

If deconstructed, parsed, and subjected to rigorous exegesis - i.e. cutting through the hyperbole, wild accusations, and free and easy handling of the facts - Trump's principles are no different. 

The Democratic mantra - tyrant, anti-democratic insurrectionist felon - simply has no resonance because Trump supporters know - as legal experts are coming to acknowledge - that his New York trial was a travesty of justice, a political witch hunt, and a stain on the judicial system.  They know that January 6th was not a coup, but a grab-bag of Viking helmeted, face-painted deep woods crazies come to Washington to cause trouble.  They know that the election of 2020 was not stolen from Trump but his way of counter-attacking the unfounded, ad hominem charges leveled against him since he rose to political prominence.  

He is no racist, homophobe, or misogynist nor was the election stolen.  These claims are par for the course of political scurrility.  Look only to past presidential elections for mudslinging, catcalls, and ridiculous claims. 

How, asks the Left in all sincerity, could this demonic, soulless, exploitative, amoral character get even one vote How could a man with the morals of an animal, a showman with no sense of honesty, sincerity, or obligation ever have been elected President? 

The question can only be asked by those who have never looked beyond the Potomac. The American people, are not the stupid, unwashed, backwoods hillbillies the Left claims.  They are not taken in by the devil, Trump, but have already shed any vestige of the supposed 'truth' of the Left.  They, like Browning, Durrell, Kurosawa, and thousands of defense attorneys know that there is not such thing as the truth, fact, objective reality but a miasma of differing perceptions.  

Worst of all say Trump supporters, is that in this relativistic, progressively virtual world the Left insists on not only saying that there is such a thing as the truth, but that they have it. 

Despite the caterwauling of the Left and their attempts to cast Trump as the Devil, the former president is poised (June 2024) to win the election.  Enough voters have gotten, understood, and embraced his fundamental messages and dismissed contrary claims; and have dismissed the tired, shopworn, desperate mantra of the opposition. 

Mary, Queen Of Hearts - Despite Vegas, God, And Good Breeding Her Luck With Men Was Very, Very Bad

Mary Stuart had always been lucky.  She won stuffed animals at the state fair, played the scratch-and-sniff daily lottery and won with regularity, and always seemed to get flushes and straights when she played poker. 

 

Scientists explain this 'hot hand' phenomenon as nothing unusual, just strings of good luck which over time will always turn out bad; but however defined, designed, or measured, she was a lucky girl; unless of course it involved choosing a partner and then more often than not she was left on the curb or a crying mess in the girls bathroom.  'What is wrong with me?', she asked herself time and time again. 

To salve the pain she played cards with her roommates all of whom were mathematicians like her, and all of whom tried to beat the house in Vegas, not quite counting cards, but calculating the odds.  Brenda, Mary's best friend, a girl with no looks, no charm, no personality but with a gift for instantaneous calculations, risk assessment, and canny betting.  Whenever they went to Vegas or Mohegan Sun, Brenda always came home with sizeable winnings - again, not break the bank fortune, but enough to pay for the round trip. 

 

Blackjack was simple - every number over fifteen carried an absolute stochastic value - i.e. the chances of winning with sixteen showing was always X and every other card dealt either increased or lowered the odds by a given number. Poker of course was more complex, more reliant on collective reasoning (how other players reacted to every card played), but still learnable.  There were odds for everything, absolute, unchangeable, and unforgiving. 

Mary felt good after these trips.  Not only the gambling - which of course was the principal reason for going - but the whole glitzy, showy, garishly exciting sound and light show that never disappointed.  She of course had been hit on by any number of young men, but there was something about Vegas and its defining rules that insulated her from the world of incalculable odds - her problem in the first place. It felt good to be in such a well-ordered, predictable place, so why disturb the peace?

Vegas of course was only a temporary respite from the bad choices she constantly made - she always bought the wrong size, underestimated or overestimated the weather, and found herself sitting next to men who always turned out wrong. 

Take Lucas, for example.  At first glance he met her basic criteria - tall, fair-complected, engaging, and classically handsome - but she couldn't see beyond the flowers and candlelit dinners, or their modern equivalent, and ended up with them pawing and grabbing at her before she knew it.  Or the men whose switches were never turned on, dead wires, hopelessly clueless, chargeless, and spent before the evening got rolling. 

 

'Maybe if I rolled the dice', she said.  'Conflation' was the term used in philosophy for the subtle merging of discordant elements, and making both of them part of the same paradigm; and perhaps there was something to it.  Oh yes of course, choosing men was a different kettle of fish, but perhaps...She slapped her wrist. 'Bad girl!' she said. 'There you go again', and primped and rouged and reapplied her lipstick as she made her way back to the  bar. 

Vegas was all about absolutes.  Either you beat the odds or you didn't.  There could be no regrets or  arrière-pensées because the odds were fixed and immutable. If you played your cards right, always with the odds in mind, you would win. The bar - this one, any one - was a crap shoot.  Rolling the dice had no such perceivable, understandable odds.  They were always the same.  The chances of rolling a six or an eight were always the same. There was nothing to suss, contemplate, or mentally adjudicate.

So Randall from Gaithersburg could either be a jerk or a nice guy.  Savvy girls knew immediately which it was because they could read men. They were experts in deconstructing facial expressions, cant of the shoulders, tonality and tone of voice; but Mary was clueless.  All the statistics and advanced mathematical theory did her no good at the bar.  

There must be some odds that governed sexual relationships. In any cohort group of 100 there had to be a number of good matches, regardless of the chooser's personality; and there must be serial odds - after so many tries, Mr. Right would turn up.  It was after all the age of big data - if you asked enough people how many gum balls were in a large jar, someone without any calculating skills (circumference of the jar, volume, distribution) would hit on the right number and there had to be a precise formula for that process.  In her case all the men in the bar were gum balls in a jar and she would have a one in...hmmm...how many? chances of getting it right. 

 

What about trial and error? That was not exactly serial odds, but somewhere between Las Vegas and the gumball jar; and so she gave that theory a try.  After too many times to count pawed and groped and drooled over, she was learning nothing.  Artificial intelligence built on odds and big data learned from trial and error and it took only a few mistakes to get the issue spot on and make sense.  Not Mary who remained stuck in her stochastic world of probability.  

There remained another possibility - do nothing, be an empty vessel, wait for Lady Luck to come calling. If she could not make sense out of variability, then why not let someone else to the calculation and come to her? 

Needless to say that option was as much of a dud as all the others, for in order to sort out the wheat from the chaff, she would have to be alone with her suitors and put up with the pawing and fondling yet again. 

She knew from women's magazines how to get a man, but that only got you through the door.  Human nature being what it is - predictable but indecipherable on an individual basis - there was no telling what insects the roses and honeysuckle would attract. 

How did those other girls do it, Mary constantly wondered.  Even drab, humorless Brenda had a beau albeit a dorky, dweeby MIT student.  Adam and Eve were the ideal couple because there was no one else around, no games, no sussing of intent or motivation, just two meant-for-each-other people bedded in a lovely place.  Nothing went right after that of course and women were forever consigned to trickery.

Shakespeare knew that little paradigm well as his heroines ran rings around their deaf, clumsy suitors in every Comedy he wrote. 

'Maybe I should become a lesbian', she thought, possible in this era of gender choice.  That must increase the odds - single sex partnership meant instinctively understanding the woman on the other side of the bed - but the whole idea was off-putting to say the least. 

It would be a nice ending to the story to report that Mary found Mr. Right, they married, moved to the suburbs, had two children, and lived happily ever after, but what were the odds of that ever happening in the best of circumstances? 

Conspiracy Theories - The Joe Biden Whopper Along With The Twin Towers And Fluoridation

There are too many conspiracy theories to name - 9/11 was a US government plot to shore up our flagging defenses and give us a cover for a war against Islam; FDR knew the Japanese were about to attack Pearl Harbor but did so to give us a casus belli for entering the war against the Nazis; JFK was killed by the Mafia, Cuban dissidents, and rogue elements of the Democratic Party - and many, many more.  These are only the ones that caught the public eye. 

Other popular conspiracy theories have proposed that the United States moon landings were all staged in Hollywood;  that both 9/11 and Pearl Harbor were engineered by Bush and Roosevelt for political reasons; that AIDS is a man-made disease; that a UFO landed in Roswell, NM; and that humanoid reptilians are taking control of the world.

 There are posts about unholy and impossible political alliances, ‘new’ data linking disease to unthinkable causes; improbable cures for intractable disease; and the wildest, most implausible statements by world leaders; doomsday scenarios about rogue asteroids headed for Earth and viruses worse than Ebola mutating in Africa.

There are theories which, despite decades of scientific evidence continue to link autism with vaccines,  and recount the addling effect of small motors (hair dryers, electric toothbrushes) on cognition.

There are others, however, which are far less obvious and more intriguing. A favorite goes like this: the Nazis weaponized fluoride - a substance which could affect cognition and logical functioning, among other damaging effects on the brain - but did not have the ability nor the delivery mechanisms to introduce it into US water supply systems. 

When the war was over, the Soviets found the secret research, brought it to their labs and did indeed weaponize it, and with their sophisticated spy network and undercover KGB operatives, able to deliver it. It was considered the ideal weapon, universally and insidious destructive and without the big bang of a nuclear devise.  Fluoride in the drinking water would act like a tranquillizer - calming and numbing the brain to concentrated, deliberate thought, and - here is the point - render the average American citizen receptive to Communist propaganda. 

 

Now, the writer of the article where this theory first appeared was to all intents and purposes sane.  He ate normally, talked normally, and dressed well.  In fact if one stayed off the topic of fluoride, he was a reasonably rational person.  As an 'alternative lifestyle' journalist for a self-published journal, he could hold his own on labor law, the debt, and even interest rates; but when started on fluoride, he was a changed man.  He became agitated, bemused, frantic, demonic all within the space of a few minutes.  He was a man possessed. 'They're here', he said, waving his arms wildly around, whirling like a dervish pointing to the ceiling, the cotton fields, and the Yazoo River. 'They're everywhere'.

Some of the earliest work on the subject of conspiracy theories was written by Hofstadter et. al. who suggested psychopathology:

The paranoid style, they argued, was a result of ‘uncommonly angry minds’, whose judgment was somehow ‘distorted’. Following this vein, some scholars came to view conspiracy theories as a product of psychopathology, such as extreme paranoia, delusional ideation or narcissism… In this view, the delusional aspect of conspiratorial beliefs was thought to result in an incapacity for social or political action.

Later researchers turned to what they felt were more compelling social factors.  How, they argued, could psychopathology be the principal cause of conspiracy theories when there were so many of them?

A belief in conspiracy theories is more likely to emerge among those who feel powerless, disadvantaged or voiceless, especially in the face of catastrophe. To use a contemporary example, believing that terrorist acts such as the IRA London bombings during the prolonged 'troubles' were perpetrated by the British or Israeli governments may be a means of making sense of turbulent social or political phenomena.

However, simply being powerless – most people are unable to influence events or decisions on anything but an individual or family basis – is not enough  Hofstadter goes on:

To the extent that conspiracy theories fill a need for certainty, it is thought they may gain more widespread acceptance when establishment or mainstream explanations contain erroneous information, discrepancies, or ambiguities. A conspiracy theory helps explain those ambiguities and provides a convenient alternative to living with uncertainty. Or that the human desire for explanations of all natural phenomena aids the conspiracist in the quest for public acceptance.

Of course these theories do not explain the totally unhinged, feral suspension of disbelief of the Mississippi journalist.  Somehow and somewhere his brain latched on to this idea among many, wrestled with it, believed it, and then took on a prophetic mission to spread the word.  In other words, he became an evangelist of cockamamie, impossibly fantastical ideas, and was willing to be martyred for his beliefs. 

Of course he was simply as crazy as a loon, addled by some weird notion that came to his attention and flipped a switch in his brain and turned him into a foaming, raging Old Testament zealot. 

That, however, is still in the realm of politics were dirty trick happen all the time, but this one is truly inventive.  Frank Tibbets was the headmaster of a prestigious New England boys boarding school.  He had a superior academic record - Harvard undergraduate, Yale PhD in quantum mechanics, Boston Brahmin family the works.  To top it off he was commissioned by the US army and fought honorably and courageously in France during the Great War.  

Tibbets, the theory went, was severely wounded at  Ypres - his entire lower jaw had been shot off by a German bullet - but the field medics were quick to act.  A German shepherd attack dog had been a loyal member of the platoon since the beginning of the war, carrying messages along the trench line between officers, and even pulling wounded men back behind the lines; and as much as he was valued, he had to be sacrificed for Colonel Tibbets, and the quick-thinking medical corps replaced his jaw with that of the dog, saved his life, and in an era well before sophisticated prosthetics, gave him the possibility of a normal life. 

Now, the headmaster of course had suffered no such horrendous injury, but he had a small, pointed definitely canine-looking jaw, and when two and two were put together, the story of his heroism and battlefield resurrection was born.  Everyone in the school knew the story, and even those headed for the old man's alma mater were convinced that it was true.  The headmaster knew of these stories and became hopelessly self-conscious about his jaw, wearing high starched collars and later a foulard.  His resignation was not unexpected. 

This like all such theories was based on some kernel of truth - the headmaster had been in the war and his resume included a Purple Heart, and his jaw indeed did look like that of the school mascot, Hercules who was on the sideline of every game against Choate and Andover.

There was speculation - a low-level conspiracy theory - that Jimmy Carter was the illegitimate offspring of old Joe Kennedy and a prostitute with whom he had a brief encounter when playing gold at Augusta National.  The prostitute had wanted to keep the baby - some odd, ironic mix of conservative Catholicism and sexual license - but gave it up for adoption.  The baby was adopted by the Carter family and the young boy grew up to be President of the United States. 

There was no proof of this story, but Joe Kennedy was a known philanderer, and most importantly Jimmy Carter did have something of the unique Kennedy look - the lips perhaps more plump than the thin shanty-bog Irish look of Joe's family but still a resemblance. 

 

Just as in the case of Headmaster Tibbetts, the theory was based on a casual resemblance, some truth about forbears and historical facts, but mostly on idle, crazy speculation, 

Now President Biden is subject of the most improbable conspiracy theory.  Baby Joe had been one of the babies taken from single pregnant women in the infamous 'Irish laundries', institutions of the Catholic Church were unwed mothers were taken in by the Sisters of Charity, and put to work in the basement laundries as chattel labor.  Their babies were taken from them and given to needy childless families throughout Ireland. 

Joe was one of these Irish babies. His family, delighted with their new child moved to Australia where they hoped to be free from the bog and peat, damp, dark, and wet life in Ireland.  Again, unfortunate circumstances prevailed, and when the family had sailed once again this time to the United States where they hoped for an even better life, the ship foundered off Newfoundland and sank. All passengers except baby Joe who was found floating unharmed in his wicker bassinette died from exposure.  Baby Joe found his way through the diligence of American Catholic relief agencies to the home of the Bidens.  

How this accounted for his rise to political prominence, his peculiarly conformist nature, and his early dementia no one could really say, but once the theory went viral, every amateur critic was blaming the Catholic Church (the President's pro-abortion policies were to spite the Vatican), the cold waters of the North Atlantic (there were no pictures of Biden swimming off Rehoboth) or the parasitical neural infections that eventually drove his Irish family from Brisbane towards New York, but put together, it all made sense. 

Information which confirms, consolidates, or reaffirms political or social notions – regardless of the obvious outlandishness of its claims – is believed without question and incorporated into a pre-established point of view.

Lapsed Catholics who have always harbored guilt for having left the Church, are encouraged by Pope Francis’ statements on inclusivity and the value of all religions.   Progressives who believe that the nation’s ills are caused by the depredations of Wall Street and the One Percent are likely to quickly accept allegations of misdoing by corporate executives because of their a priori conclusion that capitalism is corrupt.  

Environmentalists are likely to take with little or no skepticism intimations of climate change Armageddon – the sudden disappearance of bees, the disrupted patterns of sea otters and the Namibian desert spider.  Believers in alternative medicine will be quick to accept stories which suggest that disease is not only not cured by modern medicine but exacerbated or even caused by it.

In our era of AI where fake news has found a new and congenial home, conspiracy theories and cockamamie ideas are multiplying a thousandfold.  They are popping up everywhere, and in the absence of any brakes on fantasy, and given the natural credulousness and gullibility of the American population, they will only continue to grow.  Before long it won't matter any more, reality will disappear (thank God, who needs bricks and mortar?) and the world of fantasy will be the new paradigm of life.  

Store-Front Religion - How Little Pastor Williams Scammed The Inner City

LaFarge Williams was born and bred in Bradford, an inner city neighborhood of a large East Coast city  It was  a poor, drug-ridden, crime-infested hellhole where drive-by shootings, prostitution, illegal gambling, single-motherhood, and welfare queens were the rule.  It was a nasty, trash-strewn place, as bad as any in the country - worse than the slums of West Baltimore, East St. Louis, and most of Detroit north of the river.    

 

The police doubled patrols in the area, carried twelve-gauge shotguns, and never stepped out of their cruisers unless they wore triple-layered Kevlar bullet-proof vests.  Gunfights between the Metropolitan Police and Dominican gangs spilled over into residential neighborhoods, and the row houses on 12th and 13th Streets were riddled with bullet holes - not just police-issue .45s and .38 specials, but high-grade, armor-piercing, high caliber battlefield ballistics. 

LaFarge was no different than any child of his age in the slums - abandoned as a baby by his father, raised by his grandmother, and ignored by his drunken, cracked-out mother who died in a gutter from an overdose of Fentanyl

The one and only safe and sound place in Bradford was the Bible Community store-front church, repurposed from whatever it sold to religion; and thanks to the Reverend Isaiah J. Fielding was always filled to overflowing.  Fielding was a natural, a charismatic, compelling, inspirational prophet who invoked the presence of Jesus Christ every Sunday. 

After the invocation, the reading of Psalms and Kings, the pastor warmed to his audience, and before long he had them hooting and hollering, scrambling up the aisle, shaking and trembling, and shouting 'Praise Jesus, Oh Praise the Lord'.  One by one the congregants stumbled towards the altar, raising their hands and whooping in ecstasy and before long the whole place was standing, writhing, and shouting. 

The Reverend just smiled at the Lord's work.  He had only read from the Good Book and Jesus did the rest. All it took was some fancy hog calling, carny barker smooth talking, and old LaFollette Union Square political wilding and his work was done.  It was as easy as pie, came naturally, and was rewarding - not in a big, megachurch way, but in small but consistent tithings, enough for a new silk suit, a trip to New Orleans and some alligator shoes 

Little LaFarge Williams sat in the back row of the church every Sunday, gussied up as much as his grandmother would allow - the diamond tie stud, for example, that Grandfather Willy hocked and she retrieved as collateral for some unforeseen event, a glittery set in gold thing that she kept in her sewing kit but gave to LaFarge on Sundays. 

He was proud of that pin, it gave him cachet and importance - he was A Big Man for two hours once a week and was the price of admission to Pastor Fielding and the Lord.  He sat in his seat and watched the Reverend start from a slow drawl and work up to a St. Vitus' dance of religious twisting and turning, holding the Bible and sweeping it across the congregation and shouting Hallelujah, Praise the Lord with verve and wild passion, 

'I can do that', said LaFarge. 'I want to do that', and so it was that he became Pastor Fielding's apprentice, learning the trade.  He like his mentor had a natural charismatic talent - he could speak as low as the rumble of a bass organ, and shout to the hilltops.  He could read the word of Christ as if he had written it himself.  Fielding knew that the presence of such a young prophet would bring the faithful in and would fill his coffers.  

The people of Bradford like any black population with feet in the North but hearts and minds still in the cotton fields were just dying for salvation, for divine succor - just one glimpse of Our Lord and Master would be enough; and when a child could bring them to Him, it had a special, profound meaning.  The innocence of a child meant more to Jesus and to them than even the holiest of preachers. 

So LaFarge and the Reverend were a tag team on Sundays, each rousing the congregants in their own way each with their hands on some particular spiritual need and worldly misery.  They were good, and the money kept rolling in. After some time Fielding let LaFarge have his own Sunday service, and the boy was at his best.  He really looked inspired, as if the hand of the Lord had touched him on the shoulder, but based on the money he made for the church, he was one of the best 'artists' of Bradford and the whole inner city. 

'Let's go on the road', the pastor suggested.  Not to revival tents and hope and glory fairgrounds, but right here in the ghetto, a sprawling mess with hundreds of abandoned buildings waiting for a tenant. 'Why we could be the Lords of 22nd Street and Masters of Akins Avenue', Fielding said, waving his arm to encompass all that he saw. 

First there were two churches, then three, all filled to the gills - they preached together and individually, and their reputation spread.  Not only were they messengers of the Lord, and not only His streetcorner prophets, but endowed with the Holy Spirit.  A mere sighting of them was enough, a glimpse of a godly figure, close to the divine.  And the money kept pouring in.  They organized celebrations for the entire Bradford community, commandeered blocks and parking lots, covered them with tents, and had a go like Elmer Gantry, and Billy Graham. 

'These people may be poor', Fielding said, 'but generous? Generous to a fault', and with that his trips to New Orleans doubled, Armani suits filled his armoire, and diamond stick pins like the one LaFarge's grandfather wore, were on his Italian silk ties every Sunday. 

As for Little Pastor Williams - that was what his adoring parishioners called him - he rose to the very top of his game, and went from store front to established church to megachurch to televangelism.  His was the top-rated religious show on BET.  He became as wealthy as Jerry Falwell or Oral Roberts ever were. He published books on Righteous Living, The Path of the Lord, And Loving Jesus, and his online videos got thousands of daily viewers.  By the time he was twenty-five, he retired to his home in Palm Beach, lived like a king, had a harem of beautiful Jamaican women, a cigarette boat, and the luxuries of a pasha. 

'Just think of it', he said.  'All thanks to Jesus Christ'.  He smiled, of course the Lord had a little help from him, but better to be humble at times like these. 

When Good People Go Bad - Or, If Given Enough Time, All Liberals Become Conservatives

Harry Isaacson had grown up in a Reformed Jewish family in Far Rockaway, New York.  He went to yeshiva and knew only Jews outside his home town until he went to college with a generous scholarship to a second-tier university, not the Harvard or Yale his parents had hoped for, but a stepping stone to their law schools. 

Jews were still thought of as money-grubbing, shtetl refugees, and their numbers were kept down at premier institutions - take one or two Jews for appearances sake, but keep the rest in Brooklyn where they belonged was the policy. 

He was the first generation of Isaacsons to go to college.  His grandfather had a clothing store on Orchard Street and his father a cutter in the garment district who made enough money to buy a house on Long Island. 

 

The grandfather had been an early supporter of Samuel Gompers,  labor hero, founder of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and a friend of the Jews on the Lower East Side. 'A mensch', said Herman Isaacson, 'A real mensch' who sat seder with him once on Delancey Street before returning to Chicago. 'A man to be reckoned with', and with that he tutored his sons in the ways of reform and progressivism. 

 

Harry's father took easily to the struggle of the working class, joined the Communist Party in the Thirties, officially resigned in 1955 because of McCarthy and his claques but never lost his passion for civil rights, and took his son to Rallies for Justice organized by the Queens Branch of the Socialist Workers Party - candlelight vigils for Jews sacrificed at capitalist altars, and daylight marches for workers rights. 

Harry joined the Socialist Student Union at college and roomed with other Jewish students who shared his passion for systemic reform, his resentment of anti-Semitic admissions policies, and the plight of the black man. 

He was a natural leader and led Freedom Rides to Selma and Montgomery.  He was a charismatic speaker and drew crowds of both classmates and town residents who gathered on the Green to hear him speak.  He spoke with intelligence, wit, charm, and energy, and before long he was recruited by a major activist group in Washington.  There, the recruiters assured him, he would reach his full potential and serve the American people. 

For years after a degree in Deconstructive Semiotics at Duke, he travelled the country speaking in support of racial equality, gay rights, peace, and the final cracking of the glass ceiling.  When environmentalism showed up on the radar, he was the leader of the first squadron to take on Global Warming.

He was a progressives' progressive.  There wasn't a liberal cause under the sun that he didn't support.  Although with an instinctive disgust for gay sex, he wholeheartedly embraced alternative sexuality, and even had a few gay friends.  However of all the progressive causes in his hand-basket, this was one which made him gag.

His Castro friends' enthusiastic stories about fisting, water sports, and bathhouse holes in the wall gave him ulcers, and when he went with them on the Bay-to-Breakers march in San Francisco, a festival of gay floats, S&M dog collars, faux buggering, and Mardi Gras theatrical excess, he left the gay thing aside and turned exclusively to the environment - a safe haven for a liberal with socially conservative roots. 

 

However after months of the squawking and howling about the environmental Armageddon around the corner, Harry began to sour on the movement.  As important as the central issue might be, the self-serving, blatantly distorted memes about predatory Man destroying the environment were hogwash.

There was hysteria in the air, the cogs had come off the gears, the flywheels were spinning without traction, without direction. Environmentalism was no longer a sensible confrontation, but a nut-worthy side show of activist fashion. 

Yet the fires of progressivism still burnt hot within him, and he was not at all ready to abandon ship.  Soon the frat boy, beach weekend revelry would end and the issue would return to the halls of Congress, the courts, and state legislatures to be legislated and adjudicated. 

But then came the transgender thing.  If gay hijinks were not enough to make him retch, the gender spectrum encouraged all kinds of 'non-binary' coupling.  If anything in the progressive circus was side show worthy, it was this.  The parade of 'thangs', as one Mississippi naysayer called the cross-dressing, flouncing, bull dagger work boots-and-flannel, bearded lady, Cage Aux Folles faux femmes extravaganza, was as far from Harry' Jewish, Samuel Gompers roots as could be.

Yet there was still the need for social reform...Or was there? What was wrong, exactly with missionary-style, old faithful, mom and dad sex? Or burning leaves in the Fall, or sitting shiva praying the Torah and begging forgiveness and offering atonement. 

At heart his Jewishness was what brought him back from the road to the home office.  In the context of Yahweh's eternity what were a few degrees of temperature; and if the Books of Deuteronomy and Kings were worth anything, they were God's ordering of human legacy - Josiah married Esther, Aaron married Leah, Jacob married Shoshana and they all had hundreds of children to populate the world with Jewishness, godliness....Here he stopped before tangling himself in the very same weeds as his secular colleagues.  Don't go overboard, mate, his warned himself.  Parallels and obverse references are good, but know when to stop. 

At what would be his last progressive hurrah, the Convention of the Committed was a jamboree of progressive activists, each of which had a voice and a poster session, and every possible dimension of political causes was on display. None provided convincing evidence (Biblical references debunking Kings and the obsessive proto-reproductivity of the Jews, paleo-meteorological records of climate periodicity, etc.) to support their causes but were only pimped out, tarted up versions of reality. 

It was Bay-to-Breakers, the Folsom Street Fair, and Halloween in the Castro all rolled up into one; and at that moment, Harry went back to Queens. 

'I'm sorry, Papa', he said at temple during the High Holy Days. 

'For what?', his father answered and went on to whisper a joke to his son:

Hymie, Shmuel, Jake, and Abe were sitting around the coffee table for their weekly get together. 'Oy', said Hymie.

'Oy, vey', said Shmuel. 

'Oy, gavalt', said Jake. 

'What is this?', said Abe. 'I thought we weren't going to talk about the children'. 

And so it was that Harry returned to his roots.  Not only a return to the Bible, shiva, the High Holy Days, and seder; but political conservatism.  At least conservatives for all their own Sturm und Drang made sense - a nice fusion of Biblical wisdom, God's intention for individual salvation, and the course of history in all its predictability, God's determinism. Not quite a Let It Be, and not Ecclesiastes either, but sanity.  Nothing to preach - the Jews have never been evangelists - just common wisdom.  Toppling statues is no different than telling Moses on Mt. Sinai to mind his own business. 

So no one heard from Henry Isaacson again,  He kept his own counsel. 

When LGBTQ+ Came To Barton's Holler - What On Earth Were The President's Men Thinking?

Brenda Farley grew up in Barton's Holler, West Virginia - a coal mining town deep in the Appalachian mountains, far from just about everything except the general store run by a second cousin and a notions shop which somehow got by on thimbles, thread, and bolts of calico.  A bus to Wheeling came once a week, let children ride free, allowed chickens and ducks, and ground its way the ten miles to the highway before turning towards the city. 

 

It was when 'that gender thing' came to the holler, the politico from Washington looking for votes, an envoy from the President who wanted the country vote but made the mistake of sending - as Uncle Henry called her - a 'cross-bred neither-this-nor-that'.  What was the President thinking?

But this 'thang' as Uncle Henry named her, caught Brenda's fancy.  Nothing like it had ever come to Barton's Holler, not the circus, not even Clyde's Oddities, an itinerant freak show of dolled up midgets, hairy women, and snake charmers which made the rounds of the mountain towns but had missed hers year after year.  Now The Thang made up for all that, coming into town, flouncing her designer bag, and tip-toeing over the ruts and mud swales in Manolo Blahnik heels on her way up to the porch of the general store.

 

'I am here', she said in a deep-throated, gravely voice, 'to bring you good news'.  That stimulated some interest in the church-going crowd who had been preached to about the good news of Jesus Christ every Sunday, but a skeptical shrug from everyone else who had come to the town meeting just to see Uncle Henry's Thang. 

'President Biden wants you to know that he's on your side, the side of good, honest working men and women like yourselves'  Here the Thang spread her arms in an encircling virtual embrace, smiled, and went on but no one paid attention to what she said only how she said it - a sibilant, lispy delivery with no cadence, no ups and downs, nothing but California ups at the end of sentences that dragged on too long and led nowhere. 

Lester, the owner of the general store who had given the Thang his front porch as a podium, wore a suit for the first time since his cousin's wedding in Clarksburg - a visitor from Washington didn't come every day - and looked all tight and uncomfortable; but he stood there like a sentinel, raising his eyebrows over this or that idea about 'inclusivity' and 'diversity' which she never explained; but her drift was that country folk were to be finally included in the great national quilt of race, gender, and ethnicity.   

He wondered exactly what that was, but was polite enough to demur until Hiram Jenkins had to disrupt things by asking a rude and impertinent question - one of course that was on everyone's mind but were too polite to mention Not only what did inclusivity mean, but who the hell was she? Or he? Or both?

The hoots and catcalls from the rear where the drinking had started well before the Thang's first words, were raw and as Pastor Hitchens said after the Thang had left the holler, 'intemperate and undisciplined'.  The only things missing were the rotten eggs and onions that had been thrown at the last politician who had come to town; but the squawking and booing from the back was enough to throw the Thang off her stride and made her mix her metaphors. 

It was all black this, all gay that and sometimes the both together until she got completely twisted up and included the holler folk as part of the gay thing which sent the boys by the fuel pump over the top with more howling; and one of them sent a shotgun blast up through the leaves of the live oak sending a shower of bark and one squirrel flying. 

Brenda, however, was fascinated by the Thang.  She was sick and tired of overalls and work boots, hand-me-down dresses and mules.  She wanted what the Thang was wearing, pearls and haute couture; and think of it - there was a man under all that finery, and what might he be like?  Did he come out at night? Did he have a girlfriend?

 

Of course Brenda had no idea of what these transgender people were all about.  She had them pegged as a kind of sexual tag team, and that was what fascinated her. Be a man when you felt like it, a woman when you didn't.  Of course she hadn't parsed all the gender genitalia ins and outs, but it still sounded like a great idea; but only if she got out of Barton's Holler and went someplace where the choice on either side of the sexual aisle was a lot more appealing.  After all, if you were going to gussy up by day and wear serge suits by night or the other way around, you needed fertile ground for carousing. 

Which is where the Thang came in, and before her hurried exit from the holler, Brenda managed to have a few words with her and ask if there mightn't be a place for her in Washington part of the whole inclusivity package the Thang had talked about in her speech.

Brenda had enough natural savvy to bat her eyelashes a bit and give that seductive smile she had practiced in the mirror, and sure enough, an internship appointment was in the offing.  A win-win situation, actually.  The Thang could report good tidings and votes from the holler, and Brenda could get the bus out of town before November. 

The holler gave her a royal sendoff, wished her well, packed her a lunch for the journey, and asked her to be sure to send a postcard from the White House.  Neither they nor she had any idea of what to expect, especially given the visit of the Thang, but few people left Barton's Holler, so bloody good for her. 

Debunking The Myth Of The Nobility Of The Poor - Nothing Noble There At All

 Harlan Peters had grown up poor in a tarpaper shack across the long swamp that began along the coast and into the receding ridges of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina.  Like most children – one of eight – he did not know he was poor.  Cohorts are like that – enveloping communities that define from inside out.  Everyone was poor in Barton Hollow, all barefoot, coal burning, and cold. 

Poverty was on the mind of Jimmy Carter when he talked about Jesus and the nobility of the poor, and how it was harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  The poor, Carter said, were anointed, chosen by Christ because of their simplicity, their lack of worldly temptations, and their profound faith in the Lord.  Carter spent his life in the service of the poor, building houses, speaking compassionately and hopefully about a new age of equality, and working the land shoulder to shoulder with tenant farmers.

 

Lyndon Johnson saw poverty as an electoral promise – the more the poor made it out of the backwoods, the more votes would be cast in his favor. He was never a rearview president, looking back on the life that had preceded him, but a doer, and he shook down, intimidated, horse traded and wrangled with Congressional leaders to give him what he wanted – millions in cash for Texas. 

Bill Clinton was a good ol’ boy at heart and hated to leave the General Store, fishing for bass on Lake Ochoa, and hunting squirrels and coons in the foothills of the Ozarks.  He loved his people, never lost an opportunity to share tales on the porch of the general store, before and after church, and coming and going from the revival tent. 

And so it was that Joe Biden was next in line to take up the cudgel for the poor.  He, of all his predecessors would finally be the one to end poverty, to take the wealth of the rich and share it with the poor.  It was an obligation, a duty, not simply a political exigency. While unlike his Presidential forbears he had no direct experience with the poor, years of progressive politics had given him the right direction – exploitation, capitalist greed, and punitive, dismissive attitudes of the wealthy towards the poor were the causes of poverty and must be eliminated.

All of them missed the point, for of course there was never any inherent nobility of the poor, nor any particular divine light.  They were at best perfect examples of Hobbes’ aphorism about life in general – nasty, brutish, and short – consigned by poor breeding, circumstance, and inertia to the lowest rung, wondering what to do next.  In The Land of Opportunity, they miss the bus. 

Except for the likes of Harlan Peters – the quintessentially entrepreneurial man, the best of the poor, the meth-cooking, dirt track riding, butcher of Barton Holler.  He addicted the poor; expanded meth, Fentanyl and heroin usage throughout the South, especially and ironically in the backyards of Johnson, Carter, and Clinton.  In a short time he was a favorite of the Sinaloa and Obregon cartels, a big time offshore investor, and a canny fugitive from the law.  He was a Superman, a Machiavellian, a coldly amoral player that saw profits around every corner.  The poor, lacking divine inspiration, nobility, breeding, or common sense were easy marks.

 

His network of dealers, distributors, and managers started in the backcountry, cracker territory, white trash territory where the populace which was not yet hooked worked for him.  They were the ones caught and sent to a federal pen, not him.  His network was a complex mathematical maze. He was brilliant, made a fortune, and had houses in Palm Beach, Gstaad, and Rimini; and no roads led to him.  

Harlan of course knew the nature of American opportunistic capitalism as well as any Wall Street trader. While they were creating credit swaps and bundling below-prime mortgages into worthless packages, he was making the same deals in the Ozarks and peanut country Georgia.  While investment bankers were fleecing the rich, Harlan was fleecing the poor.  Only their instruments were different.

Government programs to help the poor are as misplaced as those that try to put a lid on Wall Street greed.  The poor take the welfare, the aid to dependent children, the food stamps, and the family subsidies and buy Harlan’s products.  They could work three jobs, triple their pittance, and still live in trailers and buy Blue Magic.  Live and let live, said Harlan, for there’s money to be made, lots of it.

‘You climb your mountains of wealth on the backs of the poor’, shouted one Congressman who wanted a complete reconfiguration of the tax structure so that monies collected from the rich would be siphoned directly to the poor, a scheme that once and for all would end poverty and tame the insensate greed of the wealthy at the same time.

Harlan liked this idea enormously.  Such siphoned funds would eventually go into his pocket as timorous, sensitive politicians refrained from putting checks and controls on the flow of public monies.  The poor have the right to spend as they see fit, for they are no less apt, able, and intelligent than those who summer on the Vineyard, or so they say.  Absolutely false, knew Harlan.  These hillbillies would rather spend their government check on his meth, his crack, and his Fentanyl than on anything else.

America might be a divided country, but that was a good thing for the likes of Harlan.  A sucker was born every minute up and down the phylogenetic scale.  It was just that those who had little to lose – his clients – were the bigger suckers; and why Harlan never once envied those credit swap swindlers on Wall Street.  The big money was to be made here in rube land, the backwoods.

‘Nobility of the poor?’ Harlan laughed.  America is based on many fictions and this was one of the tallest tales.  The poor had always served the rich and always would.  Louis XIV, the great Sun King didn’t build the palace of Versailles through political contributions of his courtiers. Persepolis, Alexandria, the great palaces of Chinese emperors, Guptas, and Mauryas were all built on the backs of the peasantry.  If there is one truth in human history it is that wealth will be made, enabled by the poor.

There are no tears to be shed, no regrets or reformist zeal necessary.  Bernie Madoff and Harlan Peters ‘R’ Us.