Scandal In The Vatican - The Pope, The Cardinal, And The Unexpected Pregnancy Of Maria Luisa Valenti

It would have been a simple matter of getting rid of it if it hadn't happened to the Cardinal, a senior member of the College of Cardinals who, although high ranked, was not an old man.  No, the former Antony Pietrangelo was young enough to still have his head turned, and so it was that his affair with Maria Louisa Valenti began, first in the confessional where the young woman told unbelievable stories of sexual abandon, to the vestry where the Cardinal and the young woman met to discuss her possible vocation, and finally to the inner chambers of the Vatican, a place for comfortable worship not far from the Sacristy. 

 

This affair might seem out of place and quite unseemly especially when it concerned such a high-ranking member of a church which had always been a defender of virtue; but the Cardinal was a man after all, and a young, virile one at that.  

The Cardinal was a Renaissance man, well-read and -versed but lusty and as at home in the sanctuaries of the Vatican as in the bars of his native Vico Equense.  Before the priesthood and well after, the Cardinal had had affairs which in no way compromised his love of Christ and the Church.  Jesus himself was man, and at some point in his short thirty-three years he certainly had a woman.  If one was to take the duality of Christ seriously and admit his human side, then carnality was most definitely a part of it. 

 

The Cardinal's rise was unheard of, so quickly did he ascend the hierarchy - bishop at 29, archbishop at 35, and cardinal at 42.  He was a man for all seasons, loved by the people, respected by his elders, and favored by the Pope.  

The higher he rose, the harder it became to keep his affairs quiet  If nothing else the Vatican is a very bitchy place, and any assignations or quiet cinq-a-septs were outed post haste.  It wasn't even a question of turning a blind eye - the Cardinal and his lovers were recondite to a fault, careful, and vigilant - and no one was the wiser; and yet, no one suspected a thing. 

One would have thought that such MI-5 secrecy would have been more trouble than it was worth - after all there are only so many nooks and crannies in the Vatican where pleasures can be taken, and the smaller the crypt, the less the abandon - but the Cardinal was so self-assured about himself, his fidelity to Christ and his holy mission, that he was unconcerned. 

And then it happened, perhaps in the shrine of the Holy Virgin, a small, tasteful place of meditation below the Sistine chapel and out of the way of novitiates and interns. Maria Luisa had howled to high heaven and he could no longer resist her passion, and so it was that she became pregnant. 

When he was told, his immediate reaction - quite surprisingly given his preeminence in the Church - was to return the infant soul to Christ; but on second thought, parsing the Biblical and Catholic injunctions against such an act, he concluded that he could be no part of such a thing. 

As any man would do, the Cardinal asked Maria Luisa, 'Are you sure?' to which the young woman replied, 'Yes, Your Eminence', an honorific she could never leave at the door no matter how passionate the love that went on inside. 

Ironically the Council of Cardinals was to meet in session to discuss this very issue.  While hardliners had not budged in their condemnation of abortion, the more liberal-leaning prelates were willing to consider some apertura.  Wasn't the rape of a virgin the very violation of womanhood that Mary herself represented?  Wasn't being violated and impregnated by some feral ape worth special dispensation? 

The conservatives reacted with predictable pique.  What could be more innocent than the child?  It did not consider how or by whom it was born.  It was simply a child of God and should be allowed to live. 

The debate was interminable, at times raucous and at times downright nasty; but there was absolutely no give on either side.  Meanwhile our Cardinal simply sat and listened, immured as he was within the walls of his own dilemma. 

The young woman wanted nothing to do with abortion.  The child of a cardinal was tantamount to a child of Christ, so close was he to Peter and the Savior.  She might have done wrong in terms of Catholic doctrine, but she felt that God himself had ordained this pregnancy, and she was not about to do anything to interrupt it. 

 

Maria Luisa being unmarried and beginning to show - the Cardinal had dithered for weeks and neither was willing to admit his role in the affair or to act decisively to end the pregnancy - the villagers of Vico Equense naturally began to wonder who was her young man?  It must be someone in Rome, perhaps a student at one of the seminaries in Vatican City, or perhaps even a wealthy patron; but no one ever dared to suggest or even consider the possibility of such a sacrilegious liaison as one with a cardinal. 

The Cardinal's preoccupation began to worry the Pope. He had been one of his proteges, and he had loved and supported him since he was a young archbishop, and now there was clearly something wrong.  

They sat together, had coffee, talked over old times and happy days at the seminary, but never were able to hit the mark.  The Pope, like everyone in Vico Equense or anywhere else for that matter, could not possibly imagine such an improper liaison and so assumed that the Cardinal's unease had something to do with his faith.  What else was there, after all, in the cloistered, abstemious environment of the Vatican? 

The thing of it was - another unconscionable consideration - the Pope was now nearing ninety, in bad health, and certainly not long for this world. Substantial rumors had it that our Cardinal was in line for the job.  He was young, conservative in matters of faith, liberal in matters of morals and the changing social environment, prayerful and obedient, and as pious and devoted to Jesus as anyone in the College. 

More and more this idea of returning the child's soul to Jesus gained traction in the increasingly troubled mind of the Cardinal. There was no doubt that the unborn but viable, soulful being would find comfort and everlasting peace in God's kingdom.  Life on earth, as the Cardinal well knew, was no bed of roses, and the chances of this poor, innocent soul being corrupted by the slime and moral filth of the streets were good indeed. The debate in the conference room had not touched on this aspect of human dignity and divine resurrection, and yet there it was, as plain as day, the answer to his prayers. 

'No, Your Eminence', replied Maria Luisa to his entreaties. 'I will not do it', and no matter how earnest his pleas, no matter how ardent his appeals, and no matter how cogent his doctrinal logic, the woman was unmoved and unbowed; and she was now approaching the danger zone.  It was now or never. If not, the truth would out.  She could not be trusted, and his career at the Vatican would be abruptly and irreconcilably ended. 

Horrible, unthinkable, horrific thoughts kept niggling into his head.  What about....No, no, not that! The Cardinal shook his head, yet he could not shake the image of Lucca Ponti, capo of the Neapolitan Camorra, nephew of Cardinal Imperati and good friend of his, important contributor to the Vatican treasury, good Catholic, but known only and feared for his uncompromising control of  Campana. 

 

Once again the Cardinal was given to the particular insight of men under moral and political pressure. Nothing I could ever do would be as bad as my predecessor, the Cardinal opined (here the Cardinal had jumped a step), Pope Benedict IX, member of a powerful Roman family that wielded significant influence in ecclesiastical and political circles, whose papacy was remembered only for allegations of scandal, immorality, and even simony.  Or Pope Alexander VI, whose papacy was one of the most controversial in Church history, marked by allegations of nepotism, corruption, and moral decadence.

No, any step the Cardinal might take in this Maria Luisa affair would be nothing compared to that of the many popes, cardinals, and prelates who had done far more serious things than simply....how should I put it, he thought...returning a soul to Jesus. 

The disappearance of the young women in Vico Equense was a local tragedy, and while all suspected foul play by the father of her unborn child, not one squeak that it could be the Cardinal was ever heard.  Lucca and the Camorra had done their job, and the affair was closed. 

At this writing, the old Pope is still in his chair but failing, and rumor has it that within a month or two white smoke will rise from the Vatican smokestack to announce a new Pope.  Whether he should be our Cardinal or not is only guesswork or presumption.  Only time and God will tell.  

The Brutal Truth About Women - Kamala Harris Explained

Everyone knows that Kamala Harris pushed Joe Biden under the bus - that much is obvious - but few saw the remarkable similarity to Goneril and Regan, King Lear's daughters, two of Shakespeare's most evil, heartless villainesses, who were accountable for the same heartless act.   

 

The two sisters did not quickly and painlessly depose their aging father, but took their time decommissioning him, first his guard, then his horses, then his castle until he was but a remnant of his former self, a bare forked animal raging on a stormy heath, mad as a hatter, wondering how Fate could have been so unkind.  It was the worst kind of cruelty, shoving an old, senile man aside, and letting him wander, cold, shoeless, and alone in the wild. 

While to the casual observer Joe Biden's dismissal may have seemed a bloodless palace coup - plotters calculating behind the scenes until in a decisive moment  they upended the poor old man's Lincoln chair and carried him to a windowless office - but there was more to it than that.  Kamala Harris prepared the  way from the moment the election was won, 

 

She knew from the beginning what was what.  One way or another - resignation, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution allowing for removal of a president deemed to be mentally incompetent, or deft political maneuvering to move him aside - she would be President. 

'The President is a perfect example of mens sana in corpore sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body; and just as Caesar Augustus ruled the Roman Empire for years, Joe Biden will be your President for now and for the next four years', Harris said, all the while plotting his removal.  She toadied up to him like never before, cajoled, comforted, and reassured him until he was as happy as could be that he had chosen her as his Vice President. 

 

He had hesitated during the selection process.  An uppity black woman with a Genghis Khan prosecutorial mentality might not take easily to second place, but she would look good on the ticket, and getting into office was what was on his mind - all the rest would be dealt with later. 

'Oh, Mr. President, what a fine deal you struck with the states on EVs, what a step forward in the environmental harmony you have worked so hard to achieve'; or, 'Keep on truckin', Mr. President.  You da man'.  Joe found it charming and cute when she talked to him this way, black talk, bringing him into the inner city culture he so longed for but never quite managed to embrace. 

She coddled him, nurtured him, and above all convinced him that he was in fine fettle, as sharp as a newly honed blade, superior in intelligence and insight than a room full of Franklin Pierces and Millard Fillmores and maybe even a Grant. 

 

Despite her devilishly Shakespearean intent, she opened the top button of her blouse in Oval Office meetings, mascaraed her eyes like Angel Reese, black and sexy, and left a trail of Arpege, the perfume of his youthful days, always a head-turner.  She even played to his imagined self of Southern grandee, master of Belle Reve, the Delta plantation of ten thousand acres of cotton and a thousand slaves - an image he only hinted at, but she, savvy black woman that she was, knew a closeted slave master when she saw one. 

It all worked like a dream.  The old man didn't know what hit him, and there he was on the curb, an old man as demented, cast off, and abandoned as King Lear. 

 

Now, it is wrong to condemn Kamala for what she did.  Shakespeare knew exactly what he was doing when he created characters like the Lear sisters, Lady Macbeth, Tamora, Queen of the Goths, Dionyza wife of the Governor of Thebes, or Volumnia, mother of Coriolanus, next in line for Emperor of Rome. Frills and fancy, sweet smiles and adoring eyes were never expressions of dainty, submissive femininity, but wiles - poisoned arrows in the quiver of ambitious women. 

Lady Macbeth stopped at nothing to assure that her spineless husband kill King Duncan and take the Scottish throne.  She intimidated him, questioned his manhood and aristocratic resolve, pushed and prodded him to murder.  She was a woman of absolute, indomitable will - a vixenish harridan whose ambition was insurmountable. 

Dionyza, left with the daughter of Pericles to watch over while he was attending to other business, sees that she is far more beautiful, charming, and intelligent than her own daughter; and without hesitation arranges for her murder.  Her daughter can have not competition for the best and brightest of Theban men.  

Volumnia, doting mother of Coriolanus sees, despite his battlefield prowess and heroism, a certain political tone deafness; and knows that his presumed ascendancy to the throne will never come about.  She arranges his death, curries favor with the Roman powers that be, and will become the eminence grise of empire. 

Tamora, so incensed with Titus Andronicus for slighting her and her family, engineers a brutal rape and dismemberment of Titus's daughter at the hands of her sons.

Shakespeare simply carried on the tradition of the ancient Greeks. Aeschylus' Clytemnestra is the role model for Shakespeare.  She never hesitates in her plot to murder her husband, King Agamemnon and with her lover take over the kingdom.  She like Tamora not only kills him but dismembers him so that there is no chance that he will haunt her from the Underworld.  She has not one scintilla of remorse for what she has done, and faces her own death with equanimity.

 

Shakespeare's heirs, Ibsen and Strindberg, have created women cut from the same cloth.  Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, Hilde Wangel, and Laura are all murder-minded, ambitious, destructive women. 

'Now what?', Kamala asked her aides once the deed had been done, the king deposed, and the way clear to the presidency.  Like all of Shakespeare's and Ibsen's women, there was no second act.  All had their comeuppance, and even if they had lived would probably have made a mess of things.  They were born to wreak havoc, not to assemble the pieces into any coherent whole. 

Shakespeare was of two minds when it came to women - he had to admire their pluck.  It wasn't easy for women in the Elizabethan era to assert themselves and those that did had to be admired.  Yet these soulless, cruel, and amoral women were a bit of a scourge; and the misogynistic diatribes spoken by Posthumus and Othello to name just two might easily have been the Bard's own sentiments. 

Be that as it may such shrewish, ambitious women pop up every generation and in every culture.  Whether a predictable outcome of oppressive patriarchy, or a canny gender-universal understanding of femaleness and its inherent power over men, these women are to be dealt with. 

So Kamala is no different from any of history's or fiction's strong women.  She is an amoral, willful predator, canny enough to rid the palace of an old man, determined enough to replace him, and certainly capable of any chicanery, wiles, and trickery to get into office. 

Unfortunately for her, she is a dunce - a woman of boundless ambition, but without the intellectual density to carry her to the next level.  Her foundering, blundering campaign belies the malicious intent of her coup.  We will all be better off without her, just as Goneril and Regan like justly mouldering in their graves. 

Bitchiness In The Big Tent - The Diverse Scramble For Attention As Madame Kamala Closes In On Victory

'We've done it', said Kamala's DEI aide. 'We've actually done it'.  At that he smiled and looked out over the room full of blacks, women, gays, transgenders, and Latinos, all gathered to hear their candidate for President speak.  This was the morning of the big game, and the coach was about to give the motivational pep talk of his life.  Beating Tech would not only be the culmination of a season-long fight against a cross-state rival, but the very definition of courage, dedication, and passion; and Coach Harris, beaming broadly at her team, her trusted legions who would go out and win for her, said, 'I love you'. 

Bill Clinton started this whole diversity thing when he said that his Cabinet 'would look like America', and in so doing ignored talent and welcomed members selected for the most inconsequential reasons. Recruiting women for their sex meant that their history of Kinder, Küche, Kirche, a life of pots and pans, diapers, ladies teas, and charitable causes had something to bear on the affairs of state; and that because women see the world through a different lens, a more compassionate, caring, and nurturing view, they will bring people together. 

Feminists were nonplussed.  It was a good thing that the President was making a bold effort to change the calculus of power; but his championing the very hackneyed, patriarchal, discredited notions of femaleness ignored feminists' contention that there is no difference between men and women.  Women can be riveters and garbage collectors or solve Fermat's Theorem.  Choosing women just because they are women was satisfying - it was about time that women got their due - but such a policy stated an inconvenient truth - women cry a lot, are less aggressive, and more sensitive and empathetic.

The same was true of his recruitment of black people. They are either no different from any other American, as capable as any; or their legacy of servitude - broken families, single fatherhood, Nat Turner rebelliousness, insolence and hatred of the white man - would stand them in good stead for righting the racial ship, restoring racial balance through a Huey Newton confrontation. 

Clinton did neither and opted not quite for Uncle Toms nor Stokely Carmichaels, but some bland place in between. 

Kamala would have none of that - no faux black people or women for the sake of women.  Just look at her, not just a woman but an ur-woman, Woman itself, a powerful, determined sexual being of historical importance.  She would not sniff around the edges of diversity which is what Clinton did, peer under the skirts of women, drink malt liquor with the bro's on Baltimore stoops, but like things as white as could be.  No, her Administration would be different, radically different. 

There were no transgenders in Bill's day, and God only knows what his attitude towards them would have been. Well of course there were transgenders then, but the poor souls were closeted and corseted away, suffering at the hands of the oppressor; and Kamala would finally and once and for all open the cellar door and let them out, free to roam in this great land of ours, full citizens, and revolutionaries who would change the sheets of beds for too long lain in by...

Here she stopped herself, for she was dizzy with the thought of an America without rednecks, crackers, frat boys, and bass boat, gun toting backwoods retards. From sea to shining sea there would be nothing but gay men, queer women, and cross-dressing, made-over New Age sexual alternatives making love like in no time in history. 

And then there was the black thang, her very own personal diversity. No Clinton wannabee could ever feel blackness like she felt.  She was a proud black woman and would complete the job.  The black man would be raised to the top of the human pyramid where he belonged, a being of the forest, in tune with nature and the environment, endowed with tribal wisdom, a man of native precocity.  Gone would be the ghettoes, for once she was President all black people would see the light.  She would be an apparition, a Virgin Mary at Lourdes and Fatima to which thousands would come to be healed, to be given the gift of....

 

Once again, dizzy with the thought of such reformation, such wonder, she stopped her pep talk.  'Back down to earth, Kamala', she said sternly to herself.  'Now is not the time for idle thoughts'; but of course the thoughts were not idle at all.  She would be a latter day Virgin Mary, an Abraham Lincoln in petticoats, a Joan of Arc, a Cleopatra. 

After twenty minutes of her inspiration, her meandering, fantastical images of a Never-Never Land of untold wealth and harmony, the crowd began to fidget.  Her speech was in fact too inclusive, too welcoming and charitable to all when they were very different - differently gendered, for sure, different skin color, et cetera, et cetera - but there were priorities.  

Progressives had been hammering on about the black man for decades, and it was about time that the wagons headed in another direction, whispered one hard-core, Bernal Heights femme to her seatmate, her lover and confidant.  We sexual alternatives will no longer be trotted out in public, in kindergartens, and on the stage without the teeth of racial civil rights.  A fey gay man who overheard them sniffed, and 

 

said, 'We will not be denied'. 

No longer satisfied with a simple palette, progressives had insisted on a Jackson Pollock tableau.  Just a woman would not suffice.  She had to be black and transgender, an inclusivity trifecta.  Gay men had less value because, despite their coming out of the closet, were still men after all; and Latinos of either sex hadn't enough radical cachet - Cesar Chavez was a bit old hat. 

The entire Harris campaign staff was a potpourri of this strange assembly of former fringe members; but meetings were not the inclusive, respectful, collaborative affairs the Vice President had hoped for. The internecine squabbles were something to behold.  

Of course there was dissension in the ranks.  Human nature being what it is, no one likes to play second fiddle. When you have not just gay people in the mix but demiflux, muxe, and neutrois people among other choices on the fluid gender spectrum, you are bound to have some bitchiness and me-first elbowing to the front of the line 

So behind closed doors and out of earshot of the Vice President, cabals began to form, alliances negotiated and made, and propositions formulated.  How should gay black men align? And straight Latinos who had barely made it into the big tent (too Catholic, too maladroit, and too foreign) really had no one of their ilk to sidle up to. The tough girls of Bull Hollow wanted no part of transgender girly-girls who were stealing their thunder; and the gentle black dancers were afraid of the grilled and gold-chained pimp-walking thugs of the ghetto. 

'This was not supposed to happen', remarked the Vice President. Inside the progressive big tent, peace and harmony were supposed to reign, personal ambitions put aside in the interests of the cause.  Environmentalists, peaceniks, black radicals, and all the rest were to leave their guns at the door, join in a We Are The World exclamation of solidarity, 

Wrong.  Progressives talked the talk about a new, fully integrated, harmonious world of vision and commitment, but the reality was far different.  

'That cunt!', shouted LaShonda Phipps at an uppity white transgender woman always at Kamala's hems looking for attention; and that became the meme for the Party, the campaign, and the country. 

Of course all of this will be dumpster trash if Trump wins the election, so there is hope at the end of the road. 

How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Dinner Party - Hitler, Trump, And Historical Ignorance

A perfectly pleasant dinner party was ruined after one of the guests remarked how Donald Trump’s demagoguery regarding the troubles of January 6th was no different than Hitler’s incendiary call to the Brown Shirts, Storm Troopers, Gestapo and SS to arm for violent action.  The Thousand Year Reich said Hitler, was only possible in the hands of those who would stop at nothing to achieve it.

Hitler was an orator like no other, and his stage management in the hands of Albert Speer and Goering was nothing short of genius.  Since the spectacles of the Roman Coliseum, there was nothing to match his torchlight parades, massive flags, and impressive backdrops.  Thousands of Germans filled Alexander Platz roaring their approval of the Fuhrer, wild with anticipation, chanting in one, loud voice, the glory of Germany’s patriotic destiny.

Hitler’s political machine was built to rule with absolute control, its cadres were the avant garde of the Nazi empire, and every corner of German life was filled with the ethos of Aryan superiority, Nazi supremacy, and German destiny.  There were no neighborhoods, communities, or households which dared to challenge the Reich, but as Hitler came to power and promised retribution for the humiliating punishments exacted at Versailles and the rise of a new, supreme, and glorious German nation, there were few dissenters.  The crowd at Hitler’s skillfully orchestrated nighttime events was a grand, unified, patriotic and militant one.

Of course there were pockets of dissenters, but they were quickly disbanded by the Gestapo.  No challenge to a cause so mighty, so universally important, and so insistently right could be tolerated; but in the main the German people saw in Hitler a hero who would rebuild Germany to its former glory, a great man standing on the rubble of the First War’s destruction and challenging all to recognize the Third Reich.

By the time of the first Anschluss into Austria and later incursions and into Poland and Czechoslovakia the German nation was united, strong, reconfigured as a militantly aggressive state.  Such a state was a decade in coming – from Hitler’s early rise to power in the 20s to his appointment as Chancellor in 1933 to his first military excursions beginning in 1938.  It was perhaps history’s purest example of the rise of a totalitarian state.

The circumstances of the Third Reich, not only the annexation of its neighbors but the persecution and eventual extermination of the Jews and the brutal war inflicted on Western Europe, are well-known history.  It was a unique, unconscionably brutal and murderous regime the likes of which Europe had never seen.  Territorial conquest was one thing, but the calculated, methodical, institutional genocide of the Jews was another altogether.  The Third Reich would not only conquer Europe but would purify it.  The Thousand Year Reich would be politically absolute and racially pure.

The attempts to compare Donald Trump with Adolph Hitler are ludicrous, uninformed, petty, and self-serving.  The assault on the Capitol, no matter how insidious and threatening, was no Anschluss, no well-planned first incursion as part of calculated, coordinated, well-managed attempt to overthrow the government and install a dictator in a new totalitarian regime.  It was vandalism, hoodlums on the loose, dressed in Halloween costumes out to show the country that even they – crazy, wild, untamed, political barbarians - mattered and meant something.  Even if they had the tacit support of Donald Trump, alleged but never proven, it would only have been an outrageous, unjustifiable support; and far from the active, involved, managerial support of a coup leader.

To even suggest that this wild, hairy, backwoods bunch of crackers, ne’er-do-wells, social misfits, and adolescent miscreants constituted anything like a coup – let alone an Anschluss orchestrated by a Hitler is absurd.

So why would this Northwest Washington matron, former Senior Vice President of an important K Street firm, nicely retired to book clubs, Sierra Club adventures, and a little painting even suggest such a thing?  Had she read no history? No accounts of the rise to power of Hitler and the Third Reich? No information about the planned, calculated barbarity of Hitler and his henchmen?

The answer is groupthink – the pervasive, insidious, infections spread of virulent anti-Trump hatred.  Trump from his very first foray into national politics had been branded by the Left as evil – not just a devious, dangerous politician who threatened the received wisdom of radical progressivism, but the Devil incarnate; a man of such an amoral, oppressive, hateful mentality that he could only exist beyond politics and in the Dark Realm.  Who but a man of evil could so hate women and black men? Attempt to turn back the clock to a day of pure whiteness, ignorant simplicity, and capitalist rule?

From two years before the election, to his four years in office to the two since, the drumbeat of anti-Trump rhetoric – calumny, scurrilous personal attacks which would never be tolerated had been anyone other than a white man – has grown even louder. After so much time Trump haters and their progressive claques have automatically assumed that one man of evil, Donald Trump, could be of the same villainous character as another, Adolph Hitler. 

The dinner party guest said what she did with a knowing shaking of her head, assuming that the rest of the soiree would applaud her insights.  It was only because her remarks came after coffee and because she was a longtime colleague of the host’s wife did the host keep quiet – too much propriety in his upbringing to let politics be the ruin of a nice evening.

But seethe he did, not only at the absurdity of the claim but of the nonchalant assumption that everyone around the table was of like mind – who could not hate Donald Trump, be a partisan to the Utopian visions of the progressive Left? Who could not hate capitalism? Deify the black man? Understand the existential threat of global warming?  It was a community cabal of one-thought neighbors, no dissenters, discussions could start and end with one cause or another and a pat on the back.

The dinner host had thought he had heard it all – the most idiotic assumptions about Trump-caused disease, death, and disaster and the absurdity of a godless, treacly, engineered progressive social reform – but when the name of Hitler was raised, he knew that the depths of ignorance had no bottom.  Hitler, the name bandied around like ‘racist’, a catch all for political dopes who don’t get it and never will was the j’accuse of the most ignorant. 

He had agreed to his wife’s invitation to the Hitler woman for old times sake, refilling the social calendar after COVID, and showing off the new Jose Andres recipe; but never again. “Well, she has a right to her own opinion”, said his wife in a tepid justification of her colleague; but not in this case, he replied.  She is no different from the hairy crazies on their way up the steps of the Capitol on January 6th.