How An African Tribal Chief Snookered The White Man Out Of Millions And Lived Happily In St. Tropez

Jacob M'bele was an impressive man.  Tall and elegantly dressed in his white, gold-embroidered, silk and linen kanzu, he rose from his desk and greeted the white man with great courtesy and warmth. The office was as elegant and sumptuous as the Elysees itself, magnificently ornate but tastefully so.  There was no exaggerated show of wealth and privilege, but appointments simply reflective of the man's station. 

'Welcome', M'bele  said, shaking the man's hand. 'Welcome', he said again, this time embracing him formally but warmly.  'My country greets you'. 

The white man, an emissary from the World Bank in-country to begin negotiations for a multi-million dollar loan to help rebuild the country's infrastructure after a long and costly civil war, was pleased.  First impressions were important, and this man of impeccable credentials who spoke the perfect French of the Sorbonne and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration quickly dismissed any and all rumors that circulated on Pennsylvania Avenue about him. 

 

Besides, it would be a pleasure in the coming months to deal with an educated, well-mannered African. He, like many white men had trouble accepting the fact that Africans - at least some of them - could actually be intelligent and even sophisticated. This is what development meant; and this was why he joined the Bank.  Let the Americans talk about 'participatory, village-based, consensual progress'.  He was quite happy, delighted in fact to be in the company of his kind of African, a man who was adept at finance and geopolitics, the very attributes of a Bank executive, and who could just as easily discuss Moliere. 

The path to M'bele's present position, Minister of Home Affairs, had been a long one, and thanks to his family, his tribe, its regional elders, and kinship with the President himself, he had been appointed and established in the government's top job - the jewel in the crown in what the President considered the new Africa. 

 

The job was not as officially important as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but the Home Office was both the center of political authority and repository of international foreign assistance. The country, although one of the poorest in Africa was rich in natural resources - it had oil, gas, industrial diamonds, and the  rare earth elements needed in cell phone and computer operating systems  and so Western nations were clambering for access.  

M'bele was aware of his President's support, the vast resources for which he was responsible, and the dark forces of the PDF (Patriotic Defense Forces), the secret police as powerful as Stasi, the KGB, and Sevak combined.  Governing was a matter of keeping the country on an even keel, and this trifecta assured it. 

 

Despite the admiration and immediate support of the World Bank representative, the system was carefully set up so that most of the Bank's investment - and that from the United States, the UK, and the Scandinavians as well - could be channeled 'properly', i.e. to private accounts in Switzerland, the Bahamas, and Dubai. 

African leaders since independence, had become absolute masters at the development game - a game of generous welcome, superficial ethical probity, an appearance of sound financial sense, an avowed commitment to social and economic reform, and a fidelity to the people governed. Crudely but aptly put, it was a shell game.  Neither M'bele, the President, or any in his cabinet or official staff thought otherwise.  The white man was to be had, snookered, and filched. 

'Let me introduce you to my staff', the Minister said to the Bank emissary, and one by one the equally well-dressed men and women came forward to bow slightly and shake his hand. 'They are here to serve you'.  The red telephone on the Minister's desk rang.  'Yes, Mr. President.  Yes sir, he's here.  Absolutely, sir, post haste'. 

'The President would like to see you', the Minister said.  'And as soon as his staff unblocks his very busy schedule, he will be delighted to receive you'. 

This was a feather in the white man's cap - a meeting with the President of any country in which he worked had never happened before nor was even considered possible. The Bank man would be feted in Washington. 

The bait had been laid, the trap set, and success assured.  The Minister knew his job well - never had he known a white man who understood how the development game was played.  They were all innocents, babes in the woods, credulous, and desperately hopeful to find some kernel of white value in the black man, and as such with their noses wide open, they were marks, johns, and tricks easily had. 

Everyone in the world knows that infrastructure projects are early Christmas presents.  Everyone from municipal authorities to contractors, labor unions, and the guy on the forklift gets their cut and covers it with 'cost overruns', necessary 'adjustments', and refinancing. Whether in Africa, Asia, or America, projects to build roads, bridges, ports, and runways have always been cash cows. 

Governments should know better than to give carte blanche to these mega-projects, but so committed to progress and the welfare of their constituents are they, they let it pass, turn a blind eye and continue round after round of re-negotiation, refinancing, and re-direction. 

At least in the civilized world something gets done - some version of the original bridge design is usually completed and some runways which will enable reasonably safe takeoffs and landings are built - but in Africa the goal is not progress, development, or completion, but 'diversion', that Bank term which puts a kindly name to the siphoning of millions to offshore accounts, homes on the Riviera, and secure investments in the Gulf. 

Yet these international development managers could simply not let Africa go untended. With the systemic racism eroding national polity in their countries, and with the black man still suffering in poverty and lack of opportunity there, they simply had to do something.  In a nod to the endemic corruption everywhere on the continent, they settled for gesture.

The Bank, to try to introduce at least a modicum of accountability to the process, included 'conditionalities' into all loans.  Additional monies and continuance of financing was conditional on positive changes in the electoral process, the judicial system, and financial accounting.  Of course savvy African leaders, like Jacob M'bele, knew their way around that, said yes to every codicil, and then did absolutely nothing. At the end of the loan period, World Bankers simply restructured the loan, gave the country more time to comply, and in the interim kept the funds flowing. 

All this was a bonanza for countries like M'bele's - or should I say for government dons like him.  Millions of dollars flowed into national treasuries and then were quickly and deftly transferred to offshore accounts.  The shell game could not be successful without some show of development initiative, so in the project zone there were always signs of activity - tractors pushing dirt from here to there, backhoes digging, and hundreds of laborers milling about - but nothing, absolutely was being done. 

'We have proudly completed Phase I', the letters from the Ministry of Finance to the World Bank would begin, followed by fictitious numbers pulled out of a hat and photoshopped pictures of asphalt being laid, girders going up, or foundations being dug. 

All of which is to say that the Bank emissary to M'bele should have known better; but development is an emotional business, and he like many in the trade simply bought the systemic racism, slavery, colonialism meme lock, stock, and barrel - swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.  They were guilt-carrying, do-good, racial remediation envoys and little more. Their parliaments, congresses, senates, and boards of directors looked no further. 

The World Bank's Annual 'World Development Report' always featured 'Lessons Learned'.  The next phases of implementation would be successful because the glitches, bumps in the road, and inconsistencies had been identified, dealt with, and eliminated. 

Whistlin' Dixie was all it was, hopeful dreaming that there ever could be such a thing as normal, Western development in Africa.  One dictator followed another, one more former Minister of Home Affairs moved to spacious homes in Biarritz or Rimini.  

The Africans were brilliant at these shell games and Ponzi schemes.  They read the West like an open book.  Foreign donors wanted to give money to impoverished, desperate African countries more than the countries themselves wanted to receive it.  America simply had to give money to Africa, the mother country of nearly 15 percent of its citizens.  Development aid was reparation money in another guise, so if it was diverted or misused, the intent would always been there. 

So it was not surprising that the Bank envoy successfully negotiated a loan in the high hundred millions. He would be responsible for pulling a whole country out of poverty.  He was confident of the integrity of the loan, the conditionalities, and the black-and-white dates of delivery. 

Nothing of the sort, of course.  The white man had been snookered once again, the Minister retired to his new home in St. Tropez and the President ruled for decades.  The World Bank white man was promoted and money kept flowing to Africa. 

Eaten By Lions - As If Life In The Sinkholes Of Africa Isn't Bad Enough

A development economist was travelling in Zimbabwe and had just spent two nights in a safari-themed hotel in the south - thatched-roof cabanas, views of the veldt, open-fire grilled ostrich and antelope, and drinks on the verandah. It was more than enough for him, anxious to get back to his Harare hotel, his Danish travelling companion who had other responsibilities in the capital and demurred when it came to a long trek to Great Zimbabwe. 

Late in the afternoon of the third day, after long, tedious meetings with village chiefs and government collectors, he told the driver that he wanted to return to Harare. Not a good idea.  Lions prowl at night, block the roads, gather in prides, waiting.  'The Ghost in the Darkness', the driver said, 'The Lioness of Ra, the unkillable.'  The villagers never venture out after dark for fear of her. 

The driver pointed to the mountains rimming the valley, The Mountains of the Moon, and said that her pride came down every night and took a young child back with them - to devour them in a human feast or to raise them as lion-children, feral and more ferocious than their adopted parents, one never knew, except that sightings of these wild children were common, especially on moonlit night like this one. 

'No, sir', he said, we cannot return to Harare today', so the economist spent one more malarial night in the theme park, wondering about the driver's tale. Despite years of colonial rule and many more of independence, Africa was still a totemic, tribal place where people lived in fear of the lightning god, the thunder god, and the unkillable Ghost of the Darkness. 

This, the economist thought might be the only saving grace of the place - a world filled with immanent, fearful, and intimidating gods gave some commonality, some universality to the miserable lives most Africans led.  A divine ethos, a cosmology which gave context to the political venality, the corruption, the indifference, the thievery, and the brutality of the regimes which ruled everywhere.  It would not be so bad to be taken by the Ghost of the Darkness and taken to her divine lair. 

The economist, a seasoned traveler to Africa, was still standing after three decades.  He had escaped malaria, AIDS, hepatitis, rabies, kidnapping, political vendettas, incarceration, armed robberies, and the horrific road accidents that bloodied every potholed, unmarked, dark, and rubble-strewn highway from Nouakchott to Cape Town, Dakar to Nairobi.  

 

Africa was a misruled, violent, primitive place.  Autocrats and bloody dictators ruled throughout, civil wars persisted, crime was endemic, currencies devalued until they were worth nothing, but of little interest to the Big Men who had pillaged and stolen emeralds, diamonds, oil, and rare earths, sold them for dollars and lived like emperors in the south of France, leaving behind the coteries of lieutenants who in the political vacuum, swept up the remains, bundled them in sacks and bushel baskets and sent them off to Russia and China.  

Africa was a perennial, daily fire sale.  Everything was up for grabs.  Everything had a price, and only the third and fourth wives of these sub-Saharan pashas survived but only until they looked the wrong way or did not service them as it should be.  Africa was a brutal, lawless, undisciplined place, a continent alone among all the others which prospered. 

Eaten by the pride of the Ghost of the Darkness, the Lioness of Ra, the economist thought would be a reprieve - the maw of this horrible beast would be far better than the slow death of poverty, disease, hunger, rape, and murder. 

The politicians of America had looked desperately for success stories in Africa, needed to appease the African American voting population who demanded recognition, restitution, and reparations for their long years in slavery and white subjugation.   Yet these politicians found nothing, were snookered time and time again by canny dictators who promised free and fair elections, banked the millions in good faith money offered by Washington, and rigged the voting to assure victory. 

The politicians looked to those countries with 'promising democracies', like Ghana which did indeed had a semblance of political order, but given the low bar set for them, were still poor and only marginally free from the miseries of the countries surrounding them. Ghana was no South Korea or  Malaysia, let alone China which in only a few decades after Mao had become a world economic and political power. Ghana had made scanty, irregular progress in the same time. 

African Americans and their progressive political supporters have touted Africa as the mother of all civilizations, the heart and soul of humanity, and the black man, as descendant of this innately superior culture needed to be raised to the pinnacle of society, the only place where he belonged.  Yet such limns were fantasy. The entire continent had barely progressed from its Paleolithic origins.  By what possible measure could it be used as the beacon of world civilization?  

If anything, start from zero, the cherished point of departure for all American immigrants. Once they stepped on American shores, whether in chains, on the Mayflower, or on steamships from Naples, the Old World ceased to exist.  America!! was all that existed.  Leave the old, primitive, tribal Africa; and the new, terrible, poverty-ridden, miserably-ruled Africa behind.  

But no, the politics of race and ethnicity, inclusion, and identity were all that seemed to matter.  One simply had to admire, embrace, and cherish the black man because he was black and African; and in so doing consigned him to a permanent tie to an unremarkable continent and chained him permanently to his slave past. 

The economist left for Harare at dawn the next morning and was home in time for a swim in the hotel pool, a civilized lunch on the hotel terrace, a siesta, and a few desultory hours at his desk.  This expatriate life was good, the real reason why he kept coming to Africa despite the absolute impossibility of 'making a difference'.  A safe, quiet cool redoubt amidst chaos had its appeal. 

Diversity At The White House Completed - A White Janitor To Swab The Toilets

The Biden Administration had been whole hog, all in on diversity; and had gone farther even than Bill Clinton who famously announced that his Cabinet would 'look like America'.  Biden did not stop at the Cabinet - the nation's showpiece - but went deep into the weeds and assured that every post had some color, ethnicity, and gender shading.  His Press Secretary, for example, was a trifecta - a black, gay woman who had the added cachet of Third World heritage. 

Of course there were some stumbles along the way.  There were no Colin Powells to be had in the black community- he was a one of a kind if you discount Barack Obama  Powell was a man of impeccable stature, field experience, and reputation, none like him - so the President regrettably had to pick a white man for Secretary of State, the top job which should have been the jewel in the crown of diversity, but as hard as he and his staff tried, they came up empty. 

The howls from the Squad were shrill.  These women of color and diverse ethnicity were outraged not only because he was a white man but a Jew of all things, Jew of genocidal Israel, downtown usurers, and sexually predatory Hollywood moguls.  Besides, there were palatable options like Amir el-Aksa, a black man from the Anacostia inner city, convert to Islam, radical preacher and Howard University graduate.  

The man had poise, presence, and import.  His struggle to survive single motherhood, an absent father, and the specious claims of a number of women, made him exactly the type of man needed to represent America.  Gone were the days of the white, supremacist, Ivy League morons who had dominated the State Department for so many generations.

Despite their clamor they were unsuccessful and the Department went to Biden's default choice.  This didn't stop the women, however, and they perched like harpies over the shoulder of the Chief of Diversity to monitor each and every White House candidate. 

The Chief of Diversity oversaw recruitment and hiring and assured the President that at each level of employment the White House would be diverse - blacks, American Indians, Latinos, Pacific Islanders, and every possible combination on the gender spectrum would be represented. He had hoped to do a diversity quickstep and double and triple up like the Press Secretary.  He was a busy man and this would save time and energy. 

So the recruitment went well, and diversity was prominent up and down the employment scale - except at the facility maintenance level which was all black, marginally educated, and from local inner city neighborhoods.  There was no diversity selection here - these were the cleaning ladies, garbage men, and janitors that picked up and cleaned up everyone's trash in the white neighborhoods of Ward 3.  They were cheap, easily replaceable, and available. 

It then occurred to the White House recruiters that if they did in fact diversify at this level, it would be a political coup.  A white janitor, an absolute rarity in both official Washington and outside the Beltway, would be just the thing.  It would show critics a thing or two - diversity did indeed include whites - and at the same time, by putting a white man in the boiler room would upset the applecart. 'See', the appointment would say, 'Diversity is for everyone'. 

Of course the janitorial staff, happy to have jobs that paid well and required little work, objected. 'We want no white bitch down here', they said. 'What the fuck you want to do that for?' And so it was that an ironic turf battle began.  As much as recruiters explained, discussed, and persuaded, the black cleaners wouldn't budge.  The broom closet, the mops and buckets, the dumpsters and trash bins would remain black and black forever.  

The bickering, bitching, and complaining went on for weeks; but a more pressing problem for the recruiters was where to find a white janitor, as scarce as hens' teeth no matter where you looked. 'What about West Virginia', said one staffer.  Everyone was white, poor, and barefoot in the hollers, but someone had to pick up the trash.  Four generations had worked in the coal mines, never made it past fourth grade, lived in tarpaper shacks and never saw much of anything except coal dust, cornpone, and scrapings, married within the family, and coughed their way into the grave. 

'This is the place', said a staffer, and so it was that Carney Phelps recently on disability and on the dole after years in the mines was hired.  For the last year he had been hauling trash and cleaning the toilets of the county.  His appointment would 1) round out the President's diversity agenda; 2) keep clean and clear the progressive policy of favoring the oppressed; and 3) give white people a dose of their own medicine. 

'Cracker cunt', said Pharoah Jones, head of the janitorial crew, 'he don't belong here'; but belong there he did.  Phelps had never spent any time with black people - poor as it was, Beacon's Hollow was as white as snow, so the boiler room was an adjustment.  The food was great, far better than the swill the county served at lunch break, and soon enough he got used chili dogs and half-smokes. 

After a few weeks, the black janitorial staff left Carney alone, let him be, kept him out of their hair; and Carney, surprised and happy at his good fortune, dumped the trash and swabbed the toilets with care and respect. The President might have sat there. 

'What about the upstairs maids?', another member of the diversity recruitment staff asked.  'All Salvadoran and Honduran women. Can't have that'; but the Chief of Diversity was tired and wanted no more cracker-search hunts for white maids in the hollers, and let the rice-and-beans contingent be. No one would notice. 

And so it was that diversity at the White House was completed, jobs top to bottom reviewed, vetted and replaced with more appropriate staff. 'Come have a look', Biden's Chief of Diversity said to him before he took the President on a tour of conference rooms, alcoves, boiler rooms, and bedchambers.  There was a black face everywhere, and one stark, bald white one in the basement. 

The Bitch Of The West - A Harpy Who Terrorized Congress

Despite all the monuments, museums, and flowering trees, no one ever said that the Nation's Capital was a nice place.  It is as downright smarmy, dirty, and nasty as the court of Caligula.  What else to expect from a den of ambitious, cornpone-and-bling politicians who are there only to make money?

Every single one of them, veterans of municipal and county battles, knows that the big money is in defense contracting, roads, bridges, and social welfare.  They have all been taking small pieces of small pies, and Washington offered the biggest chocolate cream pie ever. 

 

This universal ambition - to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible - was exactly what made Washington a clown show.  Ambition is not a pretty sight unless it is done in concert, and then it is worth the price of admission.  The well of the Congress, filled on most days with most of its four hundred plus members who want to get a vote in for the folks back home or to stop the next guy from taking their pork, has never been a a place for tea and crumpets.  These rubes all have sharp elbows and short memories.  The Congressman from _____ alone had left a trail of broken, severed and mutilated bodies to get from his home district to Washington. 

Women were not excepted.  The Congresswoman from ______had been known as The Bitch of the West, a terror known from the Red River to the Mississippi, the woman with the hatchet, a scorched earth, take-no-prisoners political savage who knew no bounds.  No one watching CNN would have ever guessed at this Amazonian barbarian, so carefully put together was she, her signature string of cultured pearls setting off a beautifully tailored Armani suit, her coiffure, and her demure, patient demeanor. 

Only the voters in her district who happened to tune in guffawed at the act because they knew about the Washington circus and always expected her to be on the highest trapeze.

'Isn't she something?', said one who had compared this soulless, bottomless woman to the great villainesses of the past.  She was Goneril, Regan, Dionyza, and Tamora all wrapped up into one.  'Marvelous', he said, shaking his head. 'Simply marvelous'. 

At least this district not known for much at all, a dry patch with more tumbleweeds than cattle, was a forgotten, politically insignificant place until she came along. 'Have to say that for her', the man went on. 'She put us on the map.'

Now, the Congresswoman, as venal and self-interested as any in the House, cared little for her district.  In fact she was a carpetbagger who happened on it because of a friend in high places, a high-rolling cattleman who had just engineered the most brilliant gerrymandering in US history, and created a safe seat perfect for her. 

She was given script, scenario, and money and with only few 'favors' to be given, she was off and running. The cattleman was quite happy with the arrangement, for all harridans do not have to be witches, and this woman was a temptress par excellence, a beautiful woman with the skills of a call girl - which of course she was given that she was selling herself for a seat in Congress. 

The catfights in the House between her and 'that' woman from Nebraska were legendary.  There was nothing that either one would stop at to blindside, sandbag, derail, and eviscerate the other.  Their male counterparts just stood aside and watched.  It was a smackdown, a bloody, eye-ripping, gut-spilling affair.  The women hated each other, despised each other. The votes were incidental to absolute, complete no-returning-from victory.

Kamala Harris, Vice-President at the time was kith and kin to both women.  No politician, male or female, had had more balls, chutzpah, absolute amoral hunger for power than Harris. She hatcheted, beheaded, and impaled many along her way to the White House.

If our Congresswoman ever had an equal, it was Madame Harris, and Kamala simply couldn't keep her hands off the woman. If the district she represented was only an insignificant stretch of political wasteland, its representative in the House definitely was not.  She had everyone's ear and poison arrows in her quiver. 

The 'Squad' as it had become known, was another rats' nest of political bitches - ambitious women 'of color' who fancied themselves as the ultra-liberal wing of the Democratic Party. For them there was no political issue which was not a question of race, gender, and ethnicity.  From weapons to agricultural subsidies everything for these women was about racism, homophobia, and ethnic slander.  They were on an unstoppable tear, and saw profit around every corner.  

 

The Congress was only a stepping stone to a much bigger political career.  In fact the way the President was pushing diversity and inclusivity, and how successful he had been at getting a black face or a gay body on every ad, soap opera, and Hollywood movie, all roads were open to them.  Contracts galore, money by the bushel. 

The men in the House were no patsies and certainly no shrinking violets, so they sharpened their stilettoes and jumped into the fray.  The aforementioned Congressman from ______who ' had left a trail of broken, severed and mutilated bodies to get from his home district to Washington' was the leader of his own pack of wolves, macho men out to show these uppity bitches who was boss.  The Speaker of the House had to rein in their worst instincts.  After all, some governance had to take place; but they were unapologetically armed and ready. 

The usually more temperate Senate - remember Alexander Hamilton's warning about the mob, the unwashed electorate and their uncouth representatives who needed a buffer - perhaps at one time was a judicious, reflective body; but it was no more. In fact it had become just as nasty, partisan, and venal as it’s juniors in the House.  Senators even jumped over what had always been a respected barrier, and got involved in the bickering and caterwauling in the other wing. 

 

They saw The Bitch of the West coming their way, and decided to do something about it; and in an unusual collusion, Senators from both sides of the aisle joined forces to do her in.  True to form, no holds were barred, and a disinformation, misinformation, and downright scurrilous campaign to unseat her was begun.  There were plenty of more tolerable up-and-comers from her district in both parties to take her place, so no problem there.  Getting rid of this cunt, these men agreed, was first and foremost. 

Now, none of this should be surprising to anyone paying the least attention to the machinery of government.  Competition after all was the bedrock of America, so a little infighting was expected even or especially at the highest levels; but this, voters agreed when the whole story came out, was over the top.  Bi-partisan carnage never seen before in Washington, and that was saying something. 

However, as soon as the blood and guts had been scraped from the floors of House, Senate, and West Wing, they were at it again  New cabals, crews, and cells were formed, and it all started over.  First smarmy bitchiness, upped to innuendo and suggestion, capped by allegation and indictment. 

Americans are proud of their democracy and the democratic process, and when compared to the corrupt regimes of Africa which haven't seen a democratic vote since independence, they should be; but the Founding Fathers who had such hope for a serious, intellectually uncompromised, principled rule of law, are turning over in their grave.  None of them could have expected this bathos.

Perhaps it took an outsider - Alexis de Tocqueville - to see what Americans were really made of, and with a clear eye predicted the future, this future, the future of the Congresswoman from _____, the Congressman from ______, the Squad, and Kamala Harris. 

At Least Our Illegal Immigrants Are Not Muslims

The United States is awash with illegal immigrants - tens of thousands of Joses, Marias, and Juans who have come to El Norte for a banquet of riches. 

Jose Miranda had lived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras for all of this twenty-eight years, and had made a good living in the drug trade.  Honduras had always been a safe transit point for cocaine from Colombia, fentanyl from China, and heroin from Vietnam.  

Relatively safe, of course, since the illegal trade was so lucrative that gangs would contest territory; but nothing like the Obregon and Sinaloa cartels of Tijuana.  No, here in The Goose as the gringos called the Honduran capital, life was far simpler and secure.  Product in, product out, with millions changing hands in a day and everyone to bed happy. If you watched your P's and Q's you could lead a good life.

In fact Jose had a hacienda in the campo, a wife, three children, and a mistress in Morazán.  He was a cattle rancher on the side and shipped his beef regularly to Kansas City and Omaha.  

Yet Jose saw all this as small potatoes and nothing compared to the lucrative market of El Norte.  Honduran cartels in Los Angeles and Tucson alone were responsible for a billion-and-a-half dollars a year in fentanyl alone and their jefes lived like kings.  

Once he became a citizen or at least a Green Card-holder, he could go back and forth across the border, see Estella in Morazán, check on his cattle in the llano, and have a swim in his Brentwood pool in the evening. 

Now that the Biden Administration had opened the doors to all comers, getting in to El Norte was no longer the difficult ride it used to be. For him, a wealthy Honduran, there would be no long dusty bus trips through the Sonoran desert, no coyotes to pay, no tacos and beans, cactus, scorpions, and diamondbacks.  A few thousand here, a few thousand there to the right people in the right places on both sides of the border, and he was as good as in the honeymoon suite of the Beverly Hilton. 

He would send for his wife and children once he was established in LA.  He wanted to find a nice place in Bel Air and one on the beach for them. He would throw parties that Tegucigalpa had never seen - grand parties with real whisky, American girls, and French champagne.  

And indeed, Jose's dream came true.  Biden was as good as his word, and the crossing the border was as easy as pie.  He was welcomed by the Madrigal brothers, their cousins, wives, and partners and thanks to them, prime housing was a cinch, and business guaranteed.  He had armed guards, his own armory of Kalashnikovs and Uzis, a fleet of servants, two Cadillac Escalade ESVs, and raft of 'attendants' at his beck and call. 

While he and his crewe did not have to worry about La Migra - Joe Biden's open door policy made them immediately supernumerary - there were of course the bulls of the DEA and Homeland Security, so all was not completely hunky-dory.  He had to take precautions, but nothing to worry about. 

Although Jose's trip north was an easy one, the muchachos he chose to join him in El Norte came by land, crossing into Mexico at Tehuantepec, up through the southern states, through the desert, and the crossing at El Paso.  They were among the thousands of Latinos who had come just to get a break from the tedium of life in Managua or San Salvador, a chance to join their extended families already in America, or like Jose, to begin making big money instead of the chump change they made by low-level drug transit operations. 

The whole thing was a bonanza for everyone south of the border - a sumptuous delight, an opportunity, a final chance to move up and on. 

Fatima and Ahmed el-Azar were Syrian immigrants to France who had made their way across Turkey, into Greece, to Marseilles, and finally to the northern suburbs of Paris.  They were devout Arabs, making the trek to flee the secularism of the Assad regime and the pogroms of his Tonton Macoute-trained secret service.  Fatima and her husband were good Muslims who only wanted to join the likeminded community which already existed in France.  

 

Here they could benefit from the wealth of the EU, the welfare state, and the policy of laicism - once you set foot in France you were French.  No one asked about your race, nationality, or religion.  It was a haven for conservative Muslims who grew in number each year, in a happy de facto sharia community. 

When they arrived they were happy to join their brothers and sisters in the northern suburb of Seine-St. Denis and even happier to live in a veiled, prayerful world far from Christian Paris.  There halal was around the corner, muezzins chanted the Fair, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha prayers every day from the Al-Akbar mosque, women were in full burqas, chador, and veils, men drank coffee in the cafes and smoked hookahs, and life was good. 

Fatima and her husband hated the attempts of the French government and the Parisian municipal authorities to secularize them - remove the veil, dismantle the madrassahs, and insist on becoming more and more like Christians.  The imams at Friday prayer said that solidarity was the only way to stop this assault on Muslim values, this naked attempt to destroy our religion and our Muslim culture. At every place in this Muslim-hating city, good Muslims must resist and rebel. 

The crowds around the mosque grew every Friday and became animated and forceful. Resistance was a matter of principle and the will of Allah.  The French will not succeed this time in their crusade to rid France of Muhammed's (Peace Be Upon Him) armies of faithful.  There will be no Jerusalem, no Roncesvalles, no Pope Urban II.  This will be a Muslim century, a Muslim country, and a Muslim Europe.  There will be an Islamic Caliphate, the imam insisted.  This is Allah's continent, Allah's time,  and Allah's world.

Now, a succession of European governments have been Biden clones - or perhaps Biden pre-cursors in their openness to unlimited immigration.  The world is one, they said, and the poor and disenfranchised Muslims of Africa and the Middle East need a place of refuge, solace, commiseration, and support. 

Now, of course, the chickens have come home to roost.  The consequences of this policy are painfully evident.  The Muslim immigrants who were so generously welcomed have bitten the hands that feed them - they want all the wealth, security, and opportunity of Europe but without the cultural responsibility. 

'Islamization', say Giorgia Meloni, President of Italy and Geert Wilders and Marion Marechal, political leaders of the Netherlands and France, is a curse and must be removed, expunged, and destroyed. 

Islamization threatens the very heart of Christian, European, culture.  It negates Michelangelo, Racine, Kant, Picasso, and Kierkegaard, demands a narrow, cloistered, blind vision of society, confirms only feudal obedience to Allah as a way of life, and calls for the removal of every trace of non-Muslim religion, philosophy, and culture. 

So, by comparison we in the United States should be thankful that all we've got thanks to Joe Biden's open borders are the likes of Jose Miranda, drug dealer. That we can deal with.  After all, he and his posse and the thousands of posses and gangbangers coming to El Norte are Christian and have no intention on changing the capitalist, money-making, opportunist culture of their adopted country. That is that is why they came here - to make money, lots and lots of it. 

We don't have ten thousand Muslims praying to Allah on Times Square.  We face not a cultural revolution but simply business as usual. The drug trade is just trade after all, and we have always needed immigrant arms to do our dirty work.  But a European caliphate? Ouch. 

Somehow we will assimilate all these Latinos because most of them just want to make money.  The Europeans are not so lucky.  For all the patriotic calls for the end if Islamization by Giorgia and Marion, the calls for a caliphate are even louder.  France already has a greater percentage of Muslims than any other European country, the immigration has not subsided, and natural increase among them is high and far higher than Christian counterparts. 

At least our immigrants are not Muslims.  

The Summery Delights Of Sex With Girls - It All Started At The Convent Of The Sacred Heart

Caitlin Higgins was as straight as an arrow until she met Jennifer, sweet Jennifer, Jennifer of the soul kisses, the warm caresses, the laugh, the....But I'm getting ahead of myself.  

Caitlin wanted to be an altar boy, and that's when the trouble started.  Boys had so much freedom.  Take peeing for example. Boys could go on a tree whenever they want when girls had to squat, watch out for bugs and thorns, make sure that no ants crawled up into you know where...yuk...and then step over their trickle so as not to get their shoes wet.

An altar boy, assisting Father at the consecration of the host turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Our Lord, was a step closer to God than girls could take. Bobby Links was on God's stage, a supporting actor to Father Brophy, and to Jesus himself who had to look down from the cross on sinners like Henry Carter, a serial adulterer and cheat but serial confessant who walked up the aisle to receive Holy Communion in his snappy Armani suit, razor-cut, and trailing a scent of St. Laurent without a care in the world.

Absolution was only granted if you promised the Lord never to sin again, but there he was, cocky as ever as he knelt at the railing, shut his eyes, and received the body and blood of Christ on his tongue. 

God forgave men like that? Caitlin was more angry with him than even pompous little Bobby Links, swishing and sashaying up there on the altar careful not to step on Father Brophy’s hems.  That little...prick.  There she went again, another sin this time in God's house, to add to the list for whenever she went to confession which would be a while because the sins had been piling up.

 

Caitlin felt like Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, frustrated, confined by abusive men  until she found Petruchio who made her a woman, let the chrysalis emerge from the cocoon (or was it the other way around?) and become herself. 

Yet, why was it always some pathetic Prince Charming that always had to come and rescue women? Why couldn't all women be more like Goneril and Regan, Caitlin's heroes, determined, willful, dominating women who get men to do their bidding.  Or Tamora who gets her sons to rape and mutilate Titus' daughter. 

She shook her head at the thought.  Another sin of intent, smiling at the ruin of a perfectly good, innocent girl; but she couldn't help it.  Better be a Goneril or Tamora than a Juliet simpering in her bedchamber, hanging over the balcony, pining for her Romeo. 

She got her wish - being closer to God - when her parents decided to send her to the Convent of the Sacred Heart.  They thought that being in the company of devout, Catholic girls would keep her mind on her studies, her soul pure, and her body clean. 

Caitlin did not resist. In fact being in the exclusive company of girls would be a welcome relief from the likes of Bobby Links, the twit and Father Brophy who, despite his sermons on devotion to the Lord and the celibacy and abstinence of St. Paul was certainly doing it with Markus Hetherington.  They had almost been caught by the plumber who had come for a leaky toilet, but Arnie Swensen knew what was what and he didn't have to exactly see who was doing it to whom to figure out the whole sordid story. 

Men, thought Caitlin, who needs them? But of course with the exception of her father, a loving man who always took her places, bought her ice cream, and got her out of the clutches of his hectoring wife, her mother whom she barely tolerated, all kitschy make up and volunteering.  Daddy was a mensch, and if all men were like him, life would be a bed of roses; but alas, they were not, so she really and truly looked forward to Sacred Heart. 

 

It was there she met Jennifer, Jennifer of the soul kisses and warm caresses, but not right away.  There were simply too many girls to choose from, a harem of sweet young things. Many were plain, praying the stations of the cross, reading The Lives of the Saints, and going to morning mass; but there were others, Lolitas whose flowers would open at a touch.

There was  Mary and Laura, and Benneton (Bennett), a girl from Boston who had been asked to leave Miss Porter's Finishing School for 'inappropriate' behavior.  Her parents had had her on an Ivy League path when she was caught in bed with another debutante and summarily dismissed.

The affair with Bennett lasted until Spring Break when they both went to different islands, Bennett to St. Bart's and Caitlin to St. Kitts; but they both came back with enviable tans, and resumed their affair until the end of school. 

The affair with Jennifer was the best.  Jennifer knew things, knew how to do things, and was never concerned with 'them' - the nuns who dropped their knickers with the entire Junior class; and the priests and their altar boys.  So what if they were caught, said Jennifer. Caught for what, doing what?. It wasn't as if those nuns were any better.  And besides, it’s only a sin if you believe it is, and we don't. 

They went their separate ways after Sacred Heart.  Nothing was the equal to those years.  How could it be? Universities, the good ones at least, were now sink holes for every queer duck in the union, and sorting them all out was time-consuming and low-reward. In any case who wanted a trannie who couldn't decide which end was up, a flaming gay boy, or a tough girl from Bernal Heights anyway?

The idyll of Sacred Heart could never be repeated, so pure and passionate as it had been.  Everything else afterwards was dross - an assemblage of sexual misfits, and many of the girls who went to Harvard came out as straight as an arrow, sick and tired of the gender nonsense, and headed right to the altar with some man from Beacon Hill. 

The last I heard from Caitlin was that she was a sexual returnee. Since Sacred Heart could never be repeated - innocence is a rare gem - and the sexual hysteria of neo-feminists and old Freedom Marchers simply too irrelevant to put up with, she married and had children. 

Whoa! Really? She was so committed to women and then turned over for a man? 

Yes, for thinking any differently would be to deny her - any woman's - fungibility, ease and compromise with reality after having tested it victoriously.  A woman's place might indeed be in the home, but the journey there should be an exciting one. 

A White House State Dinner - A Food Fight Over Fatback, Catfish, And Cherokee Squirrel Meat

‘Help me, Jill', said the President to his wife when he learned that he was to host a formal dinner for the President of France.  Joe had been intimidated by French cooking ever since he labored over his plate of corned beef and cabbage and first heard of Julia Child.  

He of course had never come even close to a dish of frogs legs or escargots, and had eaten the same watery Irish stew, colcannon, and boxty every night. The memories of the potato famine were still very much in his mother's mind when she prepared dinner, and there was always some kind of potatoes on his plate, great mounds of the stuff, tasteless, gooey, and unappetizing. 

'Eat up, Joey', his mother said when she saw him pick at his food.  'It’ll put some meat on those bones, it will' and with that, grace, and a special thanks to St. Patrick and the Virgin Mary, the family tucked into the same miserable fare night after night. 

The cafeteria at the University of Delaware offered nothing much different from the lumpy, tasteless Irish food Joe ate at home.  A low-end public university, it had no strawberry endowments like Yale did, or the Harvard lobster tails provided by F. Farnsworth Hobby, financier, seafood lover, and generous supporter of the school. 

Hobby reported that the first time he had a lobster roll, filled with succulent meat, and drenched in butter, he was hooked.  His summers on the Cape were banquets of steamed lobster, stuffed lobster tails, lobster bisque, and of course lobster rolls. 

 

So Joe ate the university's fare - just as bland and spiritless as what his mother cooked - chicken pot pie, chicken a la king, meat loaf, and spotted lamb, all greasy, tough, floury, inedible concoctions prepared by, ironically, Irish women in the kitchen.  

During his early adult years Joe never ventured beyond this American cuisine.  In Delaware no one knew or cared about anything beyond meat and potatoes, and so political dinners never offered anything more.  Washington was different.  It had not yet evolved into the foodie heaven it now is, and catered to the cattleman and rancher crowd - big slabs of meat,  hefty baked potato, and an iceberg salad slathered with dressing.  

Joe had never seen beef of such size and to be honest, he had trouble swallowing this fatty, bloody, gory thing. At least the lamb bits in his mother's Irish stew were cooked to nuggets and when mixed in with all the rest were indistinguishable as meat; but these great cuts of beef which fell off the plate and left no room for the potato, so served on the side, were disgusting. 

The White House had what was considered an accomplished chef when Joe was in residence.  Thanks to Obama, an eater of surprisingly sophisticated tastes for a black man - or at least half a black man. His mother was a white hippy who served him grains and root vegetables, nothing even close to the French and Italian dishes he ordered from the White House kitchen.  

'Probably Harvard did it to him', Joe mused, still resentful of the snobs who went to Harvard and Yale while he soldiered on at a fourth rate school than nobody outside Delaware would ever even consider. 

As President, Joe had to open up, try new things, expand his horizons - not for his nightly meals with Jill, for that was not much more than his childhood favorites of chipped beef on toast, turkey casserole, and bangers and mash - but for state dinners which because of his progressive mental inabilities were very few.  

His handlers did not want to expose him to embarrassment and ridicule before la creme de la creme of American and foreign society.  He could easily forget who was sitting next to him at the head table, so the staff prepared oversized, large-font place-cards for all guests to help him out.

So, the state dinner for the President of France was to be a truly royal affair, and he told the kitchen staff to pull out all the stops, share no effort or expense to give the honored guest a truly sumptuous American meal. 

'And what might that be?', asked the head chef. 

Now, Joe Biden was not the person to ask since all he knew was corned beef and cabbage, pot pie, and potatoes, so he gave the man carte blanche.  'Whatever', said the President, already on to other more important business. 

This open-ended assignment, however, was not as easy as it sounded, for when the chef presented his suggested menu to LaShonda Jackson, the White House Assistant charged with overseeing the menu, she frowned, smiled, and said, 'Try again'.  

She, a black woman from rural Mississippi, brought up on collards, cornmeal, and fatback, wanted Mr. Ooo-La-La to taste real American cooking, not these fancy-dancy inedible mini-portions loved by the California crowd.

Billy Porter was also a Mississippian but a white one with a bass boat and a gun rack, a man used to noodling for catfish and frying them up in his backyard cooker in Eupora with his  buddies. 'Buds and buds', he used to say at these fish frys, toasting his good ol' boys with a Bud Light. 

How Billy ever made it to the White House was on everyone's minds.  He was not White House material, but then again neither was LaShonda Jackson, an affirmative action hire to fit the bill - Southern, black, and female, basta. Billy had been proposed by the Congressman from his district who had gone fishing with him in Arkansas and liked his simple ways and good sense right from the start.  If a man could haul in bass like Billy, he belonged in Washington. 

Nevertheless there he was and a member of the advance menu team.  The Chief of Staff wanted a food diversity as diverse as the nation itself, so instructed LaShonda to be inclusive.  Despite her better judgement and natural suspicion of this bass-fishing cracker, she had to consider his opinion, and of course it was fried catfish, biscuits, hush puppies, and peach cobbler. 

Jose Alvarez felt it important at this point to jump in and promote his culture's contribution to American cuisine.  He had grown up on cheap Tex-Mex border food.  His mother had never been farther south than a few miles from the border, had no idea of the sophisticated cuisine of Oaxaca, and had flipped her own tortillas over an open fire, roasted some goat meat for stuffing, and chopped hot chilis and tomatoes from her small patch of a dusty parcel in a dope-running neighborhood of Tijuana.  This is what should be on the menu, not greasy catfish and collard greens. 

Singing Wolf Adair, a full-blooded Cherokee had been added to the White House staff to complete what the President thought was the most diverse staff in American history, so he suggested offerings of elk, bison, and especially squirrel.  He knew that squirrel was a Southern thing but his tribe prepared it wrapped in sage and sorrel, buried it in a hot firepit, and ate it with a mix of wild berries and nuts. 

And on it went.  The gay men from San Francisco wanted their cuisine - the sophisticated, foraged, elegantly prepared grouse and sea urchin platters made famous by of their own, Barney Bradford of Chez Francois of Potrero Hill.  The lesbians from Bernal Heights wanted their jackboot-and-flannel specialties; and the.....well, not hard to guess where this was going. 

Biden had indeed created a hodge-podge, mishmash, ethno-racial potpourri at 1700 and everyone wanted their say.  Food was a cultural marker, an iconic tribute to ethnic and racial history, and the French president should be treated to - exposed to - as much of it as possible. 

As a result the meal was as inchoate, impossibly mixed-and-matched as the various sponsors of it. Who ever ate tacos with foraged sea grass?  Or marinated squirrel with pork butt?  The written menu itself, indicating and explaining every item read like a drug disclaimer, three pages to be exact of cultural apocrypha and foodie history. 

The wine was good Californian - here the President wanted to beat the froggies at their own game, so a magnificent Flowers Pinot Noir was chosen along with the bourbon and Tennessee mash. 

Joe noticed that his counterpart was picking at his food just like he did as a boy, but distracted by Taylor Swift who had generously agreed to sing at the dinner and sat next to the President, breaking all protocol, he quickly forgot the French president.   

Powerful Men - Big Cojones, Genghis Khan, And Absolute Will, So Where Is Little Joe Biden?

Joe Biden is no match for Putin, Xi, Erdogan, or the Ayatollahs, men who understand power, know how to increase, extend, and keep it; and who are Machiavellian amoralists. They are inheritors of the legacy of Genghis Khan who led his Mongol-Turkic armies out of the steppes to conquer the world from Europe to the Far East. He did it with political savvy, battlefield genius, savagery, and absolute will.  He was feared, admired, and glorified. 

There was never a doubt in his mind as he and fifty thousand men galloped across the high plateau to wreak devastation and destruction on the peoples below. He had no thoughts of accommodation, compromise, or good will.  Heads were severed, spiked and displayed on the roads leading into and out of the towns he had conquered.  He left terrified, fearful, and obedient towns in his wake.  

No one had seen such conquest, such brutality, and such absolute desire for dominion; and no one was to see it thereafter.  Dictators came and went of varying severity and barbarity but none had the breadth of ambition and almost satanic drive of Khan

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. 

Genghis Khan was a brilliant strategist, canny politician who through tact, intimidation, and offers of great spoils, enticed the warlike Turkic tribes to join his armies, nearly doubling their strength.  However, it was not only the might of his imposing armies, nor his ability to manage, discipline, and control such a large and diverse military force; nor even his tactical acumen and understanding of calculated risk which assured victory.  It was his indomitable, absolute, unalloyed will. 

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.

No amount of hopeful, wishful thinking, moral enterprise, or righteousness will purge, expunge, and relegate these human energies.  The only time in recorded human history that peace ruled the world was during the Pax Romana, a two hundred year period during which no serious armed threat was mounted against the Roman Empire. 

Of course this empire, extending impressively from east to west, although only half the size of conquered Mongol territories, was secured through military victory.  Compliance with Roman rule – the key to peace – was assured through brilliant civilian leadership, canny threat-and-reward diplomacy, and impressive administration and management.

For the rest of our 10,000 years, violence, brutality, conquest, and bloody empire have been the rule; and the acquisition, maintenance, and extension of power at all levels of human society is still our modus operandi.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were no anomalies, no steps out of historical line.  They were the inheritors of Genghis Khan and his impressive modern exponents.  It is only vanity, historical ignorance, and incredible idealism which closes the blinds on the Twentieth Century.  It is inevitable that men like these will return.

The US had absolutely no compunction about destroying Dresden, Berlin, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo along with the populations that lived there.  Wars are for winning, American Presidents and generals agreed, and nothing would stop the assault until the war was won.

William Tecumseh Sherman understood this principle well, and rode through South Carolina, the first state to secede from the union and fire the first shots against the North, intent on destroying every building, every crop, every monument, and every byway of the state to teach it an unforgettable lesson – the South will never rise again.

A century later Israeli Defense Forces followed the lessons of Sherman and Genghis Khan.  Attacks on the State of Israel would be met not only with reprisal, but with the full might of its military power.  It’s retaliation would  be complete, disproportionate, and annihilating.  The integrity and survival of the State of Israel would never, ever be compromised, and any action to assure its safety would be justified.

So where does American feel-good, love-thy-neighbor, let's all reason together optimism come from. Why on earth can there be any doubt in the current Biden Administration's mind that Israel must destroy Hamas at any price. This genocidal, hateful, murderous regime and its Muslim allies have called for the destruction of the Jewish state and the Jewish people for decades.  Should there be any question about a scorched earth, Sherman- and Genghis Khan-esque assault?

Some historians have suggested that American political liberalism is the stepchild of the Oneida colony and the Utopian, naturalist movement of the 19th century and the influence of Rousseau and American naturalists.  Utopianism of course had earlier European roots and the works of Francis Bacon and Sir Thomas More were influential in suggesting that idealism was not fantasy, but an actionable notion.   Most other historians conclude that the liberal fascination with socialism as the fairest, kindest, most compassionate political system is behind today’s progressivism.  A belief in idealism is itself idealistic, but progressives never admit to being caught in a tautology.

Conservatives on the other hand, accept human nature for what it is and do not shy away from its competitive aggressiveness which, they say, is the real engine of progress. Competitive, free enterprise, has created wealth, opportunity, and distinction not only in America but in China and India, two formerly impoverished nations which, once they had jettisoned old Soviet-style command economies quickly became world economic players.

Yes, conservatives say, this aggressive, territorial, self-interested human nature will be the cause of future armed conflict between interest groups, regions, and nations; but that is as it has always been.  Arming rather than disarming is the only reasonable, historical move in a hostile world.  Wars will inevitably happen, and victory should always be the goal.

Conservatives are content with the legacy of Genghis Khan and have no issue with the Crusades, the Persian Empire, the Seleucids, or Gao.  Europe, China, Japan, and India were at constant war for centuries, and while there were winners and losers, there was no moral consequence.  History was simply reconfigured. 

All of which is to explain conservatives’ bemusement at progressive utopianism, an ill-conceived, ahistorical, idealistic political philosophy.  There is no doubt, these conservatives conclude, that the current reformist hysteria will die down, progressivism will go the way of socialism and communism, and America will return unabashedly and unashamedly to its Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian principles.