Dumb Is As Dumb Does - Ignorance As A Virtue In The True Belief Of Social Reform

'AOC (Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez)' is the reason why directions are put on shampoo bottles', said Louisiana Senator describing the young Congresswoman from New York, a woman without an original thought in her head, a quacking political poseur with ambitions of influence but with the intellectual power of a dim lightbulb. 

 

However, this empty-headedness has never been a drawback for her. Her constituents, nearly seventy percent Latino and black, did not vote her into office because of any particular intellectual acuity or political insight but because she is Puerto Rican.  When asked why he voted for her, Jose Miranda looked dumbfounded and perplexed.  He had no clue, no idea whatsoever, and in stumbling, broken English said, 'She good for La Raza'. 

AOC knew that she needn't worry about policy, political philosophy, economics, or finance. It was enough that she promised her constituency bread and circus, free housing, full employment, and money in the bank. Not one of her followers, more familiar with arroz con pollo than interest rates, needed to know anything more than the woman's grab bag of goodies. 

'Long live La Raza', she shouted to a welcoming crowd, and banged on about the valorous Puerto Rican heroes of the past, the indigenous brilliance of the island's people and how they deserved everything that their white neighbors across the river in Manhattan had.  'Somos un pueblo', she said, waving her arm over the Bronx slum she represented and then pointed to the spires of Manhattan across the way, 'and you shall have what everyone has'. 

It was a stock speech, hammering the injustice, the indifference, the callousness of white, capitalist America and promising justice, wealth, and unimaginable prosperity, and the crowd loved it, cheering and hugging each other as if it were a San Juan wedding.  Not one item of any substance, not a single reference to legislative likelihood, not an iota of real possibility; but her constituents, aware of little more than burritos, construction work and restaurant kitchens, roared at the wonders that would come their way. 

To be fair, this profound level of ignorance in both the politician and the governed is not new or unusual.  Alexander Hamilton understood this perfectly when he argued for a legislative body made up of highly educated, successful men to act as a buffer between federal authority and the mob.  Hamilton never trusted majority rule, and in his Federalist papers spelled out his concern over Jefferson's populism.  If given any leeway, the majority would always act in the most venal ignorance and the new republic would end up a chaotic mess of rabid, foolish policies serving no one, let alone the interests of the new, emerging nation. 

 

Shakespeare was equally eloquent about the ignorance of the common people, caricaturing it in Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Henry VI among other works.  Politicians who need to start running again the moment they assume office, rely on nostrums, empty promises, and airy idealism to get re-elected. 

This political emptiness has become the ethos, the working title of the American progressive movement. A neo-Socialist, reformist, ultra-populist affair has based its appeal on race, gender, and ethnicity and the cult of 'identity'.  America is a racist, misogynist, elitist, white privileged country which needs to be dismantled and rebuilt by people of color into the New Jerusalem.  

The central premise of the movement is opposition - in such a malign, oppressive country, only revolution matters.  What comes after the expulsion of the white race, the dismantling of Wall Street, the decommissioning of the police, and the opening wide of the doors to the Treasury is moot.  There is an anointed, sanctified character to progressivism, and its truth will be known.

For the four years of the Biden presidency, this canon was the policy of the land.  Nothing of substance, no understanding of the complexities of economics and finance, not a scintilla of appreciation of logical premise, of cause and effect, of risk and reward.  It was a cornucopia of promises, giveaways, feelgood notions of diversity and inclusivity, nothing more. 

This, of course, is the way forward in an electorate which swallows this bunk whole.  Why complicate matters with exegesis or explanation? And the Democratic Party was very good at peddling snake oil. 

Now, the American voter, as simple, credulous, and gullible as he is, has limits; and when progressives went off the rails with promises of a new transgender world, a radical reconfiguration of sexuality and a new version of sexual reality, voters revolted.  The bullshit of the Left was one thing, but the patronizing assumption of righteousness galled, and the whole lot was turned out of office. 

Americans with any sense knew the end was coming when progressives went baroque - child sexual transformations, cross-dressing transgenders reading to kindergarteners, the hysterical lionization of the black man, the defunding of the police, the snide dismissal of religion - and millions turned to Donald Trump as a return to reality. 

 

His conservative message was simple - a talent-based society of equal opportunity, a limited government, a liberated private sector, a muscular foreign policy, energy independence, limited, controlled immigration, and a return to faith and moral centrality. 

However, the routing of the Democratic Party and the likes of AOC and her Congressional claques did nothing to shut them up.  In fact the howling became louder, and the anti-Trump screeching from this little brown ankle-biter from the Bronx was insufferable.  Strange as it may seem, she considered herself the leader of the pack, the one who would lead them back to power; but the more she ranted and howled, the more ridiculous she seemed, a bitchy little harridan who simply wouldn't go away. 

The more Trump succeeded in every aspect of domestic and foreign affairs - the closing of the borders, the destruction of Iran's nuclear capacity, the wooing of foreign investment, the significant moves towards energy independence, and the excision of any and all woke programs - the more AOC and her shills wailed and vibrated with self-righteous anger.  But the more wild and wooly they became, the more Americans turned against her and the whole progressive charade.  Game over, go away. 

'Back to rice and beans', her constituents lamented. No chardonnay, foie gras, and summers on the Vineyard. 

 

It took time for them to realize that the free ride was over and they had to man up to get up; but survival is a human trait, and soon enough the new zeitgeist filtered down to the barrio, and AOC was seen as nothing more than a political poseur.  Her constituents weren't proud of their Puerto Rican heritage.  They fled the island for Christ's sake, and wondered why all the flapdoodle about ethnic identity.  They were simply Americans who wanted a piece of the pie and this identity nonsense was an obstruction not a facilitation. 

However, for the time being AOC is all they've got, so let history play itself out. Maybe Donald Trump isn't as bad as she says. 

The Demise Of USAID And The Betrayal Of Africa -Wrong! Wake Up Time And No More Free Lunch

Progressives are howling about Musk, DOGE, and the ransacking of USAID. "A disgraceful, humiliating, horrible, inhuman thing to do.  Think of the poor, starving people of Africa.'

This lament has been heard for decades since African independence from European rule in the early Sixties, a period during which the continent fell prey to Big Men, dictatorship, autocratic rule, kleptocracy, and corruption - a disgraceful downward spiral of callous indifference  Mobuto, Deby, Kagame, Amin, and a host of others enriched themselves while millions under their rule remained in Paleolithic poverty. 

It is hard to name any African country on a solid democratic or economic path.  Most are a mess – Nigeria, Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Angola, Mali just to name a few.  Ghana is everyone’s favorite, and fans point to its moderate GDP growth as an example of success, but that number reflects more the dismal rate from which it started than any promise of rapid economic growth. 

 

China started from the same point as Africa fifty years ago - a desperately poor country where millions died at the hands of Mao through enforced famine and political murder - but now is a world superpower. During the same period Africa's socio-economic status only deteriorated and is now far worse off than under French and British rule. 

Most of this continued decline into civil chaos, corruption, and unmitigated poverty is due to the misrule of the big men, Presidents for Life; but also because of a persistent tribal, forest culture that lacks the discipline, rigor, and moral authority of Confucianism. 

The Big Men were fat and happy because the West was concerned about Communism and bought them off in return for political allegiance and the vast mineral and energy resources they controlled. 

Some donor countries like the United States and international organizations like the World Bank applied 'conditionalities' to their grants - money was contingent on judicial, financial, and legislative reform; but this was just a cover, and despite the manipulative chicanery of African leaders who promised reform but had no intention of performing, Western donors looked the other way and kept on giving. 

Idriss Deby, the dictator of Chad played the US and the World Bank for fools, duplicitously agreeing to a gas-for-reform agenda and then reneging completely and continuing his despotic rule over one of the poorest countries in Africa..  The lionized Kagame presides with a repressive regime that muzzles opposition.  He has lied or distorted reports about his support of anti-government clandestine military operations in the Congo and the murderous civil war there. 

Author William Easterly wrote extensively about African corruption and the willing complicity of the West.  He cited the journalist Helen Epstein who described the support that aid donors give to Ethiopia’s tyrant Meles Zenawi, who has roughly matched Biya [President of Cameroon]  in aid receipts in a shorter period of time. 

Peter Gill in his book Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid (2010) documents Meles’s misdeeds further, which rise to the level of war crimes in his counterinsurgency in Ethiopia’s Somali region. 

Other long-serving aid-receiving dictators include Idriss Déby in Chad ($6 billion in aid between 1990 and the present), Lansana Conté in Guinea ($11 billion between 1984 and his death in 2008), Paul Kagame in Rwanda ($10 billion between 1994 and 2015), and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda ($31 billion between 1986 and 2010).

There are those who defend Africa, beating the dead horse of colonialism for Africa's persistent miasma, but ignore how no country suffered worse than China under Mao, but once that yoke was removed recorded an unprecedented economic acceleration. 

They are upset and outraged by the stifling of ‘African voices’, but who are they? The likes of Déby, Kagame, Conté, Museveni, Meles or the successive venal, ignorant leaders of South Africa after apartheid? Or the president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta sought by the Hague for international crimes against humanity?  

When Donald Trump abolished USAID and said that it had done nothing to improve the lot of Africans, had misspent billions in taxpayer money, and had done nothing to foster American interests, liberals wailed about the desperate needy; but most Americans had had enough.  

It was time that African countries take responsibility for their own people said conservatives. The free flow of foreign entitlement money was preventing this from happening, and stopping it would be the incentive for reform to occur. 

Instead of taking soft, don't-bother-repaying World Bank loans and siphoning the money into offshore bank accounts, African leaders would be forced to borrow on the international capital markets for only the loans they absolutely need and can repay. 

PEPFAR, the international AIDS anti-retroviral drug distribution program begun under George W Bush did more to save African lives than any USAID 'development project', and it was assumed that at some point African governments would take it over, either by negotiating favorable pricing from pharmaceutical companies or concluding a settlement with them to allow the local generic production of key drugs.  The direness of the problem does not alter the need for structural reform - it only emphasizes it. 

The time for handouts, particularly those which enable, embolden, and support the oppressive, anti-democratic regimes of Africa, is over.  Will the people suffer? Since USAID projects did little to alleviate poverty or improve socio-economic status, that is unlikely.  Will there be increased deaths if governments do not step up and take over anti-retroviral drug distribution and vaccinations against other infectious diseases? 

Yes, but those deaths are on the hands of African governments, not the United States.  Pulling out of USAID and putting pressure EU countries and international banks and development organizations to do the same will have a long term benefit for the continent. 

 

What is needed is for African rulers to take charge of reforming their countries enough so that they will be creditworthy.  Without a truly independent judiciary, a rule of law, financial and budgetary transparency, civil institutions of the highest quality, a free press and an open government, African countries will never improve. Since they obviously incapable of initiating and instituting these reforms on their own, pulling the plug on foreign assistance will be a great incentive for them to begin.

Mariposa, The Wonder Woman Of MS-13 – A Salvadoran Wetback Makes The American Bigtime

Mariposa Valdez was born and raised in a small village outside of St. Miguel, El Salvador, a town best known for its enchiladas and for Roberto Edgerton, the leader of the right wing death squad which was as feared as Sevak, Stasi, and the Tonton Macoute combined.  El Terror, as it was known, was the Salvadoran army’s avant garde, invading suspected rebel villages and, like White Wolf, the Comanche chieftain of the Great Plains, eviscerated, disemboweled, raped, and mutilated men, women, and children to send an unmistakable lesson to the country’s enemies.

That was a long time ago, but the legacy of the civil war remained.  Soldiers and rebels alike who knew nothing but killing, kept their weapons after the truce, assembled into gangs which ruled the country with violence and brutality.  Mara Salvatrucha, the country’s most famous gang amassed millions through canny Mafia-like intimidation of the judiciary, police, and the army, and quickly became a regional power. 

They were a destabilizing force in neighboring Guatemala and Honduras, formed alliances with Indian and mestizo gangs there, and threatened the weak and tentative governments of both countries before extending their reach to the United States.

Mariposa was a young girl at the time of the civil war, but remembered Don Roberto and his men who ruled San Miguel, walked openly in the streets, and who provided the citizenry with cash, tortillas, and the promise of a better world

The tattooed, muscled men of MS-13 found San Miguel a congenial place – photographs of the leader of El Terror were on the walls of most homes – a homegrown hero who never forgot his people – and the people of the town were just as welcoming to the sons of the movement as they had been to El Terror itself.

 

Mariposa was a product of that lucky, marvelous mix of Spanish and indigenous genes which when combined in the right configuration produced dark haired beauties. Taller than most young girls her age, possessed of a natural poise and stature and precocious sexual appeal, Mariposa caught the eye of all the men of her community, especially the MS-13 commanders and their lieutenants who lived in mansions high on the hills above the town and ate at La Maravilla, the tipica restaurant where she waited tables.

It wasn’t long before she accepted the generous offer of El Comandante, Adalberto Sanchez, to accompany him to the capital for a long weekend.  Although begun as a commercial affair – Mariposa was treated and paid well – the affair turned into something much more, and the young beauty became the big man’s consort, a constant companion, confidante, and passionate lover.

When the man invited her to go with him to El Norte, she readily agreed, anxious to enjoy the wonders of America.  El Comandante was received like a head of state, clandestinely of course, since MS-13, now designated as a terrorist organization and hotly pursued by the new Trump government, could not operate as openly as before.

Mariposa’s love for Berto grew with every accolade, every tribute, and every respectful greeting.  Never before had she imagined herself with such a man, an Adonis of the barrio, a mensch, a hero.

Mariposa was not just a pretty face, but a determined, ambitious young woman who understood that her intimacy with El Comandante would stand her in good stead with the militant wing of the organization, Adalberto’s praetorian, republican guard, the most feared cadre of MS-13 – a group whose unalloyed loyalty and unremittingly violent reputation were irresistible.

Her dalliance with them, at first suspected by Adalberto who soon realized her motivational importance, became more in tune with their brief.  She showed her mettle early on, increased her competency on the firing range, and accompanied armed factions on raids of banks, insurance companies, and wealthy landowners. She killed with the best, was a fearless combatant in gun battles with the federales and soon earned her stripes as a trusted member of MS-13. 

As feared operative and lover of El Comandante, Mariposa became the face of the organization.  A Che Guevara-style poster of her appeared everywhere in the capital, and residents hoped to get a glimpse of her as she slipped out of the ‘technicals’, the retrofitted Dodge Ram trucks, armored, armed, and supercharged conveyances of the captains.

In Los Angeles she became well-known to ICE, the border patrol, and Homeland Security as well as the local police, and was one of the FBI’s most wanted; but eluded identification and capture and engineered some of the most audacious robberies in California’s history.  She ruled over a Fentanyl empire worth hundreds of millions, negotiated successful with her Obrador and Juarez cartel counterparts across the border, and through canny investments offshore, became a wealthy woman.

‘Not bad for a wetback, eh Berto?’, she liked saying to El Comandante whose love for her only increased with her power; but power being the divisive, corrupting influence it has always been, the couple split.  Mariposa’s factions were simply more powerful, and with the separation, she carried with her many of Adalberto’s finest.  She now was the most influential feared leader of Mara Salvatrucha.

Many were surprised that a woman could have risen to such prominence in such a hardened macho culture, but she worked both sides of the street.  A devilishly alluring woman, a beautiful Delilah, a woman who understood men and could manipulate ego, desire, and male fragility like a puppeteer; but a woman with an innately masculine aggressiveness and murderous intent, she was indomitable.

.

‘I love America’, Mariposa was often heard saying but America loved her more, for she was the very image of success – a woman who rose to power and authority in a man’s world; one who was as easily at ease with guns as with roses; a canny businesswoman, a feared investor and organizational genius; but woman at heart, a stunning beauty of international fame.

She was the Bonnie Parker of Latin America – a gun moll, a famous woman of the people, feared and admired, a local hero, a genius – but she was much more.  Mariposa didn’t just rob banks, she owned them.  She didn’t just intimidate judges, she owned them.  She was a one-woman Armageddon, a fierce, unbowed, ferocious figure that had crossed the Rio Grande and made a fortune. 

‘Local girl makes good’, said the San Miguel Gazeta del Pueblo, and when she finally returned home, she was welcomed with open arms.  She was a local girl who had made good on both sides of the river, and more power to her. 

What Ever Happened To Climate Change? – How An Issue Disappeared Without A Trace

Chicken Little said ‘The Sky Is Falling’, and everyone believed him; and so it was with progressives who cried and wailed and shouted until the whole idea of climate change became an existential crisis.  Unless we acted now, The End of Days, Armageddon, would soon be upon us.

Of course not everyone was taken in by the tomfoolery.  If anything winters were getting worse, the Charles had frozen over, the Florida citrus crops were under frost warnings, and Seattle had a series of blanketing snow storms.  Besides, if the climate was warming – warming and cooling cycles have been common since the beginning geologic time – modern technology was more than up to the task.

Not only would coastal cities become wetlands, New York a Venice, genetically engineered crops produced to withstand higher temperatures, and wheat, soy, and corn moved north; but the entire human genome would be reconfigured to accommodate the new temperature reality.  Energy sources needed to satisfy increased cooling demands would be brought on line – nuclear fusion, hydrogen power, and a range of yet unexploited, new ways of converting solar power into usable, efficient resource would be realities.

 

So, the entire idea of a global catastrophe was never anything but the product of a febrile, worried collective mind.  It was the progressive dream – one, global, unstoppable, universal, all-encompassing problem that would unite liberals everywhere.  The big tent that progressives had always dreamed of, a place where all would be welcome – black people would lead the parade and fill the choice seats. Gays, lesbians, and transgenders would fill in the ranks.  Socialists would beat the drums and play the tubas and French horns.  Women would be the lion tamers, the clowns, and the mistresses of ceremony.

Then, all of a sudden in one short, indefinable moment, climate change was gone.  No one bothered with it any more.  It was off the front pages, replaced by ambitious plans to dig, frack, mine, and bore; to make America energy independent and free from the clutches of Arabs, Africans, and Russians.  Along with the cockamamie ideas of gender fluidity and the redefining of sexual identity, out went climate change.  In a muscular American foreign policy confronting Iranian nuclear ambitions and support of Middle East terrorism, concerns of a warming climate were realized for the fairy tale stories they always were.

The story of the emperor’s new clothes was never more relevant.  In the tale, the balmy emperor walked around the palace stark naked but his subjects commented on his new, sumptuous, royal ensemble – the gold embroidery, the silk finery, the magnificent jeweled pantaloons – until a child shouted, ‘The emperor is not wearing any clothes’, and the whole fanciful charade was ended.

When the new Trump Administration came to power and said that climate change was a hoax, a progressive scam, and a wild, impossibly childish fairy tale, Americans realized that what they had been seeing was nothing but a fanciful invention.  Old Joe Biden had been as naked as a jaybird.

There were a few in the liberal trenches that refused to admit defeat.  Climate change was the same existential threat it always had been, and especially now with a naysayer in the Oval Office it was time to act with renewed energy and commitment.

Bob Muzelle, a progressive’s progressive, a man committed to the neo-socialist, reformist liberal agenda forever, was one of these outliers, a man whose entire career had been based on the presumption of climate disaster.  There had been no doubt in his mind that the ozone layer was kaput, solar radiation was scorching the earth, rivers were drying up, gullies and arroyos were empty, rocky fissures, and great chunks of ice were being hived off from the Ross ice shelf as Antarctica itself was disappearing.

Millions of Americans had listened to his pleas, had worked for environmental reform and prayed for divine guidance. The hand of God who had destroyed the world once or twice before should be stayed. His people should be given a chance to restore the Garden of Eden, to make the worlds verdant, lush, and embracing as it once had been.

It was a marvelous movement, a juggernaut of righteousness, a perfect, seamless, brilliant effort to make the world a better place.

So, how could this Utopian dream have so quickly and summarily disappeared?  What Bob had seen was so palpable, real, and undeniable nothing could erase it, expunge it, and remove it. Yet there were the front pages, blank, devoid of the most incidental notice of climate change.  Only in the Style section was there a reference:

Gardeners! Worried about the heat? Don’t be. Burpee has just released a new variety of nasturtium that will survive even the worst Washington summer.  Don’t be a worrywart, plant your garden with Magic Grow and never again give a second thought to rain.

Climate change anxiety had fizzled, flamed out, disappeared like so much detritus and road trash.  In its place was good ol’ American can-do ingenuity.  AI, robotics, and the jiggering of the human genome were only the first steps towards the post-human generation one increasingly freed from brick and mortar, the capriciousness of the environment, the old economic nostrums of supply and demand.  A brave new world of opportunity and limitless possibility.

These myopic alte kockers who couldn’t see beyond the nose on their face might keep on howling about climate ruin and human disaster, but their voices were only faint echoes in an empty rain barrel.

Bob went on in a whirling dervish St. Vitus’ dance despite the emperor’s new clothes.  He, like his fellow progressives, could simply not believe that the cause they had fought for decades had now disappeared like a wisp of smoke.

 

He turned ugly and nasty, shaking his fist like a demented street corner preacher. ‘The end is nigh’, he shouted. ‘Repent and prepare to meet your maker’ until he was shuffled off by sanitation workers who needed to clean the gutters.

‘Climate change? What’s that?’, asked a seven year old; and so it was that the adage of the old soap opera As The World Turns was as right as rain.

Take The Burnt Bits Out! - How A Cranky Girl Turned Irresistible Tart And Found A Husband

Eleanor (Ellie) Farnsworth grew up in a proper family - proper table manners, proper demeanor, and above all proper behavior.  Her father was insistent upon doing the right thing at the right time in the right place and was known for his modesty, good humor, and generous respects for others. 

Her mother was no different - a proper lady always well coiffed, demure, lovely and of good, proper, conservative taste.  She had been chairwoman of the hospital auxiliary, a charming hostess, and a personable, attentive friend. 

How was it then that Ellie turned out to be such a scratchy, irritable, cranky, unpleasant child?  It certainly wasn't genes - how could it be with that parentage and a family history that went back to the Earl of Northumberland, a man of great aristocratic posture and influence; and his many heirs and legatees. 

 

Of course in any family there are some bad eggs in the basket, and great-uncle Charles had been one.  A wastrel, layabout, ne'er-do-well who fouled the family image so badly that his Aunt Tilly had tried to get him institutionalized - without success it must be mentioned. Old Charlie was not as stupid as he looked and parlayed a good piece of his inheritance into loose financial swaps and made millions, enough to shut up Aunt Tilly good and proper. 

No one thought that any of Charlie's bloodline got mixed up with Ellie's.  Besides she wasn't a bad girl, a defiant, rubbery one; but simply an ornery, prickly, and unpleasant one. The girl was such a pill that her father even entertained thoughts about his wife's fidelity - that Alvin Harding or Bret Lincoln.  There certainly had been opportunity and likelihood. 

In any case, the only thing that came to mind was Kate, the shrew in Shakespeare's play - a nasty, difficult, vile girl who made life difficult for everyone around her.  Fiction to be sure, but such women are not unheard of.  For example, no one could stand Libby Fox, a bitch - a real cunt - and she certainly came from a good family until they disowned her. 

 

'What are we going to do with her?', asked Annabelle Farnsworth of her husband who had not one sane, responsible idea to offer except 'evolution', not the Darwinian kind but maturity.  Ugly ducklings become swans, don't they, he said to the frustration of his wife whose propriety was at loose ends. 

'Wait until she gets out in the real world', Harper Farnsworth said. 'That'll clear the decks for running', his favorite metaphor when faced with a conundrum. 

In any case growing up didn't help at all, and she became the toughest, rawest, nastiest cunt in the Barfield Country Day School, leader of a coven of bitchy girls who made it their business to humiliated, piss on, and demean every boy that crossed their paths. 

In high school they were truants, miscreants, and impossibly rude and bullying harpies. They were an ugly lot, untamed, and dirty - with one exception, Ellie Farnsworth who, despite her seemingly thorny personality was a young woman of extraordinary beauty.  She might be a Goth vixen in spirit, but a true, unalloyed physical beauty.  Men could not take their eyes off her, wanted her, and would do anything to win her charms. 

 

Nothing doing, for Ellie had become a harden succubus, a man-hater, and a devilishly cruel tormentor. Now, she wasn't a dyke, not by any means, and although she never admitted it, dreamed of Mr. Right, although in her crude fantasies he did not have a face or a profession but just a large prick which she wanted deep inside her and came repeatedly with the thought. 

She was a woman of no particular political or philosophical interest, so she was unconcerned about leaving the cunt cabal as she pursued her much more fundamental and primitive desires.  Not surprisingly, however, not only was there no Mr. Right in her sights, but men, having been pussy whipped and discarded for so long, went nowhere near her.  They looked, licked, and drooled like every other man who saw her, but kept their distance. 

Where was Petruchio, Ellie wondered, the gallant aristocrat who tamed the shrewish Kate?  Where was he?  

 

Now, female sexuality being what it is - i.e. even the shrewish, nastiest woman wants a man, a home, and a family - she hung up her spurs, added some skin toner, highlighter, and eye shadow; trimmed and shaped her hair, and bought a morning, afternoon, and evening ensemble.  As she looked at the engineer boots, diesel dyke chains and studded leather she had affected, and stood before her vanity mirror, she felt both liberated and a complete charlatan.  This was not her.  

Everyone compromises to cover, justify, or accommodate necessity; and so Ellie sought middle ground, a place between nastiness, maidenhood, and motherhood.  She would become Belle de Nuit, Catherine Deneuve's high class call girl - a tart, a loose woman, a slit. A Jane Fonda Klute hooker, a controller of men, an investor in new sexual instruments, a daredevil, an adventurer. 

And so it was that Ellie Farnsworth became Madame de Richelieu's highest-paid Washington call girl, tart of all tarts, busy every night of the year or when she wanted, a ruler, an emotional dominatrix, an incomparable sexually ambitious Delilah. 

Women of genius like Ellie - for that was exactly what she was.  All the crankiness, nastiness, and bitchy villainy were just byproducts.  The world was as she found it, and if she had to live in an indifferent, cloyingly deceptive world, then she would dominate anyone and anything that rattled or rolled her way. 

It took a man of similar instincts, intelligence, and emotional bravado to tame her; and she was lucky, for such men are few and far between - men who were looking for nothing, expected nothing, and knew that emotional highway robbery was the only validation they needed to make their way. 

It happened in Akron - why not Akron, one might ask? As good as any for murder, sex, or prudery; and he and she settled down, not exactly the primrose trellis, blonde little ones, pot roast and mashed potatoes life that could have easily been the anti-fantasy she might well have envisioned; but neither the S&M whips and spikes that could just as easily have been her decor. 

Brilliance is everywhere, public, admired, and envied; but Ellie and he were beneath that particular radar, two of a kind which had no other kinds, an especial, often frightful couple that couldn't be seen in public on many days, but on others were models of temperance and lighthearted enthusiasm. 

He Has Risen - A Charismatic Pastor Brings A Sexual Jesus To Washington

Branford P Jackson DD, was a preacher from Roamer’s Creek, a small Midwest town like a thousand others – pigs, cows, soy, and churchgoing – and because of its natural rectitude, and fundamental moral sense, the Reverend Jackson had little to do except to remind his congregation of the grace of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Heavenly Father who would come again to take us to the Promised Land.

 

Reverend Jackson mixed his metaphors in lyrical passages every Sunday morning; and borrowed freely from the Old Testament and St. Augustine, embellishing, embroidering, and quilting to his heart’s content.  His congregants were simple people, devout, faithful, and believing fully in the Lord; so they never thought twice about the religious mishmash the pastor offered every week.  For all they knew, the words he spoke were the words of God.

Let us pray.  Oh, Lord Jesus, come to us from on high,  from the Temple Mount, from the cross high on the hill of Golgotha to us sinners here in Roamer’s Creek.  Come, oh Lord, come…

‘Amen’, said the congregation in unison, shaking their heads, closing their eyes, and imagining the Lord, God himself on the altar of the Ebenezer Baptist Church of the Redeemer embracing the Reverend Jackson.

Come ye, Almighty, and shine on us your beatific light, your saving grace, your all-encompassing love, your beauty, and your kindness…

‘Praise the Lord’, rose the anthem from the pews; and so it went until everyone was on the same page, a leaf from the Holy Book, verses from God himself, so was the appeal of the Reverend Jackson.  In his hands the church was a community, joined in faith and good will.  Each and every one who had participated in the services that day left with joy in his heart. 

To be honest however, Reverend Jackson, for all the fondness he had for his churchgoers, was a bit restive.  He was not home grown, and in fact came from Baltimore, was a descendant of Francis Scott Key, and from an old Anglican family who had helped build the Port of Baltimore into the shipping Mecca of the Mid-Atlantic, transporting textiles, slaves, and timber up and down the coast, to the Caribbean, and to Europe.

Somewhere in the 1850s, just before the Civil War and when Baltimore was unsettled and unsure of its support for the Confederacy, the Jackson family became converted Baptists.  There was something relevant and immediate about the holy rolling and ecstatic worship of the Lord that appealed to them.  The simplicity, order, and Old World recondite religious spirit of the Anglican Church was simply not American enough, and thanks to the evangelism of a North Carolina Baptist preacher who had found Jesus in the backwoods of the Smokies, followed him and his faith.

The Jackson family produced many preachers of whom Branford was the latest, and upon graduation from the seminary was encouraged to go west.  His nascent but promising eloquence and down home nature would be just the thing for the people of Indiana; and so it was that he left Baltimore for the Midwest.

Branford, despite his calling, was a very ambitious man, taken with the allure and seamless beauty of women, tempted by their seductive charm, and no stranger to courting them.  He was often seen with one of Baltimore’s high society beauties at one of the chic restaurants on the harbor.  He was an attractive young man thanks to his looks, his family legacy, his money, and his surprising profession.  Women never knew whether he was a bon vivant, roué, and boulevardier or a man of God.  He knew of his particular allure and took advantage of it

Sorry to leave the delights of Baltimore but excited about the opportunity of leading a congregation, he settled in quite nicely in Roamer’s Creek; and before long he was looked up to as a leading citizen and a prospective husband.

He, however, was not looking for a mate, but for a partner, a woman like those in Baltimore who fell so easily for his charm and unusual spiritual presence; and it was not long before he became known as the Brad Pitt Baptist.  Some of his congregants were suspicious of a man whose attentions were so persistently secular, but who was to judge when a man should wed, and surely the affections of such a lovely, complex person like the Reverend should not be discounted or dismissed.

Sexual ambitions and political ambitions often go hand in hand.  Henry Kissinger, former Nixon confidant and Secretary of State once famously noted that power was the supreme aphrodisiac – it both gave powerful men a vigor and virility par excellence, and drew women ineluctably to their flame. 

Every President in American history had lovers and paramours – it came with the territory – and the same vitality infused the Reverend Jackson.  Washington was to be his beat, and after much to do with the Southern Baptist Convention, he was given leave to move to Washington.

While sharpening his ecclesiastical spurs at Wesley Seminary (a Methodist institution, but ecumenical in spirit), he chanced to meet a woman well-connected with official Washington.  She was an aide to an influential senator from the Midwest a man whose profound religious belief and canny political aptitude won him landslide victories in every election.  He would be pleased to meet Branford.

It was a match made in heaven – the two men hit it off from the moment they met.  The Senator welcomed someone from his state particularly one who was not ashamed to profess his faith, but who also acknowledged the ways of the world.  Before taking on the responsibilities of congregation, would the new reverend consider an internship with him.  Jackson immediately accepted and before long he was seen as ‘that charming young man from Indiana’.  He made friends quickly, had an instinctive sense for understanding strengths and weaknesses and the interstices between them – that is, the very spaces where influence and sway could be had.

‘Let us pray’, said Branford, on his knees in the Senate office of one of the most influential legislators in Congress with that very senator, praying for guidance and divine support.  It was that particular, wonderful spiritual bonding which gave Branford license and free rein.  He had become trustworthy.

 

There have been many academic publications on the unusual but not uncommon nexus between sexual and spiritual attraction.  Sinclair Lewis immortalized Elmer Gantry, a country preacher with spiritual insight and sexual ambition; but the literature goes beyond fiction.  Women seem to be persuaded by a man of sexual purpose and confidence and a religious indomitability.  A relationship with him would be sexually and spiritually gratifying.

The literature cites the example of Friedrich Muller of Cologne, a man of unusual male beauty and prophetic religious insight.  He was never overbearing in his religiosity or insistent about his sexual desire.  He had that perfect blend of upper and lower world sensitivity. He was the pastor of a Lutheran Church which in 1883 was the center of religious and social affairs in the city largely because of its charismatic pastor.  Women who came to him for spiritual counseling inevitably became his lovers and all because of their willingness and desire.

It was by no means an affair of predatory sexuality so common today, but was akin to an almost Tantric community of shared sexual pleasure.  The women all felt blessed by his intimate attentions and had no jealousy towards one another.

It was this remarkable, unusual, but not unheard of character that the Reverend Branford Jackson shared; and so not long after his prayerful kneeling with the Senator, did Branford court and bed Melissa F., an aide to the Senator for economic affairs.  Just as in the case of Friedrich Muller, Melissa told her friends and colleagues about the newcomer and urged them to meet him.  Before long, the coterie – the devilish cabal some outsiders called it – had grown, a virtual harem for the young minister.

The Senator, as taken with Branford’s spiritual charisma as women were to his indelible virility, told his colleagues about him; and before long he was appointed as spiritual advisor to Congressmen on both sides of the aisle.  In a short time, he had become the Billy Graham of official Washington.

In Washington sex and power are nothing without money. The roles of Casanova and St. Francis were remunerative in only limited ways; and so it was that he through the influence of the senator and the wealthy family connections of his lovers, was able, through elegantly constructed NGO covers, pass millions to his private bank account.

‘Now, that’s success’, Branford said to no one in particular, smiling broadly, and waving to a bright young think in silk and chiffon waiting on the corner for the light to change.

Once A Conservative, Always A Conservative - It Just Takes Time To Come Out Of The Closet

Far from the early liberalism of Brandeis, Dewey, Lippmann, and Lafollette who at least grounded their fanciful notions on a practical, populist activism, progressivism today has become a circus side show, a shell game, all quick fingers and no substance; a burlesque show with tits and pasties, booty and promise but nothing for sale but wiggle; a vaudevillian act with a pull-by date, an exhausting show of  face-paint and mime; a familiar, predictable, crude repertoire.

 
Early liberalism was as ideologically shaky as present-day progressivism.   Both were founded on the conviction that progress towards a better world is possible, that Utopia is not fiction, and that with will, enterprise, and belief it can be achieved – a conviction which, given the violent , chaotic, and impossibly brutal course of history, is airy, happy, and wrong.

The early Twentieth Century liberals picked their fights carefully. Capitalism’s exploitation of labor, the central idea of Marx and Engels, was enough of an evil to require the full force of righteous action.  The rights of the working man, for so long ignored and abused by Robber Barons and their straw bosses, were to be restored.  Unionization not only meant the restoration of a countervailing force, a political equilibrium with teeth and purpose; but a moral victory.

The union movement, as discredited as it would become in later decades was at least  based on sound philosophical principle, guided by political intellect, and combining both Darwinian survival and Marxist synthesis to produce systemic change in the economic system.  Today’s progressivism is a catch-all jamboree of emotional idealism, solidarity, and good times. 

As flawed as liberalism’s faith in socialism was, it at least had a moral fulcrum.  Progressivism has no such foundational center – no one guiding philosophical principle.  In its conflation of all social ills – misogyny, homophobia, sexism, racism, economic inequality, and environmental destruction – its stuffing all America’s problems into one big grab-bag, it has lost intellectual focus.  It has become one big revival tent with only salvation, redemption, and promise in the wings.

Progressivism is a youth movement, a reprise of the Sixties demographic bubble, a time when those under thirty were the majority, collective adolescence the character, and idealism the meme.  Older liberals who cut their teeth on civil rights and Vietnam are now tolerated, but given a back seat, and expected to applaud at the prompt.  There is no room in the tent for their brand of reflection.  Logic and exegesis went out with Augustine; and passion for reform, anger at injustice, and an embrace of anything that tastes sweet and good is in.

The progressive bolus of sanctimony and righteousness has finally been coughed up.  Conservatives, and many moderate Republicans have had enough hectoring and badgering; and are rolling back the most offensive measures imposed by the hysterical claque in Washington.  The electorate today, fat and happily middle class as it may be, is no different than it was in Jefferson’s day - still individualistic, enterprising, and suspicious of government.  The more autocratic its policies and the more indifferent it is to public sentiment, the greater the people’s resentment.

This, however, is only the most obvious sequela of the reign of faux idealism. More fundamental, transformative changes are underway.   Progressives are becoming conservative.  The inevitable resetting of moral and political perspective from adolescence to maturity is happening.  Toys and tin soldiers are put away and big boy guns and cannons are replacing them.

Conservatives has always understood that the recurring cycles of history are no accident.  As Shakespeare understood when writing his histories, the actors, script, and sets of historical drama may change, but the plot remains the same.  History has been one irresistible soap opera of palace coups, family jealousies, insidious schemes, and strange bedfellows.  Regardless of character, pomp, and circumstance, the outcome of history is forgone.

As long as human nature remains unchanged, such predictability is assured; and anyone who assumes that the merry-go-round will stop and that a new world order will replace the likes of  Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot is just whistlin’ Dixie. These men were not the bloody despots of the distant past, but today’s men of influence and a future certainty.

The Twenty-first Century has begun in turn.  Vladimir Putin has invaded his small, defenseless neighbor Ukraine and has brutally caused thousands of civilian deaths, urban devastation, and a siege of destruction.  His territorialism, tribal interests, and complete carelessness about the use of power is no different from Hitler’s putsches or the marauding armies of Genghis Khan. History indeed repeats itself.

What keeps adolescent idealism alive for so long? Why is political fancy perpetuated so long after it should have gone the way of toy swords, buckles, and princess outfits? Why have history books remained gathering dust on bottom shelves? What has fed such dreams?

Perhaps more importantly how and why have age-old progressives become conservatives.  What are the mechanisms that finally re-introduce Genghis Khan, empire, and African tribal warfare into common perception? What makes formerly died-in-the-wool idealists committed democrats?

Most idealists see every repeat of history’s most nasty bits only as incentives to do more.  Progress is not denied but only delayed.  It is not that Putin’s violence is a demonstration of the perpetual resurfacing of malicious intent, but an incidental, unfortunate, unexpected blip in history from which lessons can be learned.  

Realists see his actions as expected, predictable events from which there is no evasion.  Aggression will always be an expression of human nature; and if met with equivalent force will result in peace, victory, or compromise.  The post-war environment will be changed as the result, neither better nor worse than the previous one, a temporary hiatus in the waves of self-interested advance. A modern Pax Romana.

Liberals do not become conservatives overnight.  There has to be a  gradual unclogging of arteries, more fluidity, clarity, and accelerated thought; but it takes only one illuminating event to bring the past to a close.  If, after all the predation, territorial wars, brutality, and inhumanity of the Twentieth Century, such offenses still continue; and if the same disregard for polity and community continues to be repeated despite the most optimistic predictions, there must be something to the idea of historical permanence.  Once grasped, never forgotten.  A progressive early, a conservative late, a historical imperative as conclusive as quenching a thirst.