The Left Gets Schooled - It Ain't What You Said

Americans are sick and tired of all the thumping and banging about the black man, child of the forest, attuned to Nature, a remarkable being of innate sensibility, intelligence, and principle.  Something of all this rattle does not square.  

The ghetto, just around the corner and just as dysfunctional as ever, does not seem to be the Elysium that the Left has been talking about.  If the black man were noble, highly evolved, and culturally superior, he would not be still living in the Anacostia, East Baltimore, or St. Louis slums.

 

'White racism', howls the Left - systemic, pervasive, universal hatred for the black man - is what is holding him back from Fifth Avenue penthouses, villas in St. Tropez and Rimini, summer homes on Nantucket, and unimaginable wealth. White male supremacy, they went on, that insidious, infectious, virulent curse that began in 1619 has only gotten more ingrained and nasty. 

Americans are befuddled. Everything in progressive years skewed to black - no television commercial was without a black face, or any sitcom, soap opera, or beauty pageant.  Foreigners visiting America for the first time would expect to see a nation of black people, an Africa on the Hudson; veldt, forest, and savannah from coast to coast.  Black men in boardrooms, presidencies, corporate offices - captains of industry, commanders of the fleet, men of power, influence, and import; but the reality belies the image.

 

Had the Left not confabulated such a fairy tale and faced the facts - the multivariate factors contributing to inner city poverty and dysfunction - and admitted that their years of political enslavement, entitlement, billions in walkin' around money had done nothing, white resentment and a hankering for a return to a white America would not have resulted.  Had it not been for their pigged refusal to ascribe blame and individual irresponsibility where it belonged, black communities would be given a second chance. 

The conservative approach to inner city dysfunction - an end to those programs of entitlement which condemn minorities rather than enable them, ideas long dismissed by the Left, - is now back.  

The years of progressive blandishments are now over but the damage has been done.  It will take time to shake off the Left's humiliating badgering and racist, McCarthy-era smearing, bullying, and hectoring know-it-all spite. 

Once there is a break in the wall, a leak in the dike, the deluge will follow.  Now that the racist core of progressivism has been called out and stripped it of its presumptions, the dismantling of the entire  agenda will follow.

The vanity of a gender spectrum, the notion that sexuality is an option and a free choice, that transgenderism is not a deformity but an advancement, is now outed and dismissed. In fact, the whole kit-and-kaboodle of reformist illogic will be tossed aside and left on the curb. 

LaShonda Jones, formerly Chairwoman of the DC chapter of Black Lives Matter, a woman who barely escaped indictment for embezzlement and financial fraud, sat in her office on 13th Street, and wondered where her meal ticket would come from now that Trump was in the White House.  

During the halcyon years of the Biden Administration BLM had received millions in government grants and private contributions, all intended to send a militant message to the country that racism must end.  LaShonda had reaped her share of the wealth while at the organization and left just in time to escape the scandal and the conviction of her bosses. 

Now that the causes celebres of the black movement - affirmative action, DEI, government entitlements - were being dismantled, LaShonda wondered where her bread would be buttered.  The whole BLM thing was great while it lasted, a marvelous convention of white liberals, ghetto hustlers, and young black wannabees with seemingly no ceiling to their ambitions; but too greedy to jump ship before the whole confection came unraveled and their colleagues were arrested with their hands in the till.  Now what?

While there were pockets of liberalism still to be found, the whole black thang, said Lashonda, had been coopted by ragheads, faggotry, and capitalism.  She had ridden the black stallion for years and now was left alone on the prairie.  Black lives still mattered - or rather there was still enough liberal guilt around to fund her ambitions - and she was not one to sit around and twiddle her thumbs. 

Had she and others shot their wad? Were black people actually going to be left hanging? Where was Mayor For Life, Walkin' Around Money himself Marion Barry when they most needed him.  Why, that brother could con the white man like no one, build himself a kingdom, rule the roost until he was set up by a crack whore; but even that never stopped him and back he went to Ward 8 and got re-elected as the victim of white racism and the champion of the inner city. 

'Dat white boy trouble', said Pharoah watching the parade of young, blonde, blue-eyed white girls walking up Pennsylvania Avenue to the West Wing and the Oval Office.  While there was despair and discombobulation in white progressive ranks, he was not taking Trump's accession lying down.  There must be money to be made somewhere. 

Meanwhile the white rout continued and there was no place to hide.  Elon Musk and his DOGE juggernaut was just the beginning, and the bulldozers were already lined up on the Frederick Douglass Bridge across the Anacostia ready to roll into the ghetto in a massive, Nazi-like Kristallnacht pogrom. 

Of course conservatives didn't see it that way. The charade of the ghetto, its scams, Ponzi schemes, and white liberal cons were about to end along with every other Leftist circus act.  No place to run, no place to hide. There was a new captain of the ship and the rats were already scurrying down the gangplank. 

'God-damn', said Pharoah Jones when he saw one of Trump's white girls walk through the North Gate of the White House up the stairs to the portico, and into Marine Hall. He had been the black Casanova to young white interns come to Washington during the Biden Administration, but these Trump women were another story altogether.  Hard to get, blacks need not apply women.  A challenge but like everything now in Washington, a bit harder for the brothers. 

 

Be that as it may, the Democratic leadership had more important things to think about than black men's ambitions.  Progressives were on the run, no shelter from the storm.  Every one of their shibboleths was coming down, the whole country was turning into a rabid white mob.  The President was having none of their grief. 

Race, gender, ethnicity, DEI, the inner city, minority solidarity, gender diversity, and the distribution of wealth were goners; and in their place...Progressives were disconsolate as it was with the dismantling of cherished programs but the 'You ain't seen nothing yet' mantra of the White House was seriously unsettling to say the least. 

'Thank God for Donald Trump', said Elizabeth Parrington, Georgetown hostess and matron, longstanding heir to the social graces of Alice Longworth Roosevelt.  'We are back', code words called out by the few liberals invited to her home one Friday evening, hearing only her patently European homage and elitist branding. 

They were right of course.  White, old-guard Europeanists - the few that were left - were enthusiastic about the changes in Washington and the thing of it was, their modestly stated feelings were echoes beyond the Potomac. 

'The fuckin' Left's been schooled'. 

Deconstructing Donald Trump - How Progressives Finally Get The Picture

Donald Trump is not exactly a recondite character.  What you see is what you get.  You may not like it, but there he is, all Sturm und Drang, braggadocio, outrageously incorrect, bombast, and snarky humor. 'Get over it', he says. 

In the decade that Trump has been on the political scene, the Left has tried to discredit him.  They have branded him a racist, homophobe, misogynist, rapist, and crook.  They have filed lawsuit after lawsuit to bring him down, to put him behind bars, to be done with him once and for all.  They have accused him of treason, Constitutional abuse, autocracy, and regal ambitions. 

Nothing has stuck.  Nothing has worked.  He gave Kamala Harris a thrashing at the polls, and in the seven months of his presidency, he has made good on every one of his promises.  He has slashed and burned the bloated, useless Washington bureaucracy.  He has ridiculed and removed absurdist woke notions of race, gender, and ethnicity.  

Voters are coming to realize that apart from the Left's wild, Trump-hating dances of doom, warnings of environmental incineration, and pulp fiction sexuality, there is nothing there.  A palsied St. Vitus' dance; a pie with no filling; a barque with rotting hawsers. 

Bob Muzelle, a social reformer, a dyed-in-the-wool progressive, the son of socialist garment worker activists, community organizers and blacklisted but proud seditionists, was unrepentant and unbowed in his determination to see justice done and to see the great defiler out of office, disgraced, and gone. 

Every day of Trump's presidency was painful to watch.  The more he saw blonde, blue-eyed white women go in and out of the White House, the Oval Office turned into a KKK meeting hall, and the cause of the oppressed black man dismissed and ignored, the more he hated the man and what he stood for. 

But Bob, a Yale man trained in Cartesian logic and the insights of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Paul Weiss, felt he should at least try to deconstruct the President, disassemble the man to make sense of his appeal.  How could such an intellectual fraud, such an imposter, a tout, a political pimp have gotten so far; and how could tens of millions of Americans have voted for him?

What Muzelle and his colleagues missed is that Donald Trump is the first real American president - a loud, uncultured, bullying, crass, and pushy example of the American ethos; a man of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the streets of New York. A 'So, sue me, fuck you, prove it' kind of guy who escorts tarty women, has more palaces than a pasha, has unmitigated chutzpah and a Borscht Belt crippling humor, and believes in the Wild West. 

For a century, Americans were led by social elites - the Roosevelts of Hyde Park, the Kennedys of Hyannisport, the Bushes of Kennebunk - or political elites, insiders who made government their bread and butter, LBJ and Nixon, poor boys who resented the patrician Harvard Kennedys.  

Finally a real man of the people, Donald Trump, comes along - not only a political populist but a man who subscribes to every American dream - glitz, glamour, arm candy, sequins, and gawdy jewelry.  Fame, big showy, big-busted, silk-suited American fame. 

The Left simply does not to do with the man, so unlike any other politician that has come across their bow.  'Give 'em hell' Harry Truman, as outspokenly prairie as any, was never in the same league as Trump, as foul-mouthed as any barroom brawler, gunslinger, or teamster.  

While the Left desperately hoped for a Kamala Harris victory - not because of her progressive ideas but that she was a black woman, the very embodiment of the racial reconfiguration of America and another step up the social ladder for a black person to the top of the human pyramid - their hopes were dashed completely by this unabashedly white, European-loving, economic primitivist.  

It was not to be.  The Left is scattered, in disarray, and grasping for purchase on a sinking ship.  After decades of social nostrums, political larks, and self-righteous assumptions, they are scrambling for policy.  How indeed, and on what proven principles, historical precedent, philosophical logic would they lead the nation?

Yet, despite the urgency, the abysmal ratings in opinion polls, and the mid-term elections coming up soon, they can only come up with the impossibly unelectable has-beens Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders. 

 

Meanwhile the Trump juggernaut gains momentum with executive orders, political fiat, lawsuits, legislative initiatives, restatements of ethos and core foundational principles.  The country was changing right before Bob Muzelle's eyes and he could only stand by and watch.  He was tongue-tied and flummoxed. He sputtered.  He babbled. 

The cat was out of the bag.  The emperor had no clothes on. There were only two sexes, the black man had a long way to go before even touching the bottom rung of the social ladder, the free market, as old as Neanderthal trading of cowrie beads was still alive with a vengeance; and entitlement, racial preference, and feel-good giveaways were things of the past.  

Guns were back on the shelves and open-carry permits now available to all. The development of deadly modern armaments was underway, free speech was back, and the old incorrect Eddie Murphy 'Raw' live performances back in vogue. 

Still Bob hesitated - understanding all this seemed just within his reach when the old bile seeped up his esophagus and choked him.  The old Trump hatred would simply not go away.  It had become so much a part of his personal zeitgeist that he couldn't let go. 

It remains to be seen whether he will at some point look at the parade of white, blonde, spectacularly nubile and beautiful young things walking down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and want to join them.  At his age desire is about all he will have, but a man is not a man if he doesn't always want sweet, young, blonde things in bed with him. 

Can You Love A Racist? Of Course You Can

Writing in the New York Times Jennifer Finney Boylan, a transgender woman, wonders whether the Salvation Army should be universally condemned for its conservative views on gender and LGBTQ.  Or, should this one ‘fault’ be overlooked in light of the decades of selfless service to the poor?

We have all been faced with this dilemma one way or another.  After years of bad haircuts, a man finally found a barber who could deal with his wild, curly hair. The problem with the barber, however, was that he was a racist – so instinctively and angrily so that he simply assumed that his client agreed with him.  Every time he got into the chair, the barber started in on on blacks.  There wasn’t an epithet invented that he didn’t use, no stereotype left behind; no story of rape, assault, irresponsibility, and laziness untold.  It was 45 minutes of vitriol and hate.

Yet, despite and through this assault, he was as magical as Edward Scissorhands.  He was a master.

After a year of this, the client had had enough. His unease at hearing the fevered rants of Tony the barber trumped his delight at having a decent haircut.  No matter how good he was a cutting hair – and he was a genius – the client judged him to be a bad person.

Yet this judgement might be the first slide on a slippery slope.  If one judged the Tonys of the world on just one thing, no matter how reprehensible it may seem, then why shouldn’t one judge others in the same way?  It takes all kinds, and clients sit in Tony’s chair to get a haircut, not to engage him in racial politics.  Why not simply tune him out?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great, courageous man; but he was also a Lothario who cheated on his wife and was more of a sexual wastrel than JFK.  Did these moral failings disqualify both men from leadership or high public office?

Many women immediately disqualified Bill Clinton from any further political consideration after he had sex with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. If he cheated on his wife, they said, he will most certainly cheat on us. Yet the Bill Clinton years look good in the light of recent White House debacles.

Ezra Pound and H.L. Mencken were both rabid anti-Semites, but their work was notable.  Immanuel Kant said, “'The Jews still cannot claim any true genius, any truly great man. All their talents and skills revolve around stratagems and low cunning ... They are a nation of swindlers.”

George Bernard Shaw said, “Stop being Jews and start being human beings”. Theodore Dreiser said, “New York is a 'kike's dream of a ghetto,' and Jews are not 'pure Americans' and 'lack integrity”.
Are we to burn their books? Consign them to the trash heaps of literary history? 

It doesn’t take much scraping of the surface to find something in public, literary, scientific, sports, or Hollywood to offend our current sensibilities. Mel Gibson, a decent actor, is also a raging anti-Semite. Gay slurs are common in our football and basketball heroes.  

Wilt Chamberlain boasted of the fact that he had slept with 1000 women and the clock was still ticking.  In many people’s mind he was a degenerate, a profligate, and irresponsible.  Yet, he was one of the greatest basketball players ever and changed forever the way the game of professional basketball was played.

Most people have some prejudice somewhere. While we may not like to admit it, there is some irrational, unfounded, and totally unnecessarily negative feelings about others lurking inside us.
It is often hard to distinguish between prejudice and strongly-held and rational belief.  The progressive Left in America has been at the forefront of the cancel culture - personality, character, courage, honesty, fidelity, humor are of no concern, relevance, or interest if someone is on the wrong side of the race-gender-ethnicity canon. 

Thomas Jefferson has been cancelled because of his slaveholding and worse, his affair with a slave. In fact everyone of the slaveholding era from Washington to Franklin, New Bedford shippers involved in the Three Cornered Trade, New England contractors who built the ships carrying slaves, molasses, and rum, Wall Street investors who lent the money for the enterprise has been cancelled and their achievements, historical significance, social status and recognition all dismissed. 

Slavery is as old as civilization itself and every race - black, white, Asian, African, European - has at one time been enslaved.  It has always been the prerogative of the victor, the conqueror, the ruler.  How and why should Americans living within this millennia-old context be cancelled for their participation in it.  If Aristotle, Plato, Aeschylus, and Socrates had slaves; if Caesar Augustus, Xerxes II, and the great Gupta and Mauryan kings have slaves, why should Jefferson be singled out? 

Without the active participation of African tribal leaders who routinely took, captured and sold slaves taken in warfare, and who saw great profit in selling them to European trades, there would be no Transatlantic slave market.

 

What about the ‘disqualification clause’? Should one cut off communication with a friend because his political views are radically different? Perhaps such difference is not just a matter of political opinion, but one of morals and ethics.  One’s political philosophy, according to this view, is a defining personal characteristic.  A conservative is not simply one who believes in small government and individual enterprise but someone who has a cribbed and narrow view of life, lacks generosity and compassion, and is cynical about human potential.

Yet, despite political differences, if two friends have known each other since childhood and have always liked each other for reasons discovered at age twelve – energy, enthusiasm, brains, allure, adventure - why should one thing – political philosophy – get in the way of love, passion, and insight?

There are Northerners who condemn anyone visiting the Deep South - traitors to liberalism, giving succor to still unrepentant racists.  Yet without understanding the South, one can never understand American history.

 

Is it wrong to have friends who persistently harbor racist beliefs? Or whose political views are so far to the left or right on one's own that they are dismissed out of hand?

Which brings us to the question of Ms. Boylan, LGBTQ, and the Salvation Army. While her experience is upfront and personal, it raises once again the issue of ‘unique wrong’. Without a doubt the Salvation Army – a Christian conservative church – holds traditional views of sexuality which have little or nothing to do with the performance of their mission.  The Boy Scouts also have a conservatively Christian foundation, and their views are predictably similar to those of the Salvation Army. 

The Catholic Church is very open about its views of traditional marriage, sex, and sexuality. Should these organizations be ignored?  A dismissal of homosexuality on Biblical grounds is not homophobia.  If the Salvation Army and its leadership were openly hostile to LGBTQ, and displayed hatred, anger, and virulence towards gays; and if this emotional and irrational stance were clearly that of the organization, then one might consider withholding contributions, but not before.

Ms. Boylan illustrates the difference well:

That knowledge put an end to my days as one of their [Salvation Army] volunteers. The organization advocated celibacy for homosexuals and resisted offering benefits to employees’ same-sex partners. Then, shockingly, a major in an Australian branch of the Salvation Army appeared to suggest in an interview that putting gay people to death was “part of our belief system.”

The American Salvation Army was acting on principle, whether or not one agreed with it.  The branch of the Australian Army exhibited hatred, prejudice, and unacceptable behavior. Ms. Boylan, or any reasonable person would keep them at arm’s length.

One issue morality like single-issue politics is never good for it  ignores complexity, the ability to hold conflicting views, to be inconsistent, and to be ignorant and brilliant at the same time.

The Man With The Big Brain - A Cautionary Tale

Bob Holsom was proud of his big brain - not his intelligence per se, but the size of his brain which he thought was remarkable, for he had developed this theory that the larger the frontal lobes, the greater the intellectual capacity. 

He was proud of his large forehead, accentuated by a receding hairline, and was quick to share his theory with anyone who would listen.  He had a parlor game - although with very serious intent - that he liked to play with colleagues.  The one who could take the longest time to draw a straight line from Point A to Point B, a few inches only, would be the smartest. 

Bob had devised the theory based on his 'Concentration Paradigm' which stated that people with the mental discipline to focus on small tasks and continue to do so until their completion, were of higher intelligence. 

Christopher Barkley, for example, spent whole nights in his basement studio drawing intricate pine trees, each needle done with one, irreversible stroke.  He had learned this technique in China where he had studied classical painting with Liu Tze Xi - a technique that combined traditional Chinese ink drawing with Zen Buddhism.

 

Christopher had read everything he could on the martial arts and especially swordsmanship, the highest expression of pure Zen concentration.  For hours he would sit in the lotus position in his room reading  Haiku and imagining the sound of one hand clapping, the paradoxical Zen koan which symbolized the evanescent nature of reality; and then start work on his trees. 

Each branch took hours, for the concentration and mental preparation for each stroke took time - the stoke must be accurate, perfect, and pure.  When he emerged from his studio into the bright light of morning, tired and unfocussed from the effort of such miniscule, close work, he pulled down the shades.  He needed time and space to adjust to the transition from pure concentration to the diffuse, random sights and sounds of the day. 

 

Christopher was not only a gifted Zen artist, but a mathematician and musician.  There was obviously some carryover, some neurological links between the parts of he brain responsible for each discipline, or perhaps all three were part of the same brain architecture and all subject to his recall. 

In any case Bob was fascinated by Christopher, the son of one of his colleagues, and asked if he could observe him for scientific reasons, nothing more.  At first the young man hesitated, for it would mean that he would be observed during his long nights at his drawing board and followed during his recitals and MIT classes in logarithmic calculus; but after little persuasion agreed. 

Now, there was no scientific research on record that made any association between frontal lobes, concentration, and high intelligence, so Bob, rather than undeterred, undertook his own observations with renewed vigor.  He found, recruited, and paid volunteers with prominent foreheads - the external sign of large frontal lobes - reviewed their academic records and gave them the line test. 

Most of the volunteers quit after ten or fifteen minutes - Bob paid them regardless of how long they held the pen - and were convinced that he was 'a little off', happy to have some spending money but deciding never to return to Bob's makeshift laboratory - a windowless room in the basement of Markum Hall. 

In fact Bob, who was convinced that he was the example of frontal lobe intelligence, was alien-looking in appearance - an exceedingly large head and unusually prominent forehead set atop a long neck and bony body - but he was proud of it and did everything possible to accentuate it. He would tilt his head at just the right moments in the right light and shadows, sweep his hair theatrically back in a gesture which would expose the wide reaches of his forehead, and hold his head in his hands, covering all but his forehead. 

Christopher, like Bob's laboratory volunteers, found his presence annoying and his premise doubtful, and politely told him that his busy schedule could no longer accommodate this additional responsibility. 

Word of Bob's obsession spread in the small town where he lived, and before long, he was passed by.  Small towns are like that, enclosures of settled propriety; but Bob was still surprised at how he became a laughing stock.  When children passed him on the street, they pointed to their foreheads, googled their eyes and stuck out their tongues, and adults in line at the post office couldn't help but stare at his head, now appearing even larger thanks to the distortions of gossip and fable-telling. 

Bob's job as Senior Accountancy Clerk at the New Brighton National Bank was perfect for him, for his days were spent in the minutiae of adding and subtracting.  Although he felt that his intelligence was far greater than what was required of him at the bank, he found his ability to concentrate on the smallest, most insignificant details of money transfers, deposits, and withdrawals satisfying and proof of his uniqueness. 

At first Bob had looked for girlfriends with large foreheads - mating with a like individual would be sure to produce the first of a long lineage of superiorly endowed children - but those that met his stringent criteria were so ashamed of what they considered their deformity, that they hid in the shadows, wallflowers by choice.  Homeliness is as homeliness does, and these women because of their misshapenness became homely in spirit - a humorless, dour lot. 

Bob, despite his peculiar and particular anatomical focus, had been brought up in a traditional home - pretty mom, and especially good-looking dad who had an eye for the ladies and one of whose first bits of wisdom passed on to his son was, 'Women want it as much as we do, Bob' a homily meant to discourage usual male adolescent timidity. 

Bob's father in fact felt under special obligation to encourage his son who had unfortunately inherited none of the attractive genes of his parents and looked sadly like his Uncle Harry, a misshapen thing with a basso profundo voice who ruined every Christmas dinner with his stories of Borneo. 

So it was no surprise that Bob was attracted to the prettiest girls in his class, and although he had no success with them, he never lost interest.  So, scientific inquiry, self-image, and sexual desire all conflicted and in the usual approach-avoidance situations (Havelock Ellis) he pined for female company but spent nights alone. 

If he was to be an eccentric recluse, then he might as well take advantage of the isolation that came with it.  He applied to a number of graduate school departments of Neuro-psychology and sent them examples of his work.  Not surprisingly he heard back from none of them. 

Undaunted Bob kept up his work and after a year completed 'On Frontal Lobe Pathology - Pathway To Genius', a four-hundred page self-published book he hoped would gain him the recognition he had always expected and felt he deserved. 

Amazon took it for a fee - in these days of AI and electronic marketing, it cost them nothing to put the book for sale - but interest was desultory at best and trickled off to nothing. 

So, old Triple B (Big Brained Bob) kept on at the bank.  The New Brighton Herald did a Style Section piece on Bob - 'How Big Is Your Brain - Time To Measure Up' and for a time he was in the spotlight but not exactly the Nobel variety he wished. In fact because the piece was a tongue-in-cheek bit of snarky journalistic bravado, he was even more of a side show attraction than before. 

Somewhere along the way he got religion.  He had been taken by the physiognomy of some of the Church's most revered, although lesser known saints, all of whom were noted for their miracles and their unusual appearance.  St. Lucinda Parra de Montoya had been a nun in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Quito when the Virgin Mary appeared to her and told her to go out among the people, which she did and cured a mortally ill girl of twelve.  Her miracle and - to Bob - her phrenology, were impressive. Maybe there was a link between spiritual destiny and the frontal lobes as well. 

Bob never did find a suitable mate, and was supposedly seen in Coeur d'Alene in a forest community of 'anti-socialists', men and women who rejected bourgeois America and lived in an environment of complete intellectual fantasy where any idea was given attention and immediately absorbed as received wisdom. 

A fitting end to his life if it was true - finally a congenial home for a man with unusual ideas that fit nowhere except in a place where that was exactly the point.  

'Are We Alone?' - Donald Trump To Declassify Roswell UFO Files

Every American who has gazed at the night sky and wondered at the billions of stars twinkling in the universe has asked the question, 'Are we alone?' Now, with the President's order to declassify and make public The Roswell Files, we may know.

  

There have been sightings galore in America. Hundreds of pilots have reported strange-looking objects, festooned with lights, crossing their paths and then disappearing just as suddenly as they appeared; and hundreds more observers on earth have reported incidents of unexplained lights travelling across the sky, object hurtling from one end of the horizon to the other, silent, hovering craft which would disappear in an instant. 

There have been simply too many such reports for the Army to deny any such thing.  Veteran Air Force captains with hundreds of hours in the cockpit of F-16 fighter jets, seasoned commercial pilots who have flown every approved world flight path, and responsible private pilots in their Pipers and Cessnas who had traversed the United States from east to west all have reported unexplained, unidentified flying objects. 

The reports of actual earth sightings of space aliens and even abductions have been fewer but not inconsiderable; and although they were discounted as the science fiction fantasies of mentally disturbed people, there have been enough of them to at least shelve them for future reference. 

Billy Ray Parsons of Aberdeen, Mississippi, was coming home from a Mississippi State Bulldogs football game when he saw a large, illuminated, flying object land on the prairie between Starkville and Columbus, and strange, sylph-like, attenuated figures descend from it and approach him.  He stopped his car, got out, and shaded his eyes against the bright lights of the ship from which the figures had come.

He said he wasn't frightened, and on the contrary felt a sensation of peaceful happiness.  He smiled and waved to the creatures, welcoming them.  

Then, as suddenly as they had come, they disappeared.  They and their ship were gone, the prairie was again silent, dark, and empty, and Billy Ray wondered if he had imagined it all. 

This 'sighting' was of course dismissed as pure fantasy.  The event was no different than the thousands portrayed in pulp fiction and sci-fi comics.  Wraith-like aliens descending a brightly-lit space ship and walking gracefully towards the observer? Straight out of Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, stock footage, personal outtakes from hundreds of pages of comics and hundreds ore B-films. 

And yet....what if the reality were the reverse?  That the films and comic books were accurate depictions of a collective consciousness? Unlikely, but epistemologically quite possible.  Wasn't it Karl Jung who wrote extensively about this phenomenon? That we all are part of a universal perceptual experience that transcends time and history?

The stories of abductions were noted (as the Roswell Files would show) and recorded but with less patience and even less credibility than any other reported alien contacts.  Nevertheless, the archives were filled with tales of star travel. 

Not only the casual observer but the theoretical mathematician both come up with the same conclusion.  If the universe is infinite and expanding, and if it is filled with untold fantastical numbers of galaxies many of which have planets, the chances of intelligent life on any one of them is good.   Only a blind faith in the uniqueness of thee human race and an all-knowing, omnipotent, and omnipresent God have stood in the way of the facts. 

Perhaps the most telling sign of credence - that is belief the existence of extraterrestrial life - was the convocation of the Southern Baptist Convention to discuss Christianity's response to alien life.  Can they be saved?

 

At the convention may hypotheses were proposed - Jesus is God for the universe, and he will be known throughout it, so no need for evangelism.  Aliens are godless creatures in need of salvation and should be treated no differently than the tree-worshipping savages in Africa.  Aliens have their own God who is even more powerful than the Judeo-Christian one; and many more.  The only point being that these pastors who have long contemplated God and his Creation were seriously considering worlds beyond this one. 

Perhaps even more telling is the fact that deep in the underground warrens of the Pentagon, there is an ET (Extra-Terrestrial) unit.  As slight as the chances are for a hostile alien invasion force, it cannot be ignored.  Semper Paratus, the famous Marine Corps logo, was not meant only for earthly enemies. 

Philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists have long studied the possible impact of an alien arrival on earth.  In one fell swoop it would deny the millennia-long assumption that we are God's specially-favored creatures, that we are the intelligent life in the universe, and that we therefore rule.  What if the aliens were more intelligent? Not just quicker at calculations but able to do unimaginable things with their intelligence, create things out of nothing, be in two places at the same time, transform themselves from substance to light to energy? Act like God?

Alexander Hamilton argued long and hard with Thomas Jefferson about the nature of governance of the new American republic.  There must be some intermediary between the masses and supreme leadership - a body not unlike the British House of Lords filled with men of absolute rectitude, intellectual sophistication, and aristocratic principles which would filter the expected fol-de-rol coming from the unwashed.  Jefferson disagreed.  Nothing, he said, should interrupt or impede the will of the majority. 

Of course Hamilton was right. America is a morally chaotic nation, one without a central, guiding ethos, irretrievably scattered and politically balkanized into meaningless categories, and hopelessly ignorant about the workings of the world. 

Which is why United States governments - even those in power during progressive, socially caretaking years - have kept the Roswell Files secret.  If knowledge that a superiorly intelligent alien race was alive and well in the universe and had ideas for earth were known to this admixture of unschooled Americans, disaster would follow.  If COVID was any example - store shelves depleted in hours, rampant hoarding, frightening lockdowns and horrific pronouncements of doom - then imagine what things would be like if the existence of an extraterrestrial race were known. 

So it with expectation and not some trepidation that the President is about to declassify and publish The Roswell Files.  The nation is already abuzz with the likely release of the Epstein files and that's nothing compared to this.  Who cares who consorted with that buggering pedophile anyway?  Washington has always been a moral sinkhole; but this is a different story altogether. 

 

'Either there are or there aren't', said the President with his usual sangfroid, referring to extraterrestrial beings. 'Man up, deal with it', he said as anxious hands shot up from the press corps. 'What could be worse than four years of Sleepy Joe?'. 

The President vowed no editing, no redacting, no black Sharpie deletions.  The American public has a right to know, he went on.  My administration is all about transparency. 

There were of course alleged leaks of the files - unconfirmed reports that declassification would finally confirm the existence of non-human beings, that they had already been among us and had mated with us, beginning a new hybrid race that would populate Mars, etc. - but Americans were told to sit tight and wait. 'Trust me', the President said. 

The day of revelation is not far off, and we will not have to wait much longer.  Epstein, AOC, Putin, Iran, and bad Canadian air will soon be off the front page.  Most of us are convinced that we have been visited before, and if the Roswell Files tell us anything different, we won't believe them anyway; but all in all, we can't wait.  

The Journey Of An Unscrupulous Woman - From Simple Girl To Washington Comer, A Very American Success Story

Summer Forsythe - her name was thanks to the beautiful July day on which she was born - had been a precocious child, good at everything she tried her hand at but easily bored by the effort.  All the pliés, turnouts, and balletic steps of Mrs. Linder's dance class were a colossal waste of time, she thought, too young to articulate her growing feelings of special destiny and the frustration caused by nonsensical things put in her way. 

 

She was good at math - surprising for a girl, her teacher Mr. Grady suggested to Mr. Steege, the Headmaster of Muirwood Country Day School who had some ideas of his own for the precocious little girl who sat in the front row of his history class. 

 'A nymphet', he mused, thinking of Nabokov's Lolita, a delicious young thing that Humbert Humbert pursued to the very end; but of course Steege, principal of a school for well-behaved and brought-up children of New Brighton's upper classes, couldn't allow himself such thoughts and quickly turned to Reconstruction and the harsh punishment the radical Republican Congress inflicted on the South. 

Steege was a closet apologist for the Cavalier South, lover of antebellum mansions, hoop skirts, magnolia blossoms, and mint juleps. 'Now, those were the days', Steege was often heard saying about the glorious days of ladies and gentlemen, long allées of live oaks, grand lawns sweeping down towards the river, carriages, elegantly dressed men and women coming to dine.  Yet these sentiments, he felt, were contrary to the censorious sentiments of the day, so he stuck to the facts and figures of slavery, servitude, and free labor. 

In any case, and despite Steege's somewhat unconventional views, he was right about Summer. She was indeed a nymphet, a pre-pubescent girl with very post-pubescent desires, a dangerous girl, a girl to be reckoned with, a girl to be avoided at all costs. 

She was dismissive of boys her age, too infantile to know any better, and was seen with the upper form soccer players, going off in their Jaguars and Mercedes to road houses and raves in Wethersfield without her parents' consent of course, but destiny being what it was, Mom and Dad were kindly but insignificant. 

The exclusive New England school where she prepped for college wasn't quite sure what to do with this obviously brilliant but seductively devious girl.  They prided themselves on diversity, but weren't prepared for the kind Summer represented - a willful, demanding, girl seemingly untethered from any moral principle; arrogant to the point of dismissal but headed for some kind of recognition, her teachers all agreed. 

 

So, Harvard it was, la creme de la creme, only the best for her, and she whizzed through advanced calculus, number theory, and abstract mathematics so quickly that there was nothing for her in the undergraduate curriculum, so she took classes at MIT. 

Far too 'geeky' a place for her, she returned to her Cambridge apartment in the evening, dressed for a night out, and headed to Boston - Charlestown to be exact, the neighborhood which has produced more bank robbers and thieves than any community of comparable size, a tough place with the kind of tough guys Summer wanted to try out. Her life would be filled with men like these, perhaps not so crude, but with the same violent misbehavior to which she was drawn. 

She took up with Albert Flannagan, 'construction worker' hoodlum, known to the FBI but elusive enough to remain on the streets.  She met him in a bar, and he, a sucker for beautiful blonde townies like her, made a move to which she responded quickly.  They would teach each other things, special things. 

Of course Charlestown and Flannagan were just whistle stops on her way ahead, so after a few years at MIT - the most promising PhD in theoretical mathematics the university had ever seen - she headed to Washington for a position with Defense Intelligence.  Code breaking, the stock in trade of smart mathematicians since Alan Turing, was her assignment; but it wasn't long before that became a sidelight.  She hadn't come to Washington to fiddle with numbers. 

All well and good, except that the casual observer could not really believe that any woman could possibly have the combination of a precocious, demanding sexuality and intellectual brilliance.  One or the other would be enough in anyone; but here was the exception to the rule.  A woman of remarkable intelligence, irresistible allure, and Nietzschean will.  God did not make many like her. 

This, however, is exactly the kind of woman that Washington thrives on - an amoral, ambitious, highly intelligent and sexually savvy woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants; a woman that Washington Type A men found irresistible.  After all sexual challenge was no different than geopolitical conflict, both requiring degrees of insight, calculation, and intimidation. 

Her job at the Defense Department was her entree to official Washington.  Such a high-level appointment to a clandestine service was her key card.  Enough said, doors opened; and so it was that Summer's real career began. 

It began with a Western Congressman in whose district was vast wealth - millions of tons of the rare earth elements that are essential for all cell phones and computers.  Although he was a rube, a simpleton who was elected thanks to his homespun offerings long before lanthanum was discovered in the ground, he was treated like royalty after its discovery.  Any politician sitting on that treasure would be sought after, and because of his eager ingenuousness, he was an easy mark.  

Summer wanted his attention, and because of her calling card bypassed the supplicants crowding into his antechamber and met the man in private.  Intelligence and quickness of wit were not the issue with this clueless man but sexual interest was.  Pulling out her divining rod, Summer knew after a few passes what his heart desired, and in a marvelously-woven fantasy of sexual innuendo and promise, she hooked him and reeled him in. 

The affair was managed well and surprisingly for Washington was never suspected let alone found out; and before long she was privy to the most profitable arrangements the Congressman had with Zephyr Mining, Inc., the principal company selected to mine, process, and sell the increasingly valuable earth elements sitting under the Congressman's feet.  Not only was she privy to them, she was invited to share the wealth.  

 

Her code-breaking was excellent cover.  If needs be, her moonlighting for Zephyr could easily be explained as a national security enterprise; but there was no need, and with the occasional sexual favors provided to the Congressman and the promise of many more to the CEO of Zephyr, the deal was as locked tight as could be. 

Why is this story so troubling to many? Washington is known for its amoral venality, for its unabashed ambition, and its limitless hunger for power and money; so why the fuss about a young, attractive, brilliant woman who took advantage of all of it?

Feminists should be happy that such a woman existed - a woman of brilliance, independence, and will who used her feminine allure to good advantage over men.  Men of power and ambition should be happy to cross swords with an equal, regardless of gender.  All of Washington should be pleased to welcome one of their own. 

Only the governed, the credulous Americans who vote in the likes of Congressman X and ignore the shenanigans in the Capitol and on K Street, would be unhappy to hear of Summer's cavorting.  A nice girl like that, imagine. 

Like most comers, she came, made her fortune, and left the bank.  Her whereabouts are unknown although there have been alleged sightings in Coeur d'Alene, Biloxi, and Martha's Vineyard.  The only unfortunate part of all this is that this marvelously American story will never be told. Few people will ever know of the genius of Summer Forsythe and how she took official Washington for a ride they will never forget. 

The Epstein List - No Surprises There Except One

Of course Donald Trump's name is on the Jeffrey Epstein list as well as a hundred others of the Washington establishment. There is nothing new or surprising about the sexual affairs of state, the basic perk of office, the sine qua non of political life.  Why would one get into politics if there were not some reward?

 

The list of philanderers, adulterers, cheats, and cads is endless, from the high-end JFK who bedded starlets and spies, to the low-end LBJ who used the Secret Service to pimp for him, an easy job because the busy President simply wanted sex, any sex, as often as an African man for whom, to paraphrase the old Italian adage, 'Una giornata senza sesso è come una giornata senza sole'. 

Former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, enjoyed weekend trysts with call girls in the honeymoon suite of the Mayflower.  When outed and asked why, he said he said as a busy man doing the nation's business, he had no time for love. He was dunned out of office for his indiscretions, but insisted that he had done no wrong. 

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, an important French politician in line for the presidency, outed for having orgiastic sex with prostitutes at all night Paris parties. 'How was I to know they were prostitutes?', he replied. 'All women look the same with their clothes off'. The glorious chutzpah of the man!

Every President in US history with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter who admitted that he lusted after women but never acted on his desires has had affairs.  Even the jowly, humorless Richard Nixon had his cinq a septs and joined the Roosevelts, Taft, and old, pinched, sour Calvin Coolidge in infidelity. 

'Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac', said Henry Kissinger, an elixir for the men who have it and for the women who want it.  Former French Presidents Sarkozy and Mitterrand were not shy about their affairs.  Sarkozy's lover had a bedchamber in the Elysees Palace, and Mitterrand's mistress and illegitimate daughter stood grieving by his grave along with his wife and children.

The one surprise on the Epstein list was that of Macdonald Roberts who because he was far more adept at bald chicanery than Frank Abagnale, Jr., Ferdinand Demara, The Great Imposter, Rudy Kurniawan, wine fraudster, and Bernie Madoff all put together, was unheard of and unknown.  And yet he was Epstein's pimp extraordinaire, his go-between, his fixer, a man in the shadows, slipping in and out of the light, working his seductive magic, without which Epstein's stable would have been empty. 

Roberts was a magician, a trickster who sold twenty-volume phantom sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica when he as a college student, made thousands as a tin man, conning homeowners into imaginary aluminum siding, graduated into Glen Garry, Glen Ross investment fraud, and then worked his way into Washington where the real money was as a comer, a political genius, a campaign strategist, and - to the point of this story - high-class gofer for Jeffrey Epstein. 

Yes, Epstein was a pedophile, sex magnet, Barnum & Bailey showman with  mansions, yachts, five-star everything as honeypots for young girls and fabulously exotic weekends for the rich and famous. 

However, without Macdonald Roberts, he never would have had the company of the best and the brightest.  You see, Roberts in addition to being the master impersonator and the consummate con man, was also a brilliant sexual intermediary.  At a glance he knew exactly what Congressman X wanted in bed, or what Senator Y dreamed of, or what West Wing Aide Z had once imagined but never had.  

Macdonald had a divining rod, an almost magical sense of finding human weakness and making the satisfaction of prurient desire seem as normal as buying a loaf of bread.  He was a genius and was recognized by Epstein early on.  The unidentified man in the background of photos with the young Donald Trump and Epstein was Macdonald as was the one on the private plane bound for the Epstein manor in the Caribbean.  

 

Invisibility was part of his con, part of the necessary subterfuge to keep a fantastically successful business going.  Epstein showered millions on him, and he was gifted millions more by grateful johns. 

To be honest, it didn't take much for Macdonald to play the part of brilliant sexual entrepreneur.  Washington has always been the locus of sexual desire - the place to be to feel the testosterone surge and the heady aphrodisiac of power.  Politicians cheated, lied, and misinformed to hide their indiscretions; but soon after their tearful apologies went right ahead with their sexual escapades and bald excuses. 

Senator John Edwards tapped a close aide to claim paternity of his bastard child, the Governor of North Carolina who went on a fugue to Buenos Aires to join his Argentine lover, said he had been hiking the Appalachian Trail.  Newt Gingrich left his wife to die of cancer in a Washington hospital while he cavorted with his paramour.  

Televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart bawled on prime time television, begging for forgiveness for his sexual wanderings, and promising to return to the righteous, holy path of Jesus; and no sooner did the wailing and rending of garments pass, then he was found in flagrante delicto with an Arkansas chippie.  Incorrigible, reprehensible for a man of God perhaps, but no man can resist the enticements of a beautiful young woman. 

Sexual meandering is Washington's perfect storm - men of power, older men, in the heady atmosphere of privilege and renown cannot possibly resist blandishment and seduction.  Men like Donald Trump who as a young real estate mogul enjoyed every last bit of the New York sexual free-for-all, partying like a trooper, loving sequins, tinsel, and faux diamonds, squiring the city's most desirable women and loving its libertine, anything-goes life, never thought much about consequences.  Rich men didn't have to. 

There have been high-class call girl rings in Washington since the beginning.  While Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton managed their own sexual affairs - beautiful mulatto slave women were there for the having - it wasn't long before the business of selling sexual favors became a growing concern. 

The famous Madame X whose sexual empire was a Fortune 500-worthy enterprise, ran a successful high-end bordello for Washington's power brokers, and her lists which were made public were exhaustive.  Politicians went scurrying for cover during the scandal, but America forgives easily, and with heartfelt apologies, they were forgiven, pardoned, and welcomed back. 

Now, God only knows what awful things Jeffery Epstein and his wife arranged - allegations of child sexual abuse, pornography, sexual slavery, and worse have been alleged and some proven; and Epstein was likely murdered in prison to keep his mouth shut; but things sexual, like all things, occur on a bell curve.  There are minor peccadilloes at one asymptote, horrific happenings at the other, with most indiscretions falling under the big curve - nothing exceptional, weekends in the Shenandoah, 'working late' rendezvous, lazy indiscretions at best.  

 

Macdonald Roberts never cared about the bell curve - the ups and downs, slides and elisions of sexual behavior.  He only wanted to profit from it - that is to service through the offices of Epstein clients who were of every possible sexual ilk.  It was because of this marvelous confluence of power, eternal male sexual desire, and the sense of invulnerability that power confers that Macdonald became a rich man. 

When the Epstein list is made public and Macdonald's name appears on it, the press will only say, 'Macdonald who?'.  A surprise revelation, but since he was not a player, not a recognizable face in the Washington pantheon, not even a backroom influencer of any note, his page was turned, and the yellow journalists salivated over the biggies, the men of power caught with their pants down with the most smarmy man ever. 

After Epstein's death Macdonald faded away which took little doing since he was never in the spotlight and because he was a natural chameleon, and to this day there have been imagined sightings of him everywhere.