The Demise Of Virtual Dating - The New Wave Of 'Love Facilitators'

Amanda Perkins had been married before - happily at first then hostile, angry, and disgusted with the man she had met through an online dating service.  She had filled the questionnaire honestly and rigorously, dismissing the easy inquiries quickly - she was a non-smoker, moderate drinker, reasonably balanced between the outdoors and city life, accepting of family and social responsibilities - and taking time with the more nuanced questions.  

Yes, she was interested in sexual exploration, but no, she was not interested in anything out of the ordinary.  She wanted a lover, a man of Lawrentian desires, but nothing overtly male-centered. 

In short she presented herself fairly - a girl of patrician parentage and breeding, well educated, temperate in political philosophy, moderate in social reform, and all-in on family, children, and the building of a responsible legacy. 

The computer matched her with men of similar backgrounds, but there was always something that brought out the dweeb, for lack of a better term; men of good backgrounds but indifferent appeal.  Good husbands perhaps, but not the kind that would, again for lack of a better term, ring her bell. 

There was Jerry X, divorced, well-employed, an outdoors type with a taste for good cuisine, favorable to new fiction but solidly old school, talented in linguistics and chess, handsome so many said, but not Hollywood worthy.  Predictable. Rejected. 

Harry F, financier in a Wall Street brokerage house, responsible for vast restructurings but thanks to an innate moral code, never made millions in buyouts and repurposing.  A religious man of principle but not fundamentalist beliefs, a man of integrity.  Bullish. Rejected. 

After having had it with failed algorithms that couldn't come up with anything better than this, a new name popped up, one Belkins R who simply said, 'Try Me', and listed only the basic biographical necessities - birth, parentage, location, and profession. 'A good woman will judge me well'. 

Amanda was intrigued and went through the well-vetted and -practiced steps to mating.  A brief meeting at the Oak Bar, dinner at Lutece, and an evening boat ride from Georgetown to Alexandria on the 'River Queen'; and more serious involvement was virtually assured. 

But the technology was still new, and what appeared to be a reasonable match, confirmed by this series of increasingly intimate encounters, turned out to be a crossing of the wires. What she found out after tying the knot in the offices of the San Francisco Justice of the Peace, was none to encouraging.  Belkins R was a tangle of weird obsessions none of which were caught by the still immature computer algorithms.  How was anyone to know about his fascination with Millard Fillmore? Or fishline tension? Or academic 'rhythms'? 

Not that these interests were perverse or distorting in any way.  Just that they were unanticipated, and what Amanda thought was a bright, considerate, honest, and intriguing man turned out to be dull, inconsiderate, duplicitous, and baldly unpretentious.  He disappeared for hours into his man cave, emerged only after 'the aha experience', some location of an intellectual G-spot in his research, pleased as punch but completely indifferent to Amanda.  A klutz. 

Harmon K. Absecker had had his share of amorous adventures.  Not exactly a Casanova or Lothario, he knew enough about relationships to avoid the worst and be tempted by the best.  His transition from part time lover to marital advisor was not surprising. He was known as a man who knew when to hold it and when to fold it, someone with grace enough to call it quits without recrimination, with enough charm to attract women well above his station, and enough savvy to winnow the wheat from the chaff. 

His classmates, friends, and associates all came first to him for advice; and those women who were not intimidated by male sexual savvy sought him for insights on men and male sexual pursuit. 

With a few months course work and a desultory internship, he was able to hang out his shingle as an advisor to the lovelorn and and love-intent.

His job was not so much consoling those who had loved and lost, but those who sought congenial sexual companionship and, as in the case of Amanda Perkins, how to get a man.  

He was not in the marriage brokerage business per se- that is, he was no mating pimp with a ready stable of stallions for eager young mares - but a reformer, an expert in priming the young, marriageable woman to meet her most desirable mate. 

Harmon was of the conservative opinion that it is the woman who attracts the man.  She is the one to interest him, lure him, seduce him, and bed him; and not the opposite.  Sure, there were men of innate sexual allure to whom all women were immediately drawn but the reverse was the standard.  Women for millennia were gussying themselves up to catch a man. 

 

Times had changed, and the whole idea of seduction, male or female, was passe.  Mating had become more a question of synchronicity than desire, an issue of compatibility and harmony rather than pure sexual impulse; but Harmon knew that nothing had really changed.  Women lured men, and men pursued women. 

So in his sessions with women he simply told them how to tart up - to play upon men's innate sexual instincts.  Not so much the old comic book pouting lips, tears, and décolleté, but something far more sophisticated, hard to put in words, but reinstalled as an integral part of womanhood 

For men, he taught no differently.  Gone were the old female stereotypes of the fragile, innocent young thing looking for love, and in its place was the super-confident women of today who beneath the feminist Sturm und Drang were still beautiful, delicate flowers that need attention. 

On occasion, introductions were made.  Harmon had so many male and female clients that it would be a shame not to mate them.  In time that side of the business prospered far more than the counselling side; but both were necessary to sustain profitability.  He needed satisfied, confident, well-educated men and women, happy with their sexual lot in life to be successful at brokering. 

So Harmon's practice became a revolving door - in one side despondent, needy, frustrated, and ambitious; and out the other well-prepared to meet the next Mr. Right. 

Without knowing it, Harmon had become a thing.  He began the wave of return to normalcy, the in-person, physical laws of attraction.  His dismissal of algorithms, big data, and virtuality in sexual matters was but the first and most pronounced of the general return to traditional values - nuclear families, two genders, classically familiar male and female roles, etc. Under his tutelage men and women began behaving as they had always done before the sexual radicalization of the Left; and it felt good.  Men were men and women were women again. 

Harmon's treasury filled beyond his wildest dreams and Amanda found the ideal husband.  She and Parker were perfectly suited, not by data matching but by chemistry, gesture, animation, and physical subtlety.  Of course there were problems.  No couple last more than a couple of months before squabbling; but in their case the disputes were minor and easily resolved. 

As for Harmon, the hours and days spent mixing and matching grew tedious and took away from his own seduction time.  One had to look after oneself after all. 

He eventually got married to a lovely young girl from the North Shore, but ironically it didn't last.  He had been too impatient to heed his own counsel, was besotted by her patrician beauty and Hollywood charm and jumped right in.  It wasn't long before she took a more exciting lover and that was that. 

However, one should not be quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Harmon's educational principles were as sound as could be.  It was just that human nature tends to throw a spanner into the works on occasion. 

I Put A Spell On You - The Left's Hilarious Racist Sorcery

N'gomo M'bele was a sorcerer, a shaman who practiced his black arts in a small village far up the reaches of the Congo River.  He was known for miles around as a witch doctor, a man who could cure ailments with incantations and herbs and who, legend has it, raised a man from the dead. 

M'bele, like most African witch doctors not only cured disease but to put spells on enemies -  a primitive voodoo-like ceremony that called upon spirits from the netherworld to do his bidding.  These hexes could make the victim blind, deaf and dumb, and reel with madness; and and as such were in great demand. M'bele, a smart businessman who can as easily assess supply and demand in the deep forest as a canny investor could on Wall Street, demanded a heavy price for such sorcery - fifty capybaras for death, ten howler monkeys for crippling illness, and five tail feathers from a Bird of Paradise for temporary insanity. 

This price structure could only be applied, of course, if the hexes worked; and the local community was convinced that they did.  Now, whether M'bele only took commissions when the victim already had a history of mental febrility, a weakness in his limbs, or bad eyesight was a moot point in a credulous, primitive society.  Whatever the mechanism, the man was respected and sought after. 

He lived simply but well, never one to display his wealth, and never tempted by impossible tasks.  Mrs. Liasso, for example, had asked for her husband to disappear into thin air, gone without a trace as though he had never existed while her neighbor asked for the return of her son, dead and gone for ten years. 

M'bele of course was not one of a kind.  Shamans, witch doctors, and sorcerers have existed in every culture since the first human settlements; and despite the not unexpected discovery that such sorcery was hogwash, villagers flocked to them with regularity. 

There was some perspicacity involved.  Shamans knew that they could frighten a stutterer to speak properly, give a natural tranquilizer to a hysterical woman, and to jumpstart a depressive with concoctions of jungle wood ear and baobab bark (scientifically proven stimulants) but attribute the results to their dark powers.  In some cases these simple men were able to practice Freud's 'talking cure' and by marvelously intricate psychological insights, cure impotency, frigidity, and lack of sexual interest 

Haiti is perhaps the best-known country for sorcery.  Voodoo is widely practiced, and has become the national religion. Tom-toms and howling can be heard in the hills above Kenscoff as exorcisms are practiced nightly.  The living dead prowl the streets looking for peace, demons live in the underground below Les Cayes, and winged devils occupy souls at will.  How an entire country can be so credulous has always been a mystery - but the African traditions which came with the first slaves and mingled with Caribbean Indian black magic were indelible. 

 

Now, it might be surprising that any Anglo-Saxon culture, especially one founded on the principles of the English Enlightenment like America, could be given to such fantasy; but a version of African sorcery is here, alive and well.  Of course there are no tongues of newt, eyes of lizards, and dried bones of coot and no wild midnight animal sacrifice - nothing so crude and primitive - but the practice of putting spells on people is not unheard of.  In fact it is common and universalized. 

The American Left, the legatees of a once proud progressive tradition, has nothing left in the hamper but sorcery.  Their entire ideology, political platform, and policy agenda has become empty of any substance and refilled with incantations, hexes, and spells.  'Racist', they shout at the slightest imagined offense.  'Bigot, black-hating, soulless crypto-Nazi' they yell at Donald Trump again and again until it becomes a litany, a chorus repeated again and again until it is believed. 

'Anti-democratic tyrant, elitist dupe of the wealthy, pseudo-aristocrat, scurrilous imposter' they go on until the chorus is taken up by more and more people.  The rhythms, the power of repetition, the deep resonance of the chant become irresistible. 

In Orwell's Animal Farm the ruling animal junta repeats the chant, 'Four legs good, two legs bad' over and over again until it is taken up by all animals, made angrier and more revolutionary each time it is repeated.  Over time it becomes more than a slogan or a chant, but a sorcery, a hex, and a spell. 

Another way at looking at the Left's hexing is tautology - a thing is because it is obvious that it is.  Trump becomes racist the more he is accused of it. A thing repeated enough times by enough people create its own reality.  Donald Trump becomes Adolf Hitler the more he is called a Hitler. 

As an extension of tautology and repetition is conflation.  Before long, the term 'racist' becomes a universal catch-all for anything contrary to received wisdom or political canon.  Crying 'racist' means that a person espouses all the wrong, antithetical, mean, and inconclusive political positions.  The term becomes a stand-in, a linguistic surrogate, and by that time the hex is complete. 

America had become no different than Animal Farm - the Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad slogan was replaced by 'Racist, misogynist, homophobe', chanted everywhere, tarring every naysayer, every opponent, every critic.  Logic was drowned out by rhetoric.  Non-believers had no say, the drumbeat was deafening, the roar became the nation's voice, reality was transformed. 

Everything that Trump did was an expression of his racist hatred and nothing was exempt. His closing of the Southern border, dismantling of foreign aid, insisting on voter ID, rolling back DEI and affirmative action, restoring the ethos of talent, intelligence, and ambition, support of Israel were all racist by definition.  The intellectual infection fulminated.  Political discussion was terminated - if evil exists, then there can be no debate.  The end of history, the demise of good...

Wrong.  These very initiatives gave lie to the fantastical assumptions of the Left and showed the emptiness and vacuity of their claims.  Their shouts, howls, and hexes were outed as nothing but aimless, baseless imaginings.  Shouts of 'racist' only identified the shouter as an intellectual poseur, a groundless claimer, a barnyard cackler. 

Finally and remarkably after only eight months of the Trump presidency, the outrage of the Left has been muted if not silenced.  Trump's actions have demanded attention. Substance requires consultation, debate, decision.  The time of empty, feral howls is over. 

The Left is on the run, still animated but more like whirling dervishes and St. Vitus' mad dancers than anything else.  They are groping, grasping, fiddling for a response to the conservative reforms instituted by Trump but have come up with nothing.  Ten years of hexes, spells, and sorcery have left them with an empty closet. 

Lions, Tigers, And Giraffes - How An African Safari Hides The Worst Of A Failed Continent

Amber Pierce had looked forward to her African safari for months.  She had done her research well, chose the Serengeti over the veldt of South Africa and the more forested lands of Botswana and Zambia, 

 

Ever since she was a girl she had been fascinated by big game - hippos, rhinos, elephants, and wildebeests had been her childhood dream.  Africa was a fantasy land of creatures in the wild, the law of tooth and claw, the majesty of herds on the open plain, the graceful majesty of lions, tigers, and cheetahs, and the magisterial size of large animals.

Africa for her was always this - a wild, far-reaching, beautifully natural place, unique in the world and the birthplace of humanity.  Being there among the animals and in the very place where the fossil remains of the first humans was found would be miraculous, even transforming. 

She of course had heard of Africa's miasmic poverty, corruption, tribalism, and mismanagement but that was not her affair.  The world is a complicated place, and there was no reason for her to either avoid Africa because of its pestilential misrule and cultural backwardness or to immerse herself in the slums in some gesture of solidarity with the poor.  

So without a second thought or moment's hesitation, she headed off for what she was sure would be a voyage of discovery and beauty. 

Africa - the real Africa - is never completely absent from any safari no matter how the tour companies work to keep it in the distance.  Although the tour guides formed a cordon around the visitors and shepherded them through customs and immigration, there was no avoiding the chaos, the shakedowns, the intimidation, the leaks, touts, airless chambers, mosquitos, and rats.  

The tourists huddled together creating a Roman phalanx against the pushing, shoving crowd.  In one corner of the arrival lounge two armed police were beating a black man unconscious.  At the front of the passport line, an Englishman was told he could not enter and shown the way to the Vaccination Room, where the first of many bribes were exacted.  Luggage was being opened and the contents rifled, computers and cameras 'isolated', naive tourists shuffled off to private screening areas. 

The guides assured everyone that they were safe, and that the company had taken care of all arrangements.  A quick passport and baggage check, and they would be on their way to the Treetops Lodge far from the city; but of course there was no such thing as 'taking care'.  The line moved slowly, and in the hot, stinking hall the mosquitos were savage.  There was no order, no civility, no graciousness or accommodation. 

The group had to stand for an hour in the blazing sun outside the airport.  Their bus had been confiscated by the airport police, driven to a far corner of the airfield and disappeared.  When the tour operator appeared with the transport, perspiring and shaken, he insisted that there was no problem, just a misunderstanding, and soon they would be on their way. 

There was no way from the airport to the plains without crossing the city, a miserable place of shanties, sewage, naked children, and angry young men who pounded the bus when it came to a stop and tried to break in.  The air conditioning had stopped working and the heat, exhaust, and swarms of mosquitos were suffocating.  

At one point, all traffic stopped.  Nothing moved for over an hour as the city was closed down for the official presidential motorcade.  The president, one of Africa's big men who had been in office for decades but was increasingly fearful for his life, took no chances and deployed his secret police to assure safe passage to the airport and his waiting private plane. 

The scene was nightmarish - hundreds of vehicles scrambled for position on both sides of the road, idling, waiting for the lifting of the curfew, and when it did, the scene became violent.  Scooters and motorcycles were left on the street as their drivers fought in anger and pure hostility.  

All this Amber watched from the bus window, wondering when it would all end and worse, if it would. What if she had been misled and the whole trip would be like this - that there would be no peace and tranquility on the plains and the whole trip would be a nightmare. 

Finally the trip to the lodge came to an end, and the group, tired, hot, and dispirited made their way to their rooms.  It took hours for the memory of the horrible road trip to fade and the wide, silent plains of the Serengeti to replace it; but when it did, Amber's spirits picked up.  Here she was in fantasy land, the very place of all her childhood dreams.  She sat on the verandah with her fellow travelers, enjoyed a cup of tea, and looked forward to the next day's journey into the veldt. 

It was not to be.  The anxious guide told them that they would have to leave the country.  There had been a coup and the various tribal factions were fighting a bloody civil war.  Not only were the traditional ethnic alliances represented, but ISIS, al-Shabab, Boko Haram, and the Houthis were engaging in a power struggle that was certain to last for months. 

All the staff of Treetops had fled into the bush, for in such an atmosphere of tribal suspicion and internecine hatred, they feared for their lives. The hotel was empty, deserted, and quiet.  The guests could not stay a minute longer and would have to make for the border.  They could not return to the capital or the airport which would certainly be closed, so they only way out was by land and to take their chances that they could cross out of harm's way. 

Of course the land route to the border was not on the tourist trail, and it was little more than a rutted, overgrown track.  It passed through thatched roof villages but not without incident. Armed men in pickups blocked the road and demanded money.  Soon the tour guides had no more, and they appealed to the tourists to please contribute what they had, otherwise they would be marooned. 

The poverty and primitive conditions of these villages was appalling - desperate poverty and not one sign of development.  There was no electricity, no running water, only dust and mud baking in the tropical heat.  All children were naked and adults were emaciated and immobile.

The bus was silent - these images would have been bad enough, but coming after such anticipation of beauty and the majesty of nature, they were all the more frightening. 

The one thing that any experienced traveler to Africa knows is to avoid land border crossings, known for their shakedowns, armed intimidation, sequestering, robbery, and violence, and so it was that the tour group was expecting the worst.  Word travelled quickly up and down the aisle, expanded, transformed, and turned into prophesies of doom by the time it reached the back of the bus; and no one was disappointed.  The border was even worse than expected.  Not only did the border guards take all their money and belongings, they confiscated the bus.  The tourists would have to walk into the neighboring country. 

African countries being what they are - all similar in their corruption, poverty, and mismanagement - nothing was any different on the other side.  The only difference was that for now the civil unrest in their neighbor's land had not spread to theirs; and more importantly the crooks on this new side of the border were more sophisticated in their scams. 

They understood credit, and agreed to arrange transport, food, and water to the travelers to the capital on the promise of payment on delivery.  They had ways, they said, of collecting on the debt, and made it clear that nothing would be spared if the tour agency did not pay up. 

To make a long story short - the trip to the capital of the neighboring country was as hot, mosquito-infested, and miserable as it was on the other side of the border - the group finally made it in one piece and were on their way home within days. 

Oh, yes.  During the trips on both sides of the border, the group did see wild animals, but they were so preoccupied with the precariousness of their situation that they hardly noticed.  What was an elephant compared to a coup? A rhinoceros to tribal butchery? 

It all was the worst of all possible worlds for Amber.  Not only was it a frightening, horrible experience, it completely erased any of the marvelously childlike visions of Africa that she had had since a little girl.  It was not only an erasure but the imposition of a new, disgusting reality.  Not only were the animals gone from memory, but the bandanna, balaclava-wearing, half-naked, AK-47 wielding African terrorists replaced them. 

Amber was a young woman and resilient, so she did not stop traveling; but always to familiar, generous, civilized places.  As it should be, actually. 

Enough Already! - One By One, The Last Bits Of Progressive Fancy Are Scattered To The Four Winds

Bob Muzelle was disconsolate.  Everything he had worked so hard for was being dismantled, disavowed, and discarded.  The progressive agenda was in pieces and in eight short months was nothing but a relic. 

Not only is transgenderism finished as policy imperative, it is being exposed as the mental disorder it always has been.  The Left's aggressive promotion of transgender individuals in all phases of American social life - a burlesque show of basso profundo kindergarten teachers and storytellers, civil servants, and Hollywood characters - is finally over and done with.

After years of hectoring, intimidation, and bullying, progressives are leaving Washington with nothing to show for the Biden years - an influx of unwanted immigrants on the pretense of 'diversity'; environmentalism with little proof and much hysteria; the lionization of the black man despite the persistently crime-ridden, socially dysfunctional inner cities; the punitive taxes and legislation inhibiting America's most productive individuals and slowing growth and prosperity; and much, much more. 

The fact that Donald Trump has been able to reverse all of these anti-social, anti-growth trends, eliminate the corrosive and damaging DEI programs, begin to settle a number of devastating international conflicts, and return the country to a respected geopolitical power is a tribute to him, but the folly of the Left's agenda. If this agenda had been based on anything of substance, historical validity, or reasonable promise, it would not have been so easily torn up and discarded.  Four years of febrile, animistic, faux-Utopian idealism. 

Where were progressives to turn now that the new President had uprooted, discarded, and discredited each and every one of their most cherished and hallowed programs and principles? Who would want them except for mayoral holdouts who have insisted that sanctuary cities are necessary, moral, and right; that police are racist thugs and murderers; and that the inner city suffers only from white racism and post-colonial black hatred. 

 

Perhaps the liberal Washington diaspora can find a home in Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco - a new wave of Barack Obama, Paolo Freire, Saul Alinsky neo-socialist community organization; or in the dispersed gay populations of the Castro and Dupont Circle who need more coalition, more solidarity, and more political visibility.  

Or perhaps not as voters in these cities are tired of the non-productive, anti-social programs of the past. Inner city families are tired of being shot up and left for dead from drive-bys, victims of uncontrolled gang violence, rape, and assault, dupes of the entitled black political establishment which howls racism and white supremacy but lets the ghetto fester in its own backward incivility.  White families who have chosen to stay in the city are tired of being sucked dry by corrupt, race-baiting council members and venal mayors.  Businesses want nothing to do with cities disassembling and destroying themselves. 

The whole kit-and-kaboodle is over and done with. The nation has said, Basta! and despite the hawking, and harping of the Old Guard the cackling of The Squad, and the intermittent popping up of an old-school socialist firebrand, the progressive movement is finished.  It has had its day and a long one at that.  There were the original progressives like Brandeis, Lafollette, Debs, and Gompers who were men of principle and faith in the worker; the neo-progressives like FDR who applied neo-socialism, unionism, and labor to address the Depression; and latter-day liberals like LBJ whose Great Society was an attempt to level the socio-economic playing field.   All movements with some foundation, rationale, and intellectual interest. 

 

Today's progressives have devolved into a side show - a band of touts, snake oil salesmen, and carny barkers with nothing but scam and promise to sell.  A Hate Trump one-man band, a Johnny One Note, a thumping bore of a political party at heart with frilly window dressing, intellectual pimps and ambulance chasers, and power wannabes. 

Bob saw it all tumbling down before his eyes, this institution, this marvelous, righteous building for all men and women, this land of promise, this...

His eyes teared as he contemplated the loss and the imminent demise of his political life.  Worst of all was to watch the coming of the New, the blonde, blue-eyed, lithe, sensuous young women who were replacing the progressive pantheon.  Diversity and the championing of the Other, the disabled, the removed, the black, the alternatively gendered was already history.  The formerly damned and excoriated white majority was back in numbers and in style. 

Versailles, the Sun King, empire, palaces, the juggernaut of the Christian Crusades were restored to their former revered place in European American history.  Africa was an afterthought, a blighted place of corruption, poverty, and bloody mismanagement. White was back. 

Bob looked out over a gathering of 'Progressives for Social Justice', the non-profit advocacy group that he had founded and managed for years now without funding and social support. The contrast to the young, bright, enthusiastic Trump supporters now seen walking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, all flip hairdos, high heels, Armani, and Cartier was striking.  The social justice group was an untidy, unkempt, messy lot, not a stunner among them, not one woman that caught your attention.  'Inner beauty', that catch-all term for the leftovers now seemed all the more fatuous.  There was no beauty here, period. 

Apostasy! Bob quickly thought as these images came into his head, these treasonous, poisonous thoughts; but he could not shake them as his eyes went up and down the room, one desperately unattractive woman after the other. 

It was time to hang 'em up, he concluded.  He had done his best, given the best years of his life to the cause.  No one could expect more.  Retirement was not defeat by any means.  Even in his chaise lounge on a Tampa beach he would still be proudly and defiantly progressive. 

'Lovely, dear', his wife Corinne said to him when he proposed the move. 'It will be a nice change'.  She meant what she said for she had grown very tired and impatient with her husband's tedium, his moroseness, his constant worrying about the plight of the black man when there was more to life than losers.  Sorry, she said to herself, the truth hurts but there it is. 

 

Bob was summary in closing shop - no fanfare, plaudits, or plaques.  It was off to Florida with a U-Haul and a few things coming by freight, a complete break with the past except for fond memories.  He, Martin, and Ralph on the Pettis bridge, getting whupped by Bull Connor and his dogs, sit-ins with Negroes at Dot's Kitchen in Montgomery...

Younger progressives left behind were not so lucky, there was no Tampa Bay in their immediate future.  Many decided to change their stripes and join the new majority, others hunkered down, and others simply went back to Chillicothe or Ames or Dubuque or wherever they came from to pick up their old lives; but the fact remained that The Movement was no more. 

Trump Gets Voodoo - Realpolitik, Bonhomie, And African Totemism, The Perfect Storm Of Geopolitics

Alphonse M'bele, President of ______, a West African country rich in rare earths and oil and abysmally impoverished in every other way, was a a recent guest of the White House.  The President, in a calculated political maneuver, invited M'bele to show the African American electorate that he was not uniquely European in philosophy, history, and political alliance, and that despite his only incidental interest in Africa and its diaspora, he saw that continent's leaders as at least equal to those of France, Russia, Britain, or Germany. 

 

Most importantly, President Trump was interested in what he called 'The Triumvirate Of Legions'.  In a nod to Roman imperialism, and the leadership of Caesar, Antony, and Pompey; in recognition and respect for Machiavelli who wrote the book on geopolitical power; and in an increasing sensibility for African totemism, he allied himself with the practitioners of these arts. 

Vladimir Putin and he were on the same geo-philosophical page because they both were advocates of realpolitik - the modern interpretation and application of Machiavelli's The Prince, a disquisition on the use of power to further national interests and to do so only when these interests were in play and in jeopardy.  Putin's reassimilation of Crimea into the Russian orbit, and his current war to bring fissiparous Ukraine to heel were examples of such bold nationalism.  Donald Trump understood this completely, and he would do exactly the same thing if such occasions were to occur within the American hemisphere.

 

After all, the United States' hegemonic adventures in South America were no different.  Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Cuba among others were in our domain and could not be allowed to dally with socialism and anti-American nationalism.  Southeast Asia was to be America's region of influence and bulwark against arch-enemy Russia, so the war in Vietnam was understandable and justifiable. 

The Special Relationship - the Anglo-American cultural, historical, and political alliance that had stood for decades - was always to be fostered and nurtured.  Although Britain and its European allies were often drifting far from solid conservative foundations, there was a certain bonhomie among partners.  NATO was only one expression of this mutual fondness.

Then came Africa - and no one knew exactly what to do with that cultural miasma.  Because of the political importance of the African diaspora in America, billions of dollars had been invested in improving the lot of Africans.  However, despite this fortune, the continent not only did not improve, it declined into dysfunction, totalitarianism, and abject poverty.  

It was worth little on the open market - it had since independence produced nothing, done nothing, influenced no one.  Because it had natural resources and only because it did, the United States persisted in its developmental aid. 

There had to be more to it than that, reflected the President to his foreign policy advisors, one of whom had family origins in Cameroon, the source of Brazilian candomblé and Haitian voodoo, and who insisted that tribal conjuration was not just a fantasy, but a longstanding reality.  African shamans and high priests were indeed able to conjure spirits and engage them in worldly affairs.  The Duvaliers of Haiti, longtime rulers of the country, had not been deposed and removed just because of political maneuverings, but because of tribal indifference.  The Duvaliers had gotten too big for their boots, and the forces of the African forest had been brought to bear.   And this was but one example. 

Of course the President demurred, thanked his advisor for his contribution, but returned to business as normal; until he met President M'bele who was not only an important political leader but an ordained shaman, brought up, educated, and initiated into the Yoruba dark rights. The African world was not the hopeful Western-invested place that Americans believed, but one of spirits and untold spiritual power.  European monotheism and Enlightenment rationality was not the End of History, the final evolution of human potential, but only one.  African totemism should not be overlooked. 

The reason why the African slave diaspora had never made it out of the ghetto, and was still African in its social and cultural mores was not because of white racism or vestiges of colonialism, but because the African descendant still was ruled by the powerful Yoruba, candomblé, and voodoo gods.  Any money invested in the black inner city was simply throwing good resources after bad. 

More importantly, this African socio-religious potency could have geopolitical influence.  Rather than look at Africa as a basket case, a miserably failed continent of Neolithic backwardness and pre-human nature, one should mine its unique resources. 

After giving the idea some thought, the President began to come around.  That benighted, miasmic continent must have something of value, he mused. These jungle people have been practicing dark arts since Lucy and the origins of mankind, so what are slums, dire mismanagement, corruption, and impoverished misery compared to native power?

The President drew M'bele aside and asked him about his background, his upbringing, and his religious inspiration.  He was circumspect, respectful, and only suggestive about his real interests, but the African quickly got his meaning. 

'It is all true, Mr. President.  All true'. 

M'bele said it with such directness, candor, and sincerity that the President had to take notice.  In his own way, he probed and pried until he was satisfied that there was indeed something to it.  M'bele pressed a token into the President's hand and said, 'May the gods of Africa be with you'. 

The President held the token tightly and hugged M'bele warmly.  'We will talk again', he said, 'very soon indeed'. 

'Express your most heartfelt desires', M'bele said, holding the President's hand. 'And they will be granted'. 

There were a number of world crises facing the President - Ukraine, Palestine, the resurgence of ISIS and Islamic terrorism, North Korean nuclear threats, China saber-rattling over Taiwan and Tibet, and much more.  Although he felt confident in his ability to confront, negotiate, and win out over his opponents, he like every other persona of power and influence, looked for that bit of cutting edge. 

He invited M'bele for another White House meeting, but this time without the pomp and circumstance of an official visit.  The two leaders met privately and without aides.  Whatever they concluded would be between them. 

It was no coincidence that his most troublingly insistent critics on the Left went out of their way to praise him.  AOC, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the Puerto Rican ankle-biter who had been after him for years in pursuit of her own White House ambitions, had some nice things to say about him, some remarkably generous comments about his international acumen and national insights.  And both Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, both indomitably opposed to anything the President  had ever done, were as kind as can be when it came to his National Guard initiatives. 

Both lived in Washington, DC, had been assaulted and mugged on a number of occasions, and were happy that they could walk home from Starbucks without being assaulted. 

Had they simply seen the light? Had they removed their political armor and actually paid attention? Or were they swayed by something 'other'? 

We will never know; but at the very least Africa, land of miserable slums, dictatorships, and abject, irremediable poverty, had shown some style.  For all the elitist bashing, Africa turned out to have something, other than oil and rare earths, of value. 

M'bele of course did not return home without 'recognition' - a nice fat no-questions-asked grant to do 'fuck-all'; but that was the way international development had been practiced since it began. 

The Eiffel Tower 'N' Things - The Absurdity Of Tourism

Beverly Parsons lost her husband and within weeks of the funeral signed up for a Lindblad tour down the Danube, a ten-day excursion curated by a Columbia University docent, five-star meals by a renowned Parisian chef, and a clientele that matched her profile.  They would all be, promised the tour company, likeminded senior citizens like her, all with advanced degrees, a thirst for knowledge, and a desire for familiar, congenial company. 

 

It would be a nice trip and would help her forget Harry, her husband of some fifty years who passed away after a heart attack which took him off in an instant sparing her dreary months of the home care that other less fortunate widows had suffered.  She had loved Harry, or at least had gotten used to him and their life together which had become a rather routine slog - the same chicken dinners and walks in the park for years.  

All in all she had little to complain about - a reasonably faithful husband, two fine children, a grandchild who showed promise, and a hefty bank account.  Not like Harriet Beacham whose brigand of a husband had died without leaving a farthing, all retirement savings squandered in bad debts and worse judgment. 

Unlike many of the women on the Lindblad tours Beverly was not looking for a new husband - one was more than enough, and she looked forward to a life independent of Harry's dogged sedateness.  No, she would do something with her life, see the world, travel to exotic locales, meet interesting people, and find herself.

Now, to be honest, these guided tours could be rather dull and uninspiring.  No matter how much pizazz the docent put into tales of Austrian kings, European history could be mercilessly tiring; and information provided about palaces, museums, and monuments usually went in one ear and out the other.  But the company was always lively, quick on the uptake, and on the tour for the ride with a kind of devil-may-care sophistication that was appealing. 

There was always one passenger who took it all seriously, oohing and aahing about this or that, adding anecdotal evidence to the docent's lectures, bits and pieces of travel apocrypha, personal observations and ironic references - getting his money's worth while the rest of the tour just kibbitzed and schmoozed until lunch or drinks. 

Arnold Pastor was one of these passengers.  Europe was the holy land, a place of special meaning, inspiration, and ambition.  Europe meant culture, sophistication, grace, and elegance - the ideal to which Americans should all aspire; and just being on such hallowed soil would mean the first step to acquiring what he had long desired - sophistication. 

How and why Arnold had developed such a passion was lost somewhere in his past - French II perhaps and pictures of the Cafe des Deux Magots, or the visit by Francois de Miramon-Fargues, son of a viscount, heir to a castle, and even as a teenager already graced with a certain charm and savoir faire that was irresistible; or the trip his parents took when he was a child, a trip down the Rhine, stops in Baden-Baden, Vienna, and Prague - castles, ramparts, forts, and tales of Hapsburg princes. It was  transformative. 

 

The Pastors invited neighbors and friends to see their slide show - there was Pinky on the third deck of the tour boat about to have dinner with the purser and in the back ground was Hedy and Bill from Chillicothe.  The docent, a Herr Meistersinger, knew so much about Prussians, Hessians, and Swabian subalterns, and his accounts, although somewhat tangled in the usual roundabout of European intrigue, that he kept keen what might have been little more than desultory interest.  

Arnold couldn't help but be enticed by his parents' stories and their vast enthusiasm, so before long he began his touring.  First was Paris, Louis XIV, Versailles, and the Louvre - magnificent, unforgettable.  Just one look at the Hall of Mirrors and he was forever after a Francophile, a devotee of anything and everything French.  He never tired of telling his colleagues about French culture that defied description. 

And so it was that Arnold became one of Lindblad's premier travelers, first class cabin, seat at the captain's table, front row seat at the lectures. He was indefatigable, determined to visit every notable and noteworthy site on the European continent, and on his tour through the Loire Valley, he met Beverly Parsons. 

She was diffident at first, quite standoffish at this squirrely little man who asked all the wrong questions of the docent, mixing ancestries and battles, his hand shooting up like an ambitious schoolgirl.  A quirky bother, she concluded, but there was a foolish excitement in his attitude.  Every monument, every battlefield, every encampment, and redoubt lit him up like a circus truck, all sparklers and Roman candles. 

Beverly had been bored to tears, moping around D Deck, sitting on a chaise lounge sipping a cup of tea, while Arnold jumped from porthole to railing, pointing out features, exclaiming loudly, riffling through the pages of his Baedeker's to check a reference, cadging a few minutes from the off-duty docent, niggling him with questions and observations. He was a mountebank, happily.

What on earth was the noisy little bugger all about, Beverly wondered.  Everything on this tedious tour was of marginal interest to be stored away and forgotten.  There was nothing illuminating about the Eiffel Tower, no particular human interest or personal relevance.  Chartres and Notre Dame were impressive displays of Vatican wealth but her own chapel in New Brighton offered her the occasional solace and glimpse of the hereafter she needed. 

 

Travel was a distraction, a diversion, a reel or two of a B movie that took her mind off her loss, but gave her a sense or wasted time and effort.  Of what earthly use was a passing glimpse of some regal excess? Wasn't Gettysburg enough to remind her of the vacuity of war, without having to sail the Dnieper to see Borodino?  War and Peace had certainly done more to humanize war and give it universal meaning than any tour of Napoleon's military odyssey. 

But Arnold quacked on and on at table, a marionette of American enthusiasm, a real tourist, a lover of sights, a collector or historical oddities, keeping a cobbled together memory of his travels, a scattered potpourri of incidental bits and pieces. 

The two left the Queen of the Seas in Baltimore, one delighted, enthused, and impatiently waiting for his first seance, the slide show with accompanying commentary, the oohs and ahhs of his neighbors; the other far more disconsolate and intellectually weary than she had been when she boarded; but taken together they explained why the tour industry is a multi-billion dollar business. 

Tourism?  The greatest invention since P.T Barnum and the circus, an easy-sell revelry, full of hoopla and unexpected sights, a break from the routine, a rousing show, an hour or two of clowns and lion tamers to be filed away for insertion in Uncle Harry's Christmas dinner tales. 

The Catholic Church, thought Beverly.  Now that was worth something - all the pageantry, excitement, and diversion from the ordinary that tourism intended but never delivered.  And so it was that she lit a candle for her husband, said the rosary, and thanked God. 

An African Odyssey - A Hopeful Journey To The Source Of The Black Diaspora But Finding It Worse Than Ever Imagined

Felicia Thompson had always wanted to go to Africa - Lucy and the origin of the species, the veldt, and the heart of the diaspora.  She would explore the inner cities of Lagos, Kinshasa, and Nairobi and find out about this mysterious, troubled place whose lands gave us musicians, dancers, and sports legends. 

She had been to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and marveled at the achievements of the descendants of slaves - runners, jumpers, horn players, and comedians had added cultural diversity to America, gave it soul and attitude, and rescued it from the sameness and predictability of white European culture. 

 

For far too long American history had been one of kings, courtiers, and empire followed by rich white men who fashioned the new nation out of old cloth.  The Founding Fathers, locked into the logic of Adam Smith, Voltaire, Kant, and Thoreau, created a nation of ideas rather than sensibility, and only after 1619 when the first African slaves were brought to the New World did America truly prosper. 

Even under slavery, African culture flourished and the animistic tribalism of the forest provided the spiritual and cultural foundation for a renascent black American culture.  Black culture was the inspiration that the nation needed to lead it out of the intellectual world of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams. It challenged the notions of white propriety and the archaic notions of a nuclear family, the confining nature of the Protestant work ethic, and the bland, prescriptive code of legacy religion.

Black culture was African - an uninhibited sexuality, a loose family structure, a native primitivism, and a joy in the physical - the pure, unadulterated, originalist notion of early man.  Attempts to confine  this native exuberance, fit it into white social norms, and make black people as white as can be, failed miserably and the ghetto survived intact. 

Criticized for its anti-social behavior - single motherhood, absent fatherhood, sexual abandon, crime, disobedience, and rejection of majority norms - the inner city was branded as an un-American, uncivilized knot within the larger body politic. 

Felicia was proud of progressive attempts to dispel this false and damaging stereotype.  She cheered the notion that the African was not at the bottom of the human pyramid but at the top and represented the most evolved expression of humanity, and it was progressive attempts to raise the black man to his rightful position which were long overdue, needed, and correct.. 

Felicia, like many Americans took the progressive canon to heart - crime, dysfunctional families, social ineptitude, and impossibly low socio-economic indicators were the result of slavery, Jim Crow, and decades of segregation.  What would one expect from a system that disintegrated families but encouraged random reproduction, deprived men of their civil and human rights, and kept them in ignorant bondage for decades?

And so it was that Felicia enthused by the thought of going to the source of primitive, ur-humanity, and seeing for herself the roots of cultural simplicity and endowed wisdom, headed off to Africa.

A large continent with very different tribal, colonial, and prehistoric themes, it was difficult for her to choose her first contact; but since the American black diaspora came from West Africa, it was there she would begin.  Nigeria, she learned, was the cultural center of slavery. 

In the early 20th-century, the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria had one of the biggest slave populations in the world, one to two and a half million slaves, a flourishing slave trade supplied by slave raids and thousands of slaves given as tributes to the Sultan of Sokoto and his emirs. Once African tribal chieftains realized the value these slaves represented to European traders, they initiated a lively, productive, remunerative European slave market.

 

Tribal chieftains up and down the west coast of Africa were quick to cash in on the new economic initiatives, and the transatlantic slave trade began apace.  West Africans ethnically were what the European trader was looking for - physical strength, durability, stature, and reproductive potential - so the perfect storm formed.  Ideal physical characteristics, an entrepreneurial tribal culture, and European capitalists anxious to make millions. 

Now, anyone who travels to Lagos understands their mistake the minute they get off the plane.  They are beleaguered by touts, thieves, con men, hustlers, and racketeers - the street culture that gave rise to the multi-billion dollar credit fraud rings in the United States and Europe. 

If and when the visitor makes his way out of the airport and into the city, he is overwhelmed by the chaos, the vast, sprawling slums, the heat, noise, and foul scenes of African life.  Here is the American inner city writ large, the famous cultural motherlode that Felicia was looking for, impossibly uncivilized, brutally raw, and intimidating. 

It was not what Felicia expected, but she had refused friends’ suggestions that she start with something milder, less inchoate, and more accommodating - Ghana, for example, a country which had supplied its share of slaves but which was culturally tamer, more attuned with Western moral and social values - but she had been adamant.  She wanted nothing but the purest experience, where the American inner city originated. 

Her Lagos hotel, the Fairleigh Arms, had no reservation for her, but for a nominal fee might see if something was available.  Her room was an airless dump - unchanged sheets, broken air conditioning, swarms of mosquitos, reddish-brown tap water, a clogged, broken toilet, and one flickering intermittent tube light. 

She felt alone, disconsolate, and miserable; but thought that getting out into the life of the city would restore the optimism and enthusiasm with which she had come to Africa; but no such luck.  A pretty, young white woman was a natural target for the thousands of itinerant black men roaming the streets.  She was accosted, harassed, abused until afraid and desperate, she ran back to her hotel, only to find her things piled in the lobby and told that her room was now occupied by another guest. 

Her money and passport placed in a hotel safe deposit box were gone, an unfortunate oversight the management said, of course to be reported to the police; but the damage was done.  She was without identification, money, or means, alone in this steaming, stinking city with no recourse.  Worst of all, and as much as she hated to admit it, she was surrounded by black people, hemmed in by them, suffocated by them, assaulted by them, with not one white face in sight. 

The American Embassy had many years set up a special section for Americans like Felicia, and helped her rebook her flight back to New York, arrange for a money transfer and a new passport; and saying prayers to a God she had long ago dismissed as part of the demands of the progressive canon, thanked him for her salvation. 

Now of course Felicia's experience is not representative of all African journeys.  Those travelers who have wisely booked well-organized safaris to the Serengeti have none of her problems; and international bankers and development consultants are always housed in five-star hotels, guests of Big Men beneficiaries of Western favors to assure a steady supply of oil and rare earth minerals.  

Yet Felicia's sojourn was real - the real Africa, the one behind the diaspora, the ghetto, the inner city.  Horrible as it was, it drew the parallel which neither she nor any of her progressive colleagues were willing to acknowledge or admit.  

Culture does matter, and the persistent dysfunction of the inner city is at least in part due to its African origins.  The slaves brought from Angola, Ghana, or the Gambia were not burghers from the West country, nor enterprising Italians from Sorrento, nor German and Scandinavian farmers - Christians, peasants and serfs at worst but solidly European in outlook.  Their history, however referential, was of kings, courtiers, and empires not of the jungle, the desert, or the veldt.

Colonialism helped to create an educated, Western-oriented intelligentsia - any diplomat or World Bank economist always returns with renewed respect for their African colleagues - and few deny the small-scale entrepreneurial energy of the people; but the truth behind the myth of the universal native sophistication of Africans, the source of the new age's cultural leaders, is hard to accept.  African countries from north to south, east to west, are ruled by despots, crooks, and petty dictators.  Their populations live either in pestilential urban slums or still-primitive Paleolithic villages. 

Felicia was met with surprise and disbelief when American progressives heard her story.  It simply couldn't be true, they insisted.  The fault was hers.  She didn't let Africa be Africa and spent her time there under false pretenses, under the yoke of white Europeanism.  No, she said. It wasn't her at all but the blighted, unredeemable horrible place it was. 

'Racist', her friends said when they heard her frightful tale; and that patently dumb, ignorant comment only showed the error of their ways.  Progressives had been confecting, weaving, stitching this cultural fantasy for years and refused to open their eyes. 

Epiphanies come in many shapes, colors, and varieties; and this trip to Africa was Felicia's eye-opener. Political life was a lot simpler without having to maintain a series of fictions.  Conservatives at least had that advantage; so without much ado and to the consternation of her friends and family she turned the corner and never looked back. 

Harridans, Viragos, And Succubuses - Life Without Bitches Would Be A Thudding Bore, A Washington Tale

Ivan's Devil in The Brothers Karamazov says that he is tummler, a comedian, and a vaudevillian. Life without him would be a thudding bore, a world of insufferably good people, doing good things, and interminably uninteresting. 

 

Tolstoy famously wrote, 'All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’; and with that he wrote about Anna Karenina and her husband, Count Vronsky, Prince Oblansky, Princess Scherbatsky and their troubled, fascinating families. 

Literature is filled with villains, villainesses, cads, crooks, shysters, adulterers, and con men.  The most interesting characters in Shakespeare are Richard III, Iago, Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Dionyza, Lady Macbeth, and Tamora who play out ambition jealousy, spite, she-bear defensiveness, territorialism, and downright greed in a mayhem of cruelty, exile, and murder. 

Literature is life, after all.  Shakespeare may have invented Richard III but he didn't invent the archetype, a character of indomitable will without a shred of moral restraint.  Dionyza in her plot to kill Marina, the beautiful, innocent daughter of Pericles only because she was a sexual competitor to her own plain, uninteresting daughter, may have been an exaggeratedly protective mother, but few readers have not met women of such cold ambition.  

Iago drove Othello to murder and ruins him, his reputation, and his family simply because he could - an evil man without a shred of human feeling; but is he unique?  Far from it. 

 

And so it is with no surprise that someone like Amanda Barkley existed, a woman with seemingly no positive redeeming features, but a fascinating woman nonetheless.  She was born nasty.  Her parents couldn't believe that they had created such a creature - a little girl without an ounce of compassion for others, not a whit of tolerance or accommodation, not one bit of tenderness or affection.  

She was a child somehow born so far outside the norm that she could horrify and fascinate at the seme time.  The good people of New Brighton had never seen or known anyone like her.  Whenever she stepped onto the playground, the other children scattered and left her standing alone.  She was a pariah from her first day in pre-school.  There was something innately fiendish about her, pigtails and pinafore and all, and even the teachers kept their distance. 

Even the most religious among the community began to have doubts about God - how and why would he have created a creature like this with not an iota of his divinity, with more in common with Beelzebub than Jesus, a girl who came out of the womb bad.  They blessed themselves, said special prayers, did an extra rosary for the girl and for all those around her. 

 

Amanda Barkley grew up quickly, and as a young adolescent was a stunning beauty, and these same devout Catholics wondered at God's irony creating a devil in such a beautiful disguise.  Worse, it was the Devil's own work, managing to fashion just the right demon for the times, an irresistible woman, as outwardly appealing and good as Eve, but a being with no soul. 

Not only was Amanda beautiful, but she was smart - so smart that she was doodling abstract mathematical equations before she left elementary school, and enrolled in the university's graduate programs while still in high school.  This too was conceived as the Devil's work, for now this young woman had her pick, and could sow the seeds of evil at will. 

Of course these febrile-minded burghers were only expressing their own doubts about Creation and their salvation.  Except for being a bitch - a virago, succubus, harridan, and vixen - she was simply a Darwinian configuration with some odd bits.  Her horridness was really no different than slanty eyes, a genetic variation that promised no evolutionary advantage but somehow showed up and persisted.  

It was her stunning beauty, genius, and growing will to apply both to her advantage which gave her that Darwinian push, and the fact that she was an abhorrent personality was irrelevant. 

Where, one might ask, would society find a place for such a remarkable person? On the one hand because of those odd bits, no one wanted to be within a mile of her, but because of that core of genius and undeniably ideal beauty they still wanted her.  A classic Kurt Lewin approach-avoidance psychological paradigm played out at the level of society at large. 

There is nothing to say that a virago cannot put on an act especially when one is as intelligent as Amanda.  She was aware of her 'special' character - a kind of personalized misanthropy which did not necessarily include all humanity, just most - and knew that because it was not irreducible the rough edges could be honed to her advantage.  All by way of saying that she could fool most of the people most of the time, and politics was the perfect place for her talents. 

In fact nothing could be more suitable.  A beautiful, intelligent woman without a scrap of moral limitations, in an arena of intellectual rubes, sexually credulous men, and scratchy women.  It was her big top, her three ring circus, her Roncesvalles. 

Her biggest talent was to harness her brutally indifferent will and let enough of it out to intimidate without rebellion. She had animal-like pheromones which other women could sense and instinctively gave way.  Men approached her with confidence but retreated. That, plus an understanding of democracy and how representative government worked, enabled her to make her way effortless through the ranks. 

Starting at state level, the darling of a Congressman who knew talent and ambition when he saw it and looked forward to associating with a woman with her brains and uncompromising political philosophy, she became known; and with his entree to Washington was well on her way. 

The Congressman and she were two of a kind - Darwin assured that in the evolution of the species there was more than one aberration at a time - and were, in their deep-seated misanthropy and Nietzschean amorality, kindred spirits.  What that sexual relationship was like, one could only guess.  Since both had the same unquenchable spirit of Iago, Goneril, Regan, Lady Macbeth, and Richard III, sexual conjugation must have been something to behold.  They were Washington's power couple, but unlike others who only pretended, they used their colleagues and the system to their unique advantage.

They were invited to Georgetown soirees and after-hours parties in Spring Valley and Palm Springs, but with a certain reserve.  Most of their associates never knew quite what to make of them and, like most people in their lives, kept their distance.  Amanda used this temerity to her advantage - weak, timorous adversaries were easy to outclass and outmaneuver - and before long she and the Congressman parted ways.  Friends to the last, co-conspirators in the great political charade, but lovers no more. 

It was better that way, Amanda considered.  As much as she felt close to the Congressman, he was no match for her.  Someone of her particular breeding and nature needed free running.  The prize would never be worth it if shared. 

Did age soften Amanda Barkley? Did she lose some of that intimidating will? Did she find reserves of kindness and consideration she never knew she had?

Absolutely not.  When she left Washington to make her fortune in business, she was even more demanding, terrifying, and nasty; and by the time she was ready to retire, she had not lost one scintilla of that peculiar dynamism which made her the stunning, unbelievable character she was.

The moral of the story?  At the simplest level, it takes all kinds; but at a more profound one, Nature gifts us with unusual people once in a blue moon, and most of them are like Amanda - soulless viragos of unmatched brilliance, ability, and ambition.  We can only stand back and admire them. 

Face Lifts - Fake News Or The Restoration Of Beauty?

'What do you think, Sarah', Betty Parsons asked her friend over coffee at Starbucks. 'A little nip and tuck here and there?'

'I'm all for it', replied Betty. 'We're not getting any younger'. 

And that little across the table conversation did it for Betty, and the next day she called for an appointment with one of Washington's most prominent cosmetic surgeons.  She knew the wait would be long - Washington had lots of money and many long-in-the-tooth matrons willing to spend it on a few more years of youthful looks. 

Betty looked in the mirror to assess the damage.  What would she need? A beginning turkey wattle which she had already covered over with an Hermes scarf?  Jowls? Saggy eyelids? And that slightly receding chin had bothered her ever since adolescence.  She had compensated for it by jutting it out just a bit - too much would have drawn attention to it - and she liked that symmetry that her effort gave to her face. 

She knew the doctor would ask her what she wanted, although some women left it up to them. They were the professionals after all and had done thousands of women, so they knew the ins and outs of facial harmony, reconstruction to the mean, and producing a face that while still the same one that came in the operating room, was one of surprising youthfulness and beauty. 

Betty was from an old, patrician New England family descended from old English stock, shipbuilders, traders, and financiers who built the new republic.  There was a social conservatism about these Boston families, a cultural pride in simple, elegant taste - Revere silver, Wedgewood crystal, Townsend desks, and Isfahan carpets.  They drove old cars to show their practicality, parsimony, and restraint.  They dressed in fine English tweeds and leather-patched the elbows rather than buying new ones.  There homes were fine, but never showy.  

 

The whole ethos of the community was adherence to traditionality.  They eschewed the modern, the garish, the temporary, and were examples of both the staying power of the American aristocracy and its cultural expressions. 

The idea of face-lifts went against the deep core of this ethos.  Altering your appearance, modifying it in an attempt to capture some youthful fantasy was unthinkable, a capitulation to all that was frivolous and unnecessary, a bourgeois preoccupation. 

Betty had long ago left the confines of Beacon Hill, married, and lived in one of Washington's old-monied neighborhoods.  Spring Valley was an example of patrician taste - classic Georgian homes impeccably landscaped, but modest in appearance.  There were no cultural intrusions in the neighborhood, neither architecturally nor socially.  It was an enclave of old English taste. 

Yet necessarily, the waves of American social change could not be excluded forever from Spring Valley, and while its occupants were still tasteful and reserved, they were modern in spirit.  While they still wore cultured pearls and black dresses on occasion, they were more often seen in something bright and sexy.  There was much to be admired about the old ways, but money simply could buy so much these days that there was no point in keeping it in the bank. 

Betty, given her heritage and the very innate sense of taste and cultural belonging that had been part of her family for over two hundred years, did have some brief second thoughts about her forthcoming facelift.  'Fake news', said a catty newcomer to her bridge group, a woman whose tarnished pedigree should have been fair warning. 

This hurt even coming from an arriviste, and it gave Betty pause.  Was she simply drifting away from her cultural center, becoming no more than a cheap American bimbo with a boob job?

There are margins of truth beyond which image cannot reach.  A face-lift can enhance the way a woman looks to others.  It is a restoration of the image she has always presented, and one which reflects who she feels she is.  A woman like Betty who had always been classically beautiful and whose classic beauty had been a feature of the well-heeled and well-watered society to which she belonged, felt it only right and reasonable to restore that beauty once it began to fade.

There was no point, she felt, in being like the Bostonians who were as proud of their sags and lines as they were of their patched tweeds and beat-up old Fords.  She had always thought of herself as a beautiful woman – her most telling and important characteristic – and if that beauty disappeared, so would she.

Facial reconstructive surgery – becoming a woman you never were – was another thing altogether.  Why should a woman, fated with the genes of unattractive parents, suffer that fate if she had the means to neuter them?  There was no pride in being thought of as ‘the smart one’, ‘the talented one’ when her desire was to be ‘the beautiful one’.  Women since Nefertiti have been prized for their beauty, a beauty the standards of which have not changed for 5000 years; so why not choose that universal virtue over others which had more than their share of rough edges. Besides, she wasn’t all that smart.



The Bostonians called the artificially beautiful woman vain and impressionable.  How long would her ‘beauty’ last?  Giving in to faltering good looks expressed an existential purity which the vain could never understand. Yet for her there was no vanity involved.  It was only a matter of consistency; and who was to say whether faithfulness to an image, a desire, a creation was any less valid that a spiritless acceptance of the ways the cards are dealt?

Vanity is considered a sin not because of its meaninglessness, but because of its exaggeration.  A woman who has a face lift to restore what was legitimately a classic beauty and the defining feature of her life should never be considered vain.  A woman who was never attractive but who has repeated face lifts, make-overs, and style upgrades to try to approximate a false, artificially-determined beauty is most certainly vain.

So, Betty's makeover would be a restoration, a reconstruction, not anything new or 'fake'.  She wanted to look again like the young woman who had always been considered the most beautiful of all, the woman of perfect symmetry, of classic line and shape, animated by a sensuousness and internal vibrancy that few women could match. 

What would be 'fake' about that?  She would not become another woman.  She would simply be that woman thirty years ago, just as vital, elegant, and alluring as ever. 

The surgery was a success, and once again heads turned, men whispered, and women marveled.  She bought a new wardrobe - a younger one, a snappier one, but still Armani and St. Laurent.  It was a complete transformation. Sh had been fitted and outfitted perfectly.  Everything matched, her symmetry was restored, and she walked with renewed pride and confidence. 

She was a new woman - well, the same woman restored to the original - and felt like a goddess, a Nefertiti, an Aphrodite.  It was the way of women.