Sexual Expiry Dates - Men's Last Hurrah Before The Exacting Of God's Cruelest Irony

Konstantin Levin in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina notes God's ultimate irony - having created Man a sentient, creative, intelligent, resourceful, and humorous being granted him but a few decades of life before consigning him for all eternity to the cold, hard ground of the steppes. 

Israel Cohen reflected on that irony, glad that the modern era had given Man a few more years than the scanty three decades of 1812, but felt a worse irony.  God had created men with a lifelong, ineradicable, persistent sexual desire, but gave him a desultory period of youth to perform. 

Israel had just come from his doctor who had complimented him on his good health - for a man of his age, the physician added.  'Can't be expecting too much with the Grim Reaper in the rear view mirror', he added hoping to lift the serious depression of his patient. 

'That's not funny', Israel replied. 

The worst part of it all was that his affair with Monica Albert, a young woman from Accounting, had just ended, a delightful December-May affair that had lifted his spirits, given him new hope for his remaining years, and just possibly was the epiphanic, Lawrentian moment of his life. 

He couldn't believe his luck, for why would this thirty-something, attractive, spirited woman want anything to to with him, a carcass of the man he once was, a wrinkled, scanty person with a good sense of humor about the only thing remaining from his youth?

The relationship was a classic.  She, alone after many miserable affairs, still hoped for a husband, children, and a home ,saw her chances dwindling.  More importantly she felt emotionally bereft - none of the men with whom she had lived understood her for who she was, took advantage of her, missed her essential nature, and left her on the curb. 

Israel with his older, more mature wisdom, took her seriously.  He loved her smile, her poise, and her special inner happiness, so long muffled and hidden from view.  He explored her 'inner rooms' as she put it.  He had the patience to roam there, to linger there, and to find out who she really was. 

At first she thought he was just like most men - attentive, but for only one reason - but soon found out that he was seriously interested and displayed the patience, the slow, deliberate pace of exploration that a woman required. 

As far as Israel was concerned, he felt as though he had received an early Christmas present under the tree - a young, nubile, sexually willing, and completely loving woman.  How could an older man be so lucky? What men of his age, like his old, disassembling Yale classmates who had resigned  themselves to a chaise lounge and adult learning, could possibly understand what they were missing?  A gift from an ironic God who stayed the course for once, dropped a luscious fruit into the lap of a deserving man. 

Coleman Silk, the main character in Phillip Roth's book The Human Stain is an older man who begins a relationship with a woman half his age.  His longtime friend warns him of the consequences - Faunia is divorced from a dangerous, psychotic, stalking Vietnam veteran, she is uneducated, barely literate, makes her living as the school janitor, and lives with the guilt of having let her two children die in an avoidable fire. 

 

'Granted', Silk says to his friend, 'she is not my first love, nor is she my best love; but she certainly is my last love.  Doesn't that count for something?' and so it was with Israel, willing to take any risk, any chance, any opportunity to fulfill the persistent, permanent, and unholy desire to have sex with a beautiful young woman. 

Israel was a man in a good marriage - one secured by two successful, prosperous children, three grandchildren, a second home on Nantucket, and a generous retirement account.  Why would he jeopardize all this? 

'It's the sex, isn't it', Silk's friend says to him after hearing his justification for a perilous adventure, and of course it was. 

Coleman makes an effort to get beyond sex.  He takes Faunia to a Brahms concert at Tanglewood, invites her to a three-star dinner at Chez Marguerite in Lenox, and buys her things - but she is unmoved.  'Leave it alone, Coleman. Leave it be' but he finds himself more and more involved in her life.  

As threatening as it is, he is unafraid of what he sees, becomes her defender, her protector, and her advocate.  Yet the real joy, the most meaningful, existential part of the romance is indeed the sex- to lie next to a woman whose skin is like velvet, whose legs are supple and long, whose lips are full and sensuous, whose passion is undiminished. 

'And what of it?, he replies to his friend.  'Didn't you get my meaning?'. 

His lawyer warns him. 'What if you get her pregnant, then what will you do?  She will rob you blind...and what if she's HIV+, then what? And when the ex-husband shows up at your door with a loaded shotgun?'

Coleman listens patiently, then responds, 'You sanctimonious prick' and leaves. Another supposed well-wisher who understands nothing, whose life is a routine slog, a pedestrian pace, a spiritless, passionless, dutiful place. 

It ends badly for Coleman, of course, but one expects that as his car rolls off the embankment, sent there by the jealous, mad ex-husband, he will look at death with equanimity, Faunia at his side; but Israel wanted no such denouement or demise.  He would have to end the affair before it became untenable. 

There were tears and regrets.  The woman was disconsolate, the more so because she had just let herself believe that Israel would leave his wife and marry her; but she understood.  The age difference was insurmountable and soon she would be taking care of him, not having sex with him. 

Coleman knew that she was his last love, regardless of his lifelong desire or sexual ability.  It was simply the end of an era, that short , happy space granted to men.  He knew that the affair had to end, but the regret stayed with him. The memories of her next to him in bed were indelible, there before he went to sleep, and again there when he woke up. 

It was an existential affair after all, a final validation of manhood, even of being.  Lawrence was right.  Sex in the right measure, in the right balance, and in complete harmony can mean something, can exist in another dimension. 

 

Israel never forgot the young woman and never put her aside as should have.  He regretted that the affair was over, but knew it had to end; but true to male form  he looked with undying interest at the young things on the Florida beach where he retired. 

A Tale Of Seduction - The Marvelous Ingenuity Of Sexual Fakery

Felicia Sanders was a coquette - a pert, cute Midwestern girl of classic cornflower blue eyes, blonde flaxen hair, a bright smile, and perfect skin. Seduction for her was irrelevant, because God had given her all it takes to attract men.  There was something in her simple perfection and innately seductive beauty that instinctively appealed to men, all men.

 

A blonde woman once said that she had a ten percent jump on all other women just because of her hair, for which advantage she had the Aryans to thank.  Ever since they came down from the steppes, settled in Mohenjo-Daro and then made their way down the Subcontinent, light complexion, light hair, and light eyes became the ideal.

Not only is this preference obvious in the matrimonial notices in Indian newspapers which plead for men and women of light skin, but in every community born of darker shades. 

Despite James Brown's famous, 'Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud', black men have sought the Holy Grail of sexual conquest - a blonde, blue-eyed woman just like Felicia Sanders.  In fact she couldn't walk down K Street without running the gantlet.  

She took it for granted, it came with the territory, and as much of a nuisance as it was, the flip side was the breathless desire of handsome white men everywhere.

Other women of ordinary looks and darker mien had no such luck. They had to work at seduction, tart up like nobody's business - make up, eyeliner, perfume, designer clothes, and Blahnik shoes - and even then had to put on the dog every time they were approached, some sign of sexual proclivity, even eagerness, although nothing too forward. 

The whole kit-and-kaboodle was a grand circus act, a vaudevillian standup routine, a television soap opera of exaggeration and melodrama.  'It isn't who I am, but who I seem to be' is the meme on the sexual street, and there is no woman who doesn't know it, repeat it, and incorporate it as part of her persona. 

A little embellishment never hurt anyone, a touching up around the edges, a little dab here and there; and as long as one didn't stray too far from the truth, such creative invention could pay great rewards.

Blue Jasmine, perhaps Woody Allen's finest movie and an Oscar-winning role for Cate Blanchett, is about a woman who veers too far from the truth.  So anxious is she to land a decent man after a long marriage with a deceitful, crooked man, she creates an alternate identity, one which corresponds to her early childhood fantasies and reflects at least some of her abilities.  It take happenstance, a chance encounter with an errant brother-in-law to out her deception. 

Jasmine is not the only woman who has fudged a bit on her resume or tinkered with her pedigree.  Somehow we all think that we are masters at legerdemain, that we are sailing on a ship of fools, that a sucker is born every minute, that you can fool most of the people most of the time. 

The comedian Joan Rivers was proud of her makeovers.  'I've sent a hundred Jewish kids to Harvard on my face alone', she once told Johnny Carson, and she at seventy never looked better, not quite thirty but a good twenty years had been nipped and tucked by Dr. Goldberg, plastic surgeon to the stars, known for his Michelangelo touch, his Bernini vision, and his DaVinci insights into feminine beauty. 

Rivers wasn't the only woman to seek out Dr. Goldberg.  Jane Fonda was as open and forthright about her cosmetic adjustments.  Why, she said, should a woman of beauty and wealth look like a wrinkled prune when she can retain the youthful looks that were her hallmark?

Women have a stake in hedging their bets.  Keeping fit at the gym, getting facials and body toning, and keeping a beauty chest full of creams, lotions, and powders is far more than simple vanity.  It makes good economic sense. 

A woman who ‘lets herself go’, who lets her graying hair straggle, wears sensible shoes and comfortable pants, and pays no attention to crows' feet, lumps, and sags has lost competitive advantage in a tough marketplace.

In the animal kingdom it is the male bird that has the bright plumage, who does the exotic mating dances, and prances around the female saying, 'I'm here, I'm here!'. 

While men have their own mating rituals, and have relied more on acquired wealth, future promise, and good health than any frippery, women of the human species are the ones who tart up.

Now, legions of ugly women have insisted that beauty is only skin deep, but they know in their heart of hearts that that is complete nonsense.  Conventionally attractive women get the pick of desirable men, the best jobs, quick promotion, and a home in the suburbs, and they are there for all to see.  

In fact the standards of female beauty have never changed.  The most beautiful women today have the same perfect symmetry as the statues of Nefertiti, Venus de Milo, the Three Graces, or Aphrodite, or the women in the paintings of Leonardo and Botticelli. 

So women behind the curve do everything to approximate that universal standard of feminine beauty - create optical illusions to narrow wide-spaced eyes, hide oversized ears, add shadow and color to disguise a long or misshapen nose. 

It has always been so, and women have been the same sexual performers forever.  Of course, social class has a lot to do with the show - peasant women are chosen for their brawn and reproductive potential.  A man needs a working woman, not a movie star, which is why although there are always a few diamonds in the rough, the peasantry is never responsible for the world's most beautiful women. 

To be fair, men put on their own show, a lot of hot air, braggadocio, posturing, and outright obfuscation of the truth to gain competitive advantage.  A silver tongue has always been the sharpest knife in the male cutlery - a little sweet-talking, exaggeration, swagger, and arbitrariness go a long way when it comes to seduction.  

Female credulousness increases with age - older, single women want to believe the most transparent male chicanery and pay the price, but in younger years the battle is enjoined equally.  Male suitors and their intended prizes go through the most preposterous stagecraft, but only one will give in. 

To be even more fair, America is the land of false images, fol-de-rol, and fake everything.  Hollywood is the real America, not Chillicothe or Ames.  It is the heart and soul, the cultural core of America whose citizens don't want the truth, but the fantasy.  Who wants the real life of Walmart greeter, Target checkout clerk, or diner grill man?  

 

Much has been made recently of 'fake news', and progressives have been falling over themselves to promote 'the truth'; but every American knows there is no such thing, everything is a matter of perception and interpretation, so why fuss?

Which is why sexual chicanery, the art of seductive trickery as old as the hills is still not only alive and well but as glitteringly in play as ever.  We don't want the truth, so go ahead and gussy up and give it a try.  We're not good at telling truth from fiction in the first place, so why not enjoy the three ring circus of sexual seduction?

The Renascence Of Religion In America - Time To Revisit The Separation Of Church And State

Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s  character in The Brothers Karamazov, explains to Father Zossima why he believes that the state should be subsumed within the Church.  How little crime there would be, he said, if men were beholden to first to God, the final arbiter of right and wrong.  Crime – sin – would be punished at Judgment Day, the consequences of ill deeds far more lasting than any secular punishment.

But far from a desire for a punitive religious state, Ivan only understood the centrality of a moral ethos at the center of any state - that governance is simply not possible without the universality of core ethos to which everyone subscribes, an ethos of honesty, honor, respect, courage, and compassion. 

This idea is far from one of theocracy where secular governance ceases to exist and only the church remains to enact its Biblical or Koranic rules.  Ivan recoiled at the accusation and insisted that without a moral core, a nation would become only a fragmented, querulous, divided place. 

The values of honesty, honor, respect, courage, and compassion predate Christianity, of course.  The diptychs of Cato the Elder (234-149 BC) included in a curriculum for future Roman leaders stressed the same ideals.  A good Roman consul or even Emperor needed to have more than good management, military strategy, and administration to rule well.

 

In other words, Roman-Judeo-Christian values are universal and ex-temporal.  No successful civilization has ignored them; and most have incorporated them in education and civic life. Teaching – insisting upon – these values would strengthen a moral ethos if it existed and help promote one if there were not. 

The principles of the Enlightenment on which both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were based were profoundly religious.  Although philosophers of the 18th century valued logic and rationality above all, they were insistent that they be put to use in the service of God.  They like Augustine and Aquinas before them understood that the way to faith was through logic; and while faith would always triumph, the exercise of reason would strengthen belief not diminish it.

Today, however, these Jeffersonian principles have been deformed into policies which forbid the inclusion of religion in any secular institution or debate.  As a result the teaching of Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards find no place within schools at the very moment when they are most needed. 

The intent of the Founding Fathers has been misinterpreted ever since the framing of the Constitution.  Jefferson et al were never against the incorporation of and respect for religious principles within a secular state; just that no religion should ever be imposed on anyone.

Augustine’s work, The City of God is perhaps the most important Western work on the relationship between church and state.  As a good Christian who evolved from doubting roots into Christianity’s most influential theologian, Augustine argued for the co-existence if not integration of church and state.  As a good Christian, he believed that nothing was possible without faith – not civil society, not government, not family or community.  Faith precedes logic, civil discourse, laws, and governance, he said.  Without it, mankind would be lost.

 

A universal belief in God, and in the case of 18th century America, a Christian God, was central to the new republic.  The values, traditions, and expectations of Christianity were commonly recognized and respected.  There was more to being an American than just being an individualist, an entrepreneur, or a free citizen. Americans from one end of the continent to the other subscribed to the same principles, adhered to the same beliefs, and acted according to the same code.

More or less, of course.  America has also been a lawless place of Robber Barons, Wild West cattle thieves, Wall Street manipulators, dirty politics, and greed.

Yet it has been because of a disrespect for this common, universal code of right behavior and  justice that the country has veered from its Jeffersonian beginnings.  There might have been no way for the ethos to have survived periods of great opportunity, the chance for great wealth, land, and property.  Erosion of common values might be the inevitable by-product of individualism and individual enterprise.

The erosion of this national ethos, or national philosophical culture, has been accelerated not because of increased immigration and the introduction of cultures and beliefs far removed from our early Christian heritage, but because these cultural identities have been given a special, unique status never before seen in America.  In previous decades of immigration to America, new arrivals were expected to quickly assimilate – to speak English, to respect not only the laws of the land but its traditions and values, and to become as American as those born here.   Not so now.

 

At its most general, grace is simply a way of becoming more committed to universal values, and through the profession of this commitment, engaging others.  Not quite a radical movement by today’s standards, but a movement nonetheless.

Where, then, does this leave us? The United State is a peculiar country.  It is one of the most avowedly religious in the world, but it insists on the separation of church and state.  At the same time, inroads are being made into America’s dogged insistence on institutional secularism. 

States are challenging the principle and the rulings of the Supreme Court – the philosophical fulcrum of liberal democratic secularism.  Individuals and businesses which reject abortion and gay marriage are mobilizing to challenge the purely secular judgments of the Court.   Conservative activists would like to see a diminution if not not elimination of what they see as a secular ex cathedra institution.  There is no way that the Court should decide Biblical matters.

There is no way that the United States will ever become a religious state let alone a theocracy; but these populist demands to de-secularize the state have gained traction and credibility.

The evolution from a secular and increasingly progressive state to one more attuned to Judeo-Christian, Biblical values will be long process; but the lessons of radical Islam –as dismissed and criticized as they currently are – cannot be ignored.  The advocates of a Muslim caliphate insist on God’s law over all; and while such authoritarianism is questioned, its purpose and goals must be considered.

Perhaps it is time to reconsider the separation of church and state - a compelling argument for moral authority.  

Razing The Ghetto - Blue Cities, Inner City Kingpins, And The Holy Crusade Of Donald Trump

Pharoah Jones was the king of Anacostia, the Big Man on the street, crewe leader, godfather of the inner city.  He had risen from minor gofer to Lafarge Evans, longtime boss of the nastiest, most violent, most untamed ghetto of Washington, DC. to the top of the crime pyramid. 

'Imagine that', he said to a group of homeboys gathered on the stoop of A block of the Frederick Douglass Homes, Washington's biggest project, a city within a city, ground zero for Jones' Fentanyl, prostitution, and extortion business, an enterprise netting millions.  

He was untouchable, given a bye by the police, in an understanding partnership with the Mayor and the City Councilmember from Ward 8, and friends with the Washington liberal establishment for whom he was the black man, sentient, intelligent being of the forest transplanted but ascendent, a true expression of street culture. 

During the halcyon years of the Biden administration, Pharoah had expanded his various businesses manyfold. He extended his Fentanyl operation to Baltimore and Richmond, made sweet deals with the Obregon Mexican cartel for wholesale pricing in return for volume, ran prostitution rings not only east of the Anacostia but on Capitol Hill, and had renascent cooperation agreements with the Jamaican posses to distribute crack cocaine which, thanks to that understanding, was having a Washington rebirth. 

Pharoah Jones was indeed the Godfather of Anacostia just as Frank Lucas had been in Harlem a few decades earlier.  He was street smart, politically savvy, and generous when it mattered.  Police captains, judges, municipal officials, federal law enforcement, and Congressmen were in his pocket

He was able to exert and maintain influence, like Frank Lucas, thanks to his generosity and brutal intimidation.  Those in his pay who began to have doubts were schooled, and schooled in no uncertain terms.  Their houses were torched, cars disappeared, and unequivocal warnings clipped to their pillows. 

Little of this violent intimidation was needed during the Biden years which were among the most congenial he and the ghetto had ever known.  DC police were withdrawn from the streets of Anacostia after George Floyd; and in the interest of community policing and black rights, federal intervention was unknown, and the streets of the neighborhood were his and his alone. 

In the Biden years black idolatry reached unheard of proportions.  Jones was feted by the Mayor as 'a man who has dedicated his whole life to black cultural integrity, the final end to racism, Jim Crow, and the legacy of slavery, and the historic ascendancy of the black man to the highest pinnacle of American society'. 

The white progressive establishment applauded in unison, and featured Jones in their revisionist views of cultural history.  This was the black man of the new millennia. 

This all came to a quick and abrupt end with the election of Donald Trump who vowed to clean up Washington and make the Nation's Capital a model of crime-free, trash-free, and homeless-free America.  ICE, DEA, and the National Guard were sent in to Anacostia, Brentwood, and the other morally vacuous slums of the city and began to round up everyone in sight in this neo-Puritan sweep. 

Jones was unmoved.  This President for all his Sturm und Drang could be had just like the foundering, blubbering, incompetent Biden; and in a closed door meeting with the Mayor he concluded an 'Agreement of Defiance' according to which neither the sovereignty of city nor the integrity of the inner city would be violated.  The city and its neighborhoods would stand strong against fascism and the storm troopers of Donald Trump. 

It was a canny, heady mix- racism and sovereignty - and both the Mayor and Jones were sure that it would halt the Trump juggernaut in its tracks.

Both were defiant. The Mayor chose DC Independence Day, the day the District gained some measure of political autonomy and distance from its Congressional overseers to speak against the armed insults of Trump

Today we celebrate the freedom and independence of the District of Columbia from its plantation overseers in Congress who have for far too long treated our city as their cotton fields and our citizens as their slaves.  This will not stand. Statehood will be ours!

The crowd assembled by City Hall to hear the Mayor cheered with loud applause.  This was what they wanted to hear -  resounding defiance of the white man, a rejection of his supremacy, arrogance, and oppression and a commitment to black power.

Pharoah Jones who had been invited by the Mayor to share the podium with her was no less eloquent. Standing tall, and surrounded by his bodyguards looking much like Papa Doc's Tonton Macoute and Louis Farrakan's black tigers, he began

Ain't no way that honky goin' fuck with us, no way.  We black folk standin' proud against that Simon Legree, that racist muthafucka who say he goin' come into our neighborhoods.  Well, we solid, we strong, we black, and we proud, and that nig-er hater ain't comin' within a light year of us. 

The Mayor winced at the language, the 'Bama accent, the ad hominem references to the President of the United States, but that was part of the 'Agreement of Defiance'.  Jones was to take care of the ghetto, she would take care of the city, and together they would stand firm against the Gestapo storm troopers of the White House. 

'I'll fix this', said Pharoah to his lieutenants after his speech.  'That muthafucka gwine listen', and so it was that he sent his avant garde across the Anacostia to official Washington, to Homeland Security and the FBI.  The wealth of Croesus was offered and refused.  No respect was paid, no homage rendered.  To these newcomers Pharoah and his legation were just black men who were not in prison.

Not only that, Pharoah's slum, now out in the open, became a target for the purges of the city; and before the legation had returned to the projects, Homeland Security and FBI agents were already there handcuffing Fentanyl dealers and throwing them in the back of paddy wagons.

'Do you know who I am?', shouted Sha-Kwanda Evans, counsellor to Jones and emissary to Congressman X, faithful supporter and lifelong friend of the ghetto., to an FBI agent.  

'I don't give a flying fuck who you are, nig-er', said the agent in body armor and mask and threw him in the van. 

When the Mayor heard of the assault, she was outraged and incensed, and went public with her anger and defiance.  She went straight to the White House and demanded an explanation, but the President who saws a photo opportunity, welcomed her into the Oval Office and treated her with treacly, smarmy compliments; and with a wave of his hand sent her 'back to where she belongs'. 

With the Mayor humiliated, dismissed, and politically neutered, Trump ordered his agents to arrest Pharoah Jones, and in short measure had him behind bars, indicted, and awaiting trial for every felony under the sun. 

Anacostia erupted of course, with the remnants of Black Lives Matter leading the demonstrations, but Trump paid it no mind.  Anacostia meant nothing to him but a pestilential slum to be razed, and as far as the Mayor was concerned, she would be brought to heel in short order - she and her corrupt counterparts in Chicago and Portland, cities next on the President's hit list. 

Elitism - Society Has Always Been Divided Top To Bottom, And The Best And The Brightest Will Always Rule

Harrison Potter III was one of America's original elite - scion of an old New England family descended from English royalty (The Fourth Duke of Northumberland), entrepreneurs (shipbuilding, trans-Atlantic trade), and financial investors (founders of the Bank of Pennsylvania in 1780 and the Bank of North America in 1781). 

 

He and his fellow early American aristocrats- the Cabots, Lodges, Astors, and Livingstons among them - formed a cadre of wealthy, well-bred, cultured, and well-schooled men who were to be the foundation of American capitalism.  They, and their politician colleagues all cut from the same patrician cloth - Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson - were the essential core and the first movers of the new nation. 

They came to power and economic and financial authority because of their lineage and their inherited fortune.  America was still very British in its respect for the aristocracy, the kings, queens, and courtiers that ruled Europe, extended Western civilization to the still primitive reaches of human habitation, and were responsible for great art, music, literature, and architecture. 

It was only natural that their descendants, recently arrived in the New World, influential during the colonial period and brilliant founders of the new republic, should be accorded respect and awarded the privilege of power. 

This old Anglo-Saxon, New England elite has largely disappeared.  The families are on the social registers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and nuptials are routinely announced in the New York Times, but they have given way to the New Age of American elitism - the billionaires.  Gates, Bezos, Buffett, Brin, and a hundred more entrepreneurs who are building the new economy, the AI, virtual, cybernetic one. 

Before them were the great industrialists of the Twentieth Century - Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and Carnegie, a genius cluster of magnitude, influence, and geopolitical power. 

America - all societies for that matter - has always been ruled by elites, and although parentage has ceased to matter as much as it did in the early days of the republic - Bill Clinton was a hillbilly; Nixon and Reagan had simple Western roots; Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer - intelligence, savvy, and powerful ambition have been behind their rise to power.  

Elites have always had something special in common, whether roots in a storied European aristocracy, or simply brains, canniness, drive, and spirit; something that raises them above the masses, the herd, the many, the ruled. 

Although the country was founded on democratic principles, none of the ruling elite ever truly believed in populism.  Jefferson was the closest to popular participation in governance, but was chastised and cornered by Hamilton who said that it was folly to trust the unwashed.  At the very least, he advised Jefferson, there must be a buffer between the people and high decision-makers.  The Senate was the compromise, and although today it is no different from the rabble of the House of Representatives, it was envisaged as a House of Lords, a more reasonable, thoughtful, and more intelligent arm of government. 

 

Such privileged elitism is of course not new. Shakespeare wrote eloquently about the ruling Roman elites in Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and other plays. The mob was always portrayed as credulous, easily led and manipulated, and dangerous.  Only the well-born, the sophisticated, the best and the brightest could assure the greatness of empire. 

The royal families of France, England, and Russia ruled for centuries, passing on power and wealth by lineage; and the dynasties of China, Japan, and Persia were no different.  Every society from East to West has always been ruled by powerful elites, a confirmation of nothing less than the bell curve - there will always be clusters of brilliance at one asymptote and these represent leadership in governance, culture, science, and the arts. 

The Soviet Communists thought that they could reverse the course of human history and dismantle longstanding social classes and private entrepreneurship, and replace them with the rule of the proletariat and socialist economic principles.  Of course, this new structure followed old, traditional lines.  The Politburo was the elite - a privileged, powerful, entitled group of men who ruled the proletariat. Equality was an idea in name only.  The Soviet Union was constructed like and acted no differently than any purely capitalist society. 

 

The rulers and producers of America come from elite backgrounds.  Bill Gates may have engineered Microsoft from a Seattle garage, but he had gone to Harvard.  The number of American presidents with an Ivy League pedigree is significant, although not surprising.  Elites are trained and educated to be elites in elite institutions. 

Cato the Elder was a philosopher-educator who devised an educational system for young Roman aristocrats who would rule the Empire.  Cato focused on classical learning – mathematics, history, logic, and oratory – but he also stressed the moral and ethical principles that underlie governance.  Young Romans were taught the values of honesty, courage, honor, respect, and compassion.

Oxford and Cambridge were founded on the same principles – the English noble who studied at Kings College in 1441 not only studied theology, philosophy, and ethics; but also the principles of proper and right service.  These Oxbridge graduates of the Middle Ages benefitted from the same academic rigor and discipline as did Cato’s students a thousand years before. 

Harvard and Yale were modeled after the elite British schools.  Not only did they focus on the same academic, ethical, and moral principles as their English counterparts, but they built their campuses in the same style.  Yale’s Gothic architecture is very much like Oxford’s.  Harvard’s less ornate Early Georgian style is much like the Tudor style of Cambridge.  Both British and American universities are divided into residential colleges.

 

Both universities have temporarily lost their way and become little more than progressive cabals.  Slave journals have replaced Shakespeare, literature has been deconstructed down to nothing, only bits and scraps of identity and victimhood.  Aristotle and Plato, old white men, have been decommissioned; but with luck and forward thinking, the old traditional aristocratic values will be reestablished, and the universities can once again provide the country with the best and the brightest. 

Wealth of course has been the common denominator for all elites in America, subsuming all social distinctions within its ambit.  Donald Trump is no Ivy League, Boston aristocrat, but a crude bar fighter, hustler, and con man.  His roots are deep in Americanism - a lowbrow, impatient, grasping, sequined society - and such classless individualism plus intellectual brilliance and social canniness has made him one of the political elite. 

The loser in the 2024 American presidential election, Kamala Harris, claimed that she was one of the people - her people in fact, people of color - but few bought that fiction.  This was not the woman of the ghetto, friends with ho's and pimps, hustlers, and dope peddlers, but a highly educated woman from an ambitious professional family.  She warn't foolin' nobody. 

John F Kennedy made it clear to all that he wanted his Administration to be filled with the best and the brightest, and so with that criterion and high standard, he combed Harvard, Yale, and Princeton for their top scholars; he canvassed America's most influential, successful, and principled families for offspring. He had no intention of making his Cabinet look like America.  He wanted to make it look like his America, a privileged, wealthy, highly intelligent elite with a sense of noblesse oblige.  His 'Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country' was not just a political slogan.

George Herbert Walker Bush was one of the old, Anglo-Saxon American elites, but his career was nothing but giving back, a man of patriotism, honor and principle - the very core of Cato the Elder's teaching and the bedrock principles of leadership. 

The sad, sorry, feeble days of the Biden Administration and their Diversity Equity Inclusivity (DEI) obsession are over and done with.  No more will identity, race, gender, and ethnicity be the meme for leadership.  Intelligence, intellect, confidence, and ability rule. 

The concept of elitism has never changed and never will, only its formation and expression will.  The old White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite - a well-defined segment of the American population is gone, but other ruling classes will replace it.  How that elite is formed, and of what it consists is unknown, but one thing is for sure - it will represent a small fraction of 'the people', a tiny demographic piece residing at the far asymptotic end of the bell curve, as always. 

The Return Of The Native - The Final Vengeance Of White Wolf, Savage, Defiant Comanche Chief

Bobby Grey Wolf Perkins was a direct descendant of White Wolf, Comanche chief who defied white intrusion into Indian homelands through a reign of terror.  White Wolf savaged white settlements, raping, disemboweling, torturing, and beheading, sending an unmistakable message to any and all who intended to take Indian lands. 

Jonathan Foreman, writing in The Daily Mail (12.8.13), said:

S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’

He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explains.

‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Babies were invariably killed.’

‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonized bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’

Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors — indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’. They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.

When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apache, among the greatest horse warriors in the world.

Bobby Grey Wolf had lived in exile in Paris since the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States, a man determined to demean, diminish, and marginalize the greatness of the Indian people of America.  The removal of insignia, logos, and names of his heroic forefathers was an insult, and an indignity which could not be ignored. 

He wrote to the then President in no uncertain terms: 

My forefather, White Wolf, was a true American hero, a valiant, uncowed, defiant defender of Indian lands and Indian rights.  His defiance, and yes his savagery, were very American in nature, for he embodied the sane spirit of territorial integrity as those who fought at Bunker Hill.  And yet, his legacy is being discarded in an irreverent and historically ignorant attempt to right the balance.  How insulting, revolting, and deeply ignorant are your attempts to airbrush Indian valor from American life and culture

LaShonda Evans, President Biden's Chief of Intercultural Diversity responded in a presumptuous letter, suggesting that she and the President respected all Indian history and regretted and apologized for the murder of innocent indigenous people, their expulsion from lands east of the Mississippi, and their forced incarceration in reservations. As such the Administration stood firmly against racist references, allusions, and depictions. 

Bobby Grey Wolf was incensed at these patronizing and indifferent words; and from that moment on he decided to return from exile, take up the hatchet and the war cry and exact vengeance on the white supernumeraries in power in Washington. 

He seethed with anger at the ignorance of Biden and his progressive claques but the damage had been done.  Indians were not even a notable minority, and were reduced to selling trinkets and snake skins between Indian Ledge and Berkeley Flats.

He would avenge his grandfather, his great great grandfather, and the Comanche nation. It was one thing to defeat Indians in battle - a question of victor and vanquished, survival of the fittest, Darwinian and Machiavellian politics combined in a perfect storm - another altogether to have to put up with the derogation of the Indian brave. 

Bobby Grey Wolf was out for blood when he stepped on the tarmac of Dulles Airport, smelled the hot, fetid, scent of Washington and its cabal of political idolaters.  He would take scalps. 

He yearned for the Great Plains, painted ponies, and the whoops and war cries of battle but he didn't know where to begin.  He found himself caricatured, ridiculed, and tossed aside.

Worse, he got sidelined by a Filipino woman who was attracted to his Asian looks and masculine aggressiveness.  She was from Mindanao, a Muslim, and a separatist partisan, so they made a good couple, but  sex complicated things for both. 

Before long their tryst became a Sunday thing and then something durable. He knew that he had fallen for the identity mpolitics of America, preferring Asian eyes and a burnished copper tint to white, although it was white women he wanted to love and leave, a great satisfaction it would have been.

Vengeance would have been sweet.  He could not take scalps like White Wolf, and leave limbless, disemboweled bodies on the prairie like his great grandfather, but he could do some damage nonetheless; but too many years of Puligny-Montrachet had intervened, and he found his expatriate cultural niche accommodating.  The French love American Indians, and Rousseau's idea of the noble savage took hold every time a Parisian woman looked at him. 

 

America was either about cheap turquoise jewelry, snakeskins, and wampum or a jamboree of white, liberal guilt; and Bobby had no idea where to strike. American Indians has gotten lost in the miasma of inclusivity, guilty wokeness, and revisionist history.  What a choice.

The Indian's time had passed, and that of White Wolf, given revisionist history had never really existed.  Yes, he had been the terror of the plains, the scourge of the prairie, but  his savagery, his territorial imperative, his fierce, brutal tribal loyalty had all been subsumed into the image of the oppressed, the victim, the disregarded.  Besides which white people were obsessed with blackness and the few Indians left didn't matter.  They were imaginary numbers in today's calculus. 

Bobby's romantic sojourn was a happy one - she was delighted by the thought of love with a primitive and an American hero; and he withdrew from the vengeful hatred of everything white and succumbed to Asian gentility.

'Your bet, Chief' said a player at the blackjack table at The Sands, looking over at Bobby.  'How did he know?', he thought, but when he looked again, the player could have been a Comanche or an Apache.  A nod of recognition, the bet upped, and winnings shared at the bar. 

Vengeance is a hateful, spiteful, corrosive, and unnecessary thing.  No Hatfield and McCoy drive-bys for the Comanches who had been Lords of the Plains, and their memory still was alive, so if their lot was now Pine Ridge, turquoise, eagle feathers, and snakeskin, so be it. 

Not With A Bang, But A Whimper - The Death Throes Of A Sad Political Idealist In The New Conservative World

Bob Muzelle, a lifelong progressive, refused - absolutely refused - to give up the ship, the one on which he sailed with Martin and Ralph across the Alabama River, the one  on which he rode down through the bayous and cypress swamps of Louisiana for the black man and the one sailing on the Mississippi River alongside the Bourbon Street gay floats. 

 

La lucha continua! Bob shouted to a gathering in Lafayette Square across from the White House, residence of the interloper, the outlaw, the infidel who came crashing into Washington, destroying the very foundations of America so carefully constructed and strengthened by long years of progressivism.  He, Bob, and his colleagues had worked tirelessly for the rights of women, the black man, the transgender, and the Latino, and in one fell swoop, the capitalist idolater, the very embodiment of the worst impulses of bottom-feeding America, had weakened the pillars of a charitable, inclusive, compassionate America. 

The small crowd politely clapped - a moment of desultory respect, but an impatient one.  Even before he had finished, people began to disperse, leaving only a few stragglers by the end. 

This was a far cry from King's I Had A Dream speech, the banners, the upraised fists, the cheers, and the pandemonium of solidarity of tens of thousands of passionate reformers on the Mall listening to The Great Man speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 

'What happened?' Bob asked himself.  What happened to the dream, the hopes and aspirations of Americans for the coming of a new world of peace, justice, and love?  How could such an insistently righteous moment have been so summarily forgotten?

Bob sat disconsolately on a park bench after everyone had left, staring at the White House and watching the parade of blonde twenty-somethings troop in through the gates with a wave and a smile from the guards - white privilege in this sea of bobble-headed bimbos when it should have been proud, high-shelved black women with attitude.  

The whole world was turning upside down.  Just a few days ago Japan elected an ultra-conservative prime minister.  Japan! model of propriety, respect, and dignity now sleeping with the enemy having joined the fascist Meloni of Italy, and her European consorts - a wicked cabal of unregenerate haters out to rid themselves of the 'defilement' of The Other and send them back to their home countries and be done with them. 

OK, Takaichi, Meloni, Le Pen, Marechal, and Weidel are women, that's something, but their success has been overshadowed by their bullheaded, backward beliefs.  These women want to return their countries to imperialism, former glory, and xenophobia.  They are no different from the autocrats Putin, Xi, and Erdogan who look to dynasties, Czarist rule, and the greatness of the Ottoman Empire for models of governance.

Worst of all, the Trump supporters are nothing but backwoods crackers, swamp rats, bass boat trailer trash, toothless airhead buggers - lowbrow legions, cultureless Neanderthals.  When progressives called for inclusivity they did not mean this unwashed, brainless lot, but the noble black man, the sentient man of the forest, the repository of tribal wisdom....

Here Bob stopped his angry reverie, his mighty feeling of deception and loss.  How could this have happened?  Where were Brandeis, Lafollette, Debs, and Gompers when we needed them?

There, amidst Bob's febrile screeds and unhinged idealism, was indeed a point.  These men had fought for something palpable and just.  The country had begun to veer off its originalist rails, and there was still time to put things right - to assure a well-integrated, fair, and just society.  Today's Left was a flopping gasping flounder of cockamamie ideas - the gender spectrum, the black man as the pinnacle of human society, peace at any price, and a rainbow nation of all comers.  

It was no wonder that millions of Americans turned their backs on the preposterous Kamala Harris, a discombobulated woman who ran  for president on race and gender with no vision beyond crossing the street. 

 

Nationhood is not nationalism of xenophobia.  When Giorgia Meloni said, 'I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am a Christian, and I am an Italian' she said what millions believed.  The era of open borders - one massive cultural hodgepodge without rules, with no universal moral authority, and no rational judgment or ordering of cultural priorities - was coming to an end.  

Identity based solely on race, gender, and ethnicity was seen for the tomfoolery it always has been.  A nation without a common, unshakeable, historical moral center cannot survive, and the nations of Europe finally came to this belated conclusion and turned radically and fundamentally conservative. 

The United States under Donald Trump has been at the forefront of this return to cultural sanity, nationhood, and cultural integrity.  Attacked and accused of racism for his unequivocal stance on American cultural identity - any immigrant who wants to live in America must subscribe to the prevailing socio-economic and cultural values which have underlain the nation since its inception. - he joined Europe in affirming historic cultural identity. 

 

The culture of the inner city street, a malignant, antisocial posture of 'diversity' must go, and the white, middle-class values which have been at America's core since Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams must be the moral foundation of the land, not just in selective parts of it. 

'Racist, xenophobic, misanthropic nonsense', shouted Bob out of his park bench reverie to no one in particular. The few bums who had stumbled his way for spare change kept their distance.  The pigeons picking at peanuts rose in a flock and flapped their way down Pennsylvania Avenue.  A few mothers moved their baby carriages to the other end of the park.  Bob was alone in his anger and dejection. 

'God help me', he moaned, head in his hands, sobbing. His whole life had been predicated on noble progressive ideas, and now each and every one of them was being challenged, vetted, and summarily dismissed. His colleagues - Senators, Congressmen, political advocates - were all now just caricatures of governance, wild-eyed, St. Vitus dancers, whirling dervishes, clowns, jugglers, and bearded ladies. 

This is of course the price one pays for seeing with blinders, seeing only what you want to see, walking some straight and narrow which everyone else sees as crooked and leading nowhere.

'What will I do now?', Bob said, choking on his sobs and disconsolate sighs. 'Where will I go?'

Off scurrying for the hills as many of his colleagues have done once the bulldozers and wrecking balls had their way with official Washington? Meditation in the Himalayas? Alpine monasteries? Begging for quarters on K Street?

'Good riddance' was in the air, and the new crowd in town would not be appeased, happy as they were to see l'ancien regime over and done with, dumpster trash, rancid and soon forgotten. 

No one was sure what ever happened to Bob.  He left town probably to a safe haven, a gay place, a blackish kind of diverse place, but these places were disappearing as fast as one generation of fruit flies, so who knows where he ended up?

The Demographics Of Protests - Women Are There In Numbers To Meet A Man, Political Causes Are Incidental

At last weekend’s "No Kings" protest in Washington, D.C., inflatable chickens bobbed above a crowd that, according to demographic research, was made up mostly of educated white women in their 40s.

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert said that the "No Kings" protests are a snapshot of an era when emotional catharsis and civic activism have begun to blur (MSN)

Felicia Wright had recently turned forty, was still single - well, she had been married once to an emotional vagabond, but for nearly ten years she had been on her own.  She lived in a small condo on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, a reprise of the girl ghetto of the Upper East Side back in the day, but no where near as chi-chi.  

Those were the days, recalled her mother, just out of Vassar and 'in publishing', shopping at Bendel's and Saks, meeting swells from Yale at the Oak Bar of the Plaza, dining with investment bankers at Max's Kansas City, and packed into the Long Island Railroad for weekends in the Hamptons in the hot summer months. 

 

No, the Arlington condo complex was not the Upper East Side.  It was more of a cheap bedroom community for women like herself who came home after tiring days in one government agency or another, too knackered from the routine, the airless warrens, and the deadening, purposeless meetings to go out at night.

At least in her marriage there were some life prospects.  Her husband, as much of a prick as he turned out to be, had money, some of it inherited from his family, the rest earned in commercial real estate development; and Felicia and he went island hopping in the winter, and took long summer vacations in Tuscany. 

They lived in the Dresden, an old fashioned, early Twentieth Century building in Kalorama with an ornate stone work facade, a historic Victorian wrought iron door, Baccarat chandeliers, and spacious apartments overlooking the park.  It was not a bad life, a comer's life, and if it hadn't been for 1) his insider trading; 2) his bilious drinking; and 3) his serial affairs with the likes of Amanda from Accounting, they might have made a go of it.  

She had found him inimitably attractive when she met him at the Yale Club, was charmed by his elegantly sophisticated ways, and therefore overlooked the prick beneath.  So be it, life is not fair. 

'I've got to get out more', she muttered to herself one evening on the Red Line, headed home; and vowed to make an effort.  She wasn't getting any younger, her biological pull-by date was fast approaching, and she had no intention of remaining solitary for the rest of her life. 

Like many young women of her age and background, she was a committed progressive, and was wedded to ideas of social justice, compassion, international peace, and environmental sanity.  She had never been a joiner, and despite the repeated requests of her co-workers and condo neighbors, she demurred.  These meetings always ended up with desperately ugly women hammering away at something or other, and she preferred a life of uninvolvment to one of hysterically reaching out. 

'Come', said a friend, 'just this once', and together they marched on the Washington Mall for climate action.  There were thousands of people there, most very much like her -fortyish women of good pedigree, education, and employment - all of whom were having a grand old time together.  

It was like her Girl Scout Jamboree in Indianapolis long ago, troops of girls on their own for the first time, laughing giggling, whispering about boys. There was the same camaraderie, the same girlish enthusiasm, and the same hopefulness, and except for Father Time - many of these women had not aged well and already had the sags, folds, and lines of grandmothers - it was a joyful affair. 

Felicia had to admit, it was fun.  It was a glorious October day, the Capitol and the White House shone brightly in the sun, the grass on the Mall was still green, and the cheeriness and bouncy happiness of the crowd was exciting.  

The political issue at hand - demand for a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions - was lost in the jubilation.  The podium was far from where she and her friend stood, the speakers were second hand and crackly, and there simply was too much chatter to hear what was being said.  No one cared, for the wonderful sense of community, friendship, common values, and shared experience were quite enough. 

Washington is the mecca for protests, and groundskeepers are always reseeding, returfing, edging, and rolling the Mall grounds, keeping  it in good shape for the tourists and for the next protesters.  Fall was a particularly good time for demonstrations - the cloying heat and humidity of the Washington summer had retreated, winter's cold was still distant, and everything combined to make the Mall a congenial, welcoming place. 

 

And so it was that Felicia became a frequent protester.  The dullness of her job, her single life, and her bare condo, were quickly forgotten once she got downtown with thousands of her new-found sisters in arms. 

Many young women came to Washington to do good, and they worked at the many non-profit agencies helping the poor, the black, the marginalized, the gay, and the underprivileged.  These women formed the core of the protests on the Mall for they were expressions of the same commitment evidenced during working hours. 

Felicia was a 'tweener - a professional in a for profit company which relied on government grants to improve the health and welfare of poor Africans.  The company took their fair share of the monies won, and their stock options and generous retirement accounts were well known in the industry.

So Felicia was not a do-gooder and primed for social protests, but the environment of her firm was decidedly progressive - pro-Palestine, anti-Israel, pro-black, Latino, and gay - but noses were too close to the grindstone for any political activism. 

But on the weekends, out they went to the Mall to protest, to shout and demand dignity and recognition; so it really was only a matter of time that Felicia was enticed. 

Now, given the demographics - thousands of single, available, anxious women - the protests were also prime feeding ground for the savvy young men of Washington who had come to the Nation's capital for fame, fortune, and influence, but who reveled in the distorted demographic curve - young women flocked there in great numbers. They took jobs as interns, associates, subalterns in the vast army of bureaucrats and politicians, and of course novitiates in the congregations of doing good. 

'Imagine it' wrote Bob Atkins to a friend from Chillicothe. 'Pussy everywhere for the asking', and so it was that he cruised the Mall every time there was a protest and never left empty-handed.  There was Betty from Freedom From Hunger, Charlotte from the Environmental Defense Fund, and Megan from the Equal Opportunity Commission.  These women simply could not get enough political commitment 9-5 and poured out into the sunlight every weekend. 

Now, Felicia would never have admitted any sexual intentions for her attendance at these Mall rallies, but she was quick to notice the young men in her midst.  They did their share of shouting and hollering for social change, but were not indifferent to the women around them.  In fact they were most attentive, considerate, and engaging. 

What could be better? An attractive man who shared her personal values and with whom there might very well be a future. 

Robert Alling noticed Felicia at an abortion rally - she was still young-looking, had a pertness and very youthful appeal, and he noticed her diffidence.  She was clearly not interested in the political goings on, had an air of expectation and promise, all personal.  Bob had known many women like this who lived on the cusp, never quite happy with their lives, always looking for something more fulfilling and satisfying. Particularly attuned to this neediness, he was quick to profit.  Poor Felicia never had a chance. 

The affair was good while it lasted - passionate, hungry, adventurous - but Bob soon returned to the Mall to troll for new conquests. Why tie oneself down when a cornucopia of sexual delights awaited? 

And so it was that Felicia was left on the curb, a note left on her pillow, and the adored Robert disappeared into the crowd. 

'Better to have loved and lost', she reminded herself, 'than never to have loved at all', but in her heart of hearts she knew that Robert was just as much of a despicable prick as her former husband, and it took quite a while for the resentment to settle and disappear. 

Meanwhile, sexually recondite, she was quite happy in the company of women, and the delighted political enthusiasm was infectious.  She came home from the protests exhilarated, alive, and satisfied. 

'Can't do this forever', she said two years later, finally exhausted from the good cheer and faux enthusiasm, but there was nothing much on the horizon, so she kept it up for a desultory few more months and then disappeared.  Her colleagues were surprised - she was such a good worker - but there was always something flighty about her 

As for Felicia, it is presumed that she is either in Humboldt County amidst the redwoods or lying on the sand on Venice Beach, or back in Carmel, Indiana with her folks.  One of thousands of female aspirants who come to Washington, leave, and find solace elsewhere. 

The Genius Of Donald Trump - Fake News, Tall Tales, And Whoppers, Without Them Life Would Be A Bloody Bore

The Devil, imagined by Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov, says that he is a vaudevillian, a tummler out to make trouble, and without him life would be an intolerable, insufferable bore. 

 

So it is with some surprise that the American Left is so intent on the truth, righteous behavior, and a serious moral code of conduct.  Such purists are not unknown or uncommon in America and have been around since the arrival of the Puritans four hundred years ago. 

Those early settlers were fierce moral absolutists - there was only one way, the right way, and they abjured any other.  The witch trials in Salem were only a superficial indication of the harsh, punitive Protestantism that arrived on the Mayflower.  The religious tenor of Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony was strict, unbending, and abiding; but even then John Davenport and his followers felt it was not strict enough and set off to found new, more disciplined settlements.

New Haven was a perfect site for the new, more fundamental colony that Davenport envisaged - deep water port, moderate climate, peaceful Indians, and the chance for a new, more God-fearing home.  The New Haven Plantations as they were called fulfilled his every dream, and the colony became a fierce enabler of deep Puritan belief. 

The deacons and proctors of the Salem trials were after the truth, for in those pre-modern days, there was believed to be such a thing - if God said it, it was true, and their job was to rid the town of falsehood, apostasy, and the very presence of the Devil who represented all that was false. 

They devised specious tests of faith and fidelity that no woman could pass, and summarily convicted them of Satanic possession.  Not a little misogyny was in the trial judgements - most men of the town were glad to be rid of what they considered to be natural born sexual witches, harridans, and unfaithful slatterns. 

'We are doing God's work', said Hiram Potter, Chief Judge and Prosecutor at the trials, 'and let there be no doubt about it.  The Devil and his evil vessels will go up in smoke, burned at the stake, never more to curse the sacred ground of Salem'

 

And so four-hundred years later American progressives, the heirs of Hiram Potter and the burning judges of Salem, carry out their own witch trials.  From the same presumptuous moral posture - the possession of the truth - they go about in search of the Devil.

The persecution of Donald Trump in the years prior to his second inauguration was a perfect example of Salem-esque witch hunting. Progressives made an a priori assumption - that Donald Trump was evil and possessed of the Devil - and that any measure of censure, attack, or moral villainy was justified in the name of truth. 

Yet this moral certitude and missionary zeal did not stop with the President of the United States.  It extended to the population at large, one which, according to progressives, was a society of retrograde sinners - vile haters of women, gay men, blacks, believers in white supremacy. 

The campaign to institute a New Age of blackness, gayness, and female authority was not just a movement to promote a new, more inclusive way of thinking.  It was a hateful campaign designed to marginalize, humiliate, and eliminate any and all who did not see and accept this particular version of the truth. 

Enter Donald Trump, a man with not one sanctimonious, obeisant bone in his body; a man of outrageous ego, middlebrow tastes, and Borscht Belt humor; a man for whom any claim to 'the truth' was fanciful and ignorant.  

There was no such thing and there never was. It didn't take Browning, Durrell, or Kurosawa to write about the nature of perceptive plurality - four different people will see four different events - to convince him or anyone else about the subjective nature of truth.  Every criminal trial's 'eyewitnesses' see what they want to see, and express as though it were the absolute truth, some confected version conditioned by prejudice, a gassy meal, a blandishing wife, or getting out of the wrong side of the bed. 

 

Not only that, Trump made a mockery of progressive sanctimony about 'the truth'.  He told enormous whoppers, impossibly exaggerated tales, and marvelously fantastical versions of every political issue.  He made fun of the formerly protected classes of progressive inclusivity - tarted up cross-dressing men were ridiculous; black people didn't belong on the top of the human pyramid but in jail; diversity was nothing more than a stew of leftovers. Compassion, consideration, and accommodation were for nice guys who always finish last. 

Trump supporters got the picture - it was not what he said but what he meant, and they were accomplished deconstructionists.  His wild harangues were meant to rile up the opposition and to send them into paroxysms of frustration and hysteria. His agenda was twofold - first to honor conservative principles; and second to humiliate the poseurs of the Left.  With joy his troops ransacked the  progressive holy of holies - the bureaucracy, the home of caretaker government, the bloated do-nothing cubicles of waste and fraud.  

With delight he sent ICE out to round up illegal immigrants and the National Guard to clean up the pestilential slums of American cities; and as a last, defining blow to progressive sensibilities, he tore down the East Wing of the White House to replace it with an oversized, garish, tarted up, tacky ballroom. 

 

He was not out to destroy government and install himself as regent of a monarchy, but to reduce government to a manageable size and return it to originalist non-interventionary principles.  Immigrants weren't all rapists, drug dealers, and pornographers, but it helped to portray them as such, stressing the point that Biden's open door policy had led to an unvetted jamboree. 

He criticized the addled, dysfunctional ghetto and its ho's, pimps, and pushers but stressed equal opportunity for those willing to conform to standard middle class values.  He singled out the most outrageous queens of the transgender movement, incensed that they could be teaching kindergarteners, but had no desire for pogroms or Kristallnacht roundups. 

Every American except for the fevered Left got it. Only progressives, arbiters of 'the truth' saw devilishness, hatred, monomania, and regressive immorality.  Ordinary Americans had had quite enough of the preposterous propositions of the Left and were insulted that these lame ideas were being promoted as the truth, the right way, and the only way. 

What Trump supporters like best about the man is his absolute absence of sanctimony and self-righteousness.  They love his bombast, his Borscht Belt no-holds-barred comedy, his political incorrectness, and his circus act performances.  Americans had suffered through four years of the most pitifully morose breast-beating, fault-finding, and unhinged presumptuousness, and were delighted that the lid was off.  

Their man says whatever he wants whenever he wants.  He is the very epitome of the outspoken, fiercely independent American, an unabashed lover of glitz, glamour, arm candy, yachts, and garish resorts.  One of us....one of us. 

 

Principle can exist within a wild and wooly environment of impossible fiction - and the great comedic act of Donald Trump does nothing to diminish his commitment to serious conservatism; but since life is nothing but exaggeration, subjective conclusions, and a jamboree of tinsel, sequins, and fake everything, why not enjoy the ride?