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?
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