Who's Your Daddy? - He's Everywhere, Nowhere, The Law Of Nature And The Inner City

Much has been made of absent fatherhood in the inner city.  Black men, critics say, are irresponsible sexual brigands, iterant wanderers with no sense of family, society, or community.  Single mothers are the rule in the ghetto, grandmothers, single mothers themselves, are drawn into child care.  Boys without a male role model drift from here to there, emotional vagrants, picked up by the crewe, the gang, the street. Girls assume that fathers are drop-in features of their lives, of no interest, no importance, and no reality. 

While all this may well be true, it is hard to fault black man for his irrepressible male sexuality, and carrying out nature's obsession - procreation.  Men were not built for a sedentary life by hearth and home, but for a hunter's life on the veldt, tracking the wildebeest, elephant, or lion and spreading his seed far and wide.  While he had a nominal 'home', a fire, and a place to sleep, he had many such homes.  His 'family' was made up of all women, his children, everyone's children.  

This is what God intended said the Reverend Alonso Evans from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Anacostia, Washington DC's deep inner city. 

God the Almighty hath created a world of bounty, splendor, and miracles; and we (here he extended his hand over the heads of the congregation) are the beneficiaries of such treasures.  We are his children, his anointed, his family, men and women carrying out his will, his divine goodness, and his plan.

Which is what? (Here he paused, looking for some sign of understanding, but finding none, continued) Procreation, reproduction, productivity.  We are here to populate and repopulate the land, and our brothers are the emissaries of God, those chosen to go and be fertile to impregnate again and again, to spread the vital, inimitable human seed of life far and wide

'Amen', said the congregation in unison, waiting in anticipation for the pastor to continue. 

Our black men are the salt of the earth, riding high above the Colossus, giants of mankind,  keepers of the flock, royal stock of the forest.

 This was what the congregation, in fact the entire community, was waiting to hear - a defiant 'No' to the white, patronizing, patriarchal plantation bosses across the river, sitting pretty on Capitol Hill, Georgetown, and Spring Valley.  Let them have their tea and crumpets with little children in frilly frocks tended to by Swiss nannies.  Let them lead dry, confined, cold, and tepid, predictable, sexual lives while the real world that God intended was right her in Anacostia, in the projects, on the stoops, and on the streets of the inner city. 

 

In a white neighborhood, the protests to such misogyny would be heard for blocks.  An outrage! An absolute deformation of Biblical injunction, a slap in the face of hardworking, dutiful mothers; but not here in the Ebenezer Baptist church where both men and women nodded their approval and gave out with hallelujahs and amens at ever pause. 

The women were not the victims that white people assumed. They had no idea who the fathers of their children were, and were as sexually active as the men who came calling.  What was the big deal, anyway? said these women who understood men's need to roam and women's need to bear and nurture children.  Anacostia was a microcosm of the world of Adam and Eve, the primal world, the world as God intended it, not the salons of Beacon Hill, Fifth Avenue, and the Main Line. 

Felicia Washington was a black woman of fundamentalist Protestant faith, an evangelist, a social reformer, and a person committed to the social reconfiguration of the black neighborhood, to make it moral-abiding, fair and equitable to women and children, and a model of higher cultural values. 

Felicia had escaped the inner city thanks to a foster family who adopted her.  The Washingtons were God-fearing, Bible-reading, prophetic white evangelists whose only purpose in life was to preach the gospel.  They had a secular life - her father was a loan officer at Riggs Bank and his wife, was a teacher at Brighton Elementary - but their real existence was divine, and it was with this religious zeal that they brought up the waif from Anacostia and made her into a faithful believer. 

'Give back to the Lord what he hath given you' said her father quoting liberally from Luke, and before she was much out of her school uniform did she listen to her calling, and began what was to be a long, difficult, but spiritually fulfilling journey to the ghetto. 

On her first visit to Anacostia as a young woman, member of her church's evangelical mission, she was shocked and appalled. After all, this trash-strewn, stinking, drug-addled place was her home, her native place.  As she looked up at the hundreds of windows in the Frederick Douglass Homes projects, she realized where she came from.  

Yet, this realization only galvanized her faith and her purpose.  She was here to bring the light of Jesus Christ and his wisdom to these heathens.  A woman's body was sacred, she believed, a vessel of the Lord to be cared for, guarded, and reserved.  Childbearing was an honor, a privilege, and a duty and the creation of a stable family its natural expression.  What she knew of the inner city - an unholy place of unaccounted for children and sexual libertines. 

 

'Whatchoo doin' up in here, girl?', asked Pharoah Jones from his stoop overlooking MLK Avenue.  She, as black as any young women on the street, had that look and feel of whiteness about her, a hesitancy, a reserve that set off gongs in every black man's head.  Of course, being a sister, she was given a bye by Jones. Let the pretty young thing preach her gospel, and then let's see who converts whom. 

She retired to her small room in the rectory of her missionary church, unpacked her suitcase, and lay down on the bed, but the screams, gunshots, screeching cars, and drunken shouts kept her awake. What had she gotten herself into, she wondered, and got on her knees to pray. 

Now, the two cultures - her adopted, prayerful, obedient, traditional white one; and the sexually chaotic place where she was to preach - were as different as could be. Why, as she walked down the street to the church she was whistled at, propositioned, and accosted.  Where was the feminist propriety she had left?  Men quietly minding their own business, respecting women, adoring them, but reserving their love for marriage. 

The hooting and howling continued every day after that, a gantlet of whistling, enjoining men lining the street, Colt 45s in hand, smoking marijuana, with nothing to do but pander, verbally abuse, and address her. 

 

'Honey, let me set you straight about something', said LaShonda Evans, a congregant, midwife, and savvy ghetto priestess. 'You ain't goin' get nothin' from the brothers except a big black cock up yo' ass; so don't be goin' up in there.  It's Lagos, sweetheart', the teeming half-slum African city where no law, let alone white, European law, prevailed.  Where sexual abandon was the rule not the exception, intact families were remnants, bits a pieces of a colonial legacy.  'You don't belong here'. 

'Banging a square peg into a round hole' said a white church colleague back in Arlington where she went on weekends for a rest, support, and solace.

'What do you expect?  That the black man should have automatically turned white the minute his enslaved foot touched American soil, ignoring his Dahomey roots?'  The black man is the most human, the closest to God's original creation, free from white, Puritanical, maniacal vision there is.  His sexuality hasn't changed from Eden, so how can he be faulted for that purity? White imposition of a faux morality is what it is.  Go back to the neighborhood and preach Jesus's true message - love and forgiveness - and let the sexual thing go.'

Yet what about all these half-naked children running up and down the stinking stairways of the projects? the thousands on welfare, food stamps, aid to dependent children, a drain on society, a deformation of what is proper, right, and reasonable. 

'White' is what you mean, said her colleague. 'No such thing as ebony and ivory'. 

And so it was that after a few more months of being accosted, propositioned, challenged, treated like a common prostitute, not a woman of God, she returned to the suburbs and devoted her life to mending the mildly wayward ways of good Americans who still despite their solid moral center, needed Christ's love. 

She married a white boy - see, she thought, there is ebony and ivory - but by the time she had reached the altar she was as white as they come despite the color of her skin.  Her foster parents' upbringing, the moral purpose and righteousness of her pastor, and her brief foray to the inner city, made her a proper white woman.  And so it should be. 

What Ever Happened To Black Lives Matter ? - Irrelevant, Jailed, Gone With The Wind Like It Never Happened

'What ever happened to Black Lives Matter?', a colleague asked Marfa Phelps a frontline worker for the black man, the climate, gays, and women.  'You don't hear much about them these days'. 

The colleague was right.  Not more than a year ago every house in St. Thomas Park, a leafy residential neighborhood in Northwest Washington was festooned with BLM banners, oversized placards and stickers on all the windows. 

The community was one in solidarity with black people and BLM, a movement reminiscent of the great marches and protests of the Sixties, the heady days of Martin, Ralph, and Jesse, moments of hopefulness, joy, and jubilation.  

No one who was on the Mall when King gave his 'I have a dream' speech will ever forget it, and as elderly as the St Thomas women now were, they made it out to Pennsylvania Avenue to join the BLM procession to the White House. 

The event felt different - much more angry, ragged, and violent than any of those in years past; and white people were certainly not welcome.  Although a few busloads from Bethesda and Arlington drove to the assembly place downtown, the white women passengers were ignored and even shunted aside by the black bodyguards who formed a cordon around LaShonda Jackson, First Lieutenant of the DC chapter of BLM, event organizer, and head of the radical deep cover cadre linked to Weathermen and Black Panther-like extremism. 

Jackson stood in the middle of the gathering crowd, and spoke:

Ya'll here for the black man and his sisters, but we here for the white man, the white devil, Simon Legree, the overseer, the plantation owner, the slave driver, the oppressor. Not for the white man, but out to get the muthafucka...

The crowd whooped and hollered, raising their fists in solidarity.  Marfa and her white sisters moved slowly back to the path leading to the National Gallery at the far edge of the assembly, but could still hear LaShonda who was just getting warmed up

The ofay, the white man has promised us everything but has given us jack shit - sent us off to fight his wars, paid us off with a few food stamps and walkin' around money while he sits his white ass in mansions and Mar-a-Lago, fucks the sistahs who suck white dicks for a buck then head home on the crosstown bus.

This was not what Marfa was used to.  Martin had spoken with eloquence, propriety, respect, and passion and she had come to expect this from the black man.  Yes, there was H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael in the old black rabble-rousing days, Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed, and race-bating ambulance-chaser Reverend Al Sharpton, but they were anomalies. 

Black people were more like the Southern marchers across the Pettis Bridge, not the rock-throwing thugs trashing the inner cities. Where was interracial harmony, ebony and ivory, hands linked facing the ax-wielding Bull Connors and their attack dogs?

 

'Let's burn some shit', she heard from somewhere in the crowd surrounding Evans, and a group of young black men broke off from the rest and headed up Fourteenth Street joined by a few hundred more head-banded, balaclava-wearing, marchers.  Along the way they smashed car windows, overturned a van, and threw rocks at storefront windows.  

The DC police, under orders of restraint (the City Council had defunded the police, given them George Floyd cease and desist instructions) simply stood by as the cluster passed. Word spread, and before long the line of rioters was in the many hundreds.  It was reminiscent of the 14th Street riots of the Sixties, racial mayhem, destruction, fire, and rubble.  

In the days of the Sixties race riots in Watts, Newark, DC, and Detroit, white people took notice - not of the black anger against racism, Jim Crow, and continuing discrimination, but of the seeming endemic violent character of black people and the perennial expression of dysfunctionality and social incompetence. 

 

While politicians wrung their hands in a collective mea culpa, white Americans got out of town, as far away from the steaming, pestilential inner city as possible. 'White flight' was hardly the word for it. 

But things had changed, Marfa thought before heading to the Mall. The inchoate violence and racial hatred of the Sixties was no longer. She and her progressive colleagues had made sure of that, what with affirmative action, generous social welfare, and public visibility (on every commercial, and in every television series and Hollywood movie there were black faces), so why the violence, the racial hatred, and the virulent enmity?

Because BLM was a cash cow for LaShonda and every one of the leaders of the movement, that’s why. The cons, scams, and schemes devised by BLM operatives were Enron/Bernie Madoff worthy.  They escaped the notice of law enforcement because the FBI had been told by the Biden Administration, 'Hands off.  These are good people'.  

What a financial jamboree.  Money was skimmed off the top of social programs, donations were routinely 'edited' and monies sent to offshore bank accounts, and in the most brazen show of defiance, thousands of dollars worth of wigs, extensions, and home improvements were bought. 

So the more BLM acted up, made a fuss, and made the 6 o'clock news, the more money from progressives like Marfa poured in. They had been so well trained to believe than any black miscreance was nothing more than a natural, justifiable response to racism, and that financial support was necessary to consolidate and strengthen the movement for justice and a more equitable piece of the American dream, white money poured into BLM coffers, then out the door. 

The charade couldn't last and BLM leaders, members, and operatives were charged with fraud and financial finagling. It was a good ride while it lasted, lots of financial gain, good times, fame, and political glory; but like any great bamboozling con game, it had to come to an end. BLM was in the best American tradition of Ponzi schemes, shell games, credit swaps, and insider trading, and should be given credit. 

 

They knew there comeuppance was coming, and with some deft wizardry hid millions from even the best federal sleuths; but they finally got caught, and just like that BLM disappeared from view. Of course a few lawn signs in St. Thomas Park still remain - partisans simply cannot believe what they consider conservative white-engineered fake news - but all in all BLM is gone, a blot of ink, a smudge if that. 

Now that Donald Trump was in the White House and conservatism was ascendant, there were fewer causes for Marfa to join - or perhaps better said, the causes were still there, but progressives had been so badly beaten, disoriented, and scattered by the Trump victory and aftermath that there was no oomph to them. 

As the BLM scandals became public, George Floyd dismissed as a minor criminal, and blackness itself relegated to a back room, Marfa was increasingly disconsolate and at loose ends.  There must be something I can do, she thought; but a Florida retirement kept sneaking into her head, a chaise lounge on a beach in Tampa, some pina coladas.  Even progressives have retirement accounts, so perhaps it was indeed time to cash hers in.

What Happened To Climate Change? - The Disappearance Of Armageddon

Bob Muzelle had been one of the biggest fretters about climate change.  He had been on the front lines of the movement since the reported first thawing of the polar ice caps, the catastrophic loss of the Ross Ice Shelf, the disruption of the Humboldt current, the erratic Gulf Stream's patterns, the mass extinction of sea birds, the inundation of the Atlantic coast, sunspots, the choking new levels of carbon dioxide in the air and the continuing pollution of the environment. 

'The climate will so radically warm', Bob said to a group of Scientists for Social Action, his Washington lobby group, 'that in a decade crops will wither, insects will swarm, baking heat will kill thousands of the elderly, the demand for electricity will outstrip demand and the power generating systems of the Northeast and the West will collapse'. 

A polite round of applause rippled through the audience, far from the rousing cheers that Bob got a decade or more ago when he was one of the first to clamor for dramatic action against this existential threat. Half the seats were empty and many had rudely left before he had finished his speech. Those that remained were so old that they probably were not aware that he had finished talking, so zoned out they were, travelling in some godforsaken place sure to be Bob's next stop. 

'Nobody gives a shit anymore, Bobby' said a close friend as they both walked out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, crowded with blonde young things making their way to and from the White House to which Bob shook his head, wrung his hands, sputtered and choked, but could manage nothing. 

 'That....that...that...' Words failed him when it came to describing the President.  Over the past decade of Trump's rise and fall and rise again, Bob had called him every name under the sun, and now when it really mattered, he felt the store shelves were empty, the armory bare, and the inventory down to zero. 

He looked around him and saw people simply going about their business as if there were no climate problem at all - ignoramuses who froze their feet in January and laughed at the idea of global warming; fools who were too stupid to look at the climatological charts to see discernable changes in Bering Sea temperatures or fluctuations in the South Pacific current; too credulous and intellectually sedentary to look at the barometer, the seismometer, the thermometer, and astronomical data. 

Bob had happily paid his heating bill this winter, higher than it had ever been; for melting polar ice had chilled ocean waters and caused a temporary, cautionary cooling, that was all.  The more global effects of a changing, warming climate were more dynamic, more profound, and although at times unnoticed, were taking their toll little by little. 

Now, it must be noted that Bob was a progressive's progressive.  There had not been one progressive cause that he had not espoused.  He was on the front lines to restore the black man to the top of the human pyramid as evolution's expression of high native intelligence, sentience, and emotional genius.  He marched for women's right to their bodies and the absolute right to eliminate the phlegm that was audaciously called 'life'.  

He cavorted with gay men in the Castro, waved to onlookers from a float in the Bay to Breakers gay parade.  He downed oyster shooters with the bull dykes of Bernal Heights, and was on the dais at the anti-capitalist rallies in Chicago.  

 

Progressivism was part of his identity, his persona, his soul.  There could be no other way to look at the world than through the lens of race, gender, and ethnicity.  History had been deformed by racist colonialism, the perpetual enslavement of Africans, the occupation of land for no other reason than conquest. Israel was but the last of the exterminating, territorially obsessed nations of the world. 

There were deniers. The idea of a black pinnacle was total nonsense.  The reality was in the stinking, dysfunction slums of the inner city.  Gay pride was nothing more than a convenient, happy cover for buggery and perversion.  Women were not vessels of goodness, compassion, and righteousness but aggressive comers pricked by ambition, greed, and male envy.  And climate change was one big, outrageous, scam. 

Bob dismissed deniers and their ignorant notions out of hand.  'Pants first, shoes next' was the characterizing meme of these idiots who didn't know shit from Shinola and who had lawn parties and barbecues while the climate raged and the black man suffered. 

Progressivism was so ingrained, so deeply rooted, so immured within Bob's very soul that there was no way that he could wonder whether it was right.  That would have been tantamount to denying the sunrise or the phases of the moon.  There were such things as absolutes, said Bob, and it is our duty to recognize them. 

But all it took was a change of administrations, and all of a sudden climate change was off the front pages and there wasn't a black face in every commercial, every television series, and every Hollywood film. Gay men were back in the closet or at least in a back room.  The reformist programs set in place by President Biden - the distribution of wealth, the dismantling of free enterprise in favor of unencumbered public benefits, the rolling back of private sector initiatives in favor of government dirigisme - had disappeared overnight as though they had never existed. 

Yet, what if?  Bob could never consciously admitted that there might be some sense to the criticisms of race, gender, ethnicity, climate, and social equity; but every so often some niggling, irritating thought crept into his head, and no matter how hard he tried to shake it loose, it stayed damnably long. 

The Ross Ice Shelf was regaining ice, the climate had moderated, new forensic climatological evidence from the Paleolithic forward demonstrated almost predictable cycles of cooling and warming.  Black men were responsible for more than half the violent crimes in the country and represented barely ten percent of the population.  He himself would never set foot in the Anacostia inner city for fear of his life.  Transgender women, all big thighs, hairy chests, thick ankles, and gravelly voices reading fairy tales to kindergarteners was ridiculous, and the weather was certainly pleasant. 

What if it really all was bullshit? Bob wondered.  Then what? Would his life be erased? A kind of political Alzheimer's or a radical historical revisionism?  His whole life, save for an innocent childhood had been devoted to doing the right thing.  What if reality was really Poland - a country decidedly and defiantly white, Christian, capitalist, and European and not the trash-strewn, discordant, brutally antisocial Islamist suburbs of Paris?  Was the resurgent Right in Poland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK the future?

God forbid, he said, but was quickly ashamed of himself since he had become a confirmed atheist long ago. Religion was an obstacle to utopian, progressive, secular reform; but ideas of God were becoming just as insistent, irritating, and niggling as the possibility of no climate change.  What was happening to him?

Nobody cared, actually, since Bob without noticing it had become supernumerary, irrelevant, and a bother.  Let him do his windy preaching on some streetcorner and cadge a few nickels from the crowd.  Just not here in official Washington which was changing as fast as a chameleon's colors.  

As such, Bob was a metaphor for progressivism, a political movement which had finally had its day.  There will always be minor eruptions, burps from the radical underground, young idealists in need of a cause, but when all is said and done, the vapid, hollow, impossibly hopeful beliefs of the Left are finished. 

So Much For Ebony And Ivory - Beacon Hill And The Projects, A Rich White Boy Snookered By A Goddess Of The 'Hood

Harrington Potter grew up on Beacon Hill in Boston, home of English patriots, colonial heroes, wealthy slave traders, and blueblood aristocrats since William Blackstone built a house and orchard on the area's south slope. in 1625. In the 19th century the south slope became the seat of Boston wealth and power.

The residents of opulent homes there, called the Boston Brahmins, had residences designed by Charles Bullfinch, and appointed with ancestral portraits, Townsend and Chippendale furniture, and Chinese porcelains. The Brahmins were known for their humanitarianism, Enlightenment values, Yankee shrewdness, and New England exclusiveness. 

Literary salons and publishing houses were founded in the 19th century and influential thinkers lived in the neighborhood, including Daniel Webster, Henry David Thoreau, and Wendell Philips. 

Harrington was the latest in a long line of Potters, all of whom were of historical interest. Isaiah Potter was one of the first founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his son Alfred was a member of John Davenports Puritan mission down the Connecticut River to found New Haven.  Frederick Potter was a shipbuilding magnate who built the ships that plied the lucrative Three Cornered Trade - molasses, slaves, and rum. 

Subsequent Potters made their fortune in Wall Street.  Zebadiah Potter was a partner of J.P. Morgan and the Drexel, Morgan & Company investment bank, and his offspring helped build Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley. 

Wealth, privilege, the social register, homes in Palm Beach, Nantucket, and Biarritz - all were Harrison Potter's and how he fell so far off the scale of rectitude and propriety was a tale repeated throughout the salons of Boston and New York for years. 

Harrington's affair had all to do with Harvard which in a moment of ragged progressivism, recruited a number of students from American inner cities. Most were desultory students at best, matriculated because their street experience and slave inheritance would provide the diversity that the university needed.  More importantly it would force the likes of Harrington Potter to rub shoulders with 'the real world', and to come tooth by jowl with African Americans whose forbears were chained in the holds of his ancestors' slave ships.

Delilah Evans was one of these specially-recruited students.  She came from Anacostia, the most pestilential of Washington, DC's slums - a young woman who had caught the eye of the Councilman from Ward 8 and engaged as his aide in City Hall.  The Councilman was drawn to her stunning Ethiopian/Fulani beauty, her charm, and her intelligence, and hoped that as well as influential political aide, she might one day become his lover. 

Delilah knew which side of her toast was buttered, knew that the Councilman was her meal ticket and a fast track up and out of the projects, so a few 'favors' were nothing compared to the long term benefits of their friendship. 

So, it was to Harvard she went on a full scholarship, and as she kissed goodbye to MLK Avenue, the Frederick Douglass projects, and to her godfather Pharoah Jones, wondered if she would ever return. 

Now, Delilah surprised Harvard administrators who never thought they were going to get a black person with brains, at least one who could compete at Harvard.  She turned out to be a talented student, quick at differential calculus and organic chemistry, and chameleon-like talked white, acted white, and if you were in a dark room, would be convinced she was white. 

All a charade, for Delilah never forgot her roots, never forgot Anacostia, and missed her street days with Uncle Pharoah, hanging out on the stoop of D Block, smoking weed and drinking a six pack of Colt 45 magnums - a sister, queen of the projects, the Nefertiti of Anacostia. 

And so it was that one day she met Harrington Potter in a carrel of the Widener library.  She knew who he was, of course, for she passed the statue of the first Harrington Potter, one of the founding fathers of Harvard, scion of New England intellectual aristocracy, and important figure in university history.  

Most white Harvard students in those ultra-progressive, affirmative action years would have changed seats if a black person approached, but it must be remembered that Delilah was a Nubian princess - dark black but with fine Caucasian features, Egyptian poise, and a Naomi Campbell runway elegance; and even the most racist student could not have turned away. 

 

She turned up the whiteness, cited Kant and Roentgen, but all the while stoking up her ghetto fires, and honing in on this most desirable of prey. Harrington invited her for a drink, and she accepted, and soon the couple was an item in Harvard Yard. 

Harrington was enthralled - taken with her modesty, her native sophistication, and her gumption. Escaping the slums was no mean feat, and he was increasingly proud of her ambition and desire.

'What do you know about this girl?', said old Great Uncle Jepson, dyed in the wool New England patriot, keeper of the Potter legacy and fortune, traditionalist and staunch Episcopalian in a thinly veiled reference to her color and presumably suspect background. 

Harrington went on to talk about Delilah's wizardry at math, mastery of the worst and hardest of organic chemistry, her charm, her elegance....

'Stop right there, old boy', interrupted Jepson. 'Where's she from?'

Harrington, caught off guard, stumbled before saying that she was from good stock given her sophistication and versatility. 

'Have you met her family? Of course you haven't' to which Harrington, trussed and tied to this beautiful black goddess, completely hers and hers alone, shouted 'racist', got up and left his uncle standing behind his Revere desk, under the portrait of John Adams. 

 

'When can I meet your folks?', Harrington asked Delilah one night, an expected and predictable request, but she demurred. She had not yet secured her fortune. Not that securities, cash, or property were an option; but appointments, references and job placement were.  The Potters were her way into Harvard Business School, a Bear Stearns internship, and a fast track to partner. 

Uncle Pharoah had always wanted an in to one of the big New York investment banks - they were the key to legitimate support of one of his 'companies'; and with Delilah's canniness, appeal, and fidelity, investment would be assured. 

'Patience, my love', she told Harrington. 'Patience' and with that let time roll on. 

Thanks to Harrington's determination, threats (rocking the Potter boat was not an option) insider family influence ,and a persistence not seen since Cousin Abigail forced an unheard of compensation from the family trust, Great Uncle Jepson capitulated, did the needful, and Delilah proceeded to Harvard Business School and Bear Stearns. 

 

The great thing about the 'hood - just like the Mafia in the old days of the Gambino family - was its uncanny ability to find and exploit a weak link, and Delilah with her street savvy, intelligence, and charm, was able to find one at Bear Stearns.  She would make the john a rich man if he worked his magic with creative swaps which had largely disappeared after Enron, but were still available, profitable and if arranged carefully, untraceable.  A few hundred thousand in the john's offshore bank account were nothing to Pharoah Jones compared to the millions to be realized from the swap. 

It worked like a dream. Pharoah made millions, Delilah was favored, and her reputation in Anacostia grew manyfold. It was time to return, and why not with Harrington?

The best part of a scam, the royal hoodwink, was to let the conned know he had been had; and when Harrington rolled up to the Frederick Douglass projects, and was greeted by Uncle Pharoah and his home boys, all bling, ho's and pimps in Sunday finery, tricked out Escalades on the curb, the smell of weed drifting across the porches, he knew he had been had, conned, snookered and left hanging out to dry. 

 

'Harrington, meet my godfather, Pharoah Jones', said Delilah as she gave the Big Man a kiss. 'Everything I have, I owe to him'.  The projects were a particularly noisy backdrop to the silent moment played out on the stoop.  Howls, shots and screams - as though orchestrated, and they well might have been - were heard from the open windows and terraces of D Block. It was a scene from hell, a marvelously staged Grand Guignol to show the white boy just where his black goddess came from 

He made his bows and a quick exit, headed across the Anacostia to Capitol Hill, across the Potomac, to the airport and tail between his legs, back to Boston and Beacon Hill. 

Government Opens! The Shutdown Ends! - The Sluice Gates Of Irresponsible Public Spending Are Open Again

Government is the only enterprise that does not require results.  Congress passes one spending bill after another on good faith, promise, and hope.  No private business would ever be so lax, so indifferent to results, so unconcerned about profit as the government of the United States.  It is no wonder that in just a few months, Elon Musk and his wrecking crew found billions of dollars in waste and fraud in the federal bureaucracy  'If it feels right, fund it' has always been the meme on the Washington street. 

USAID, the government department responsible for international development assistance was a sinkhole of failed promise, pie-in-the-sky idealism, hopelessly feelings-driven projects, and total ignorance of the venality, corruption, and blatant thievery among its  foreign 'beneficiaries'.  Project after project was designed to reduce poverty, improve the lot of women and children, to empower local communities, and to promote popular engagement; and project after project was bilked by canny foreign government officials who siphoned off most of the funds and used the remaining few in a desultory show of good will. 

No one at USAID or the State Department stopped to ask for justification, cost-benefit analysis, or proof of success.  The means were more important than the ends.  If a project engaged women, encouraged community participation, and engendered an appreciation for local development, it was a success even though the stated objectives - higher educational performance, job creation, reduction in poverty, etc. - were not met. 

USAID had a perverse system of 'verifiable indicators' and asked all prospective contractors to indicate projected positive changes.  How many teachers would be trained, grades raised, swales constructed, school meals delivered?  Contractors had a field day inventing numbers, rates of increase and final results.  It was a shell game, a Ponzi scheme, a vaudevillian disappearing act with no substance whatsoever; but USAID took the numbers as fact, and doled out money accordingly. 

 

Musk exposed the worst of this nonsense - gay teacher training in rural Uganda, transgender mime show production in Zambia, bridges to nowhere in Tanzania - but layers and layers of ill-conceived, hopelessly naive, and futile investments were still ongoing or planned. There was nothing to do but to shut down the whole kit-and-kaboodle 

Free food has been doled out to Americans for decades with no accountability and justification, with few enrollment and longevity requirements, and with little or no restrictions on what food stamps could be used for.  Fat and flubber were no bar as Americans working the system filled market baskets with Twinkies and Krispy Kreme.  The Department of Agriculture, tied to principles of diversity, equity, and inclusivity, could not in good conscience tell people what they could and could not buy with their entitlement.  The poor were deserving of respect.

 

So who knows how many of the 46 million Americans on food stamps are obese, indolent, and happy to live off welfare but  should never be on it.? 'Don't ask', says the government, for that would be insulting.

Bill Clinton tried to reform welfare, suggesting that there should be strict entry criteria, time limits, and absolute cutoffs if eligibility requirements were not met.  His reforms were met with a chorus of progressive opposition. How could he, a man born in poverty, be so callous and indifferent? and so the sham and charade continued. 

Joe Biden had no shame when he authorized billions in infrastructure and social welfare projects - two areas of notorious corruption and misuse.  Every bridge, road, or port project is known for its cost overruns, unaccountable 'investments', and baldly self-serving subcontracts.  Infrastructure projects world over are known as cash cows for everybody up and down the line -except the taxpayer 

National social welfare projects, as flimsily designed and as hopelessly idealistic as those foisted on third world countries are just as remunerative for local governments, school boards, and city councils.  These feel-good, unaccountable, unmeasurable programs have always been one stunning waste of money. 

And so it is that the reopening of government is not exactly the panacea that many expect - the return of programs to help the poor and the disadvantaged, to extend protection to the vulnerable, to give a leg up to the promising, to build parks and promenades to that the poor can enjoy fresh air and sunlight.  In fact, it will be a return to the venal Congressional business as usual, the doling out of untold billions with no concern whatsoever how they are used. 

Of course it will be nice for airport lines to disappear and the Washington museums to reopen, but other than that, the sluice gates for irresponsible spending will reopen and a flood of unaccountable cash will once again flow.

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency are in the rear view mirror.  Musk had just got his engine started and bulldozers working when he got into a food fight with the President, and the wrecking ball was suspended.  The work of upending the federal bureaucracy, eliminating most of it, and relying only on a lean, Constitutionally mandated (only Defense is specifically mentioned) government, has only begun but now is in hiatus. 

 

The President took advantage of the shutdown, moving to eliminate not only jobs but positions, thus acting on his promise to reduce the bureaucratic burden, but now that the government will be open for business again, it will once again grow, creep, and insinuate itself everywhere.  It takes great commitment, time, effort, and stick-to-it energy to actually reduce the size and influence of government. 

Shutdowns are good things, for they both expose the inanity of most government programs, the inefficacy of many others, and the ability of private citizens and businesses to get along just fine without them.

Most bureaucrats will go back go work and get paid after their two month vacation.  The paperwork, endless meetings, signoffs, approvals, and reiterations will begin again as though they never stopped; and one way or another, budget compromise not withstanding, new monies will be earmarked, approved, and spent to no useful ends whatsoever. 

Government! What a colossal scam.  What a perennial, perpetual, con perpetrated on the American people.  Ronald Reagan famously said, 'Government is not the solution.  Government is the problem' but even he could do little to stem the tide.  Conservative administrations have addressed the issue to little avail.  Bureaucracies are living organisms that change and morph like amoebas, squeeze them here and they reappear there.  Abolish one department and it shows up somewhere else unchanged but with a different name. 

 

Given all that, we are stuck with Big Government, Big Brother, and bigtime waste.  We, the voters, the taxpayers the citizens are complicit, for free things always win votes and the consequences come only later. 

The Sting Of An Unrecoverable Past - Why Divorced Men Always Go Back To First Loves And Wish They Hadn't

Bob Evans was recovering from a particularly bad divorce - fights over the house, the car, and the children, and couldn't believe how he could have married such a woman in the first place.  

Yes, he had been unfaithful, and yes he had not been the most attentive, solicitous husband, but that was no reason for her to fight World War II all over again. 

In any case, recriminations, anger, and thoughts of vendetta aside, Bob knew that he had to get on with his life, make a new one with another woman, a new home, and some measure of happiness. 

He had met Felicity while a student. The weekend trips always paid dividends, and he and Felicity had spent long hours in a cozy hotel room promising the world and a life together. 

They married soon after his graduation, two youngsters on their own in New York, finally unbridled from family, school, and prospective futures. They were sure of themselves and their love, and the rest would come in turn.  After all, what was the point of it all if not for a union of true love?

After a few years they both understood the measure of their mistake - they were totally unsuited for each other, but because of some unexpected stick-to-it principle, decided to make the best of a bad choice.  After all, how bad could the marriage of two attractive, intelligent people be?

Very bad it turned out, not exactly the Sturm und Drang of George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but close.  They fought, they cheated, they lied and deceived and finally realized that any more of this penury would lead to violence or disaster.  They divorced. 

Bob lost track of Felicity in his early good riddance days, and turned his attention to the next phase of his life - finding a more suitable, congenial, and compatible match.

There was Joan from Accounting, a lovely young thing from Chillicothe, cornflower blue eyes, farm-bred simplicity, and sexual need.  Bernice, server at La Fourchette, aspiring actress, poetess, and Tarot card reader; but her starred ceilings, incense, and scholar's rocks were too much.  

Martha, serious progressive, feminist, and activist strummed his strings for a few months, then left for Portland.

Then he thought of Marilyn, his first love which, like many adolescent infatuations had gotten lost in transition and circumstance.  Perhaps like him, she had entrapped herself in a bad marriage, was now divorced, alone, disconsolate, and was looking for a second love. 

'Why, Bobby', she said when she realized who was calling.  'How nice to hear from you'; but the squalling of an infant and the barking of a dog suggested otherwise.

‘What have you been up to? It’s been how long?', and with that he spieled his entree, stumbling over a few years to which she only said, 'How nice.  You must come over and meet Henry and the children'.  Door closed, the past cannot be recovered despite Gatsby’s ‘Of course it can, Old Sport'. 

Disconsolate, hurt by her indifference, and feeling sheepish at his clumsy attempt to reconnect with someone so long ago, he quickly demurred and went back to reassembling his life - ridding the house of 'hers', setting up a wet bar, getting rid of the sconces and Italianate drapes in the living room, and airing out her boudoir. 

What about Nancy Blythe, he thought?  Now, that was reaching far into the distant past, for his desire for Nancy had begun in the eighth grade when she sat by the open window by the hollyhocks and sweet honeysuckle which even by May had made their way up the wall beneath.

She always wore sleeveless blouses, and from where he sat, he could see heaven itself.  Nothing came of it, but the image - the open window, the breeze, the scent of lilacs, and the tempting, impossibly delicious breasts of Nancy Blythe - was indelible, painful, and permanent. 

'Who?', said Nancy when he finally reached her.

The connection went silent.  Had she rung off a crank caller? But after a moment, she got back on the line with an 'of course I remember you', and as chance would have it she worked in a law firm not far from his. 

When he walked into the bar, he expected to recognize her immediately - who could forget that blonde hair and that uniquely feminine charm?  He looked around and asked the maître d' if there was anyone waiting for him; and there she was, a doughy, impossibly middle-aged woman nursing a martini.  It couldn't be her, but had to be. 

Chit chat about Mrs. Thomas the English teacher, Mr. Leonard, the math teacher, Bobby Pelham the bully, cheering the team, Halloween, the Holly Ball, and Nantucket did nothing to collapse the years. 

One and done, he thought as he contacted Joyce Patterson, Vassar tough girl, hard bark but sweet on the inside occasional 'date' on his weekend excursions to Poughkeepsie.  She had been a keeper, and God only knows why he demurred when she suggested a long term relationship.

Joyce had gone off the rails somewhere between Poughkeepsie and Park Avenue and that somewhat unhinged, vacant quality came across loud and clear when he finally found her.  

Despite Gatsby's hopeful promise, Dylan Thomas was right. You can't go home anymore. The past is past and unrecoverable.

So, the long trek forward would have to begin. Courting and a silver tongue all over again. Bob wasn't sure he had the energy for it. Why didn't women simply fall into his lap? 

At last sighting, Bob had married again, this time to a complete unknown - a statistical match, given background, education, legacy, race, ethnicity, and simple aspirations - but as far as he was concerned, since Nancy Blythe was long gone, a fictive bit of memory, then anyone would do, someone to comfort, support, and take care of him.

First Ladies Who Cut Ribbons And Bake Cookies - Marrying Power Instead Of Having It, The Retro Ideal Of Young Women Today

Amanda Ott had never had an eye on the board room.  The glass ceiling could remain in place for all she cared - women who wanted to be men clutching and clawing their way to top for what? A denial of their femininity, their God-given gift of pregnancy, and their nurturing, caring nature. 

Ananda came by this persuasion quite naturally,  Her grandmother was a a Fifties housewife who prided herself on her pot roast, her Chairwomanship of the Hospital Auxiliary, her knitting, her housekeeping, and her fidelity.  Her mother was cast in the same mold - or rather followed in the footsteps of her mother until she hit the Seventies, Women's Lib, bra-burning, umbrage, and dissatisfaction.  

Linda Ott was a crotchety old woman at thirty, angry at every imagined slight, a fierce soldier in the fight for women's rights.  She had Amanda in a 'toned down' period, one in which men did not seem so bad and her husband - Amanda's father - was the kind of understanding male that was one in a million. 

The fact was that William Ott was not one in a million.  He was just a canny, sexually ambitious man who saw  easy conquest in Linda - a woman nudging past thirty with nothing but festoons and campaign hats in her bridal chest who wanted someone, anyone, to take her seriously. 

The marriage was Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew to a tee. Linda found a man who could tame her increasingly inchoate anger and hostility, and William found a woman who, when tamed, would be the perfect, complaisant, faithful wife.  

 

And so it was that despite Linda's earlier, defiant years, she became docile - a wife and mother just like her mother, Grandma Felicity.  To her surprise, she fit wonderfully in the role.  While the women around her were getting law degrees and joining Wall Street investment banks, she preferred to stay at home, take care of her three children, and tend to her hardworking husband. 

This seeming volte face was nothing of the kind, since women's genetic code and hormonal predisposition hadn't changed since the paleolithic.  Regardless of the changing times, the new positioning of women on the socio-economic scale, and the new male accommodating space, women still reacted in the same ways as their mothers, grandmothers, and ancestors. It was next to impossible for a woman to deny her ineluctable bio-genetic destiny. 

In the rise to the top, something had to give, and in these days of unstoppable female ambition, it was always husband, home, and children.  Of course there were exceptions, women who deliberately stopped at the middle rung, preferring middle management and family rather than CEO, but often ended up more frustrated than if they had chosen one or the other.  Middle management meant taking orders from often far less qualified women and spending only 'quality time' with children.  Neither fish nor fowl, neither here nor there. 

And so it was that Amanda sought a compromise - wife to a powerful man; and there was no better model for her and all women than the First Lady of the United States, the wife of the President.  These were women who loved their husbands and took special care of them for they as chief executives of the land were indeed special, unique, one of a kind.  Jackie Kennedy loved and supported her husband Jack despite the fact that he used the Presidential bedroom as a bordello.   

Hillary Clinton stuck by her man despite his backdoor time in Arkansas trailer parks and his dalliance with interns and Washington floozies.  Nancy Reagan was fiercely loyal to her husband as were Laura Bush, Barbara Bush, and Lady Bird Johnson. 

All these women were content with ribbon-cutting, ladies teas, and redecorating - except for Hillary who convinced her husband to put her in charge of health care reform which she botched and bungled and consigned her to baking cookies and charming the wives of foreign dignitaries.  She was an outlier, an unlikeable, nasty woman.  No one was surprised as Bill's dalliances as cheap and tawdry as they were. 

Melania Trump was the perfect First Lady - beautiful, elegant, quietly supportive, deferential, and kind. It was her business to take care of the President, not defy him or cut her own path. 

So Amanda set out with her goal clearly in mind - she would be taken care of by a virile, confident, but loving man of means, a pearl in an oyster to be sure, hard to find and harder to win, but doable if one put one's mind to it.  

However, given the sexual dynamics of the day, with many women headed for the boardroom, partnership, and Wall Street billionaire, the field was open, fertile, and wide for likes of Amanda. 

The game of sexual partnership is easier if you know exactly what you want.  Women who simply wanted Mr. Right and assumed they would know him when they saw him were at a competitive disadvantage to women like Amanda who set their sights, took aim, and never once flinched from their target.  

Men were credulous suckers, Amanda knew, sitting at the feet of her lover father who, a gem in a quarry of broken rocks, never once was taken in, seduced, or enchanted.  It was he who did the seduction, he who bagged the prey.  'Take 'em for what they're worth', he said, proud that his daughter had shown the same clear and unalloyed ambition as he. 'Watch any Barbara Stanwyck movie', he added, referring especially to Double Indemnity where the Fred MacMurray character is suckered into murdering her wealthy husband. 

 

In fact the noir genre is nothing but canny seductresses who take advantage of their clueless, dense lovers. 

First there was Harper Stonington, heir to a New England patrician fortune, on his way to partner at Bear Stearns, penthouse duplex on Park Avenue, houses in St. Bart's and Palm Beach, a man hurrying his way to fulfilling his family legacy but not too sure on his feet when it came to women, thanks to an overbearing mother and pusillanimous father.  Fair game in other words, and Amanda set about the hunt. 

Women being what they are, Daddy's girls from the very start, Amanda found Harper diddling and unsure - far from her sexually confident, determined father.  He had been, despite the priority and principle of aristocratic heritage, been feminized and insisted on asking her, 'Is this OK...may I...do you mind...' until she had had enough.  Money and social influence were not enough to keep her. 

She liked the cut of Billings Lodge's jib and assessed his prospects as 'good', but he had a vacancy about him, not quite all there. He had to be called in from pasture and was far from the rutting bull she secretly dreamed of.  He was quick to respond to her loveliness, and her willingness to please, and soon enough he was 'getting serious'; but that vacancy was never far away.  It was hard for Amanda to imagine how he kept his rather imposing job if he drifted off into interstellar space so easily. 

More importantly there was nothing at all to take up any slack in his brain.  He was a tabula rasa at age thirty-three.  He loved her because of her pheromones, some instinctive upwelling of desire, but not because of her.  She could be anyone in that empty, vacuous brain. 

She trolled New York's finest watering holes, showed up at important vernissages and chamber music events, did all the right things and met the right sort of people, but none ever met muster, never made the grade.  She had made herself more than available - at times demurely attractive, at others coquettish, and at others primly expectant - but got nothing but dross.  Glittering on the outside, but impossibly porcine on the inside. What was a girl to do?

Still a young woman, it was too early to give up the ship, but the time and effort spent on finding a man who would take care of her, treat her as a queen, and give her things was getting cost-ineffective.  Maybe it was time for a reset. 

OK, but what? It would be a comedown to join the legions of bullying cunts on their way up the corporate ladder or being the exterminating angels of the courtroom; but it seemed to be an either-or situation, neither of which offered much promise or satisfaction; and marrying a dutiful clothier or pharmacist was not at all in the cards. 

 

So it was back to New Brighton to live in the house where she grew up - a comfortable place, her place, especially since her parents had moved to a retirement home.  She found herself becoming her mother, little aprons, home-baked bread, garden parties, and volunteering.  She was the belle of the ball in such a small town, desired by all the men around but interested in none.  In fact she became exactly like her grandmother, the Fifties wife sans husband and children, but that suited her just fine. 

Why Black Men Support Trump - Ghetto Machismo In The White House

Pharoah Jones was the acknowledged Godfather of Anacostia.  Master of a multifaceted business empire of drugs, prostitution, and trafficking, the residents turned to him for help, support, and rescue.  He was as much the godfather of the Washington inner city as Frank Lucas once was of Harlem. 

Jones was as canny in his enterprises and as ruthless, brutal, and intimidating as Lucas.  In his rise to power he neutered the opposition and outwitted local and federal authorities.  Few court cases went against him as his influence and largesse spread far and wide. 

Jones was a showman and owned three chopped and channeled lowriders, all gold with red trim and piping, his trademark, two specially outfitted Secret Service issue armored Escalades, a ten million dollar mansion on the Anacostia River, and a retinue of the most beautiful black women seen in the pages of Ebony.  

His consort was Aissatou Demba, a Fulani from northern Mali, a canny, resourceful woman who not only serviced him but ran his African trafficking operation - a major enterprise where young light-skinned Fulani, Berber, and Moorish women were sold to Saudi traders.

This enterprise was remarkable because of its reach and internationalism. The African-Arab sex trade had been dominated by Nigerians until the Pharoah Jones conglomerate entered the picture with intent, dollars, and modern automatic weapons that beggared the imagination of Ibo thugs. 

Jones was a master of all he surveyed.  Great grandson of Carolina slaves, and grandson of low country sharecroppers, he made his way quickly and ably.  He understood the intricacies of the free market, racial dynamics, Southern politics, and federal power, and had investors from Charleston to Baltimore. 

He was deal maker par excellence, and concluded arrangements easily and profitably thanks to his savvy understanding of the balance of power.  Before he was thirty he was a multi-millionaire who had eluded every law enforcement agency deployed to capture him. 

Pharoah Jones who had never voted in his life nor ever would, was still a solid supporter and promoter of Donald Trump. He felt akin to the man in his use of power, intimidation, canny political sense and his unalloyed confidence.  There was nothing that would stop the President from amassing more power, generating more support, and concluding more deals than any president before him. 

In addition to that, Trump had always been an admirer of beautiful women, a lover of luxury and show, a man of yachts, mansions, and tropical idylls.  It was a pleasure to have such a man in the Oval office after four years of a pussy whipped old man hounded by ugly queer women and who did nothing but give way free things.  

The fool emptied the treasury and got nothing for it - those billions of dollars in infrastructure grants could have generated a king's ransom for him, set him up for life.  He whistled and waffled with the Ayatollah, played pinochle with his aides while rockets rained on Israel, said he loved black people but did more to deflate enterprise and initiative than any president before him. 

When Trump sent Elon Musk into federal office buildings and scattered the do-nothing hangers on, Jones was reminded of his storming of the headquarters of a rival.  In a cavalcade of armored vehicles, armed with RPGs, rocket launchers, and Israeli automatic weapons, he assaulted LaFarge Washington's redoubt on MLK avenue in broad daylight and neutralized every last one of his crewe. 

When Trump made deals with China, America's most defiant adversary, Jones thought of his own pact with the Prince George's cartel, one whose leader was a canny, equally intimidating and brutal, businessman.  Resolving the continuing violent disputes which had interrupted business on both sides reduced cross-jurisdictional tensions and resulted in millions of dollars in formerly unrealized revenue. 

Trump's Florida estate at Mar-a-Lago was not unlike the one Jones was building on Bimini - a vast, spacious home on a thousand acres which would be the pleasure Mecca of the hemisphere.  The bright, young, blonde women whom the President courted and recruited for his administration and his pleasure were exactly the women that Jones favored and were seen regularly at his homes on Nantucket and Palm Beach. 

 

Pharoah Jones was a natural politician but not a partisan one.  He had no interest in Republicans or Democrats and worked both sides of the aisle for his benefit; but the election of Donald Trump gave him an entirely different and new perspective.  The man embodied all of the inner city's ethos, a man after Pharoah Jones' heart.  Everything he did - his intimidation, uncompromising attitude, machismo, defiance, absolute confidence and desire to 'do whatever it takes' made the two men soul brothers, comrades in arms, two peas in a pod. 

Pharoah was perhaps the most visible and influential of black Trump supporters, but black men throughout the country had had enough of Joe Biden, his gay gender spectrum, his tough dykes and swishy aides.  He was not a man but a suit. There was nothing in him, his character, or his personality that gave even an inkling of power, decisiveness, and influence.  

In the last election, Trump won over twenty-five percent of black male voters, a significant number given the historical preference for Democratic candidates regardless of the cut of their jib.  This percentage, according to recent polls, was edging up.  The President's first ten months were pure ghetto, unmatched for their singlemindedness, authority, and all-out aggression. 

'I want to meet that white boy', Jones said to a group of his associates who knew that such a meeting was nigh impossible; but they cheered their boss anyway for his intent. 

In fact, Trump had heard of Jones and his outspoken support for him. Trump a bottom-line political thinker couldn't care less about Jones' alleged activities.  'That's what the ghetto is all about', he said, 'and more power to him'.  What mattered was his growing national reputation as the black community's Big Man and his influence over those within it. 

Clearly a meeting was not in the cards - for now - but he did send Jones a Christmas card signed, 'With thanks', an apertura if there ever was one.  

Jones and Trump understood each other perfectly.  They were no different, combined the same understanding of power and its limitless use, its perks and rewards, and its fame and notoriety. They were both Big Men, uncompromising males who never had any doubt about their potency, virility, or naturally-given forces. 

On a clear day from the steps of the Capitol, one can see Anacostia.  There are no skyscrapers, monuments, or spectacular edifices there - after all it is a slum - but one day after meeting with Republican Congressmen there (on their turf was his idea), Donald Trump stood outside and looked across the river to the east and thought of Pharoah Jones. 

Why Are Young White Women So Progressive?

Marfa Potter was an ordinary girl who had led an ordinary, unremarkable, but stable and reasonably happy life.  Her father was a Vice President at a local New Brighton bank and was known for his charm and accommodating nature. While he was no less financially disciplined than his fellow bankers, his winning ways brought in a steady stream of customers. The fact that most of them were women was a tribute to his innate kindness and consideration. 

Alex Potter's charm was not wasted on the widows who hesitatingly came in for a home improvement or car loan and left delighted with him and the credit.  He had a  way with women - all women - and had an uncanny sensibility to their particular needs.  He was a patient listener, and a practiced admirer who let his lovers know that they were the most beautiful, intelligent, creative and resourceful women ever.  Here was a man who - unlike their husbands - paid attention, did not drift off, and who took them seriously. 

 

As most experienced men know, it doesn't take much to seduce a woman, for all are susceptible in one way or another to male charm, attention, and a silver tongue.  How did most men not understand this basic, fundamental point?  Why did they go about everything in exactly the wrong way, bullying their way to the front of the line, primming themselves like a peacock, and exposing all the stereotypical male traits?

This feeling of being taken seriously, for being recognized as a person of value, equal to all, a prime and principal example of the best traits that God handed out at Creation, made them particularly vulnerable to the blandishments of men like Alex Potter. 

It was this neediness and its associated credulousness that led to their overwhelmingly passionate belief in progressivism.  Progressives not only took themselves and all women seriously, but all those who at one time or another had felt ignored, refused, or oppressed.  The well-known caricature of young women loving babies, little animals, and defenseless things, so hated by feminists who insisted that such characterization condemned women to a perpetual life of  Kinder, Kuche, Kirche, was like all caricatures at least partially true.  Childbearing and childrearing gave women greater sensitivity to others than the bearish males who impregnated them; but at the same time made them dependent on them.  

 

Of course things have changed since the Paleolithic, and women can quite capably stand on their own, but a few million years is not enough for women's genetic structure to have evolved. So women still carry the same natural proclivities predominant in prehistoric times. 

American political progressives, for all their insistence about compassion, inclusivity, and social generosity, understand this well.  Young women - especially young white women - have always been in their sights.  They are the ones who are most eager to hear messages of female empowerment, the ugliness of male patriarchy, and the infectious greed of capitalist America.  

Why white and not black women?  The answer is obvious.  No sister on the street has ever put up with such progressive horseshit.  A woman from the 'hood is proud of being a tough bitch, an intimidator, an insatiable sexual predator.  'I don't need no pansy-assed, lily white cunt comin' up in here and telling me what to do, honey', said LaShonda Trout sitting on the stoop of D Block of the Frederick Douglass Homes.  

Right she was.  Black women were what progressives thought they wanted, but were worthless as a vulnerable constituency.  It was these needy white women, brought up in an environment of modest middle class values and therefore incensed that they were being broken so summarily, who were their targets. The combination of credulousness, the age-old desire to be taken seriously, a far left education, and a need to be given some direction was the perfect progressive storm. 

Young white women voted overwhelmingly and disproportionately for 'Democratic Socialist' Zorhan Mamdani as Mayor of New York.  Black women and men weren't even close.  Progressive operatives clapped each other on the back after the demographics were made known.  They knew it all the time. 

The demographics of the recent No Kings rallies were exactly the same.  In overwhelming numbers, young white women, joined by their mothers in a jamboree of happy hopefulness, filled the streets to protest the pretender to the throne, Donald Trump. 

And so it was that Marfa and Abigail Potter turned out with their sisters on New Brighton's No Kings Day.  Abigail made tea sandwiches for everyone, ordered and distributed catchy No Kings tee shirts, and hugged and embraced everyone who joined the crowd from every quarter of the city.  There was not a black face in the crowd even thought New Brighton like other New England towns now had their share, and although the Potter women tried their level best to assure at least some diversity, they were unsuccessful. 

First of all Abigail didn't know any black people, and Marfa's private school, despite affirmative action, was all white; but the real reason that no white person ever set foot in Lincoln Heights, the sprawling black neighborhood across the tracks. 

No matter, said Abigail who was secretly happy that his was a her crowd only.  Black women would have simply been an irritant - you had to pay attention to them although you really wished you didn't have to - and the solidarity of the movement remained intact. 

Now Marfa was going out with Trowbridge ('Trow') Evans, scion of the Boston Evans family, direct descendants of John Davenport, original member of the Massachusetts Bay colony and founder of New Haven.  The Evans were rock-ribbed conservatives brought up on old English and colonial American values, fierce patriots and ardent supporters of the current President.  The young Trow was a chip off the old block, and laughed at Marfa's intention to protest at the No Kings rally. 

However, he, like Marfa's father, understood women well, and knew that such infantile longings would not hurt his relationship with the girl - on the contrary, his complaisant permission for her to do so endeared her all the more to him.  Sexual pleasure and control of the relationship was what mattered to Trow. 

White women have always been the bastion of the Democratic party, but this significant uptick in support has taken Republican pollsters and political observers a bit by surprise.  They knew that white women had always bought into the compassion thing, but not in such numbers; and conservative operatives went back to the drawing board to figure out some counter-strategy if indeed there were any which could seduce women away from the febrile nonsense of their political opponents. 

Savvy men went to No Kings rallies because there were hundreds of young white women there, and Trow was one, despite his fidelity to Marfa, trolled them with great success.

'What the fuck?', said Pharoah Jones, self-appointed King of Anacostia, a black man who had no trouble whatsoever with absolute power and reigned supreme in the inner city.  'What these white bitches doin'?'; but he understood quite well the paradigm, took a big hit on his spliff, passed it on to his Jamaican crew, and drove off in his cream-and-gold Cadillac Escalade.