Cheating - It's In Our Genes, Everyone Does It, So Sit Back And Enjoy The Ride

You have to hand the Somalis credit.  They went from pirating cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden - a tricky, dangerous affair, attacking huge Maersk container ships from an outboard with Kalashnikovs over choppy seas - to pirating the public treasury of Minnesota.  It took savvy, opportunity, smarts, and the credulousness of a government love affair with asylees; but the sheer chutzpah of it was marvelous. 

When reporter Nick Shirley decided to visit the now infamous Learing Centers, supposedly pre-schools funded though generous grants by the state, he found them empty - not a child to be seen, doors locked, a few men hanging around chewing kat, but nothing even resembling a pre-school. 

The Somalis didn't even try to cover up their fraud - create some semblance of a working school, a few coloring books and toys on the floor, perhaps even one or two children whose parents were paid for their appearance.  Nothing, nada.  The cheating - at this multi-million dollar level it is called fraud - but cheating is what it is, taking something from someone on false pretenses.  It was the gall of it, the sheer scale and scope of the affair that was impressive. 

Sven Carlson, born and raised on the Minnesota prairie, Sinclair Lewis country with some originalist American Midwestern values but still a windy, cultureless, ramshackle place surrounded by emptiness, had moved to St. Paul after business school and hung out his shingle, S.P. Carlson, Accountancy and Tax Preparation.  He did well despite the incursions of the big Eastern accounting firms.  He knew Minnesota and federal law and how to avoid and in some instances evade it. He had been cheating the government for years, and so when the learned of the Somali escapade right in his backyard, he was delighted.  Not only would the government be occupied with the Learing Center debacle, but it showed how easy it was to take from the public trough. 

Not everyone was on the take in Minnesota, of course, but there was enough cheating going on everywhere to make one think that the state had a monopoly on it. Looked at another way, Minnesota was the land of opportunity - for what else to expect of a people who had survived the harsh winters of the prairie and made a home and a living there?  

Cheating was just the questionable edge of doing business.  Donald Trump, after all, made millions by inflating the value of his properties and counting on the credulousness of buyers looking for a good deal to fall for his his sleight of hand.  He did nothing wrong in a buyer beware New York real estate market.  No one took a number at face value in that heady environment. 

And what else would his father's friend Halve Swensen have done other than woo the wife of Henrik Olson, take her on the corncobs in the far shed in the dead of winter?  Halve's wife had frozen up on him years ago citing all manner of discomfort, desuetude, and disinterest, and any red-blooded man would naturally seek solace and sexual comfort elsewhere.  Yes, he cheated on his wife, but who wouldn't? Married to that woman was penance in and of itself. 

The Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov tells Ivan that he is not such a bad guy, certainly not worthy of the calumny heaped on him since the Fall.  I am a vaudevillian, the Devil says, and without me life would be a bloody bore, three hundred and sixty five days of Sunday mass, penitence, good works, and vain hopes for an unattainable better life. At least with me around, the Devil says, life can be fun. 

 

He is a trickster, a con artist, a carny barker, a snake oil salesman - anything to spice things up in what Hobbes would later describe as a short, nasty, and brutish life.  'You should be thankful for me', the Devil tells Ivan. 

Talking about chutzpah, what about the two best of recent years?  Bernie Madoff bilked his Jewish friends out of millions in a Ponzi scheme which when uncovered by the FBI had not one red cent of assets.  Madoff was brilliant - suave, convincing, playing on his Jewishness, his natural financial wizardry, and his charm - and convinced hundreds of investors that his fund was the best way to double and triple their profits.  

 

Rudy Kurniawan was a young Indonesian who made millions selling dreck as high-quality vintage wine to investors who would never drink it but buy and sell it at enormous profit.  Rudy bought up unused French barrel wine, became a master and 'aging' bottles, corks, and labels, and claimed he had a wine cellar unmatched for sophistication and unrivalled quality.  On occasion he would buy an actual high-end wine (he was gifted with a remarkable palate), share it with investors, and con them into thinking this would be the wine they would be buying. 

'That's what I'm talking about!', Ivan's Devil would certainly have said had he known of Bernie and Rudy, 'my kind of men'. 

Who in America could not have marveled at former South Carolina governor who went on fugue, a long absence from the statehouse to be with his Argentine lover in Buenos Aires, and when questioned insisted that he had been hiking the Appalachian trail.  'I needed headspace', he said. 

Or John Edwards, another American politician who bribed a minion to take the fall for him and announce that Edwards' illegitimate child was his; or former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich who gave his dying wife a bouquet of flowers, an 'I love you', and then went off to the Bahamas with his over. 

 

Politics of course is an easy target.  'They all cheat', said a Washington Post Watergate era reporter; but religion is the motherlode.  Bible hucksters since the days of Billy Sunday and Amy Semple McPherson have been making millions off the spiritually bereft.  Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Tammy and Jim Bakker were brilliant at their ability to fill their personal treasuries only with the promise of prayer. 

Mackintosh Peters was a snake oil salesmen in the Arizona Territory in the 1870s, and made a good living selling worthless gum Arabic and corn syrup mixtures to the Piute and Navajo.  'Works like a charm', Mack told the Indians, 'take a swig in the morning and one in the evening, and it'll cure what ails you'. 

Which was arthritis, impotence, scabies, catarrh, and suppuration and anything else he could conjure up.  He was long gone before the Indians knew they had been had, but the placebo effect has been around for centuries, so many of his customers told their friend and families how good they felt after only a day's dosage.  If for some reason he found himself back in the same village and was accosted by the Indians he had duped, he had a ready reply. 'Ahh, of course', he said.  'I said two swigs in the morning and two at night, not one.'

'What's a swig?' asked an elder of the tribe. 

'Why, like this', Mack said, swilling a half-bottle down in one gulp. 'Ya see, ya wasn't takin' nearly half as much', and with that, he lit out of town, his racks of phials and bottles clinking and rattling in the back seat of the wagon as he drove. 

Nigerians are the cyber-kings of trickery.  Snake oil salesmen on a grand scale.  Tens, hundreds of thousands of appeals go out at the click of a mouse and if only a fraction of one percent bears fruit, the Nigerian scammer is set up for life.  After the genie was out of the bottle and the whole scamming landscape had quickly evolved into a barely recognizable, untraceable universe, there was no limit to the money that could be made. Brilliant. 

Husbands cheat on their wives every day of the week, cheating on your taxes has become patriotic, keeping a thumb on the scale was the way Katz's Delicatessen turned a profit.  Cutting corners and reshaping them to look full is an American talent.  Advertisers cheat with every seductive, persuasive ad, always keeping one step ahead of the FCC.  Politicians tell bald-faced lies, are found out, apologize, and are re-elected.  Televangelists who have an unaccountable product, keep on praying and passing the basket.  

Looked at through the prim, censorious lens of the social and moral reformer, all this cheating is corrosive, destructive, and hurtful; but looked at through a more forgiving one, it is the only thing that keeps us awake. Without it there would be no television serials, no gossip, no kibbitzing by the water cooler, no locker room stories, no lawyers, no politicians, empty shelves in the supermarket.  Cheating, and its handmaidens lying and confabulation, are what make the world go round. 

War, A Love Affair - The Allure Of Fiery Destruction

Imagine Genghis Khan with an army of ten thousand men thundering out of the Steppes, slaying all in his wake, laying waste to village after village, and nothing but carnage and death in his wake from the Far East to Europe.  It must have been a grand and heroic  spectacle.

Khan was charismatic and fearsome; and he and his armies were known for their cruelty and barbarity, and the sight of them advancing across the battlefield in a storm of dust, the feel of the earth shaking with the thunder of 50,000 hooves were enough to send enemies into retreat; but the thought alone of this terrible, bloodthirsty, and mighty warrior would have been enough. 

Genghis Khan was a man of absolute will and power, a frightening figure of power and vengeance.  He was a horseman of the Apocalypse.

 

The Crusades were Christian but just as barbaric.  Pope Urban’s armies were sent out to destroy and annihilate the Muslim occupiers of Jerusalem, to rid the world of them and their godless, heathen, insidious religion.  The mayhem and slaughter wreaked by the crusading armies was little different from that of Genghis Khan.

The battles of wars past were exalting in their ferocity –  banners flying, swords flashing, and thickets of arrows flying them through the dust of battle.  Armed horsemen – mammoth, incredible figures to most enemies who had never seen horses – charged through the enemy lines, slashing all from their mounts until the battlefield was littered with dead.

There have been many successful armies in the world.  Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Agrippa were as brilliant generals as Genghis Khan, and brought Roman organization, discipline, and management to the battle.  They won because of superior ability, armaments, and military thinking while Genghis Khan added an almost untamed savagery to his victories.

The battles of the Aztecs were more like those of Genghis Khan, for in addition to classic military strategy, organization, and a half-civilized barbarism, they added a powerful spiritual element.  Soldiers dressed in the skins of animals whose spirits they possessed.  When they attacked the enemy, they killed like a panther would; or ripped and tore flesh like an eagle.

The army of Montezuma which pursued the enemy across the Mexican highlands was not just comprised of men, it was made up of powerful animal spirits. It was the panther which killed, the eagle which ripped enemy flesh, and the jaguar which tore at enemy throats. There could be no greater spectacle of battle than that of the great Aztec armies and the wild soldiers dressed in animal skins, talons, and feathers charging across the plains.

The armies of the European Crusades fought for their Christian God, and felt his spirit within as they attacked the Infidel.  Theirs was a military engagement with strategy, operations, and tactics; but it was also a holy war, inspired by a holy cause, and guided by God himself.

Early modern warfare was tame by comparison.  World War I was a war of mud, trenches, barbed wire perimeters, mortar fire and infantry charges.  It was a war without spectacle, fought without clear cause or purpose, and was responsible for the deaths of millions.

World War II was the first fully modern war, for it combined classic military tactics with a full complement of armaments – planes, tanks, artillery, riflery, rockets, mortars, and bombs. Soldiers had a cause – Hitler had invaded their countries and they were determined to drive him out – but they were part of a military machine, cogs in its wheels.  Battles were hard-fought, territory often gained by feet, not miles, and battle lines shifting by the week.  It was an ordinary war.

It was not until Vietnam when the spectacle of war again appeared.  F-16 jet fighters were once again Apocalyptic as they rained terror down from the skies.  The destruction was Biblical and epic.

Despite Hinduism’s image as one of shanti, Om, and peace, its mythology is based on endless cycles of destruction and rebirth.  The goddess Kali is the Destroyer and the god Siva dances for its rebirth.

Despite our intentions to end war and to progress towards a peaceful, accommodating, compassionate, and respectful Utopia, brutal, bloody, insensate conflicts will – as always – exist.   How can millennia of violent, aggressive, brutal, human history not be of relevance? Genghis Khan is more expressive of human nature than Jesus Christ ever was.

The Old Testament, of course, reads in parts like the chronicles of Genghis Khan.  Yahweh having seen how badly the Garden of Eden turned out, destroyed the world in the Flood.   When the world repopulated and returned to its evil ways, God sent a message to the sinful.  He destroyed the entire populations of Sodom and Gomorrah – men, women, children, and babies – in a vengeful, murderous purge.  That too did not work, and he sent Jesus to deal with a seemingly irremediable world.  His message of love, compassion, and brotherhood went unheeded, and the world now is no different than it ever was.  God anticipated this, of course, and vowed to destroy the entire universe in a fiery inferno.

So Genghis Khan, the Crusades, Sodom and Gomorrah, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Dresden, the napalming of Vietnam, and the nuclear intentions of rogue states are all part of the same, predictable scenario.  The comic books of the Fifties were not aberrations but prophetic.  It would not be aliens who would destroy the world, but ourselves.  The same inevitability, the same destiny.

A few years back American boys played with He-man figures and created out of imagination and popular lore their own existential battles.

Hindu philosophy teaches cycles of destruction and regeneration as the natural order, but the destruction is much more human than the regeneration.  Nietzsche believed that an expression of pure Will – one beyond morality, beyond good and evil – is the only thing that validates our humanity.  The F-16 fighter pilot raining terror from the skies, the panther man ripping the throat out of his enemy, or Genghis Khan, Nietzsche’s perfect Superman rampaging his way through the civilized world, are all very much like us all.

Although we may live in a quiet, orderly, predictable world, there is something violently primitive still in us all; and as much as we talk about peace, community, and diversity, we cannot ignore it.

Our religions have become tame and tepid compared to the animistic and supremely powerful religions of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, where the Zapotecs worshiped thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and violent storms and sacrificed their own to appease their gods. Our wars have become tame, remote, and surgical. Acts of human will and expressions of pure power are – for the time being – things of the past. 

This period of temperance, judicious political restraint cannot last,  Our lust for violence, our blood lust, sanctioned by acts of war must be satisfied and it soon will be. The New Age has tried to tame such lust, and boys are encouraged not to destroy things but to build them – trucks, cranes, and bulldozers are sought-after toys by concerned parents – but little boys find ways to engage the trucks in battle, to crash them, overturn them, and destroy them.  It’s in our genes.

Sex And The Liberal Woman - Hidden Desire For The Unfeminized Beast

Bettina Campbell thought she knew what's what until her neighbor flew an oversized American flag.  Putney Meadows, the leafy Washington neighborhood that had been solidly progressive for as long as she could remember, now had an apostate living right next door.  Or course he could simply be expressing his patriotism, his love of country, and solid Americanism, but in these days of Donald Trump and the miasma of right wing political infection, there could be no such thing.  Flying the American flag was nothing more than a Make America Great Again banner. 

Bettina had suspected as much when she met her neighbor taking out the trash and commiserated with him about 'the ballroom', the garish monstrosity that Donald Trump was planning to build in the White House, a travesty of history, an obtuse, bourgeois claim to faux culture, and a gross obscenity.  She was surprised when he did not rise to the occasion, but merely smiled, commented on the weather, and asked Bettina about her rose garden. 

'Silence is complicity' was the sign posted on her front lawn, and here was a clear case of it.  Her neighbor simply by deflecting the ballroom comment and turning to innocuousness, showed his true colors - a right wing zealot, an apostate, and a traitor right here in Putney Meadows. She had been right about the flag all along.

'I had a chat with our neighbor', Bettina mentioned to her husband over dinner that night.  'You know the one, the flag one', and without waiting for his response, she went into her now familiar screed about the idiocy of Donald Trump.  This time, however, there was something more to her usual fluid stream of hatred.  Never in a hundred years did she expect a Trump supporter to live in the neighborhood, let alone next door.  How was she expected to deal with such an intrusion?

Her husband said that he didn't know what the fuss was about. The neighbor parked courteously, was careful to recycle his trash, smiled, waved, and brought over fresh figs from his garden. His political beliefs were his affair. 

This of course did not satisfy Bettina who felt the presence of the neighbor was a blight, as bad as a crack house next door, an unwanted, uncivilized, brutish, brooding presence that destroyed the comity of the block and the neighborhood. 

From that moment onward she hovered, waiting for another chance to confront her neighbor.  She tried to be outside when he went to work and came home, looked out the back window on trash pickup day to catch him in the alley, tended her rose garden when she heard voices in the yard next door; but no dice. She was not up to full frontal confrontation - there was a certain sense of propriety in the neighborhood borne of good breeding and education - but was tempted when all her more surreptitious attempts at contact failed. 

Susie Brandon was the woman who knew everything - who lived where, what they did for a living, how the marriage was progressing, whether children were on the way, what schools they went to, what cars they drove etc.  She wasn't actually a busybody, just an interested, community minded neighbor to whom all went for gossip.  How did Judge Fuller die? Is that Marge Adams' second or third marriage, etc. 

So Bettina went to Susie about her neighbor.  What did she know about him?  Now, Bettina, mindful of the neighborhood ethos of goodwill, was tentative and careful in her questioning, but her intent was clear.  Was the neighbor a right wing Trump supporter or not?

Susie said she had no idea.  The flag and the Lexus parked out front were some indications of Republicanism, but beyond that she was unwilling to say. 'Invite them over', she suggested. 

Bettina had of course thought of that, but was afraid of what she might find out.  It was one thing to suspect or surmise one's political affiliation, another altogether to be faced undeniably with it.  No, invitations would not do. The truth would crack the polity of a well-constructed, politically solid neighborhood and better to let sleeping dogs lie than to rile them up. 

Now, it turned out that the neighbor was actually a charming, polite, and articulate man who clearly loved women.  Even in the first alley-trash encounter, Bettina felt his affection and personal interest.  After so long married to the same man and after years in the progressive trenches, she was surprised at her response to her neighbor's quite obvious sexual interest.  

This of course added to her confusion.  Sexual responsiveness towards a political traitor would be capitulation to the Devil, an insidious and unforgiveable lapse of integrity.  However once the flame had been lit, she couldn't deny that her political interest in outing an apostate was merely a cover for something far more pertinent although inexpressible. 

'Conservatives make good lovers' was the meme on the street, a happy-go-luck t-shirt logo worn on the tennis court or mowing the lawn but as in most hyperbole and fancy there is some truth.  Liberal men fall over themselves to respect, honor, and defer to women.  Lovemaking is progressive method acting: 'May I? Can I? Would it be OK if...' and all the rest of the mile markers set up by No Means No women.  There would be no male forwardness in the bedroom of sensitized women. Men would be brought to heel and kept there at women's beck and call. 

Of course most women were sick and tired of such sycophantism and faux demeanor.  They wanted to fucked royally not mollycoddled and deferred to like the Virgin Mary.  It was conservative men who had never bought into the feminist cant, gender inquiry, and pedestal thinking of their progressive colleagues, and who believed that women were to be had, no different from any other desirable item in the marketplace. 

Although women like Bettina publicly raged at such insensate, bullying, intimidating behavior, they privately wanted men like this....men like Bettina's neighbor. 

The cat-and-mouse game continued for a month or two.  Both parties knew the outcome but were willing to play dutiful suitor and coy maiden.  As they grew closer Bettina, began to see that her neighbor was 'not that bad' - his radical conservatism, under the soft lighting of the Jefferson Suite at the Fairfax, did not seem quite so noxious; and it was that joyous epiphany which changed her mind.  She was no longer a one-issue woman.  Not everyone had to pass muster, pass through her political filter, to be acceptable. Political anger was draining, debilitating, and counter-productive.  Politics described but did not define. 

It is hard to keep up let alone leave off a sexual liaison with a next door neighbor, but Bettina and her lover were civilized people; and when the affair was over, they still managed neighborliness and good will. 

Every so often, when she saw his wife leave for work in the morning, she was tempted to slip in the back door and rekindle the affair, but she demurred.  Better leave that one in the rearview mirror.  There would be others now that she had rid herself of the limiting political sieve through which men had had to pass. 

Rain Dances, Cowrie Shells, And Witch Doctors - A Conservative In Liberal Country

Parker Hammond lived in Fairmont Park, a leafy enclave of Northwest Washington, DC, a white, upper middle class, professional neighborhood, uniformly progressive and home of No Hate Resides Here, Black Lives Matter, All Are Welcome banners and lawn signs.  There were no chinks in the neighborhood’s armor, no doubts or second thoughts about the gender spectrum, affirmative action, redistribution of wealth, or the evils of capitalism. It was a homogeneous, hermetically sealed, committed place to live.  It was no different than the bland, plump, and prosperous suburbs of the Fifties.

The cars in Fairmont Park were all the same – Prius, Volt, Tesla, or hybrid Toyota.  The dinners were all ethnically eclectic, locally-sourced, and organic. No flags flew on the Fourth  of July or Memorial Day, no floats down Mass Ave in honor of the fallen.  Church on Sunday was desultory and prayer a parents’ thing.  If ever there was a neighborhood of surety and one that slept well, it was Fairmont Park.

For a conservative like Parker Hammond life was as simple, ordinary, and uncomplicated as that of his neighbors as long as he observed decorum, and respected received wisdom and political propriety.  His neighbors never suspected his radical leanings because the ethos of political homogeneity was so universal that they talked to him as openly as if he were one of theirs about the devilishly misogynist, homophobic, demented Donald Trump; about the rise of The Black Man, the heroism of the Transgender Woman, and the solidarity of the Congressional women of color.  They assumed tribal conformity and fidelity to tribal laws, and never expected a contrary word.

Parker had a number of friends whom he had known for the many years he and his family had lived in Fairmont Park, and during those happy years of pre-school, kindergarten, and elementary school talk of children, teachers, playgrounds, and trash pick-up was enough to fill a raft of chicken dinners; but when the birds had flown the nest, little convenient social glue remained, and the cracks in the friendships began to show.  Although Parker had been determined to keep his own counsel and to express his conservative views elsewhere, he was put upon. His neighbors caught the scent of contrariness, of a conservative in the guise of a liberal, and were not content until they had outed the outlier.

To keep calm and to preserve the familiar light chatter of childhood days, he became adept at deflecting pointed remarks about Critical Race Theory, black empowerment, the gender spectrum, and Wall Street greed; and turned every reference to the innocuous. 

“Speaking of curriculum reform”, he said, “what do you think of the new French teacher?”  Language studies were safe, neutral ground, or so Parker thought; but his friends pounced on even that.  “French”, they laughed, “the language of Bourbons, Louis XVI, and the colonialist post-Napoleonic hegemonists.  Why should we impose that language on our children?”

“Nice weather we’re having”, turned into a diatribe against conservative ignorance about global warming.  The unseasonable warmth was but the first step into an environmental Hades, a final, universal conflagration that conservatives not only did not accept but had caused. 

His comment about the beautiful new gym teacher – young, lithe, runway ready, and Hollywood primed, biding her time until her inevitable trip to the West Coast – was dismissed as antiquated, misogynist, pseudo-patriarchal abuse.  Her declared Hollywood ambition, her proud sexuality and vital sexual spirit she had translated into the grace and enthusiasm of acrobatics were ignored.  Her beauty was to be overlooked, dismissed as irrelevant, and inconsequential – despite the fact that all the girls in the school wanted to be her and all the boys wanted her.

Finally, and long overdue Parker spoke up.  He had had enough of his friends’ cancelling dismissal of the Tudors, the Romanoffs, and the Pahlavis;  their revisionism and historical dimness.  He was magnificent, a Williams Jennings Bryant or Frederick Douglass. He was a demon, a man possessed.  When he drew breath and looked around, he was satisfied.

The Fieldings were nonplussed.  They had, like all Fairmont Park neighbors, thought that science and politics were settled.  How could such unexpected, crude and antagonistic sentiments come from a friend? And how could they not have known or even suspected his true colors?

For his part, he had become increasingly bored with the Fieldings, their rattling on about old political saws, their intellectual insularity and lack of curiosity, their morass.  At his age, far nearer the end of life than the beginning, he was increasingly impatient with the chatter that had occupied him in the hot tub while the kids played on the swings but which the Fieldings continued.  Better a solitary life without meaningless interruption than a nattering one that passed for friendship.

All is supposed to settle as time goes on, find its proper level, which is what retiring and doing nothing is all about.  Reflection, re-consideration, a prayer perhaps; but nothing disruptive.  Life is supposed to end on a glidepath, not a rutted runway or foundered in a tangle of mangroves; so what was all this scrambling of progressive eggs all about?  Why the glee in upsetting apple carts? Or re-rearranging knick-knacks on the coffee table?

In such a community of closed doors, it felt good to slam them.  

Where political belief has become an article of faith, disagreement is a sin.  There can be no more difference of opinion about the rightness of climate action, gender fluidity, or the rise of the black man than there can about the nature of the Trinity.  No questions about whether Jesus was God and Man, all God, sometimes one and sometimes the other, borne of he Father, co-existent with the Father, or any of the other apostasies debated during the Second Century.  Life in Fairmont Park was like Christianity after the Council of Nicaea.  Right and wrong had been settled, inquiry and debate were unnecessary and tantamount to heresy.

So Parker was branded an apostate, a heretic, and an outlier.  He was no longer welcome. This isolation had a kind of purity – shedding snakeskin, the histogenesis of a moth, becoming someone neither defined by others nor by opposition to them.

It was initially hard to adjust to this new life, and each time he passed a front lawn festooned with rainbow signs or matrons still wearing COVID masks the old orneriness returned.  It was definitely orneriness since he had enough of a Tolstoian perspective of history to expect repetitive cycles of political fol-de-rol turned into true belief, territorialism, and war and not to get exercised either way.  Diffidence pissed people off more than deeply held belief ever did.

Diffidence – a layman’s nihilism – was the soft pillow of Parker’s later years.  We all die alone, said Tolstoy, so better get used to the idea, contemplate mortality and leave lunacy behind.  A hard prescription to follow but clarity would come, an ‘aha’ experience like that of Ivan Ilyich; but not yet, by no means not yet.

Toy Soldiers - Peace At Any Price, The Fanciful Dreams Of A Hopeless Idealist

Artemis Jones was a child of the post-war generation a woman who grew up in the heady times of American political hegemony.  The world was American in spirt, philosophy, will, and ethos.  Germany and Japan had been roundly defeated and the Soviets shown what would happen to them if they overstepped their geopolitical interests.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war with Japan to a consummate close, but more importantly they showed the Russians what to expect if they got out of line. 

 

Fourth of July parades meant something.  They were exuberant expressions or native patriotism.  There were few dissenters in post-war America, a few residual socialists in Wisconsin and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but by and large the Fourth was a universal celebration of national pride. 

Of course that nationalistic euphoria could not be sustained - the world has a way of intruding on idealistic hopefulness - and soon America was mired in an unwinnable war in Korea, followed by a disastrous misadventure in Vietnam, on the heels of which came the half-hearted military excursions in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

After the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad Square, George Bush, tricked out in flight suit on the decks of an American aircraft carrier, declared victory, and time for the Iraqi people to determine their own, particular path to freedom and democracy. 

Whistlin' Dixie it not unexpectedly turned out, as Abolhassan Banisadr and his Islamist militias took to the streets to fill the power vacuum.  Leaving the political future to 'the Iraqi people', meant turning the country over to venal, self-interested terrorist groups, but the hard lifting had been carried out, and was time for Iraqis to man up. The result - political chaos. Extended military rule was proposed - stay in Iraq until true structural reform had been effected and all seeds of Islamic intent neutered - but America was having none of it. Time to move on. 

The same was true in Afghanistan - after years of a punishing, unwinnable war against the Taliban, let the people decide, American troops were withdrawn, and the country went back to a medieval caliphate. 

So, Artemis Jones, despite her earlier pride in America's defeat of fascism and imperialism, changed her tune.  War was no way to solve disputes, and was only a regressive return to Paleolithic barbarism. She had become a Neville Chamberlain 'Peace at any price' pacifist. 

 

It was hard for her college friends, all of whom had become conservative over time  - the old adage, 'Give a liberal enough time and he will become conservative' was never more true of her Seven Sisters, privileged social elite who had had their dalliance with progressivism but who had returned to the fold - to understand how Artemis, icon of intellectual brilliance and philosophical insight at Vassar, had come so beholden to a faded, discredited philosophy. 

'It's the right thing to do', Artemis said, 'the only thing', and she joined with her Yale colleagues in following the Reverend William Sloan Coffin in his One World peace movement - disarmament at all costs, reductions in force, and a return to civil sanity.  A failed incentive of course, given history's lessons of persistent, perennial aggression.  The Hundred Years War was just a trifle compared to the bloody military escapades of Genghis Khan and his hundreds of thousands of brutal-minded cavalry; and an afterthought to Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot, responsible for millions of deaths of innocent civilians in mindless attempts to establish communist hegemony. 

One would have thought that Artemis and her fellows would have come to their senses by the end of the Twentieth Century, one of the bloodiest in human history; but no, such is the persistence of idealism in the human breast - a simple, unproven belief in the natural goodness of Man and the ultimate outing of a verdant, compassionate, considerate, harmonious world. 

But no...she was as deeply committed to pacifism and the eventual coming of Utopia as fundamental Christians are about The Second Coming.  The world would see, sooner rather than later, that war, warfare, armed conflict, hostility, and competition are only social artifacts placed erroneously in the way of social and moral progress. 

When asked about WWII - after all a world dominated by genocidal, autocratic, hegemonic regimes could not in any way be acceptable - she demurred, happy with the outcome but retrospectively hopeful that a more peaceful solution could have been found.  She remained resolute that violence, no matter how appealingly logical it might seem at the time, only leads to more violence.  

It was her goal in life to assure that such world wars would never happen; but when questioned about powerful, unconcerned, and unintimidated regimes like those in Russia and China and whether military force could ever by contemplated, she once again demurred.  If we worked hard enough with enough moral authority, war would never be needed. 

The world is at war - Ukraine, Iran, Palestine, and the racist, Islamic incursions in Nigeria, North Africa, and the Middle East.  Western Europe, thanks to its ignoble assumptions of diversity, is awash in separatist, militant, radical Islam - a movement which if not deterred and neutered, will most certainly end in violence.  China is ready to unleash historic aggression against Taiwan if it continues to refuse re-integration with the Communist mainland.  Russia is as vigilant for an Islamic resurgence in the Caucasus. 

Yet and still Artemis held firmly to her principles of non-violence. Unless some stood up against the persistent and increasingly violent aggression everywhere, it would go on unabated.  Only she and her pacifist colleagues stood in the way between world mayhem and international civil order. 

The American Left in its increasing use of the term 'Hitler' to describe any conservative policy or political stance has done more to distort historical reality than any academic revisionist. The war against Hitler and Naziism was a just war - not only because it defied Hitler's overt attempt to create a thousand year Reich which extended from East to West, but because of his genocidal desire to rid the world of Jews.  Now that everyone with views opposing the progressive Left is condemned as a Hitlerian racist, evil and satanically destructive, the war to destroy Naziism loses its existential validity and makes 'peace at any price' acceptable once again. 

Artemis had trouble justifying the 9/11 terrorists - Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people and their denial of civil rights was certainly the root cause for Islamic frustration and anger, but such a bold, blatant attack on a civilian target was questionable at the very least. 

She never once withdrew her criticism of Israel for its armed response to Hamas terrorism or its attempts to eliminate Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.  Israel was and always will be seen as the racist aggressor.  The war in Gaza was entirely and unequivocally Israel's fault. 

Jesus was a pacifist and so were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King - saints in the liberal pantheon, prophets of right, justice, and goodness - and their portraits were place above the mantlepiece in Artemis' living room.  Their spirit of universal brotherhood should never be forgotten. 

The best that can be said of all three is that their influence at least mitigated the horrors of war; but history shows that they had no influence whatsoever.  Not only were the Crusades sent to Jerusalem to kill Muslims in Jesus' name, but India was home to one of the most bloody communal violence the world had ever seen before Rwanda.  Millions of Hindus and Muslims were slaughtered in the name of religious equity.  Islam is not the religion of peace but the religion of violence.  Death to the infidel rings loud and clear now more than ever. 

Conservatives know that peace can be achieved in only two ways - armed standoff such as that in the Cold War where mutually assured nuclear destruction kept missiles in their silos for fifty years; and Pax Romana when one empire, the Roman, held absolute, complete sway. Peace as a concept is only academic, a result not of goodwill or best intentions but the result of geopolitics. 

Artemis sat in, knelt, marched, and protested for all her livelong days without one whit of impact or result.  Despite her many decades of peace at any price, the world has continued without interruption its violent ways.  Conflicts are still resolved in violence.  As Mao Tse Tung famously said, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. 

There are special plots in every cemetery for deluded, ingenuous, fabulists - idealists who no matter what the evidence or chronicles of history keep on believing that peace has a chance, that it can be the prevailing ethos of humanity, that it is possible.  The rest of the graves are for those who soldiered on in war and peace, taking life for the 'nasty, brutish, and short' sojourn that it is. 

Wars Are For Winning - America's Ignorance Of History, An Unwinnable War, And Ultimate Iranian Victory

The War in Iran should be over by now, but President Trump is still talking about negotiated deals, promises to denuclearize, keep the Strait of Hormuz open for shipping, recognition of Israel, and assurances that support of regional terrorists - Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, ISIS, and a range of other equally violent Muslim organizations which are committed to an Islamist caliphate - will cease. 

Whistlin' Dixie of course.  The regime of the mullahs has never once in its almost fifty years of theocratic rule backed off from its determination to annihilate the Jews and wipe Israel off the map, extend Islamic hegemony across the region, and continue to threated the United States, 'The Great Satan'.  Why would Trump possibly believe that the Iranians want peace and want to be brought back into the commonwealth of civilized nations?

So, against all historical advice from Machiavelli to Clausewitz to Kissinger, the American President with no clear objective in mind, launched attacks on the Iranian regime. While these attacks were successful - the Ayatollah was eliminated along with his inner circle of advisers - they did nothing to bring the country to heel.  Iran had tens of thousands of missiles and drones deployed throughout the country, hidden in deep underground silos which even with the best Israeli intelligence, escaped destruction. 

More important, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the real power in the country, is alive and well.  It is the force responsible for the murder of 30,000 peaceful protesters, a paramilitary army not stationed in barracks, encampments, and bases but scattered throughout the country and as effective as the Viet Cong as an enforcing, intimidating power.  The 'regime' may have been toppled but the wrong one. 

The attempts to eliminate the IRGC has been no different than America's attempts to destroy the Viet Cong in the War in Vietnam.  Rolling Thunder, a campaign in which thousands of giant B-52 bombers dumped their payloads on the critical Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main supply route from North to South, but the resilient Viet Cong simply went underground in tunnels and caves, waited until the bombers had passed, emerged, rebuilt the trail, and continued their effective village terror. 

The Iranian regime, however now it is constituted, is not alone in its fight against the United States.  America's arch-adversaries, Russia and China, let alone North Korea, continue to supply the country with thousands of drones and the wherewithal to produce missiles.  Iran is not a third world country without intellectual resources.  It is quite capable of building a nuclear capacity and a strong high-tech military. 

When asked what the purpose of the war is, the Trump Administration searches for answers. It is not regime change, they say, although after the first days of the war, the son of former Shah Reza Pahlavi went on national television to announce that he was ready to return to Iran and to oversee the building of a liberal democracy.  Only ridding the country of a regime responsible for the murder of so many innocent civilians would do. 

When that goal seemed impossible, the Trump Administration said that its purpose was to completely destroy Iran's military capability; but that proved to be just as hopeless.  Despite weeks of strategic bombing, Iranian drones and missiles were striking friends and foes alike. 

Then American attention turned to securing promises from the Iranians to keep the Straits of Hormuz open to shipping - an easy compromise since the Straits had always been open and under Iranian control; but the canny Iranians said that they would guarantee peaceful passage with conditions - unacceptable military and strategic conditions which would allow the regime to restore and rebuild. 

Finally, it has come down to 'a negotiated peace' which amounts to nothing less than a capitulation by the United States which was unable to topple the real regime, to destroy Iran's military capacity, and to extract concessions to cease and desist aggression in the Middle East. 

The media reported that the generals meeting with Trump in the War Room had even broached the nuclear option - do a Curtis Lemay and blow the whole bloody place off the map - but of course the calculus of nuclear warfare has changed since Harry Truman pushed the red button and unleased nuclear holocaust on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Wars are no longer for winning if civilian populations must be killed along with military personnel.   Hitler and Hirohito were considered existential enemies to the West and to the very code of freedom it espoused, and any measure to defeat them was acceptable. 

Iran and radical Islam are no less existential threats, but the Iranian population - at least in the eyes of American moral exceptionalists - is not complicit as was shown by the massive street demonstrations before the start of the war.  Blowing Iran off the face of the map would mean annihilating millions of faithful, good, democratic spirited, secular-minded civilians. 

So the war drags on with no end in sight, particularly with no good results for the Unites States.  No matter how the war ends, Iran will be the victor.  It will continue producing and shipping oil, it will slowly but surely rebuild its nuclear capacity, and will continue to support its claims to regional Islamic hegemony. 

'Never begin a war you are not confident of winning', Clausewitz observed. In this view, war is not an independent activity but a means to achieve political objectives. The use of force, coercion, and military action is necessary to compel an opponent to submit to one’s will. Clausewitz emphasized that the value of the political goal determines the sacrifices—military, economic, and human—that should be made to achieve it. If the cost of pursuing a goal exceeds its value, the goal must be abandoned. 

The problem with the war in Iran was that the Trump Administration never was even able to define what 'winning' was.  It is one thing to study the calculus of invasion - the costs of fighting and the value of victory - another thing altogether to struggle to define purpose; and in this indefinability, victory was conceded to the Iranians before the first bomb was dropped. 

The greatest leader in world history, Genghis Khan, knew exactly what he was about when he led tens of thousands of horsemen thundering out of the steppes.  He wanted to conquer the known world, to bring each and every tribe, region, territory and jurisdiction under Mongol-Turk rule.  In the end, his empire was one of history's biggest and most powerful, and he did it only one way - with the brutal force of arms 

Genghis Khan was a charismatic and fearsome figure.  He and his armies were known for their cruelty and barbarity, and the sight of them advancing across the battlefield in a storm of dust, the earth shaking with the thunder of 50,000 hooves, was enough to send enemies into retreat. The thought alone of this terrible, bloodthirsty, and mighty warrior was enough to rout enemy armies. Genghis Khan was a man of absolute will and power, a frightening presence of power and vengeance.  He was a horseman of the Apocalypse. 

 

There have been many successful armies in the world.  Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Agrippa were as brilliant generals as Genghis Khan, and brought Roman organization, discipline, and management to the battle.  They won because of superior ability, armaments, and military thinking; yet it was Genghis Khan who, with an almost untamed savagery, conquered the world.  At its height the Mongol Empire extended from far eastern China to the Danube, the biggest empire the world has ever seen. 

Genghis Khan was a brilliant strategist, canny politician who through tact, intimidation, and offers of great spoils, enticed the warlike Turkic tribes to join his armies, nearly doubling their strength.  However, it was not only the might of his imposing armies, nor his ability to manage, discipline, and control such a large and diverse military force; nor even his tactical acumen and understanding of calculated risk which assured victory.  It was his indomitable, absolute, unalloyed will. 

Khan had no qualms, moral reservations, or ethical hesitancy.  Wars were for winning, civilians were complicit enemies, and total annihilation of any opposition was his modus belli. Not only would defeated populations be without the wherewithal to mount a resistance or counterattack, they would never dare to incite the bloody, murderous, savage wrath of the conqueror.

We have come a long way from Genghis Khan.  Many say we have progressed and become more considerate, humane, and compassionate.  We should look to an end of war, not ways to improve it.  Many others say that the calculus - human nature - has not changed.  Wars will always be a feature of human society and as such should be fought with only one thing in mind - winning. 

The Saga Of The White House Ballroom - Sturm Und Drang, Trump Hatred, And The Clown Show Of Gossipy Women

Marge Ellen Talbot threw the Washington Post on the table and shouted at her husband, 'Do you know what Trump just did?'. 

By now Harper Talbot was used to his wife's Trump hysteria, so he took another bite of toast, smiled, and waited. 

'The ballroom', she spluttered. 'The White House ballroom.  To get it through Congress he declared it a military facility! Can you imagine?'

Of course he could.  The man - Donald Trump - was a genius at driving the Left completely batshit over nothing, having a gay old time of it, watching their apoplectic Saint Vitus' dances, hip-hopping, flailing, and howling like the demented souls of Bedlam and Broadmoor. 

Harper was amazed that his wife - intelligent, the best schools, professional occupation, responsible mother had been so taken in by Trump's hilarious chicanery. How had she had so completely missed the point and gone so far  'round the bend with a million other middle class matrons over trivialities - the ballroom, the Victory Arch, the Field of American heroes, the Kennedy Center, etc.?

How could anyone not see what this vaudevillian impresario was doing?  He was in his second and last term, a billionaire, happy to retire to Mar-a-Lago and live out his life in luxury, unconcerned about legacy, history, or the yapping, carping street dogs that had pursued him without success for years.  

The Presidency was not exactly the Big Top, but along with reconfiguring foreign policy in a Machiavellian, America-first policy to match the nationalism and realpolitik of Russia and China; along with closing the borders, untethering the private sector from punitive regulations, rolling back woke idiocy, and dismantling the bureaucracy, he was having his jolly way with the Left. 

He loved to watch them squirm, loved to call out the stupidity of media shills at press conferences, and above all loved creating havoc with liberals’ sanctimonious, airy, impossibly foolish agenda.  Quite the guy, thought Harper Talbot. Quite the guy. 

Of course Harper kept all this to himself.  No reason to get into an argument with his wife who, like her colleagues, was fixed in stone when it came to Donald Trump.  Nothing he did, ipso facto, could be right, reasonable, or just.  He was an autocrat, an elitist Wall Street goon, a mountebank, a racist pig. 

Harper Talbot had been married long enough to overlook his wife's growing eccentricities.  They had had a good life together, had produced two children and many grandchildren, so let her rant and rave if it feels good.  

God only knows she wasn't the only one.  All he had to do was walk out the door, greet his neighbors, and get harangued over something that Trump had done.  

Women were the worst - something stuck more chokingly in the female craw than in the male, and these ordinarily sedate and centered women kept trying to cough up the bolus of Trump cat hair day and night. 

What was it about women, Harper wondered?  Why should they be so infected by this virus of insensate hate, this persistent animus, this emotional plague that kept them awake and kept them caterwauling night and day?  How was it that men saw through the Trump charade, the marvelous side show that was his Presidency, the over-the-top hilarity of his barbs, ad hominem arrows, and politically incorrect and rude behavior? 

Of course there were men and plenty of them who opposed Trump policies.  Harper had gone to Yale with a number of former North Shore, Piping Rock conservatives whose heads had been turned by the infamous William Sloane Coffin, Yale Chaplain, civil rights activist and first on the bus to Selma to march with Martin and Ralph.  

Anson White, scion of the White shipping conglomerate, brought up in solid patrician, dutiful patriotic ways, turned against family legacy and rode alongside the Reverend to do the right thing. 

But even he never went into the whirling dervish apoplexy that so characterized Harper's wife and her friends.  He harped on incessantly about the black man, the warming planet, the rights of asylees, the place of women, and the distortions of the capitalist markets, but he left all the rest aside. The ballroom, the arch, the reflecting pool, the gilding of statues were distractions from the real business of the day - radical progressivism. 

'How could he?, Marge Ellen wailed, looking around for something to grab.  She wanted to pick up Aunt Tilly's Victorian cruet - an ugly, ungainly piece that had stood as a centerpiece to the dining table for years - and throw it shattering against the wall.  'That man...we must...he's...', and with that she stormed off to the kitchen where she blew off steam by banging the pots and pans in the drainer. 

Tonight was her bi-weekly political meeting - a group of like-minded women who gathered together to commiserate and consider ways of protest; but it was really little more than a girls' night out, a gossipy affair which rarely got down to business.  

The women bitched all evening, but only with a half-hour before closing time did they get down to Donald Trump, and by then they were all spent what with Betty Helander's drinking problem, Louise Banner's afternoon dalliances, Felicity James' total parking disrespect, and the scrofulous Fletcher twins. 

Harper was no misogynist by any means.  He admired, respected, and loved strong, determined women; and so was initially befuddled and perplexed by their cattiness and gossipy flightiness.  The ballroom?  The arch? In his view, a male view, a subscript in the Trump text perhaps, but nothing more.  

The girls' nights out were what made the whole Trump thing crystal clear.  These women - and here Harper hated to generalize to all women, but again and again during the Trump Derangement Syndrome phase it was women who jumped around like mad chickens.

Women loved to gossip, to find fault, pounce on peccadilloes, to take their pound of flesh in small bites, to nitpick, insinuate, and cavil. Why shouldn't they take this spitefulness to the top?  The ballroom was no different than Hermione Baxter's depression or Randall Ives' run-in with the law. 

So much so that liberal women had become a laughing stock - a caricature, a freak show, a predictably and hilariously unhinged lot of clowns - and they, decked out in warpaint, dyed hair, piercings, and thrift store ensembles, played the part to a 'T'.  

Now, Harper's wife, Marge Ellen had not gone that far, although one day not long ago she and her coffee klatch friends boarded a school bus and went down to the Mall to demonstrate for abortion and against Trump's vile, misogynist, Bible-thumping posturing.  Best left to the younger generation they concluded after a hot, sweaty four hours in the sun; but they had at least put their money where their mouths were. 

When Marge Ellen had come in bedraggled, knackered, and ready to cry, Harper knew that she had overstepped her limits.  Better stick to Trump hatred from Bethesda, couched in girly gossip and righteousness. 

When Diversity Means Conformity - A Clown Show To Hide Serious Political Intent

 No rational observer takes the progressive canon on face value.  Diversity, equity, inclusion - the liturgy of social reform - is nothing more than a cover for a more serious political intent.  Who every thought that the Biden open border policy was a humanitarian gesture, a reprise of Ellis Island and multicultural early 20th Century America?  Anyone paying attention saw it for the calculated policy to engineer redistricting and ensure Democrat majorities; and to fill non-ID voter rolls with those thankful for Democrat generosity and largesse.  

 

Does any progressive who publicly champions the black man and commits to raising him atop the human pyramid, recognize his forest-sentient origins, his closeness to Nature and the Environment and his native power really believe in such cant?  The African diaspora is immured in dysfunctional urban cells - 'inner city' neighborhoods of crime, truancy, drugs, and violence; and the mother-lode, Africa itself is a failed continent on all points of the compass.  Black-love, the overrepresentation of black faces on television, cinema, political office, and public affairs, is nothing more than a convenient coverlet, a mantel of respectability to keep the black electorate in tow. 

Who in the progressive ranks actually believes that the basso profundo, ex-telephone lineman, barrel-chested femme teaching kindergarten is actually a woman? Or that late-term abortion is nothing more than removing an unwanted clot of phlegm and preserving the sanctity of women? Who, once they have returned from the barricades shouting down Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires in a loud endorsement of socialism has ever looked at the murderous, destructive, inhuman regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and the Korean Kims?

'Idealism', say those who although in partnership with the Left, are more reserved about its current extremism.  Socialism appeals to the young because it promises equality, a communal end to unearned privileged, a utopia of good will, harmony, generosity, and compassion; and they are not expected to look further.  It is their idealism which is important for the nation, principles to guide democracy to a new, more verdant, understanding, and peaceful world. 

The same socialist ethos - assuring that every individual regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity, rich or poor is welcomed into the big tent of communalism and equality - underlies all verses of the progressive canon.  

'Stick to your own kind', the refrain from one of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story has never been more true.  Ever since the first human settlements difference has been the rule - suspicion of the outside, the interloper, the curious.  Every society has been hierarchically defined, the most intelligent on top, the least able on the bottom and a scramble to move up and out. 

The Communists knew this like everyone else, but saw that their version of 'inclusivity' resonated particularly well after centuries of the czars.  With enough determination, will, and military power, Russian society could be re-formed into a socialist paradise.

Once American progressives achieve their goal of diversity and inclusion - i.e. all citizens espousing the same theology, singing the same hymns, and reciting the same prayers - political control will be easy.  The Soviets tried this but ruined the country, eliminated the most promising and productive of its citizens, and threatened world peace. 

Eleanor Potter who considered herself a thoughtful, reasonable person - after all, what was a Vassar education worth if not to instill the principles of analysis, objectivity, and exegesis? She had never thought of herself as liberal or progressive - at least not in the reformist way - and went through her college years and beyond acting out her own interests.  She married well, was professionally successful, and socially engaged, all of which pointed to a life of political moderation. 

Something happened along the way - perhaps a dalliance with a Fifth Avenue Jewish matron who despite her wealth and premier New York cachet, was a committed but secret socialist.  Their love affair - as quiet and closeted as Mrs. Rubenstein's politics - lasted only a summer, but the woman was as seductive about her ideas as she was about her body, and before back-to-school, Eleanor had become a believer. 

'You must come to New York again' said Mrs. Rubenstein at the train station, but of course neither woman believed in that promise; but neither regretted the affair, particularly Eleanor who had come away not only with the buds of her sexuality finally opened, but her mind as well. 

It was this fundament - the socialism so eagerly endorsed by her lover - that was at the heart of her turn to progressive politics.  As she listened to the blandishments of liberal advocates about immigration, abortion, climate change, gender fluidity, and racism, she understood what this potpourri, this grab bag of disparate causes, was all about.  Although the women who stormed the barricades in protest thought they were fighting for individual reforms, they were simply chess pieces in a much larger game. 

This was what Esther Rubenstein was all about - the fundament, the infrastructure - the need for revolutionary social change.  All the rest was just window dressing, attractive political shawls.  As Stalin knew, the state had to make the individual believe that his bit for social justice fit within the overall transformation of Russian society. 

Yes, the Jews were not well treated by the Russians, but they did defeat the Jews' worst enemy, the Nazis and for that Esther and her family would be eternally thankful; but that was now part of history, when the real struggle, the neo-socialist caliphate, was far more urgent.  And yes, Stalin overstepped his bounds with Siberia and the gulags; but his salutary vision was undimmed.  The world could simply not survive the divisive, separatist, Paleolithic world of greed and aggression. 

Esther saw the progressive potpourri - the smorgasbord of tasty bits on the reform agenda - as necessary treats for the unwitting faithful.  Let them dream of a transgender world, a mass of multiculturalism, a cooling, temperate, paradisical climate, she thought, while their efforts would eventually be stitched together into one, unified, perfect quilt. 

Eleanor, once back in Washington, never forgot Esther Rubenstein and became her political devotee and like her a secretive one.  No one in Eleanor's milieu - well-to-do McLean, Georgetown, and Great Falls matrons - would have tolerated a socialist in their group.  Progressive sympathies were as far as these women went; so Eleanor kept her own counsel.  

However, behind the scenes she supported those in the intellectual socialist underground - the Harvard, Duke, and Berkeley professors who were at the avant-garde of what they called 'revolutionary underpinnings'.  In their courses, their writings, and their public addresses, they were careful about overplaying their hand but carefully and seductively couched their revolutionary message in acceptably progressive terms. 

The movement was one of genius - the fragrant potpourri for the acolytes, the true believers in individual progressive causes; and the heady intellectual substance for those responsible for true intent.  It was a marvelously orchestrated, brilliantly conducted symphony.  The American Right simply fought battles with the minions - gender reassignment was imagined, open borders was destabilizing, climate change was fiction - but never honed in on the more insidious, seditious socialist intent which underlay all these disparate causes.  As such it was fighting a losing battle. 

Eleanor did meet Esther Rubenstein again after many years, a nostalgic reunion at the Plaza, afternoon tea of reminiscences, expressions of mutual affection; but Eleanor felt blessed that she had the opportunity to meet her benefactor, a true hero, a woman of merit. 

America’s Morality Police–Iran, The Qur'an, And Doctrinal Purity

Before the American-Israeli invasion of Iran, the regime had cracked down on the increasingly hostile public protests against its authority and was reported to have killed 30,000 peaceful protesters.  The Iranian people had had enough of the theocracy, Sharia law, and the punitive codes of behavior.  Women were to be completely covered, men's beards were to conform to that of the Prophet's, alcohol consumption was cause for imprisonment, and even the slightest insinuation of apostasy was punishable by death. 

Progressives in the United States were stymied.  They had always condemned the treatment of women and criticized the regime as medieval and heinous, but at the same time they were reluctant to endorse a white, privileged regime - that of the United States - in its intention to topple a legitimate regime which ruled a country of diversity. 

As importantly but far less well know was progressives' admiration of the Iranian state for their successful imposition of a strict moral codes.   The state had a right and responsibility to promote, assure, impose moral principles on its citizens, and police their observance.  

The United States under Donald Trump, say progressives, had devolved into a radical, seditious, and immoral nation which rejected transformative notions of sexual equality, racial justice, and economic fairness.  Not only were these deep state, MAGA, reactionary sentiments politically dangerous, but morally wrong.  The progressive agenda of transgenderism, black supremacy, the dismissal of religious fundamentalism, and the dismantling of capitalism were anointed, absolutely right, and morally above debate. 

Anyone who disagreed with this agenda was ipso facto an apostate, a heretical denier, an immoral, self-serving reprobate.  Nothing but a casting out, a torturous death, a purifying boiling in oil, flogging, and burning at the stake would suffice.

American progressives were clear and unequivocal about their agenda and their means of enforcement.  They intended to secure their agenda by intimidation, threat, and public censure.  Any university president who did not subscribe to MeToo campus injustice in the name of women’s rights would be exposed for his backward, hateful, and ignorant ideas, and calls for his summary dismissal would be incessant and determined.

Anyone who suggested that the black man was anything other than naturally superior, enslaved only because of barbarous collusion of European and American capitalists, and denied his right and his dignity because of the innate inhumanity of the white man would be labelled racist and marginalized to the far periphery of orderly society.  

Those who suggested that a woman’s right to choose abortion was not an absolute, undeniable right were dunned and called out for misogyny; and anyone who challenged the idea of gender fluidity and the right of every child to choose his or her own sexuality was pilloried and expelled.

Every young person recruited into the ranks of progressive liberalism was not only schooled in the catechism of right behavior, but armed with the materiel to engage the enemy.  They were taught the correct lexicon, the language of inclusivity and diversity.  Language was the first and most obvious offense of the morally idle.  Instances of retrograde English usage were to be called out and censured and correct forms and terms indicated.  

Homeless people were to be outdoor urban dwellers; prostitutes, sex workers; an insult was emotional rape; and shoplifting was irregular shopping.  Recruits were taught revisionist history – those American icons irreducibly tied to racism which were to be discredited and their names and likenesses removed from public view.  They memorized the doctrinal catalogue and the automatic responses to denial – climate change, racism, misogyny, homophobia, predatory capitalism, environmental sanctity, etc. They were taught to recognize moral escapism. 

Once ordained, these new recruits were sent out like militant, door-to-door Jehovah’s Witnesses. Armed with an indoctrinated sense of righteousness, they were unafraid to speak out, to be heard, to criticize and reveal moral depravity when they saw it.

In the early days of the pandemic, COVID evangelists formed vigilante groups, neighborhood enforcers of masks and six-foot spacing.  In a reprise of Eastern European secret services, they recruited, trained, and encouraged children to call out those who did not comply. It was a j’accuse moment,  the howl of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers the cry, and Stay At Home! was the injunction.  

Children were the avant-garde of the movement, Stasi-like informers of the East German state.  They were ideal recruits because they were too little and too uninformed to question the bald intrusiveness and anti-social behavior of their parents.  They were taught only to discover, point, and report pandemic deniers. It was a fearless, righteous time of humiliating public censure.

It was not so much that these street preaching vigilantes were worried about getting sick themselves; it was the shameless disregard for others that posed the greatest threat to the body politic. If we are all to reach a better, more perfect world, progressives say, one with a mild, pollution-free climate, complete tolerance and inclusivity, and a gender-neutral society, naysayers, doubters, and stubborn individualists must be gelded.  The brave, new world can never be realized while the noxious gasses of hyper-conservative radicalism are in the air.

The environmental movement is no different.  It believes in the sanctity of Mother Earth which was at the center of many ancient pagan religions.  Mother Earth is Gaya, a sensate organism with a life of its own.  She reacts to pain, to rape and mutilation and sheds the tears of Jesus Christ who asked in disbelief at the evil of Mankind,  “My God, my God.  Why have You forsaken me?”.  

Environmentalism is not a secular movement, dealing only with atmospheric computer models, the delicate measurement of ultra-violet light penetrating the ever-thinning ozone layer, the build-up of toxic and nuclear waste, fracking, and clear-cutting.  It is a religious movement with a profoundly spiritual core.  It is no more fractured by the various issues confronting it or by its multiple enemies than religious fundamentalism.  Whether one joins the fight for clean water, clean air, toxic waste clean-up, alternative energy, or forest preservation, the fight is for Mother Earth, the preservation of her sanctity.

It is as though environmentalists actually want the planet to heat up.  This is understandable enough given the time, effort, and money they have invested in the cause. Environmentalism has become a secular religion no different than the Bible Belt evangelism Southerners had witnessed as children.  In fact when they heard speeches given at the National Conference on Climate Change and replayed at length by NPR, churchgoers were reminded of the sermons given every day in the hot, airless churches in the Mississippi Delta. In those days the pastors were was speaking of carnal lust, abandonment of God, and the fiery breath of the Devil, but they sounded very much like the wild-eyed evangelical Climate Changers of today.

Religions, whether secular or spiritual, have a field day with existential uncertainty. Church coffers are replenished every Sunday, and the cash registers of Climate Change International ring like music on a merry-go-round with every fiery sermon about the end of the world.

One has a moral right – an obligation, a duty – to call out, censure, punish, and remove those who flaunt the truth.  While today’s American secular evangelists have no insignia or official identity cards, they are no different from their Iranian religious counterparts.  They march to the same drummer of conformity, true belief, righteousness, and absolute authority.