Mary, Mary Quite Contrary - Congressional Harpies And The Smarmy Mix Of Race, Gender, And Ethnicity

Kamala Harris was the ideal candidate for the progressive era - the perfect storm of being a woman, the daughter of a black man and an Indian mother - and she flogged that trifecta to death.  The American public was having none of it however, and rejected this shrill, garbling, entitled harridan. 

Harris was the new uppity woman, confident of her privileged position of being a thrice victimized patriot.  Of course her black father was an economics professor in majority white universities, and didn't have to act white because he subscribed to all the ethical and moral prescriptions of American success.  

Her Indian mother was not a lettuce picker, a leaf-blower, or an enchilada street vendor but a proper, well-educated Hindu well assimilated into white Christian society.  So her cries of victimhood were seen as hysterical posturing - a political hack trading on her trifecta but without a reasonable, coherent thought in her head. 

 

Defeat is not something that a politician like Kamala Harris can consider, and so she keeps teasing the American electorate about a possible second run for President in 2028.  She is unbowed, uncontrite, and unaware that she is perhaps the least able, the least desirable, and the least attractive candidate in the Democratic field ever.  'I am a woman for the ages'. she said in a speech to the Ohio Progressive Union in Chillicothe. 

She banged on for what seemed hours speaking in tongues, barely decipherable but with intensity and passion. Hearing her speak was like watching a sound and light show, a carnival of clowns and mountebanks, banging each other with toy hammers, doing somersaults, and squeezing Clarabell the Clown horns.  Sturm und Drang, sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing.  

If there were more of a cipher on the political stage, it would have to be Dimwit Danny, the guy who opened and closed the shutters at Kamala's big events, chosen for his mental diversity. 

'Daniel is one of my closest advisors', said Kamala in an MSNBC interview.  Not in the traditional, political advisory role, of course, but 'the voice of the people, the forgotten, the dismissed, the undervalued'.  When Danny was cornered, microphones in his face and pushed to answer how he advised the former Vice-President, he responded simply, 'I bring light and air into the room'. 

Kamala was last seen with AOC - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the woman whom Senator John Kennedy (R-La) said is the reason there are instructions on a shampoo bottle, or who in a hilarious viral send-up, says 'Great news! My IQ test came back negative!' 

She is a clone of Harris - an entitled woman of color, a Puerto Rican running on rice and beans, East Harlem tenement soul, the glory of La Raza and promises that La Lucha Continua. 

She shows her teeth like a barnyard dog, but has no bite to go with the bark.  She reads from prepared scripts which attack the Cabinet members who must testify before her committee, but then fumbles and squiggles when they refuse to be cowed by her bullying and retort with facts and figures. 

'We are soulmates', she said when she and Kamala appeared together in Philadelphia.  'Soul sistahs', she said, doing a chicken-neck and a gang sign and smiling up at Harris.  'Bonded in bond with gold trim', the Democratic ticket for president in 2028, just the dyad America needs, a vacant duo, a cackling twosome of intellectual wannabees. 

These women have the national stage because of their infamy (Harris) or because of a cafe-au-lait cuteness (AOC), but the other members of the cabal - Tlaib, Omar, and Pressley - are pretenders to progressive leadership.  

The queen of the harem is Ilhan Omar, a Somali elected in a Muslim-prevalent district in Minnesota, likely a player in the multi-billion dollar Somali-sponsored fraud in that state, a tireless succubus, as airy and vacant as her political sisters, and a cipher.  

The Palestinian bulldog Tlaib, Hamas shill and Islamic hegemonist, and Pressley, a good, solid ghetto mama fill out The Squad, that clucking hen party of Democratic women out for 'social justice and the consignment of Donald Trump to hell'

'Quite a woman!' (真是个了不起的女人) said Xi Jinping, President of China, basking in the international spotlight just having hosted Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in the Imperial Palace, referring to AOC brought to his attention by a senior aide to prepare his boss for the Trump visit. 

Trump said, 'Indeed she is', and both world leaders had a great laugh over the idiocy of the woman and the utter impossibility of the likes of her ever showing up in China. 'But what can I do?'. 

Of course if in the unlikely event someone like AOC were ever to turn up in Beijing, she would immediately be clapped in irons and sent to some remote gulag.  'I have my ways'. Xi replied to Trump through an interpreter. 

In a congratulatory call to Donald Trump after his 2024 election - despite the war in Ukraine - Putin shared with the American president his satisfaction at his victory.  'Where do these women come from?' (Откуда эти женщины), he said, referring to Kamala Harris, and the two adversaries apparently had a good laugh.  'I have gulags for them', Putin said to which Trump replied, 'I wish'. 

When the conversation was leaked to the press, the Left was up in arms, their convictions about Trump confirmed.  He was an autocrat in waiting, a Russian sympathizer, a racist bigot, and a misogynist ape.  The President, nonplussed as always, replied, 'Well, who wouldn't be happy if that harpy weren't around?

There is a move in Congress to pass a law forbidding any foreign-born citizen to run for political office and to remove those that squeezed in under more tolerant Democratic administrations; and when asked, Trump said he thought it a good thing, although he added 'I would really like to send that idiot Ilhan back to Somalia, to the shithole country where she belongs'.  

This caterwauling, pissy, uppity crew is American exceptionalism writ large - not a caricature, but an example of democracy gone badly awry. If this is what America has to offer to the world, then Putin and Xi have nothing to worry about. 

Trump unfortunately cannot slam them into some South Dakota Indian reservation, but he and his colleagues can show them up for the demagogues they are.  The American people already wise to their shenanigans will not put up with much more. 

'Good riddance to bad rubbish', the President said. 

The Remaking Of America - The Middlebrow, Impossibly American Revolution Of Donald Trump

America was founded on Enlightenment principles - logic, wisdom, the pursuit of happiness, faith in God, individualism, and the rule of law.  Rousseau and Locke were the mentors of Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and Franklin.  America was to be a country in which individual enterprise would be the way to prosperity, but only if practiced within a respect for community, polity, and commonwealth. 

America has had its ups and downs over centuries and these principles have been tested as the country developed from a small, rural, agricultural state to a world industrial power.  Contrary to the Founding Fathers' vision, government grew exponentially and became more than just a caretaker of Constitutional law but an intervener in civic and personal affairs.  

Despite the Civil War which broke the nation apart, it retained a certain moral ethos and a respect for foundational principles.  Jefferson and Hamilton argued over  electoral authority - Jefferson, a populist, believed in the rule of the majority; Hamilton a federalist, concerned about mob rule insisted on an intermediary body of wisemen who would mitigate the naturally selfish and self-interested demands of the majority.  It was a system which respected the rights of the individual to vote his conscience, but which restrained the natural human tendency to favor the near-at-hand. 

Over the decades, this system - wise and reasonable in principle - failed in practice.  The Senate, supposedly a body comprised of men of good judgment, patriotism, and national interest, devolved into the same caterwauling, parochialism as the House of Representatives.  'Government for the people, of the people, and by the people', spoken by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, renewed Americans' belief in participatory, inclusive government; but in the years following Lincoln, this principle became distorted, eroded, and nearly forgotten. 

Government became the prime mover, the interventionist higher power, and the be-all and end-all of constitutional authority.  Fueled by radical Republicanism during Reconstruction, government was a Big Brother who would put the Union back together but only succeeded in driving it further apart.  The punitive sanctions imposed on the South only created resentment, hatred, and a commitment to reestablish slavery. 

 

Government never retreated.  It could not stand by while the giants of industry - Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, J.P. Morgan, and Vanderbilt - built an unimaginable machine of productivity and prosperity.  Government, seeing itself becoming marginalized, supernumerary in the great private sector expansion of the times, felt obliged to put the reins on capitalist expansionism, and in so doing expanded its influence and power. 

Years later FDR and his New Deal further expanded the reach and influence of government.  Roosevelt effectively created the welfare state and institutionalized progressive liberalism.  Although postwar enterprise enabled the private sector to recover ground and become once again the center of American economic might, the following years of the Sixties and beyond reversed the trend and returned the country to government-led monopoly. 

The Biden Administration was perhaps the worst, most exaggerated, most distorted government in history, for it took governmentalism to an extreme degree.  Capitalism was to be limited, restricted, and ultimately dismantled in a long overdue period of social reform.  The individual would be subsumed within the ethos and control of the state which arrogated to itself unabridged power. 

Not only did progressives hope to create a country where all enterprise was filtered through government authority and tested against a received code of behavior, they introduced outlandish, absurd policies and programs that defied logic and history.  Their DEI - Diversity Equity Inclusivity - program which distorted the American belief in equal opportunity and value and in so doing divided the country along racial, ethnic, and gender lines instead of reinforcing unity and universal adherence to a common ethos. 

It was a disaster of monumental proportions.  It was George Orwell, Big Brother, Animal Farm and 1984 all over again. 'Four legs good, two legs bad', shouted the usurpers, the new authoritarian dictators; and the Biden claques did the same thing.  'Heterosexuality bad, homosexuality good...white bad, black good...women good, men bad', they claimed and went about reconfiguring government to accommodate these twisted ideas. 

 

Government was no longer JFK's the best and the brightest, but the most colorful, alternately gendered, small, plus-sized, and defiantly progressive one.  

Then, to the surprise of most observers, Donald Trump won the presidency of the United States, beating an entitled woman who ran on nothing but her sex.  'It is time for a woman to run this country', said Hillary Clinton, 'and this woman will'. 

Not only that after four years of the destructive, divisive, and corrosive Biden Administration, Donald Trump beat another entitled woman this time one who added race to the mix.  'It is time for a black woman to lead this country', Kamala Harris said, 'and I am the black woman to do it'.  

The American public was fed up with the bullying, pandering, hectoring, and intimidation of progressives who condemned them universally - racist, misogynist, homophobic to the core, Harris said, 'but I will right the ship and show Americans a new direction'. 

 

In the endorsement of Donald Trump Americans rejected such anti-American sentiments and the arrogance of political poseurs and elected a President the likes of which the country had never seen.  A big, outsized, personality; an outspoken, rude, profane, but brutally honest politician, he not only proposed a new conservative agenda but intended to reshape American political and social culture.  His first four years were remarkable for their unabashed, unique, and revolutionary governance and in his second, current term he intends to finish the job. 

Trump is the first real American president.  He is middlebrow, unabashedly fond of glitz, glamour, arm candy, yachts, and mansions.  He is a man of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the mean streets of New York without a drop of Kennedy's Camelot, a White House of Pablo Casals, Robert Frost, and the elegance of haute couture.  He is without a scintilla of Bush I's patrician heritage, Kennebunkport, old English reserve, Chippendale and Townsend, Copley and Remington. 

Trump is brashly Wild West.  He is a gunslinger, a fan of OK corral resolution to disputes, a territorial Westward expansionist, a man who not only believes in the principle of individual enterprise, effort, and influence but embodies it.  His razing of USAID and his march down Independence Avenue not only challenged the bureaucratic rule of Washington but began to eliminate it. 

 

His geopolitical moves against Venezuela, Gaza, and Iran restored American unilateral military options.  His loosening of private industry to drill for energy and rare earths have restored American energy independence and positioned it well for the AI future.  His rejection of the hyperbole of climate change and the transparent designs behind the hoopla to increase the size and influence of government have stopped the progressive tide; and his rollback of the most absurd gender-shifting ideas of progressivism has restored the central, irremediable ethos of America. 

It is for all of these reasons that the Left so hates him - a visceral, absolute, reflexive, universal hatred.  Anything and everything the President does is wrong, objectionable, and anti-democratic.  His turpitude, aggressive totalitarian ambitions, and his total disregard for the poor, the marginalized, and the disadvantaged make him a neo-Hitler, a man as devoid of moral direction as Stalin; a Pol Pot, a horrific example of human nature in the extreme.  Plus the fact, he is so bourgeois 

Invade Cuba, Why Not? - Donald Trump And The New Geopolitical Reality

Cuba has been a royal pain in the ass since Fidel Castro took over in 1959.  The Bay of Pigs, John Kennedy's ill-planned, amateurish invasion of the island made the US a laughing stock, hardened the Communist regime's resolve, and made Cuba the center of American regional geopolitics from then on. 

The Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 when Kennedy demanded that the Soviet Union remove the missiles it had deployed in Cuba and aimed at the United States nearly precipitated a nuclear war, and from that time on until the fall of the Soviet Union Cuba was the focus of American and Russian attention. 

Cuba's economy relied on Russian support - food, oil, hardware, technical support - and it was more than ever an important player in the American-Soviet rivalry. 

After 1991 when Russian support dwindled to nothing and the Castro regime was forced to rely on its own resources, the country fell into even greater economic crisis.  The American embargo to force the Communist regime to capitulate did little to shake the foundations of the regime and only added to Cubans' misery. 

The Mariel Boat Lift was Castro's answer to America's plea for freedom of movement and expression, and he emptied his prisons and sent hundreds of hardened criminals the US's way.  Miami which had thrived with refugees which came to Florida immediately after the Cuban Revolution and the rise of Castro, was inundated with these undesirables; but the US had always had the policy of 'If they're Cuban, we'll take them'. 

Since then Cuba has limped along, somehow surviving.  The United States under Barack Obama loosened the embargo rules and permitted some Americans to travel to the island, hoping that some kind of accommodation might be achieved; but no dice.  The regime after Fidel's death was no less hard and fast in its authoritarianism and no less hostile to the United States. 

The Soviets and the Russians are long gone. The only hardline Communist country is North Korea and its support of Cuba is desultory at best, so Cuba is no real threat to the United States.  Leave it alone and let it collapse under its own weight might be the best option; but America cannot do that just as the North could not leave the South alone in America's civil war period. The South's slavery, challenge to free labor, and its open hostility simply could not stand, and when the South attacked Fort Sumter, it was the casus belli the North had always wanted. 

Many economists have concluded that the Southern agrarian, slave-based economy would have collapsed on its own. It had no industry to speak of, no shipbuilding or shipping, and relied on British transport for its cotton. The North was rapidly industrializing, growing powerful and influential, and the South could not possibly have lasted much longer. 

Yet the North was anxious to pull the trigger.  A combination of abolitionists, free labor advocates, and Northern nationalists combined to insist on full-scale war.  The South shall never rise again after we are through with it, they said.  

And so it is with Cuba.  The Communist regime simply cannot last much longer, so why not just let it fester and come to its own logical conclusion?  Because it's there, that's why.  Time to get rid of it once and for all, pay it back for all its insolence, obduracy, and drumbeat of Hate America!

Trump is on a roll.  Venezuela was a piece of cake, a few special forces with air cover and the dictator, Maduro, was history; the oil fields were ours, and another pissy, uncontrite socialist regime over and done with.  Hamas and Iran have proved harder nuts to crack, but the American President has shown chutzpah and cojones in a defiantly militant posture.  

It has been almost fifty years since the ayatollahs have changed the country into an oppressed gulag, have sown terror throughout the Middle East, have built a nuclear arsenal and declared that it would eventually annihilate Israel and kill all Jews, and again it was about time to get rid of it. 

This is not to say that Donald Trump is the Wild West gunslinging cowboy he is made out to be.  He is just playing the Machiavellian geopolitical game that America's arch-rivals Russia and China have been playing for years.  China wants complete Han control of the Uighur regions of its west, the re-integration of Tibet into China, and the final assimilation of Taiwan.  

There is nothing new in that either from a geopolitical or natural perspective.  China has never been bothered by American-style moral exceptionalism, has always been an imperialist society, and has never once given American concerns about freedom, liberty, and cultural identity a second thought; and human nature is never satisfied with what it has. 

President Putin of Russia has made no bones about his respect for his country's imperial past. Czarist Russia was a social, cultural, political, and military leader; and it is time to restore those very ambitions and values to the new Russia. 

President Erdogan of Turkey has similar sentiments about the Ottoman Empire, a time of Turkish world domination under Islamic rule.  It is time for modern Turkey to return to those same hegemonic, imperial roots. 

Trump is simply joining Putin, Xi, and Erdogan in their geopolitical outlook.  Spheres of influence, whether Ukraine, Taiwan, Venezuela, or Cuba - and by extension the Middle East. Trump's first strike posture is completely within this new geopolitical zeitgeist.  He is simply abandoning one-world idealism and returning to hardline nationalism.  The world is not a happy picnic ground. 

The US under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon claimed Southeast Asia as America's; and they initiated a war with Ho Chi Minh, a nationalist patriot, because of his Communist intentions.  The Domino Theory was prevalent - if Vietnam falls, then so will Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and God knows what else. It was time to nip that probability in the bud, and so the US began an unwinnable war. 

It was only after such a humiliating defeat that America pulled in its horns, rethought foreign policy and geopolitics.  McNamara, LBJ's Defense Secretary went to Vietnam many years after the Vietnamese victory and begged forgiveness.  We shouldn't have done what we did, he said to deaf ears and then went on to become President of the World Bank and changed its ethos and policy structure to favor 'poverty reduction', a kind of international mea culpa for Vietnam.

However, the seeds of regional dominance were still in America's garden basket, and Ronald Reagan undertook a small-scale support of rightist forces in Nicaragua and El Salvador - our sphere of interest - and subsequent American Presidents had their moments - taking out Qaddafi in Libya and Noriega in Panama, but nothing major until Afghanistan and Iraq.  

'Mission Accomplished' said George W Bush after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but of course nothing was accomplished.  Both resurgent Islamic militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan eventually regained power. 

The only difference now is that Donald Trump is no longer using exceptionalist cover for his actions.  There is no need to justify taking over a country because of democracy.  It is enough to say that we simply want it, that it is in our national interest.  It is bald aggressiveness, aligned quite nicely with Russia and China.  In fact it is a triumvirate of equal-minded adversaries.  That is what is new. 

The American Left of course cries foul.  Trump is an imperialist dictator who has abandoned any sense of justice, compassion, understanding, and peace.  He is a blundering, arrogant, authoritarian pig who has no moral inhibitions. 

Yet how short the memory of these critics.  America has always been like this.  Thomas Jefferson the architect of Manifest Destiny, the philosophy which stated that America was destined to be one country from sea to sea, was unapologetic about American expansionism, the clearing of brush, titling land, and moving the Indians as far west of the Mississippi River as possible. 

So, no tears.  The Cuban regime has threatened to send explosive-carrying drones to Florida and bomb key targets.  This would be the casus belli Donald Trump hopes for.  Just one pathetic little Latino drone coming our way would be enough for a massive invasion of the island, and getting rid of the hated Castros once and for all. 

It might not happen, but then again it very well might.  Trump is on a roll, so why not?

A Harem Of Excellence - Thirty Billionaires Travel With Trump To China And The Left Is Outraged

‘Not a black face among them', Bob Muzelle shouted as he read the list of high-tech executives invited to travel to China with Donald Trump in a high-stakes meeting with President Xi Jinping.

No, Bob was right, there were none. Not a one, not a single, solitary one. 

'He could have picked...' but there Bob stopped, fumbled for names, looked at the ceiling and around the room, and stumbled on. Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, he was just a black academic trotted out by the Biden Administration to show the American public that black people were not just basketball players and blues musicians, and that they had brains as well as parquet floor and guitar aptitude.  

Tyson was on MSNBC time and time again citing the impending climate doom and heralding Biden’s efforts to slow global warming.  No, not Tyson; but then, who?

'My people', Bob thought since after decades spent in the trenches of the civil rights movement he considered himself black. In fact so insistent was he on minority identity despite his patrician New England roots, that he had a DNA test done to see whether any of the blood of the illegitimate mulatto offspring of Great-great Grandfather Samuel Pilkington, Virginia plantation owner ran through his veins. 

It didn't and in fact his genetic history only showed grandee blood on both sides of the family, an unbroken string of slave owners, Three-Corner Trade shipbuilders, New Bedford investors and insurers.    

 

So it was of great disappointment, chagrin, and frustration that Bob could come up with no names - no black luminaries that should have featured on Trump's list. 

Of course even if there had been a black man on the list, Bob would have demanded that he decline the offer. No self-respecting person of color should be seen in the same company as that racist pig Trump no matter how important the event. It was a moot point however since there were none invited, none even on the seconds list, none even as third-tier alternates. 

'Talent', said Marco Rubio, Secretary of State filling in as Press Secretary while Karoline Leavitt was on maternity leave. 

That's what this President values, not diversity for its own sake.  Americans of brilliance, outstanding effort, ability, and above all contributions to the United States are what the President admires and favors.  The days of divisive, corrosive diversity and identity politics are over

Bob wasn't sure which was worse - that this was a lily white assemblage...well, if you discounted the Asian or two on the list - or a horde of billionaires.  Bob had spent recent weeks working with Socialist Mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani who was proposing new taxes on the wealthy.  'The billionaire is not American', said Mamdani which sent those who had helped build the new New York scurrying for the exits for safer tax havens in states where their enterprise was appreciated. 

The fact that the hated Evil in the White House, the Hitler reincarnate, despiser of the poor, colossus of hate had put together a black-free assortment of billionaires was double indemnity, the perfect storm of capitalist, conservative malignity. 

Engine Charlie Wilson, former Chairman of General Motors in its prime famously said, 'The business of America is business', and not one of the Trump invited executives declined the offer.  

This was not pampered athletes refusing to be feted at the White House in a show of arrogant ignorance. Why on earth would the attendance of these physically talented but politically naive slam-dunkers matter in the least?  Their refusal to attend was a sign of the worst, most grinding self-importance, nothing more. 

To a man, the corporate executives invited by Trump engineered, built, and extended the reach of impossibly far-reaching technological advances, were happy to engage with China, their arch-adversary but one that they mightily respected.  Their loyalty to the man, Donald Trump, was secondary to their allegiance to America - and yes, of course, to expand their own corporate influence and become even wealthier, but that was a foregone conclusion anyway.  The competition between Chinese and American AI companies was what fueled innovation. 

'Scurrilous', said Bob, still scrambling to come up with black entrepreneurs whom he might sponsor for the next high-stakes trip abroad if not this one but coming up empty once again.  Why couldn't the President have just an ounce of give, invite someone, anyone of color, to show that America was not the old white nation of the past.

'Genius clusters' are groups of unusually brilliant men who happen to live at the same time.  How to explain the Founding Fathers? To a man, they were individuals of insight, intelligence, moral fiber, historical grounding, and unique creativity.  

Churchill, De Gaulle, and Roosevelt were another such cluster.  Roosevelt brought America out of the Great Depression and presided over the the Allied victory in Europe.  Without Churchill’s resolve, will, courage, and absolute conviction of moral right, the Battle of Britain would never have been won.  De Gaulle in exile was a heroic figure to whom occupied France turned for moral and political support.

Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie formed another genius cluster and together they built the foundations of American industry. 

Huang, Musk, Gates are part of a far larger, more far reaching, and more revolutionary genius cluster, a remarkable testament to America's culture of talent and opportunity.  Former President Biden did his best to shut down this engine of prosperity, progress, and geopolitical influence. His DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusivity) focus on race, gender, and ethnicity rather than talent and ability was an attempt to disable a culture of excellence by insisting that excellence was a matter of white privilege.

It is amazing that these technology innovators were able to do what they did even in the miasma of forced ordinariness. Affirmative action was a curse - a voodoo, zombie affair, an inversion of value. 

The billionaire trip to China might be a final wakeup call to Americans seduced by Biden era distortions.   This mission of undoubtedly the best creative, innovative minds in the country showed the credulous, progressive Left that the days of diversity are over and a restoration of originalist values has returned. 

'This cannot stand!', shouted Bob, but by this time he was not sure what 'this' was. There was no denying the fact that there were no black faces on the roster of the best and the brightest, no Nobel Prize winners in all of Africa, no meteoric rise of African Americans to the top of American society so where to look?

There could be, there might be black faces if the spurious, damaging culture of entitlement, victimhood, identity and white patronizing were to end, if black men and women were taken off life support and immersed in the same sink or swim waters as everyone else.  

A culture of competition, free enterprise, economic mobility, and ambition always enables the best and the brightest to emerge, rise, and profit. 

If that demeaning, stultifying, oppressive liberal group-think persists, there can be none of the dramatic social changes that enable success, and black people will suffer under the common but never admitted assumption that they are simply not up to it. 

Americans should all look up to Musk, Huang, Gates et. al. and want to be like them, not hate them because they are white billionaires.  That seditious lie, that insidious conclusion must be dismissed once and for all.  

Racial Harmony - An Old Freedom Rider Tries To Relive Ebony And Ivory But Finds 'Whites Need Not Apply'

Vicki Batten was an old Freedom Rider - on the busses to Montgomery to march with Martin and Ralph across the Pettus Bridge in Selma.  Ah, what a heady time! she remembered. More like a camp jamboree than serious business until, of course they were set upon by Bull Connor's dogs, beaten like tramps by his thugs, thrown into jail with nothing but bread and water. 

'I would never have had it otherwise', she said, reminiscing about those times, the halcyon times of racial integration, ebony and ivory, black and white, arms linked singing 'We Shall Overcome'.  She still wore an amulet given to her by a young black boy, a gri-gri he had been given by his former slave grandmother, given by her grandmother as she was loaded aboard the slave ship taking them to America. 

'Dis keep dem evil sprits gone fo' evah', the boy said to Vicki as she set off on the long march for freedom.  'Now Olodumare is wif you'. 

She had tears in her eyes as she remembered that day, that boy, and the sun rising over the Pettus bridge, the stink of the tannery on the far banks of the river, the solidarity, the camaraderie, the brilliant, unalloyed hope for a better future. 

She and her classmate were on their way up to Poughkeepsie for their Vassar reunion.  It had been many years since she had visited her old school, and she was filled with fond memories of girlhood, first love, and the intimations of her professional calling.  When visiting professor Harold Bloom read from Blake's The Tyger, she was moved to tears and knew at that moment that her life was to be dedicated to beauty. 

'Do you think Felicia will be here?' Vicki's classmate asked as they made the final turn onto the campus, already festooned with welcome Class of 19___banners, white tents put up in the quad, caterers already fussing with tablecloths and silver services. It was a beautiful May day, and the weekend promised to be a memorable one. 

Felicia had been Vicki's first love and the two were an item during a year together - strange, unique, and a curiosity since those were the days when that kind of love was far more undercover and not supposed to exist, especially not at such a high-toned campus like Vassar. 

'A flirtation', snapped Vicki, hoping that she would not have to be reminded of her sexual dalliance under the covers at Stratham House; but the thought had crossed her mind.  What would she say to her after so many years? especially since Vicki had gone on to marry, have children, and lead a quietly traditional life - except of course for Selma. 

To her surprise and pleasure, Felicia was at the reunion and even more surprising, she too had been in Alabama during the time of civil protest. Now she was in a different political place, a different emotional country, and far from Selma, but she had been moved by the same integrative spirit at the time.

Now, the paths taken by the two former lovers had diverged significantly after the Freedom Rides.  Vicki had followed her heart and joined the civil rights movement, but for one reason or another meandered into redistributive wealth, climate activism, and world peace.  She had never once lifted her nose from the grindstone, and was as passionately committed to these existential causes as she had been for the black man. 

Felicia on the other hand had turned the corner, looked at her sexual and political dalliances as youthful fantasy, and become a corporate lawyer who was proud that she had defended both Amazon and Microsoft in famous anti-trust cases. She came to the reunion dressed to kill, all Armani and Arpege, a fashion plate looking like a well-tailored Catherine Deneuve, desirable but aloof. 

Vicki felt shabby standing next to her.  A life of social commitment did not pay well nor was it expected to.  Money was the root of oppression, racism, and climate denial; but still and all, she wanted to look like Felicia and in fact be like Felicia who warmly invited her to their summer home on Nantucket or their winter place on St. Bart's. 

Vicki had heard about Felicia, Amazon, and Microsoft - the Vassar Alumnae Magazine literally gushed with pride over her achievements - but Felicia had heard nothing about Vicki.  A life in the trenches meant keeping your head down. 

'When this shindig is over' said Felicia, warmly embracing her old friend, 'we must have lunch'.

Other than that fortunate, happy occasion of meeting Felicia again, the reunion was a routine affair. Quiche, chardonnay, girl talk, chatter about children and grandchildren, a few noteworthy alumnae talking about art, the human genome, chips, and rare earths, but nothing more.  Vicki was glad it was over, thinking more about her coming lunch with Felicia than the affairs of her classmates. 

'Why are you still in that rat's nest', asked Felicia when the two met a month later at the Four Seasons.  'As corrupt as can be. BLM LaShonda whatever in prison for fraud and embezzlement. Your inner cities sinkholes, rabid, disgusting....Oh, I'm being too forward, aren't I, darling?'

Felicia, however forward and intemperate her remarks, had hit the nail on the head.  When Vicki thought to reup her allegiance to the cause of racial justice and made overtures to the Black Women's Social Caucus, Washington's most prominent civil rights non-profit, she was met at the door, shepherded through metal detectors, frisked and asked to empty her pocketbook. 

'Sorry 'bout that', said her host. 'Can never be too careful these days'.  On the walls of Letitia James' office there were no photographs of King, Abernathy, Rosa Parks, or even Malcolm X, Rap Brown, and Stokely Carmichael, icons of the black cause, heroes of the movement. "We don't do that shit no mo'" said Letitia. 'Them's history and we's the present'; and from that moment on Vicki knew she didn't belong.  Better not to mention Selma, Bull Connor, Montgomery or any of the rest of it.  

'What did I tell you?', Felicia said when she and Vicki met again.  'Not that you've spent your life for a lost cause', Felicia went on, 'because of course you did what you thought was right, but still and all in all, you were barking up the wrong tree'

A pause for reflection.  What had started off as a happy, unified, collegial, and happy event - blacks and whites together, singing in unison, arms locked, embracing, and just happy to be together - had become a racially divided, racist, identity-flaunted nightmare.   How did this happen? 

'Is Harold Bloom still alive?', Felicia asked.  Vicki was unsure but after checking found out that he wasn't.  How she had been impressed by him, by Blake, and by the deliberate parsing of those few, spare lines of Tyger! Was it too late to return to the fold?  Of course it was.  She should have retired years ago, but hung in there. 'Sunken costs', said Felicia.  Too much invested regardless of the innocence and yes, ignorance of the investment. 

Florida beckoned.  Vicki knew that she should not be thinking condo in 'The Free State', the fascist state, but she was tired of northern winters, slush, and potholes.  She would have preferred to go out in a blaze of glory, the signing of another civil rights bill perhaps, something to mark her efforts; but she couldn't shake that niggling comment of Felicia - she said sinkhole but she really meant shithole - and decided that a Tampa beach would be the anodyne appropriate for a tired warrior. 

Felicia was in the news again, arguing corporate interests before the Supreme Court. Vicki was happy for her, Frost's the road not taken Vicki's fate, but let bygones be bygones.  Those camp songs on the Freedom Rides were something, weren't they?

The Daydreams Of An Eternal Idealist - Hitler, Stalin, And Mao Were Just Bumps In The Road

Taken together Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were responsible for one hundred million dead; and yet Vicki Parsons was still optimistic.  Bumps in the road, she said.  The road to the peaceful, verdant, and communal society of the future is all but guaranteed.  History does not always repeat itself.  Humanity is not consigned to perpetual war, ignorance, selfishness, and there resides in all of us a natural reserve of goodness, generosity, and good will. 

 

Just whistlin' Dixie, of course, but if it weren't for optimists like Vicki the world would be even more corrupt and venal than it already was - or so said her colleagues and friends, all united in their belief in the natural, inborn, and ineradicable goodness of Man and his ultimate utopian future. 

In the mean time, the world kept up a drumbeat of violence, mayhem, terrorism, and war as if there were no tomorrow.  Pol Pot mandated forced marches out of Cambodian cities into the countryside and executed shopkeepers, bureaucrats, doctors, and teachers to cleanse Khmer society of all traces of bourgeois, capitalist society.  'This is the Year Zero', he said, the first of a new history of a perfect world.  Millions died of execution, starvation, and disease until he was stopped by the Vietnamese army.

Mao's Great Leap Forward was the inspiration for Pol Pot. Millions were sent into the countryside in forced labor collectives, mini-gulags which produced little and consigned all to poverty and death by starvation. 

Stalin's totalitarianism was brutal and universal, and tens of thousands died in Siberian gulags.  Hitler's death camps are well known - unconscionable, unbelievable horrors of mass ethnic extinction. 

'History is not the sacred shibboleth you make it out to be', Vicki said to her conservative Vassar classmate whose husband was a favorite of George W Bush who rewarded him with a senior diplomatic post.  'We are not under the yoke of the past. Things can change for the better.'

The classmate, a friend since the old days and used to Vicki's remonstrations, said only, 'Well, dear, let's see'.  

The Twenty-First century was starting off badly, Vicki had to admit.  Perhaps not with the same rigorous cruelty of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, but with a violent entitlement nonetheless. The current wars in Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon were but minor league skirmishes compared to historic conflagrations, but violent nevertheless.  What did that mean?

'Let us pray', said Reverend Archibald Pender of the Westmoreland Methodist Church of Christ, and then with his spiritual invocation put aside, he launched into his familiar sermon about Donald Trump, 'Predator in Chief', usurper, unlawful inhabitant of the White House. 

The congregants of the church attended Sunday services just to hear the Reverend Pender call out the evil in the White House, to expose his villainy before the faithful, and show his godforsaken evil intentions. 

There were many Sunday services like the Reverend Pender's but none so forceful, accusatory, and brutally honest as his.  He virtually thundered with righteousness and saw himself as Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jacob all put together. 

 

Vicki was completely taken by him.  His words touched her deeply and strengthened her resolve.  The interloper would soon be out of the White House, peace would again reign, and goodness would prevail. God was her spiritual lover, her soulmate, her congregational husband. 

At the same time American and Israeli rockets were reducing Tehran to rubble, eliminating the imams and ayatollahs, destroying missile silos and underground drone armories, blowing offenders of the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz out of the water as the air forces of both countries ruled the skies.  

Hamas, resurgent after months of Israeli bombing, was once again 'referred to the underworld', blasted to within a fraction of survival; and Hezbollah, thinking it had a military advantage because of Israel's involvement with Iran and Gaza, stepped up its attacks on Haifa and Jerusalem but was summarily 'excused from this earth'. 

'Bumps in the road', Vicki insisted, nothing but interruptions in the journey forward.  The new world - the one of gender reassignment, the replacement of the black man on the pinnacle of the human pyramid, and the redistribution of wealth concentrated in Wall Street - would not be deterred.  The very goodness of the new American century would not only result in domestic unity but international peace. 

Vicki had given her all to the movement, even as unlikely as it was to come to fruition.  She was a passionate, lifelong, true believer in the progressive mission for a better world. 

Her conservative friends tried to dampen the fires a bit, if for no other reason than to prepare Vicki for the comedown, the intrusion of Trump on her marvelously innocent dream; but there would be no such thing.  No matter how many rockets rained down on Tehran, no matter how many Hamas and Hezbollah operatives were eliminated, peace was in the air, ephemeral perhaps but there to be grabbed. 

How someone like Vicki could stay the course, hold true to communalism, world peace, and the world community and diversity in the face of such Machiavellian ambition was a puzzle.  She must have known; and yet there she was, still in the choir loft, singing the same hymns, praying to God with no reward.  There must be a place in heaven for such faithful. 

'La Lucha Continua', Vicki shouted on her way to the National Mall to protest the bombing of Iran. There was no way that this inconscient, inhuman, barbaric assault on innocent civilians could continue; that the bullying ape in 1700 would have his way.

 

Peace was the answer, but of course Vicki was just singing hosannas, as far removed from human enterprise as the man in the moon. 

Life couldn't possibly be the way Trump saw it, Vicki concluded, an existence as bad as Hobbes had offered - short, nasty, brutal, and ugly - but there it was, unmistakable and undeniable, and this throwback was taking advantage of it.  That was the irony of it all.  Good people like Vicki came up empty after years of righteous protest while the brute prospered.  

'What hath God wrought?', Vicki recalled from Bible study; but God was an extra in this drama, an offstage prop, a fill-in from central casting. 

Vicki's children were fighting again - Bernoulli's principle gone awry. Only smashing and breaking had value. 'Haven't I taught them anything?', Vicki wondered. 

'Mom, something's burning', her daughter shouted; but Vicki's mind was elsewhere, in that hopeful never-neverland of dreamy promise.  She yelled at her daughter, 'Well, take it off the bloody stove', but immediately regretted taking Trump frustration out on Baby Dolly.  This is what life had come to, trapped like a fly in molasses, buzzing but impotent.  Donald Trump would go on killing just like Genghis Khan, the Crusaders, and the English soldiers at the siege of Agincourt. 

'I refuse', she said.  'I absolutely refuse', but for an instant she realized there was nothing to refuse. All her caterwauling, her chorus of defiance, her bellowing demands were just blowing in the wind. 

Epiphany? Cause to turncoat and cross the aisle? Yes and certainly, but not yet.  'Takes time', Indians say. Siva's cycle of creation and destruction although endless does not revolve in a day; and so it was that Vicki gradually pried herself loose from the grasp of her handlers and became her own woman.  Not that she cheered Israeli missiles blowing Iranian shelters to smithereens or American precision laser-guided bombs taking out an imam, but inwardly applauded their resolve and then capitulated to old 'let it be' Epictetus. 

Spheres Of Influence, Donald Trump, Taiwan, And Latin America - Machiavelli And Regional Hegemony

'This is my sphere of influence', Harper Flynn said to his wife who was once again rearranging things on his desk after dusting, 'which means hands off. 

'But dear', his wife said. 'It wanted dusting and it is a part of the household after all'; and so it was that a discussion of Taiwan, the President's trip to China, and the question of regional hegemony turned into a marital squabble. 

That always seemed to be the case.  Women simply couldn't keep to themselves, couldn't keep out of it despite themselves. As a young child whose room was a ruckus of boy things - toy dump trucks, soldiers, dinosaurs, comic books, and baseball stirrups, he couldn't understand why his mother was always in their picking up.  'Because I know it's there', she said to her son when he asked why he couldn't keep his room the way he wanted. 

In the Ondaatje book, The English Patient, Count Almasy insists on a world without maps, a world without ownership and belonging, a simple world as God made it with no national boundaries, no claims, no deeds, and no definition.  The desert was never one place, said Almasy, but always shifting.  What was here today will be gone tomorrow, the desert's own and no one else's. 

Of course this idea as noble and elegantly simple as it was, was untenable, and before long Almasy was claiming Katherine as his, and to save her life he gives away secrets to the Germans. 

There is nothing new or particularly unusual about staking a claim.  This is what the first settlers of the American West did - simply marked off the perimeter of their land, fenced it and kept off interlopers and intruders with a shotgun. 

The Lewis and Clark expedition was the first step to land titling, legal ownership, and capital.  One's land had value when titled and could be mortgaged, sold, or rented; and that alone was the key to westward expansion and Jefferson's Manifest Destiny. 

The territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific was America's, Jefferson said, European America's and over the course of the next hundred years ago European Americans tamed and settled that land and crisscrossed it with railroads.  The Indians - Native Americans - were in the way, and by the early Twentieth Century were either eliminated or in reservations. 

There was nothing new or special about this territorialism. Genghis Khan and his Mongol-Turkic armies burst out of the steppes with his ten thousand horsemen, and conquered territory from Europe to Japan. He was known for his savagery, and the roads between conquered villages were lined with severed heads on spikes as a warning to all in his path. 

 

The Crusades were organized by Pope Urban II to rid Jerusalem of the infidel, but they were no different than the armies of Genghis Khan, territorial in intent, and bloody in execution.  Jerusalem is ours! said Urban, western, Christian, civilized and European. 

The history of territorial expansion is long, consistent, and predictable; so the desires of Russia for Ukraine, China for Taiwan, and the United States for Venezuela and Cuba fit a pattern.  American with military force ousted the Communist dictator in Venezuela, Russia will eventually regain the Donbass region of Ukraine, and Taiwan will become part of greater China.  It is the law of hegemony or spheres of influence. 

The United States has always been territorial.  Manifest Destiny was an expression of territorial right.  Texas belonged to the United States, not Mexico; Chile and is copper mines were well within America's sphere of influence so President Allende had to go.  The United States supported the military regimes of Brazil and Argentina because they were always to remain America's allies; or put another way, America's foreign properties. 

 

While not in America's immediate geographical sphere of influence, it intervened militarily in the Philippines and took it over as colonial ruler for years. The US fought a long, bloody, and ultimately losing battle to keep Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia within its sphere of political influence. Its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, similarly failed enterprises, were to keep those parts of the world under American control. 

Ronald Reagan intervened militarily in Nicaragua,  the Dominican Republic, Haiti,  and El Salvador for the same reasons.  They belong to us, said the President, if not by Constitution and title, then by right. 

So those in America who find Donald Trump's warning to Taiwan to keep its missiles in their silos, and to make no public pronouncements of independence from China, do not understand history.  The assimilation of Taiwan into China is a foregone conclusion just as Hong Kong and Macau were; and there is no way that the United States will engage in a bloody no-win war with China to defy it. 

Trump is a true Machiavellian and his foreign policy is based on national self interest. What would America gain by confronting the Chinese over Taiwan?  Nothing.  By the same measure what does America gain by perpetuating the war in Ukraine at a cost of tens of thousands of lives, the destruction of the country's infrastructure, and billions of US treasury dollars when a Ukrainian victory, as impossible as that might be, would gain the US nothing.

The Biden Administration insisted that democracy was at stake in Ukraine, an extension of American exceptionalism; but as Machiavelli pointed out centuries before, it is folly to get involved where there is no tangible, observable, quantifiable reason to do so. 

American liberals are howling, beating their chests in righteous indignation.  How could he? they sputter? How could he give away a sovereign country? Toss it into China's hamper with nary a second thought.  The answer is easy, they say - billions of dollars of trade with China that will benefit his cronies and American oligarchs.  Another example of the crude insensitivities of this rube, this barroom brawler, this fool. 

Of course billions are at stake in the US-China negotiations, and that is the whole point of the new Machiavellian foreign policy of the United States.  And Trump, the ultimate deal maker, knows that China holds all the cards.  It owns our debt, is a country of a billion and a half Confucian-inspired patriots, has progressively and deliberately rounded up the world's rare earths, and is in a geopolitical position of supremacy. Throw it all away out of some exceptionalist principle.  Read Machiavelli's The Prince. 

Harper Flynn got the geopolitical picture easily - life was a series of territorial disputes, ownership was not only the basis of capitalism but a feature of human nature and his office was his.  

His wife not surprisingly also took the office dispute as a metaphor.  There were principles involved here, contracts of marital communalism, the right way to behaves within larger contexts.  Machiavellian territorialism was just a convenient academic cover for taking and holding what is mine regardless of the larger world.  

The world if filled with One Worlders, Neville Chamberlain capitulating idealists, peace at any price accommodators who put a fictious value over reality.  Anyone in their right minds should have seen Hitler's intentions; and it should not have taken an outspoken Churchill to call out Stalin's hegemonic ambitions. 

Taiwan for the time being will remain quiescent, unobtrusive, and no obstacle to profitable deals to be concluded by the world's two greatest adversaries.  As it should be.  Foregone conclusions should never be challenged, and above all, a la Machiavelli,  moral principle should never get in the way of geopolitical self interest. 

The Cult Of The Black Man - A White Woman Seduced And Bilked By A Canny Nigerian Scammer

Vicki Cabot gave unusual love a try - not today's meme of lesbian and transgender love and Folsom Street Fair S&M - but love with a Nigerian.

Her mother warned her against the relationship.  'They are scammers to a man', she said.  Her husband who worked for the World Bank had a No Nigeria clause in his contract.  So many of his colleagues had negotiated the same codicil that finding loan officers for the multi-million contracts concluded with the Nigerian government was well nigh impossible. 

'A shithole', said Frank Cabot who had learned his lesson the hard way, traveling to Lagos as a Bank intern, harassed and shaken down at the airport with not enough money to pay the bribes demanded by the taxi driver and hotel clerk, he sought refuge in his embassy after he had given up his silk ties, Rolex, and Armani suspenders.

The reputation of Nigeria was well deserved.  No one came out of there in one piece, thousands were conned by online fraud every day, and most savvy Washingtonians checked cabs for Nigerian drivers before getting in. 

Lagos was a stinking, festering slum.  Whatever money had been realized from the sale of Niger delta oil - before Exxon, Shell, and Gulf had pulled out, went into offshore bank accounts with nothing left to run the country.  In short order the whole country had become a toxic, gang-run, miserable, lawless place. 

'He's a professor', Vicki told her father who was unmoved.  A scam too, he said, informing her of the thousands of fraudulent CVs the Bank got every day from Nigerian 'professors'.  'They scam you coming and going', her father said, 'corrupt, dishonest, shady and nasty from the word go'; but Vicki had been charmed by this suave, polished African who treated her like the Queen of Sheba, and who was as far from the stereotype painted by her father as the man in the moon. 

Or so she thought.  The man, Adrian Adebayo, was as crooked as they come, in the United States on an overstayed tourist visa, and on the prowl for susceptible, credulous, and naive young women like Vicki.

'I hit the jackpot', he told his friends back in Lagos, for Vicki was the heiress of a considerable fortune.  Her father might be an international civil servant on salary, but her inheritance was unimaginable.  The offspring of one of Boston's finest families, first in line among the grandchildren of the patriarch of the family, she was the jewel in the crown. 

Now, why Vicki got caught in this tender trap is a simple story of doing the right thing. At college she had been convinced that the black man was at the top of the human pyramid. but because of slavery, Jim Crow, and persistent racism, he foundered at the bottom.  With effort, desire, and hard work, American society would be soon reconfigured and the black man would be restored to his primal place. 

Nonsense, of course. Brown University was not exactly an unbiased institution of higher learning, and had been coopted by social reformists and was now fully in their hands.  The administration, the faculty, and the students were all part of the same political cabal. The whole campus marched to the same drummer, flew the same flag, and prayed to the same gods. 

Where possible young white girls hooked up with black men, admitted to the university under a liberal affirmative action program, and who like every pimp from the ghetto were on the prowl for nubile white girls. There was a pecking order among the student body at Brown.  At the top were girls dating black men, then girls in lesbian relationships, then gay men together, and finally bi-sexual students who were testing the waters but had not yet committed to one side or the other.

Vicki, was an unfortunately homely girl who might have inherited Grandfather Cabot's money but none of the patrician, graceful look of the women of the family. Somewhere along the line she got a Jewish look - sallow skin, prominent nose and lips, and untamable hair.  She was often asked by her Brown classmates if she had changed her name. 

She was the perfect mark for Adrian Adebayo - a homely woman trained in the fantasies of cultural diversity and the myth of the black man.  The way into her treasury was as simple as could be.   

Vicki was not Adrian's first score.  He had been quite the man about town, showing up at progressive conferences, seminars, and public events.  He had enough money to keep him above water until he hit the jackpot - his second cousin had made his fortune in a devious but impressive Somali-like fraud in Atlanta, a Ponzi scheme where millions were invested in shell companies, and all of it siphoned off to Aruban banks. 

He had almost made it.  If it hadn't been for an annoyingly investigative father, he would have tied the knot with Alison Parker, a girl like Vicki born and bred in a culture of privilege and wealth and a graduate of Duke (where she had been immersed in the same cauldron of diversity and black idolatry as Brown).  

To her tears and flapdoodle, he left town before the old man called in ICE; but he had learned his lesson.  Chicanery has its limits, and the careful plotter must cross all the American t's and dot all the i's. 

Adrian and Vicki got married over the wild protests of her parents. His visa was regularized, the path to citizenship assured, and the marriage contract concluded without punitive codicils.  In short order he was legal, free, and rich, and was never heard from again. 

Now, Vicki, chastened, humiliated, and shamed should have at least admitted her 'miscalculation' as she called it, apologized to her father for having dismissed his warnings, and gone on to a more stable emotional and political life.

But she insisted that Adrian was a good man, and to throw him in with a bunch of thieves and worse to condemn an entire country and a whole continent was wrong, exactly the kind of racist opinions that set back the cause of the black man for decades. She had been blinded by his attentions, his demeanor and yes, although the hated to admit it, by his extraordinary sexual endowment.  

This had always been the worst racial stereotype in the white grab bag, but when it turned out to be true, she was as surprised as any white, liberal woman would be, but quite happy about it.  Serviced by this black man every night was a pleasure few women could imagine. 

No, Adrian might have had his faults; and yes, she was bilked and deceived by him, but all the more reason to blame colonialism for the persistent underdevelopment of Africa. He was a victim of oppression and racism, and it was white people's duty - her duty - to fight for the black man wherever he lived. 

Vicki was a defiantly unreconstructed liberal.  The roots of progressivism planted during her Brown days were still deep and strong.  Other weaker, less committed women might have turned conservative, tossed aside the whole idea of cultural diversity, and stuck to their own kind; but not Vicki. Political commitment and the philosophy which provides its foundation are not so easily dismissed.  She would be lifelong progressive, a believer in racial justice, and the lover of a proud black man. 

Why Hate Feels So Good - Social Justice And The Happy Jamboree Of Trump Loathing

Vicki Marks hated Donald Trump with a passion, and so did her friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  It was a friendly cabal of hate - nods on streetcorners, stories over the picket fence, knowing smiles, and bus rides to rallies.  

It felt good to hate, and never before in her lifelong progressivism had it felt so good.  This time around it was a soul-cleansing release.  After scouring the pots for so many years, rasping away at conservative backwardness and ignorance, now she could be as mad, foul-tempered, unrestrained like never before.  There was evil in the White House and nothing but exorcism would do. 

Each one of her venting moments with Margot down the street or Beatrice in the office or Henrietta at the gym was satisfying in a way simple political commitment was not.  There was a fire in her belly like never before.  Her life had new meaning, a clear and present purpose, a clear line of fire, an unquenchable desire. 

She was a glutton for news about Trump and flipped channels between CNN and MSNBC every morning over coffee, watched the news on the monitors at the gym, surfed the dark web for information about Trump's insider trading, collusion, corruption, and moral failure.  She fueled her hatred from the moment she woke up until the moment she went to bed.  Even her dreams were feverish with hatred. 

As counterintuitive as it may sound, hatred was happy time, an emotional orgasm for a crackly, older single woman who had been too picky to settle for second best, and a first best man had never come her way - not in the coffee houses of the East Village, not in her 9th Street non-profit, not on the barricades, and not in holding pens.  Politics is not simply a matter of preference or logical conclusion, it is the heart and soul of a person, and enhances or deforms as if it were a magic potion or vile poison. 

Vicki's hate was oxymoronic - it both rotted and corroded her insides and twisted and deformed every aspect of her outer self but gave her unlimited joy.  She might be as unappealing as a Wicked Sister, but she was bursting with joy every time she sallied forth with one of her untethered, bitter attacks on those who strayed from the progressive canon. 

The more bile that built up, the more venom that filled her viperous sacs, the more hate she felt, the happier she was.  Such hate was not a perverse obsession but the emotional force behind her sense of identity, self-esteem, and worth. 

Today was No Kings rally day on the National Mall, the biggest, most exuberant anti-Trump jamboree in the nation.  It would be featured on national television, covered widely in the press.  Thousands of women like herself would join hands and lock arms in solidarity and in mutual hatred for the incarnation of the devil. 

She couldn't wait, got up early, fed her cats who were surprised at getting fed before sunup, took her morning run under the streetlights, and waited on the stoop for the bus to come by. This was to be her day, a day like no other, a halcyon day. 

It felt so good to be with her sisters on this sparkling clear May day that she wanted to kiss them, hold them tight, go off with them and be happy forever.  They shouted, waved banners, chanted in a chorus of powerful women's voices, so much so that they almost forgot the object of their calumny, the beast in the White House.  The thousand voices ringing out from the Capitol to the Washington Monument was life-affirming, joyous, and spiritual. 

There was nothing like it.  Hate had become a raison d'etre, an expression of personhood, existential worth, and faith.  Vicki, tired but fulfilled after hours on the Mall and pub-crawling with her sisters up and down K Street, she went home. 

Few if any of these women could articulate exactly why they hated the President so much.  His policies and programs were classically conservative - closed borders, small government, private sector, strong military, traditional social values, patriotism, and individualism - and while he demonstrated a particular and unusual resolve in implementing them, he was well within Constitutional limits.  It was his opponents who resorted to fictitious claims, frivolous, unfounded lawsuits, left field impeachment attempts, and baseless information. 

Most of Vicki's friends when asked gave that 'Are you kidding?' look and railed on about racism, misogyny, homophobia, and mindless crony capitalism.  They refused to be pinned down because no pinning down was necessary.  The man's villainy was obvious, uncontested, there for all to see. 

Vicki's house seemed particularly empty this time around, perhaps because of the unbridled joy of such a large gathering, an epiphanic moment of solidarity and pure happiness; but there was a shadow of a doubt that fleetingly darkened her mood.  She was alone with her cats.  The plants needed watering. 

She shook off these morbid thoughts, rattled uncharacteristically around the kitchen, emptied the refrigerator and ate leftovers, put her head in her hands, and cried. 

'What am I doing?' she shouted, embarrassed, chagrined, and angry at herself for letting such pedestrian emotions overtake her.  She needed no man, no towheaded children, no backyard barbecues, not church dinners to make her happy.  She was as fulfilled as any woman could be. 

She looked at the calendar and saw every day filled with appointments, events, conferences, and seminars.  Every day was metro, boulot, dodo - yes, with more purpose and meaning than her neighbors who hopped on the N6 and spent laborious days at meaningless jobs; but somehow missing something, something she sensed was important but couldn't put her finger on. 

For the first time in months, she felt the bilious hatred for Donald Trump slip away.  She tried to conjure up images of him as a destroyer, a child killer, a Gestapo thug, a tyrant; but the old vaudevillian shtick was falling flat. Thank God tomorrow was the climate conference. 

Life went on like this, desultory, passionless, and increasingly morbidly without respite or recourse.  The die had been cast years ago and there was no wiggle room now.  A leopard cannot change its spots. Too many sunken costs, too much water under the dam. 

Furthermore, hate had become her personal zeitgeist.  It was as hardwired as any exogenous factor could be.  It was part of her persona.  How could it be dwindling away like this?  How could her very lifeblood be trickling from her veins?

'Is it too late?', she wondered, but could not finish the question.  Too late for what had never had to be asked; but too late for something other than this! A cat jumped on her lap but she threw it off into the corner, screeching and climbing up the curtains.  'So this is what it feels like', she thought; but there was still time to regain her footing, to rekindle the old fires, become a social justice warrior in the avant garde, the first phalanx. 

Yet, the next morning the funk had not disappeared and she had to face the day without that marvelously joyous hatred that greeted her as soon as she opened her eyes. 

'I couldn't have wasted my life', she said to herself, but that niggling doubt was there.  If after years of fighting the good fight for civil rights, gay rights, the climate, redistribution of wealth, diversity, and equity, conservatism was now the ethos of the land, the zeitgeist, the meme, what were her struggles worth?

Very little of course.  Epictetus had been right all along.  Take what comes, let it be, what goes around comes around.  La Dolce Vita is not so bad after all; but these a posteriori thoughts didn't do Vicki much good.  'You made your bed, solie in it' her mother used to say, and that was as pithy a nostrum as there ever was. 

Which didn't do Vicki any good whatsoever. 'I'm stuck'. she said; and like many old spinsters before her, fixed herself a lovely cup of tea.