A Love Affair Made In Heaven Which Ended Up In Hell - When Political Alignment Spells Disaster, A Progressive Romance

Vicki Ward was living cooped up in a small seventh-floor walkup on MacDougal Street in New York, the heart of the West Village, the scene of the Sixties, and she couldn't have been happier.  This was a heady time, an incomparably optimistic, happy one.  The beatniks were close enough in the past to give the new cafe society inspiration.  Kerouac and Burroughs were their idols, preaching free love, intellectual independence, and social liberation. 

 

The hippie era was just around the corner, but the New York crowd was too urban, intellectual, and free-spirited in a New York cosmopolitan way to appreciate communes, flowers, and spring rains.  

They were on the cusp of both the beatnik and hippie generations, and felt unique, part of the past, crusaders for something important to come, and above all comrades in their distaste for the bourgeois, sedate, sedentary life of the Fifties. 

It was there that Vicki met Ira Greenblatt. Vassar had not prepared her for such an encounter, let alone love affair.  Yes, there had been Jews at Vassar, girls with from Great Neck with thick New York accents. Vassar was very much a school for the Cabots, Lodges, and Longworths of America. Vicki - Victoria Hastings Ward - had been born, bred, and brought up on Philadelphia's Main Line, schooled at the exclusive Miss Porter's in Farmington, Connecticut, and then after a year abroad (the Greek islands, Torino, and Paris) she entered Vassar.  

Vicki was a good student with a particular interest in history and economics, never near the top of her class but far from the bottom.  Vassar was known for its early feminism and encouraged its girls to settle for nothing less than a career.  While the other Seven Sisters - Smith, Holyoke, Wellesley, etc. - hewed to the more traditional cast for young women, i.e. productive members of society through motherhood and family, Vassar insisted on much more. 

So when Vicki graduated and took a job in New York with Fleisher & Isaacs - an economic consulting firm - she felt she was faithful to the Vassar spirit and a respected legatee of the Ward family.  

Philadelphia was not New York by any means, but it gave her enough urban grounding not to feel ignorant of street culture.  She found her apartment through Two-For-The-Money, a sublet which turned into a proper rental after the original renter moved to Boise, and immediately found the Village to be consistent with her ideas of a post-bohemian New York.  It was at the Cafe Figaro, a meeting place for the Village crowd where academics, poets, artists, and writers discussed ideas and culture, that Vicki met Ira Greenblatt. 

Greenblatt was what Vicki thought was 'your typical Jew' - everything about him shouted rabbinical, seder, impatience - but there was something attractive about him.  He was handsome in a Mediterranean way, none of the ugly features which usually characterized his race, and was forthright, demanding, and overtly sexual.  She was stirred by his intensity and his intellect, and before long they were sharing long weekends in her walkup. 

By now the civil rights movement was catching fire, and Ira was one of the first at the barricades, protesting segregation, Jim Crow, and the virulent discrimination of the black man.  He was first on the Freedom Rider buses to Montgomery, was beaten by Bull Connor's thugs, and bitten by his dogs  He returned bloodied, uncowed, and more convinced than ever that defiant socialism was the only way forward.  It was the capitalist rot which was at the root of such unprincipled, racist behavior, and unless the pillars of this corrupt socio-economic system were torn down, the lot of the black man would never improve. 

Vicki, now in love with the man, followed his every direction, and she too became a rabid socialist, with him at every protest in New York and on the National Mall.  She read Marx, Engels, and Lenin and gave her heart and soul to the movement. 

Vicki eventually left New York, Ira, and socialism; but never lost sight of the progressive agenda or Ira Greenblatt who like her had moved to Washington to work as a political advocate.  By this time Vicki was on the faculty of a historically black university, chosen despite her whiteness for her decades- long fight for the rights of the Negro. 

Vicki had never married, so when Ira called her, she was delighted and available.  She still loved him and now more than ever their political focus was precisely aligned. They both were tireless advocates for racial justice, the environment, economic equality, and gender fluidity.  There was nothing on the progressive agenda with which they disagreed and were both ready and eager to pick up the cudgel for any of the causes of the movement. 

Ira, however, had never lost that New York Jewish aggressiveness - a characteristic pushiness which she hated to admit - and far too often he was in her face.  She had become far more reasonable and temperate over the years, never veering far from dogma or the principles of the canon, but more reserved.  

'Have you lost it?' shouted Ira one late night after they had finished a fifth of bourbon. 'Have you fucking lost your mind?', followed by a drunken battle royale worse than anything out of Virginia Woolf. 'Enough already', she yelled as he left her quiet suburban neighborhood in a roar of exhaust and screeching tires. 

It was on and off for months thereafter, coming together and parting in final farewells which never amounted to anything. They saw each other at climate seminars, neo-socialist colloquies, and the occasional protest, but really only got together incidentally. 

While politics for Ira became a wild, even crazed emotionally violent enterprise, for Vicki progressivism became a religion.  It had foundational belief, a canon, prescribed rituals, prayerbooks, principles, organization, and true belief. In her own way she became as unhinged - that was really the only way to describe her divestiture of rational thought - as he had.  Both now were traipsing through a brave new world which they had ceased to try to understand but engaged with passion. 

Incidental though the love affair had become, the common bond - political animation and profound conviction - brought them as close as they had been in the old days; but this time it was different.  Their world had evolved from the adolescent dream of a better world to the angry, venomous, frustrated militancy of the day. 

They talked around and over each other, stumbling, shaking with hatred, their affection gone with the wind, replaced by undirected animus, a vile hatred of Donald Trump, a desire to do damage, to show America that there were still patriots in their midst. 

They went to every No Kings rally, travelled to Minneapolis to confront the Gestapo SS storm troopers of ICE, to kill or be killed in an existential fight for decency and moral right. 

Ira became as gaunt as an Old Testament prophet, a streetcorner preacher, a wild zealot, a man possessed, inflamed, shaking with a terrible Biblical investment. 

Vicki stood by his side with the same wonder and amazement she had had in the old socialist days - how Ira burned with a righteous anger and an evangelical zeal.  When he spat in the faces of ICE agents, and spat again, and yelled at them, she cheered; and when one day he pulled a gun and shot one of them she raised her arms in victory, an almost sexual pleasure in seeing her lover standing proudly until he was wrestled to the ground by Trump's animals. 

She howled and wailed like an Arab woman over a grave, pulled her hair and tore off her clothes and stood bare-breasted in front of the ICE troops. 'Here, take this', she yelled, shaking like a St. Vitus dancer, twisting and turning like a dervish, a madwoman, demonic, distorted, and wild.  

The crowd around her took her in their arms and raised her high above them, cheering, jubilant, and triumphant.  'Off the pigs...Off the pigs', they shouted, their chants repeated and reverberated back through the crowd and then forth again to the barricades where the confrontation continued. 

Photographs of her bare-breasted, looking as wild as a beheaded Medusa, frantic, frenetic and totally and completely unhinged went viral - a new hero of the Left, an unrepentant, regenerate, woman of righteousness and honor.  

The dean of the English Department where she was a tenured professor was shocked at the public display of an ordinarily recondite and temperate woman.  He, like Vicki subscribed chapter and verse to the progressive canon and was an outspoken advocate for all its causes, but this display was unbefitting of a senior faculty member of the university.  Political commitment was one thing, but hysteria was another. 

He had of course forgotten his own beginnings in a small tarpaper shack in North Carolina, whipped and cellared by his preacher father, forced to sit in the front pew of his Church of Zion Baptist church, watching the hysteria, the holy rolling, the ecstasy of those who saw Jesus descend from the rafters in a grand visitation. 

Forgotten at least until he was reminded of it when another AI generated photo of Vicki, a Joan of Arc at the burning stake, arms reaching up to God who had forsaken her, with the caption ANOTHER MARTYR TO THE CAUSE? an ironical reference to the charismatic craziness of both progressivism and Southern Baptist ministries.  

At that moment the dean knew that Vicki had been possessed by the Devil, although he didn't know whether to welcome her home or dismiss her.

The story of Vicki, Ira, and the Dean is either apocryphal or cynical - either the couple was indeed a demented, addled, emotionally maimed and needy pair; or the very poster children of progressivism. It all depended on how you looked at it. 

Some saw tragedy in it.  A pretty debutante, Vassar graduate, a woman with the manners and demeanor of good aristocratic upbringing brought to heel by the ferocious inanity of modern progressivism. A rabbinical scholar, a man of intelligence and fine perception co-opted by the most incidentally dangerous political movement since shamanism. 

Most people shook their heads and saw nothing but the absolute, unqualified, unmitigated chicanery of the Left. So that, dear reader, is what should be the epitaph of the story. 

Race, Gender, And Ethnicity - The Demeaning Bullying Of Diversity And Its Sorry Result

A few years ago when the DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusivity) movement was getting underway, companies organized diversity workshops which were ostensibly intended to make the workplace a more tolerant and accepting place, but which were thinly veiled initiatives to call out white supremacy, privilege, and racism.

The workshops although billed as initiatives to encourage an environment welcoming to brown and black employees, they functioned as an exercise in shaming.  Whites were not to be included as patches in the multicolored quilt, but as the harsh overseers of the slave labor that produced it. 

In one workshop employees were asked to identify themselves by race, gender, and ethnicity, and  to stand in groups.  The identification was left up to the individual - a black Puerto Rican could join either the black or Latino group. A mixed race, white-black worker would be encouraged to decide in which category he felt best.  

Once the division was made, and the various groups were assembled, the facilitator pointed to the white group, not surprisingly the largest in high-powered law, accounting, and economic consulting firms, and began to address the gathering.  LaShonda Evans who was one of Diversity International's most seasoned instructors, began. 

'Here you have America, y'all', she said, pointing to the white group. 'We', she continued indicating the brown and black groups, 'are in the minority.' Broadly smiling, smoothing the folds in her dress, and taking a sip of water, she went on. 

‘But not for long. the demographics show us in the majority in America in a few years, but that numerical majority may still be a minority, treated as inferior, second class, and insignificant unless you' - and here she pointed at the white group - 'assure that it is not. Your days of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and racial bigotry are over, and may they never again return.  Your white supremacy, privilege, and racial elitism, hated but common expressions of the white man, are done for, hallelujah!'

The black folk applauded, the whites did their own shuckin' and jivin', insulted at such outright hysterical cant. LaShonda Evans was no more than a storefront church preacher from the depths of a Washington ghetto, howling for Jesus to come down and save all sinners, full of black spite and vindictive righteousness.  What was she doing here in the first place, an affirmative action momma pulled out of the slums to lecture to us??

 

LaShonda was not expecting anything like this.  Upon hearing her words, white people generally bowed their heads in contrition, regret, and genuine aspiration to mend their ways.  She had not counted on this insurrection, a revolt by these uppity crackers in Armani suits. She would show them. 

'I see that some of us are unhappy with my words...or is it with the message therein? A message of truth, justice, and reform, a message....' 

Here the whites broke ranks, jumped the corral fence and stood in front of Lashonda, arms folded, scowls on their faces, signs she knew were those of dismissiveness, racism, and misogyny.  They never would have treated a man this way. 

The Asians also left their groups and joined the whites circling LaShonda and looking at her with the same attitude, sending their own message to this ugly, fatuous, simple-minded ghetto queen. They had been discriminated against for years by the likes of LaShonda Evans, picked from the ghetto and placed on admission committees bound and determined to open the doors to thousands of black students at any cost.  Bigotry started with black people, not ended with them. 

LaShonda despite all her professional training had not lost her ghetto mojo and stood up to these clowns reverting more and more to the language she knew best  'Shut the fuck up, bitch', she hollered at one white woman who called her out for reverse racism, holier-than-thou penitential nonsense, and empty threats.  'White cunt...buggering honky...the whole fucking lot of you'. 

The Office Manager burst into the room, and with a 'What's going on here?', hurried to LaShonda's side and began to usher her to the wings. It was one thing for his employees to voice their anger in peaceful ways, but the gutter language of the facilitator was unconscionable 

The whole affair broke the emotional dam of LaShonda who, despite her practiced, temperate, and very professional demeanor, had had quite enough from these white, buggering fools, and she could not stop herself.  There was no reining her in.  As she proceeded out of the auditorium, she continued with her vile, rancid, sewer-mouthed rant.  Finally calm enough to walk out of the building on her own, she hailed a taxi and was not heard from again. 

While one might think this a one-off event, it was not.  White people, having been badgered, hectored, and vilified for years at the hands of progressive 'reformers', had finally had quite enough.  The African forest was not the Garden of Eden described by racial advocates, and the black man was not the sentient, environmentally attuned, spiritually evolved being he was purported to be, worthy of placement atop the human pyramid.  On the contrary, he was still living in endemically dysfunctional neighborhoods or in prison in disproportional, record numbers. 

Affirmative action had done nothing except to graduate a whole generation of incompetent lawyers, doctors, and dentists.  Black faces on television sitcoms, on each and every commercial, on high school podiums, everywhere had done nothing to rid cities of the coruscating blight of 'the inner city' - and because these faces were faux, there for engineered diversity which has done or proved nothing, of course there was white resentment.  Hammered and badgered for years, told that their European culture was nothing but rot, a miserable, oppressive, colonialist disgrace, and now forced to put up with face to face attempted intimidation, they were pissed. 

 

The Diversity workshops designed to promote tolerance for gay and lesbian co-workers were no different.  Herded into different stables, asked to bare their sexuality, dunned if it turned out heterosexual, and ridiculed for traditional sexual attitudes, straight workers had become increasingly restive.  Moreover they were increasingly hostile to the suggestion that homosexuality, transgenderism, and the fungibility of the gender spectrum was the reality of the future.

'I am a proud gay man', said Alvin Pinckney, facilitator of another diversity gone wrong workshop, 'and let me tell you my story'.  The heterosexuals, grouped together by self-identification and the largest number, squirmed and fidgeted at what they knew awaited them.  Alvin went on and on, a closeted boy in a West Virginia coalmining family, put out of the house with the pigs and chickens when his father found out he was gay. 

Of course the straight crowd could only imagine the most disgusting scene of buggering in the woodpile, smarmy seconds behind the school boiler.  This was not the romantic love affair in Brokeback Mountain, but an episode of backwoods cornholing. 

It was not going well, Alvin quickly realized and moved on to the meat of his lesson - the existential genius of the gender spectrum, how each and everyone of us has sexual diversity within us, waiting to be explored.  He himself had tried on 'suits of many colors', cut from different cloth and moved in happy elision among the panoply of sexual choices open to him. 

Again, the straight crowd could only think of the old San Francisco Castro where gay men stuck hard-ons through holes in bathhouse walls to be sucked off by strangers.  Now, that was diversity!

Ethnicity, the third leg of the race-gender-ethnicity troika, got short shrift.  Nobody really cared what Mexican lettuce pickers did with their time, or what the life of a Salvadoran leaf-blower was like, so office workers were at least spared that. 

The new conservative administration in Washington has made it clear that DEI nonsense is to stop, programs and offices to promote diversity abandoned, and the ethos of wholistic individualism was to replace the tired, shopworn, discredited, and absurd notions of 'identity'.

It wasn't what you looked like that mattered, but who you were and what you did.  Excellence would be the only measure of performance. Talent, creativity, intelligence, and ambition were to be the hallmarks of the new America.

America gave a big collective sigh of relief.  They would finally be spared the demeaning, bullying, intimidating assumptions of racial diversity.  

The result of decades of DEI? Nothing, a balance sheet with no plusses. 

If this turning tide of excellence continues, then America will see black and brown people among the most affluent and respected - perhaps not in representative numbers, but that's the whole point.  Proportionality is gone, discredited as nothing more than progressive idealism. 

The days of DEI are happily over, although colleges and universities are trying their best to fudge, evade, reconfigures, and rejigger admissions procedures to avoid the law.  It will take another few years of conservative administrations to clear the drains. 

Orwellian Doublespeak And Reformist Idolatry - Climate Armageddon, Gender Fluidity, And Black Supremacy

Former Vice-President Al Gore warned in 1993 that global warming would soon cause natural disaster - rising, engulfing seas, more frequent and more devastating tornadoes and hurricanes, drought, insect pestilence, and human disease.  The world was coming to an end, he said, a climate Armageddon, unless something was done to slow climate change. 

 

Scenes of New York and Miami inundated with ocean waters, whole neighborhoods flooded, Lower Manhattan a watery grave, and the beaches of South Florida no more.  More horrific scenes of crops shriveling in the heat, streams and rivers without water, the great American dams, the Grand Coulee and the Hoover inoperable and millions left without hydroelectric power.  Biblical waves of locusts would descend on those few northern crops still green and destroy them.  The sun would bake mercilessly and cause heat stroke and sudden death. 

Of course none of this has come true and climate change talk is still around, although buried in the style section ('Ladies, summer heat causing oily skin?). A few older social activists, with so many sunken costs in decades of insistence on the coming climate disaster, keep beating the drums.  'The current protracted cold weather throughout the Unites States is caused by global warming', said one in The Daily Kos. 'Warmer weather is causing polar ice to melt, sending unusually cold waters into the oceans, cooling the land, and causing lower than normal temperatures'. 

The press had a field day with this last gasp of true belief from the Cassandras of the Left; but his  rejoinder to the most catty of the many editorials following his press release was adamant.  He went on to cite geophysical 'quotients', gamma ray anomalies, infrared and ultraviolet spectrum shifts, and orbital warping, all of which only produced more cackles and whoops from those who had never bought the cockamamie stories of Al Gore and his internationalist claques. 

It was a literary critic from The Paris Journal who had first noticed the similarity between the American Left's doublespeak and George Orwell who, in 1984 and Animal Farm, wrote of a future dictatorship which altered the perception of reality simply by calling it by a more acceptable name.  Given the secret police and state-controlled media, the population began to accept the new reality, and before long the old version disappeared. 

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength" said the state. "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past".  Senseless, meaningless convolutions meant to convey articulateness, intelligence, and purpose; but were only devices  of the state to mold the population to its own complete, universal, vision of authority and social obedience. 

The critic went on:

The climate change phenomenon is no different - an Orwellian distortion of obvious fact to subvert individual thought and by so doing to promote an untenable, unproven, fantasy', the critic wrote. 'This latest attempt to suppress logical inquiry with a deluge of manufactured faux scientific facts, and to explain persistently cold weather because of global warming, is the death knell of the movement.

Everyone on earth wondered what American progressives were doing when they began to promote the gender spectrum and sexual fluidity.  There is no such thing as two sexes, they claimed, but an infinite variety of sexual natures.  Moreover, sexuality is not fixed and irrevocable.  One can change genders by choice, since 'within each of us is a myriad of sexual pinpoints, all waiting for acknowledgement and expression'. ,

No one bought this idea or took it seriously. Heterosexuality was biological given, the proper ordering of reproduction, the core of family and society, a Biblical and Koranic injunction, a literary icon, an absolute, hard-grounded reality; but the critics of simple male-female sorting were not having it, and went out of their way first to champion gay sex, second to lionize transgenderism, and then finally to tout the gender spectrum and the idea that sexuality was personal choice. 

In an unintentional baroque moment, the new posterchild of the movement was introduced to the public- a sexual chameleon, changing from swishy gay boy to tough Bernal Heights bull dyke, to straight-as-an-arrow accountant, to a ball-wrenching Seventh Avenue harridan. 

'Be all you can be', meme for a popular consumer item was reworked to avoid copyright laws and to be far more inclusive than the original ad intended.  The new version paid for by The Gay and Lesbian Alliance and crafted by a top Madison Avenue agency, was an instant hit - not with the applause that the Alliance expected, but with hoots and howls from coast to coast. 

The Paris Journal critic found new grist for his mill. 

Orwell again', but this time with an even more impossibly fantastical idea.  The chutzpah, the arrogated authority, the nominal regard for fact, the championing of received wisdom. We've seen nothing like this before, doublespeak in spades, the most arrogant assumption of popular gullibility ever. The death knell of yet another impossibly fantastical creation'

Irvington Bennett, Professor Emeritus at a historically black university recently wrote:

The black man has finally come into is own.  No civil rights act, no affirmative action, no significant representation in the media (a black face in every commercial and on every sitcom) can possibly match the new, progressive vision of racial identity.  The black man, heir to the forest's wisdom, intimate with the subtleties of nature and the environment, of high native intelligence and uncanny insight, has finally been raised to the top of the human pyramid, recognized for his supremacy and supreme example

Professor Bennett was echoing the sympathies of the American Left who, in an attempt to once and for all expunge all traces of white privilege, supremacy, and virulent racism, has lionized the African American.  'He is he future of America, progressives said, primus inter pares of a multicultural, diverse society free from whiteness', wrote LaShonda Jones of Black Lives Matter. 

'Orwell again', wrote The Paris Journal critic.

The creation of an idealistic, totally false reality in hopes of feathering their own nest - a bald, transparently political attempt to promote the notion of a vibrant, vital, culturally relevant street culture; to explain the disproportionate incarceration rates of black men by condemning the brutal, racist, extrajudicial tactics of the police; to justify the same disproportionate black rates of violent crime as 'normal, understandable expressions of anger and hostility at the forces of oppression.  Yet everyone knows the truth - the persistent dysfunctionality of the black community not only disqualifies the black man for pinnacle status, but lays the blame directly on him for such antisocial behavior'. 

Politics has never been a pretty affair, and lies, slander, distortion, exaggeration, and downright falsehood are par for the course.  Yet, as the Review critic has pointed out, this wave of Orwellian doublespeak and thought control is not the usual one-off affair, a politician lying about his infidelity or fudging the data; but a systemic fraud.  Misleading the electorate in a deliberately devious campaign to promote the progressive agenda is tantamount to fraud. 

'We never believed that horseshit in the first place', said one voter; but of course he and millions of others did.  It takes two to tango; ordinary Germans were complicit in the Holocaust; the mob wants to be led by visionary leaders regardless of the vision. 

Last words of the Journal critic said off the record:

The Unholy Triumvirate, The Perfect Storm, the snake oil salesman meets 'A sucker is born every minute' P.T. Barnum combined with the most idiotic tomfoolery of political idolatry.  The morons in Washington started the whole shebang. 

 

'Frenzy,' A Diary Of Insanity - A Mental Asylee And A True Believer Find Camaraderie At The Barricades In Minneapolis

I am not sure why I am here, but then again does anyone ever know? I am to be released after far too many years, and to be honest, I’m nervous.  Will He still guide my path, light my way, nurture my dreams. and salve my wounds?

 

Ronald Benchley kept a diary while interned at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, the publicly-maintained institution for the mentally ill, and in this entry, read by his psychiatrists after his rampage in Minneapolis, it was quite clear that they had mistakenly discharged him.

'We admit that there are still some bumps in the road'. said the Chief Attending Physician responsible for Benchley's discharge.  'Our release protocol is by no means perfect', but when Benchley went berserk in Minneapolis, questions about the protocol were asked and the supervising medical officer was summarily terminated. 

'We care very much for our patients', wrote the Chief of Staff, 'and while they are at St. Elizabeth's, we do everything we can to either cure them or make their lives comfortable.  We release patients only when they have demonstrated a viable, objectively verifiable socialization, and even then we follow up with regular visitations and supervision.  On behalf of the hospital, the city council, and the faculty here, I regret the unfortunate behavior of a patient who seemed on the road to recovery.'

The Biden Administration had encouraged legislation to open the doors of state mental institutions throughout the country.  In a State of the Union address, Biden made his intentions quite clear:

The mentally ill are no different than anyone else in our diverse land; but they have faced discrimination, oppression, and bigotry no less that our black brothers and like them have been hunted down, tethered and harnessed, thrown into the back of anonymous vans, and locked in maximum security facilities.  Just as we intend to release the many black men unfairly and unjustly arrested and convicted, so will we release into society the men and women of differing mental capacity who have suffered for far too long. 

And with that, the doors to the hundreds of state hospitals for the insane were opened, and their inmates released.  

Of course there was no way that this would turn out well.  St. Elizabeth's alone was filled with the craziest, most demented, most schizophrenically violent people anyone could imagine.  Images of Bedlam, the mental institution founded in England in 1247 - a truly unholy and inhuman place - only suggested what went on in American institutions.  

Conditions had improved - medication had taken the place of chains, bolts, and irons; and patients were housed in heated quarters not the rat-infested dungeons of times past - but still, these were institutions from which no one should ever be released. 

 

Another excerpt from Benchley's diary:

God appeared again to me today, this time in golden robes, a halo of mystical beauty, and a loving smile on his face, a welcoming one, an embracing one; but suddenly his expression changed and he looked at me harshly and with reprimand in his voice.  'Why have you forsaken me' He thundered, and then disappeared, leaving me to parse his meaning, search my soul for the dereliction he saw.  I fell on my knees and looked up at the sky, hoping that He would reappear and make my way clear. 

Ronald Benchley wandered the city that day, disconsolate, depressed, and humbled.  Why was he here? What was his duty? He had been released from St. Elizabeth's for a reason, but what was it?

On the corner of 19th and K Streets there was a gathering in front of an official-looking building.  Everyone was holding signs and placards, pushing forward against the barricades and the police line that had been formed.  'Fuck Trump', he heard. 'Fuck ICE.  Fuck everyone'.  

Many of the people in the crowd looked familiar - the man on the front line spitting and pissing on the police could have been Manny Oberdorfer, a fellow patient at St. Elizabeth's.  Manny in his day did much the same, shitting on the shoes of the male nurses, puking on puzzles, and waving his dick around like a wand. 

And there was Billy Joe Crosby, as naked as a coot, painted like an Indian, whooping and hollering, and screaming like a banshee.  It wasn't Billy Joe, Ronald quickly realized, but someone just like him.  The whole crowd had a strange, unexpected familiarity.  Taken as a whole it was no different than the gatherings in C Ward at the hospital before medication, everyone shouting obscenities, spitting, showing their private parts, and jumping up and down. 

Joining the group was inevitable.  He, for the first time since his release, felt at home, comfortable, among friends.  He joined in whooping and hollering just like anyone else, quickly picking up the phrases and epithets directed at the police.  As the crowd became more unruly, more angry, and more determined, the police pushed forward and moved it backward.  

Again, Ronald was reminded of the time that Billy Joe led all of C Ward in a kind of St. Vitus's dance - a wild jamboree, an enthusiastic release of pent-up free spirits.  It took twenty-five nurses, attendants, and hospital security staff to corral everyone and put them back in their cells. 

 

'Who are you?', said one demonstrator to Ronald after the crowd had dispersed, a man who wore an eye patch like a pirate, but whose other eye burned with some stellar light. 'They took fifty away today', the man said, 'down the rat hole, never to be seen again, tortured victims of Donald Trump; but we showed them!'

Ronnie had no idea what the man meant but thought he had found a friend.  There was something akin to any one of a hundred inmates at St. Elizabeth's in the man - perhaps some Jungian world soul, or at least an intimate, unspoken bond of 'otherness'. 

'Nutcases, wackos, loonies', Ronnie and his new friend heard yelled at them from the sidewalk, again a flash of familiarity.  He had heard those words before, a thousand times over.  That was what ignoramuses called people like him, otherly ordered, diverse, different, sometimes unable to control their emotions and therefore had to be treated at St. Elizabeth's, but human beings. 

If one deconstructed those noxious words, yes, they applied.  He and his fellow patients were indeed as crazy as loons, as cracked, and weird as any bunch of men with screws loose could be; but so were the protestors in front of the federal building. 

Arnold Briggs, Professor Emeritus at Emory University Medical School and former Dean, was an expert in socially psychopathic behavior, and had written extensively about the remarkable similarity between patients in the psychiatric ward of his hospital and the state mental institutions he had visited and the political protestors on the streets of American cities. 

There is something, to use a carpenter’s expression, 'unhinged' about  both the mental patient and the true believer, a man or woman who is infused with a divine mission to do good, to rectify all former evils, to right the ship, and sail to Utopia. No logic, no sense of polity, rectitude, or generosity can temper the exaggerated passions of the true believer, the advocate, the reformer.

And so it is with the schizophrenic who has lost all touch with reality and for whom there is nothing but odd voices speaking to him, phantoms in the night, walking corpses, half-human bodies dangling from the ceiling. 

'Come with me to Minneapolis', Ronald Benchley's new friend said to him. 'There we will do some real damage'; and so the two boarded a Greyhound bus north. 

Professor Briggs was uncanny in his analysis, so much so that the Antifa protestor and new friend of Ronnie Benchley had no idea whatsoever that he was as nutty as a fruitcake and far beyond the reaches of any normal interaction.  Every wild, inchoate outburst by Ronnie was taken by his friend as nothing less than pure hatred for the system that oppressed the poor, the ethnically diverse, and the racially different.  The more than Ronnie fulminated and thrust his hands skyward like an Old Testament prophet, the more his friend was convinced that he had found a soulmate. 

The trip was a homecoming for Ronnie.  He had thought that leaving St. Elizabeth's would be the end of community, camaraderie, and intimacy; that he would wander alone on the streets, joining the derelict bums on the streets of San Francisco, unhoused, alone, kicked aside by society, released from their proper homes, St. Elizabeth's and its sisters; but no, he had found a warm, congenial, friendly place. 

He howled and spat at ICE like his friend and the hundreds of like-minded comrades on the streets of Minneapolis.  He was never happier, and every night when God appeared to him without censure or reprimand, with that beatific smile he had come to love, he shouted 'Hallelujah', righted his display of upside down statues - Jesus, St. Joseph, and St. Jerome - turned toward Hell because of his own sins, but now upright again in the light of the Lord. 

A further entry in Ronnie's diary:

I am redeemed, saved by the intercession of God Almighty, a crusader in his army, a keeper of the flame of righteousness.  Slay me, O devilish swarm of Satan, kill me as a martyr in His cause.  Let me die like all the saints before me, killed in the service of the Lord

And with that, and a swift, mighty sweep of his sword at the neck of God's sworn enemy, he was cuffed, hauled away, and kept in a holding cell until, happily (God works in mysterious ways) he was sent back to St. Elizabeth's where he had fabulous stories to tell.  

'Bedlam' - A Social Psychologist's Commentary On Minneapolis, ICE, Antifa, And 'Collective Hysteria'

Robert Anson Wright is Professor Emeritus at a prestigious eastern university, Associate Dean (Emeritus) of the medical school, former Editor-in-Chief of Forensic Psychology, a leading academic journal, and hired by the Randall Corporation, a major Washington think tank, as an analyst of the recent events in Minnesota - the violent anti-ICE protests and their aftermath. 

Wright had long been an observer of modern progressivism, its 'feral' and viral nature, and its Orwellian inspiration. In an article written in 2021 in The Eastern Economist he voiced his concern about the perfect storm of progressive politics - utopian idealism, true belief, and a culture of righteousness combined to create ‘a dangerous mentality that threatened 'the integrity of logic’.

The article made the Randall Corporation, considering a major study on radical progressivism, think twice about hiring Wright. It might be perceived as biased, but after consultation with its professional membership, known for its comprehensive approach to social issues which looked through the lens of the social and behavioral sciences as well as through the more traditional economic, financial, and political ones, it agreed that Wright was the right choice. 

The Corporation was more concerned over a telling and potentially incendiary article written in 2022 in The Journal Of Political Economics in which Wright said: ‘The American Left is navigating dangerous waters.  Its  revisionism, historical idealism, and profound hatred of 'the idolatry of individualism is an example of political overreach and an attack on heartland patriotism.  True belief, as Eric Hoffer noted, is “the corruption of the simple mind”’.

But the Committee Chairman, himself also a social psychologist, found no bias in Wright's writing, only a reasonable contribution to his basic assumption - the political Left had veered away from the temperate, albeit passionate liberal philosophy of LaFollette, Gompers, and Brandeis, and rode into uncharted territory, one which had more to do with collective groupthink than rational political opposition. 

'What's going on in Minneapolis?', the Chairman asked doing Wright's final interview.  'Take a good look and don't be shy.  This is not political protest, it is bedlam'. 

An appropriate description, thought Wright, for it really did seem like the demonstrations had gone beyond sanity - closeup photographs of the frontline of protestors, their faces contorted, maniacally twisted, their mouths gaping, choking with rage, a very picture of the inner, most secure wards at St. Elizabeth's, one of the nation's last 'centers of internment for good mental health', in truth a replica of England's Bedlam, a howling, wild, bestial place for the incurably insane. 

This is what he was after - the demented psychology of the protestors, not their political motivation, handlers, or intent.  There was something that had snapped in the body politic, turned protest into inchoate rage.  Even in the days of the Vietnam War when student protests rocked the nation, there was a collective purpose, a clear political intent, and a communal desire to right a bad wrong. 

 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?' was the era's meme, a sense of moral rectitude expressed by millions. 

The anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis had none of this central, moral core.  It was clearly mass hysteria, not a term to be used lightly, but one described in the academic press.  This excerpt is from the pages of the June 1994 edition of The American Journal of Behavioral Psychology:

The phenomenon of group hysteria is not new.  Cases from the 18th century of hundreds of school children coming down with the same imaginary illness are well documented.  It took only one child mildly ill but within overall concerns about an epidemic in another county, to encourage this universal sickness. 

Such group hysteria can be seen social behavior as well.  The case of Ronald Evans, slated for the guillotine at Old Bailey is illustrative.  Evans, a petty criminal in the wrong place and the wrong time was imprisoned, and because of the prison's macabre history, it was assumed by family and friends that he was to be executed.The very idea of bloody decapitation, the hooded executioner, the sharp blade of the guillotine, and the instantaneous loss of life was abhorrent in and of itself, so it took only the presumption of state murder to send crowds into a hysterical fervor. 

Evans was released after a week, smiling and dopey looking but in one piece - a case of mistaken identity - but the crowds only assumed that their protests had worked, and without further notice, disbanded. 

Wright began his research under traditionally controlled procedures.  His random sample, his methodology, his approach were all according to Hoyle, irreproachable and honest.  What most surprised him was not the hysterical anger of his respondents, but the naive presumptions of right and wrong.  

This was no Sixties protest on the National Mall where the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, the burning of villages, the routine savagery of American troops unhinged from moral protocol by the threat of an unseen enemy, were fact, and compelling reasons to stop the war. 

No, the Minneapolis protests were founded on one thing and one thing only - a spiteful hatred borne of nothing more than irrevocably naive assumptions.  It mattered not why the federal agents had been deployed in Minneapolis, only that they had been sent by Donald Trump, a man the protestors believed was an autocratic, racist, interloper out to destroy America, cleanse it of black and brown people, make it his own empire of greed, arrogance, and power. 

Given this assumption, there was no reason to assess the cause and effect of letting millions of undocumented migrants into the United States without vetting, proper procedure, or caution; or whether rampant crime was due to the endemic dysfunctionality of the black community, idealistic indifference of local politicians who ran on platforms of inclusivity and diversity, or cultures of entitlement. 

The protestors in the Sixties had purpose - to pass a Civil Rights Bill to end segregation and discrimination; and to stop the War in Vietnam.  Those in Minneapolis have none, only classically hysterical belief.  Professor Wright wrote:

Many in today's fractured America reject the term 'hysteria', not only because it unfairly casts doubt on what is a legitimate political movement, but because of the origin of the word derived from the Greek hystera "womb," from PIE *udtero-, variant of *udero- "abdomen, womb, stomach".  Originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus.

While there may be some ironic truth to these politically motivated claims - many if not most of the Minneapolis protestors are fevered hysterical women - one should stick with the modern adaptation of the term - unhinged collective antisocial behavior. 

 

Of course when excerpts of Professor Wright's research were leaked to the press, the outcry was...hysterical.  In a typical comment on The Daily Kos Facebook page, one angry reader said:

To be expected from a privileged, white male, writing from his ivory tower, protected in his bastions of racial security, a prick in the guise of a journalist, a vapid, irrelevant racist, a moron, a man who lives on lies, fabrications, and innuendo.  A disgrace, a cunt, a bottom-feeding muthafucka...

The Randall Corporation was noncommittal, recondite at least until the firestorm died down.  Wright turned his research into a series of lectures at The Cato Institute on 'Orwellian Groupthink Or Simply Insanity - The Hysterical Nature of Protest' in which he was finally able to loosen his academic ties and be far more expressive than he could within a university setting. 

 

'The inmates have left the asylum', he began one bright Thursday morning, finished to a round of sustained applause and an invitation to return. 

How Identity Bottoms Out In The Kitchen - Miserable Cooks Think They Are Five-Star Chefs, A Political Metaphor

Maria Salvatore Jenkins was the grand daughter of Italian immigrants who had settled in New Haven early in the last century.  At the time Wooster Square was the bustling center of the growing Italian American community in the city, one of the largest in Connecticut and rivalling New York and New Jersey for size and influence. 

 

Most of the immigrants came from Sorrento and Amalfi, and the subculture of that region was noticeable in the cuisine, the language, attitude, and dress.  Except for the cold winters, a walk through Wooster Square could easily have been confused with one in the old country. 

Maria had been one of the last to move out of the Square.  She held fiercely to her roots, and despite the high taxes, indifferent municipal services, and few original shops and cafes, she stayed on in the same apartment building her grandparents had lived in until their deaths.  Giuseppe worked in the lock factory as a laborer, and Anastasia took in laundry, had five children all of whom survived.  Both did their best to raise and educate all of them.  They were most proud of Roberto who became a priest, but they had room in their hearts for all their other children as well.

Maria, the daughter of Eddie, Giuseppe and Annie's son, and Samantha, his wife became a nurse at Yale New Haven hospital, married a medical assistant, and had two children of her own. 

Italian cuisine is considered by some as the best in the world.  Its use of fresh ingredients combined in perfect complementarity, seasoned with panache, and served with delight has made it delectably desirable for many throughout Europe and the Americas.

As might be expected, the cuisine lost some of its complexity and originality when it moved across the Atlantic to America.  The new immigrants were poor and the markets less abundant than in Italy, and so they had to do with less to serve more longer.  As a result, Italian American cooking became a garlicky, thick tomato sauce-based cuisine complemented by fried cutlets, bready meatballs, and bean dishes like pasta fazool.  Laborers from the New Haven factories came home to a a simple but ample spaghetti dinner, sometimes with meatballs, less often with pork or sausage. 

Much later and thanks to a newfound desire for foreign adventure and with the financial resources to do so, Americans discovered that Italian cuisine was more than spaghetti and meatballs.  When they ventured to the north of Italy and tasted another cuisine altogether - still Italian in inspiration, respect for ingredients, preparation, and display but with more Austrian and Tyrolian influences - they were surprised and vowed to try it at home.  

 

Eating in Southern Italy was even more of a revelation. While they recognized something of their own home cooking, they were surprised at the variety, the pairings, and the remarkably authentic tastes of seafood.  Somehow the real Sorrentini were able to feature the taste of fresh fish, clams, mussels, squid, and octopus and not smother it in an overpowering sauce. 

Easier said than done, and when Maria returned to New Haven, full of enthusiasm and energy to reproduce the remarkable meals she had eaten in Italy, and to try out her new culinary knowledge, she ended up with inedible sauces, faulty fish, and tasteless meat.  To compensate she reverted to her old ways, and added more olive oil and garlic and turned the initially classically simple Italian dishes into little more than the heavy duty 'gravy' and ziti of her childhood. 

Nevertheless, she was proud of herself for having been one of the few Wooster Square residents who had ventured out of New Haven, let alone to the Old Country.  She cooked up a storm, plated it, and photographed it for a social media site dedicated to the Italian American experience.  She thought she was really something, and every comment congratulating her on her ingenuity, taste, and presentation boosted her pride and enthusiasm. 

Yet a photo archive of her creations showed nothing but a lack of inspiration, a thrown-together mess of cheap bits from Costco and Walmart, subprime cuts, of meat, frozen fish, and frost-covered calamari.  One dish after another, each less appetizing and appealing than the one before, made the rounds.  Few members of the group wished to be honest about Maria's cooking - such harshness in a familial group like this one was simply not done - and the truth of the matter was that most of those looking in on Maria's kitchen produced no better.  Post after post displayed the most unattractive refrigerator-emptying potpourri. 

'I should write a cookbook', said Maria, 'online of course, and I will start next week'; but she found that she had little to write about.  All the fine touches of the cuisine of the Italian homeland had been lost in her pasty sauces and overdone meat, so she had nothing of panache or dramatic creativity to share. 

Yet, she persisted.  'I am a good cook', she said. 'Perhaps not yet a chef, but talented nevertheless' and with that new identity she persisted in her efforts.

Like anything else there can be artistry in cuisine, but without a master's touch dishes quickly become pedestrian, so despite the fact that Maria considered herself a chef-worthy cook she was nothing of the kind. 

Maria of course was not alone.  There are many American couples who spend hours in their newly redesigned kitchens, tending to six-burner Viking stoves, walk-in refrigerators, food islands, endless marble countertops under track lighting; and spend thousands on the most exotic ingredients available at specialty shops and online caterers.  

Some succeed in approximating the New American Cuisine of Alice Waters or Wolfgang Puck, California light, Asian fusion, farm-to-table freshness; but most, like Maria, found themselves tired and overmatched and resorted to their old home ways of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas.

Yet they never give up trying, for after all, they had felt comfortable in their new identity of cook.  The ballet of the kitchen, he and she a charming duet of mixing, chopping, arranging, and serving was their signature item, and reverting to anything less would be unthinkable.  Identity once established is hard to remove or replace.  As bad as these 'cooks' might be, they still wore their $200 aprons, cut and sliced with the finest Dehillerin Parisian knives, used only traditional Oaxaca fired ceramic bowls, and served the best Puligny-Montrachet in Baccarat crystal. 

None of this improved the food; but for the credulous invitees, all foodies themselves, the sound and light show covered for the quality of the meal and all were delighted with the experience. 

Identity is a perilous thing, and we live in an age where it is everything.  You are a political persona, an assumed character, an actor on the stage, a gay fetish on a Mardi Gras float, a revolutionary, an advocate, a reformer. Who you really are, what you were like as a child, created whole but with unexplored sectors of intelligence, beauty, creativity, and insight, is overlooked.  Assumed identity is all you have, as tarted up, postured, and posed as it might be. 

In a world of eight billion people we all need something of distinction, otherwise we will go to our graves unknown, unrecognized ciphers.  Everybody has some measure of intelligence, humor, principle, and emotional response, so there is nothing remarkable about that very ordinary confection; but if one has shown some style - shouting at the barricades, bedding a thousand men, or starring in the kitchen then there will be something to say at your funeral. 

Give Maria some slack.  Even in the kitchen there is room for identity, meaning, and self-esteem so lighten up on the snarky remarks about her creations.  It's more than the food after all, so give her that. 

Death In Minneapolis - Packing Heat Is Not Picking Daisies, The Intentional Murderous Violence Of The Left

Another provocateur shot by ICE agents as he was reaching for his gun.  'He's got a gun', shouted the agents, and indeed he had.  The old adage, 'Give a man a hammer, and all he sees is nails' has always been the case whether malignant or benign. 

A surgeon spends decades of his life learning how to cut, so don't expect him to recommend alternative therapy. Builders are rewarded by the square foot, so incentive to build high, wide, and deep is understandable.  Armies are assembled, trained, and armed to fight with the most modern technology, so no one should be surprised when they want to try out their new weapons.  

The incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified as the best means to end the Japanese war; but it was also a thinly disguised message to the real enemy, the Soviet Union.  'Look what we've got'.  

Besides that, the test - the first time that such a weapon was tried out on human beings - was successful.  In one magnificent firestorm, the atomic bomb destroyed a city and killed 100,000 at one go. 'It worked', said Truman. 

Why sit at home with a million soldiers under arms, mouldering away in their barracks when they could be out promoting America's interests? American military adventurism is not new. 

The point is, the nurse who was shot in Minneapolis was carrying a gun not just incidentally, something strapped on after shaving and polishing his shoes in the morning, but deliberately.  He would show those Gestapo SS Storm Troopers a thing or two. If you have bought a gun, then you want to use it. 

Rather than emptying bedpans and caring for the sick and dying, he loaded up his Glock, made sure he had extra ammunition, adjusted it for ready access, and headed out to do some damage. He was not out there to pick daisies.

Martyrdom was on his mind as it was in the case of the woman also in Minneapolis who tried to run over a federal agent.  The cause is holy, the perpetrator is evil, end of story. God will reward the crusaders. 

One liberal critic suggested that America was becoming an Orwellian nightmare thanks to Donald Trump, but he overlooked the real lesson of 1984 and Animal Farm, both cautionary tales about the insidious, destructive mindset of mind control, conformity, group-speak, intimidation, and thought police.  

The regime of 1984 saw the intellectual adolescence of the ruled, their desperation for belonging, and their willing obedience to higher powers, and took over, expanded its reach until there was no opposition, no dissent, only abject conformity. 

Behavioral scientists talk about 'the enabling environment'.  It is not enough for a promotional message, a persuasive advertising campaign, or a catchy ad for purchase to occur.  The price point of the product has to be right, community standards must provide the right environment, individual choice must be consistent with prevalent mores. 

Consumers fall for television ads that promote the newest drugs to battle psoriasis, cancer, obesity, rheumatism, and sleeplessness because: a) the Internet has given them what they consider legitimate influence over doctors' decisions; b) the cult of identity and personal worth provides the legitimacy of self-esteem to challenge received medical wisdom.; and c) mediated electronic information has become so pervasive and persistent that logical inquiry has been weakened. 

This scenario is being replayed on a national political scale.  Those taking to the streets have been enabled by all the above; plus as Orwell understood, by the desperate need to belong.  The rallies on the National Mall against climate change, for the black man, against predatory capitalism, for abortion, against white supremacy, for demilitarization...are less serious efforts to change policy, and more jamborees of brotherhood, camaraderie, and good nature. 

The elision from raising fists in unison against Donald Trump on the Mall to defying federal officials on the streets of America's cities with mayhem in mind and Glocks at the ready is an easy one. One can gain admission to the progressive club by saying the right things and raising the pitch to hateful levels; win merit badges by protests on the Mall; but full membership can be had only by violence - putting your life on the line. 

Sacrifice is nothing, said the leaders of the regime in Orwell's book, unless it is for Big Brother. You should die an honorable death doing the duty of the state.  The progressive movement in the United States, not yet universal and not yet an authoritarian state, has ambition and intentions to do so.  The hardest part - the indoctrination of the young to believe in the progressive cause- has begun with significant success.  There is a feral hatred in the anti-ICE crowds, a desperateness, a pack mentality, an unthinking ferociousness.  

The Left's elites are delighted.  They are not the ones in the streets getting tased, gassed, or shot; they are in their Congressional offices watching with glee as their minions cause havoc.  'Let us pray for the family of the deceased', they say publicly but are privately delighted that a crusader has fallen in the name of justice.  

George Floyd, the career criminal who died while resisting arrest, the progressive hero, the icon of the Left was just the beginning of a sanctimonious outpouring of faux tears.  Progressives were delighted that a black man died at the hands of the police, 'See?', they shouted. 'We told you so'; and are now just as delighted with the deaths in Minneapolis. 

Progressives are working on the enabling environment while letting children do the dirty work, a shameful enterprise, an empty, immoral, divisive behavior couched in the most sanctimonious rhetoric. 

Alexander Hamilton understood this mob gullibility and the venality of politics and how the one can easily manipulate the other.  He argued with Jefferson about the structure and organization of government and insisted that at least some buffer be placed between those who make policy and those who elect them.  

The mob cannot be trusted, Hamilton said, citing history and Shakespeare; and so it was that a Senate was created.  The august framer of the Constitution is turning over in his grave to see the chaos and insensate venal politics of the Upper House. 

 

The progressive mob, the thousands who have bought cant and presumption hook, line, and sinker, are running wild while their Washington backers cheer them on.  'More mayhem', they shout, 'the more the better.  More deaths, more killings, more blood'; but the blood is on their hands. 

Annals Of Underdevelopment - In Africa's 'Miasma Of Misery', The Arabian Nights

Harper Collins was a journalist for a highly-renowned international publication, and had planned to travel to every country in Africa in the hopes of being the chronicler of the last informational frontier, a continent which had been neglected and all but forgotten.  He would write stories of human interest, moving tales of human gumption and courage. He would not, of course, neglect the better known saga of misrule, corruption, civil strife, and economic medievalism; but he would be evenhanded and balanced in his reporting, fair, and objective. 

The Chief Public Affairs Officer for the President of an important central African country, had heard of Collins' interest in visiting. The country and its President had been badly maligned in the press, the result of neo-colonialist sentiments never far from the surface when it came to Africa.  Westerners for whom Africa was still a heart of darkness, a jungle of unimaginable savagery, tribalism, and Paleolithic primitivism would never understand.  

Its leadership was heir to the powerful, shamanistic traditions of the forest, its animism, totemism, and naked intimacy with the environment.  If it seemed 'corrupt, venal, and exploitive' to outsiders, it was nothing of the kind.  President Boubacar M'bele simply was acting on millennia-old native practices, well understood by his constituents, and embraced as their own. 

M'bele was proud of his rise to the top, thankful to his family, his clan, and his tribe for enabling his immeasurable talents, encouraging his ambition, and promoting a generous, capable son of the jungle; and repaid them in kind.  Every one of his extended family shared in M'bele's wealth, and his clan and tribe prospered. 

As the early African explorers Mungo Park and Rene du Chaillu quickly found, deepest darkest Africa was just as the legends had it - a primitive, savage, cannibalistic society which slaughtered and dismembered its enemies, raped and enslaved women, and bartered or sold young, healthy captives.  Park was kept alive only because of his white skin - an unusual, valuable commodity, a prized trophy worth thousands. 

M'bele was proud of this tradition and felt no shame in embodying its ethos.  He, too, would be the forest warrior of his tribe, only this time he would be sitting on a throne of gold.  So when his Public Affairs Officer told him of the journalist's intention to visit, he said he would graciously accept his offer. 

Now, as evenhanded as Collins considered himself to be, he was not without the prejudice of the European.  Africa had been a vile, primitive place before colonialization, during it, and for the long years since independence.  It was a hopeless sinkhole, a 'miasma of misery' as it had been described by one unkind but honest reporter.  On every point of the compass, the continent was an unholy pit of terror, intimidation, and misrule.

'I refuse to succumb to this white, privileged, obscene cant', he said before his departure. Pride in his trade and in his own moral rectitude would keep his eyes focused and him mind opened. 

Yet and still he was unprepared for trip in from the airport to the capital and M'bele's Presidential Palace.  There were stinking, rotting, garbage heaps piled alongside the rutted, narrow road. Naked children played in the stink of ordure, mud, and feces. 

'Hold your horses', he said. 'Be calm.  This surely cannot continue'; but it did for miles and only slackened as he approached the city limits - the density of the slum slackened, lightened, and thinned, but spread out within the city limits. Rancid-smelling goats, hideously deformed beggars, dead bodies, and addled prostitutes were the city's calling cards. 

Again Collins reminded himself that he was a journalist, here to report not to judge; but he found this reserve harder and harder to maintain as the nastiness, the abominable, miserable blight continued. 

Finally and at long last the car turned into a private way, up a long, well-tended, palm-lined road.  On both sides were luxuriant, green rice fields.  They passed a few small, prosperous settlements, pleasant groves, oases of well-being.  Well-dressed men and women were sitting together drinking, playing cards, and laughing. Music played, a light breeze ruffled the awnings above the verandahs of the cafes. 

The palace itself was a grand structure, a mix of style and design- Mediterranean, Victorian, Greek Revival, and Midwest modern.  There was no cohesion, complementarity, or fusion - it was all just cobble of Ferrara marble, Islamic minarets, and Egyptian porphyry.  The building was set amidst a vast Versailles-inspired formal garden complete with fountains, sculptures, and mazes.

As the car drove up to the entrance of the palace, a troop of caparisoned regimental guards saluted, and he was met with a garland, a kiss by a lovely, light-skinned African woman, and a handshake from he President himself. 

In an instant, the miasma of misery was forgotten. 

'You must be tired after your long journey'. said the President.  'Let my aides show you to your rooms', and with that his luggage disappeared and after winding through ornate passageways, dark, fragrant-smelling alcoves, and high-ceilinged hallways, he arrived at his suite.  It was a fantasy out of A Thousand and One Nights, a perfumed, flower-filled, spacious room with a verandah overlooking the rice fields and the mountains behind.  On the table was placed an assortment of tropical fruits, a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet, and a silver bell to call the servants waiting outside the door. 

'And this is Fatima', said the Chief Presidential Aide, 'She will provide you with any service you might require'. 

Fatima was a Fulani, a Hamitic, Euro-Asian ethnicity which had originated in Alexandria and made its way across the continent on the rich trade routes from the East.  She was beautiful, her perfect Caucasian features wet in a burnished copper-toned skin.  Her eyes were dark, almond-shaped, and luminescent.  She was dressed in a white, flowing gown that was at the same time elegant and sensuous.  

'A scam', Collins thought.  'A transparent attempt to influence, a shameless, familiar trick', but he couldn't take his eyes off the marvelous Fatima who was turning down his bed, smiling, and trailing the most engaging, floral scent, quietly left the room.  'If there's anything you need', she said, 'do not hesitate to ring'. 

The meeting with the President the next day was as congenial, accommodating, and pleasant as that with the lovely Fatima.  M'bele was gracious, open to questioning and generous with his time.  He was anxious, he said, to open wide the doors to Africa, and was grateful and honored that Collins had chosen his country to begin his journey of exploration. 

He cited statistics, produced geological maps, described the many development projects underway to assuage the unfortunately persistent poverty in those few regions in the south, and showed the journalist an album of scenes from the new dam, power plant, and mining operation which would add significantly to GDP in the coming years. 

'But you want to see with your own eyes, Mr. Collins, and I have arranged a visit for you'. 

This was not the first time that foreign journalists or dignitaries had visited the Palace, and he President knew how to 'show them around'.  He had spared no expense to build otherwise unused roadways, all going through agricultural or vernal forest land, to selected 'construction' sites.  M'bele put Louis B Mayer to shame with his soundstages and Hollywood assemblages.  Everything had been beautifully staged, produced, and choregraphed.  Collins was impressed, duped, and fooled like a backwoods rube. 

He was taken to faux markets, filled with tropical fruits and vegetables, imported cloth, toys, and hardware; faux schools with children in clean, pressed uniforms, polished floors, flower vases, and neatly arranged books in French and English; faux community centers, childcare services, and homes for the elderly.  

The rewards of this bald chicanery were clear - millions in 'development' funds from the US and the EU were channeled to the country; and journal articles praising 'The New Light In Modern Africa' appeared in The Economist and The Financial Times. 

After one or two days of these field trips, Collins was content to stay at the palace and review videos prepared especially for him of the various investment opportunities in the country - resorts, golf courses,  five-star hotels, and particularly rewarding mining of rare earths. 

Every night he was visited by the lovely Fatima who spent the night, served him tea and breakfast like a Geisha, and returned for his afternoon siesta.  Life was good. 

Of course life is always good for journalists, foreign dignitaries, and development consultants in these 'dumps with oil', countries of unimaginable poverty and gross mismanagement and corruption.  The hotels are worthy of Paris, London, and Rome.  The restaurants managed by Michelin-starred chefs, and the women as stunning and complaisant as Fatima. 

It was no wonder that, to the surprise of their European and American colleagues, these men were more than anxious to return to Africa which they had reported as needy, and deserving of every dollar that development banks and aid agencies could muster. 

'Ahh, Africa', mused an older consultant who had experienced the same delights as Harper Collins at President M'bele's palace. 'Quite a place.'