Marge From Accounting - How The Sexual Bar For Older Men Is Set Very, Very Low

Harry Bond worked for a mid-level law firm, not the best and certainly not la creme de la creme, but creditable and familiar to those in the business.  None of the partners went to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford  - it was more of a Florida State, Tallahassee crowd; but the firm never lacked for clients given the litigious nature of our era.   

 

Harry was a divorce lawyer, on the smarmy side of the  legal profession -  innuendoes, false claims, sorting out one scurrilous untruth from another, wallowing in the shit of miserable, hateful marriages and having to keep one's composure - but it more than paid the rent, assured better than a duplex in the suburbs and a place at good, if not top-tier college for children. 

If the truth be known, Harry's marriage was nothing to boast about except for its longevity.  Harry and Louise had been married for donkey's years, and were settled into the usual, predictable, not unpleasant but certainly humdrum routines which characterize those of most couples.  

Over the years they had moved from infrequent sex to desultory, to almost never, to sexual barrenness. For Harry's wife it was a removal of an incommodious duty - she had never been one for sexual enthusiasm and after the children were born claimed 'uncomfortability', and so transitioned to her new sexual abstinence without disappointment or remorse. 

Harry on the other hand was as sexually desirous as he ever had been - more actually, for politics and social activism had eaten most of his free time in college, and slogging billable hours until partnership had taken its toll - and a pretty girl turned his head every time.  

There was that new girl in the gym, a sylphic Japanese beauty, right out of an Edo woodcut, so elegant, so classic, so sloe-eyed and magnificent!  Or the newcomers to Washington - blonde, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired young women from Iowa and Kansas for the presidential term, delectable morsels, sweet, innocent things, as desirable as Christmas candy or lemon drops. 

Konstantin Levin, a principal character in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina lamented God's irony of having created man, an intelligent, sentient, creative, person of humor and charm, given him but a few decades on earth, and then consigned him to an eternity beneath the cold, hard ground of the steppes. 

Harry felt a worse irony - that God had created men with a lifelong, desperate interest in women, but with a very early sexual pull-by date. Most men were either unaware of the irony or ignored it, and doddered into old age with the same prune-faced hag they had married decades before and with only faint silhouette memories of sexual pleasure. 

'I must act and act now', Harry said to himself one morning after a particularly rancid-smelling night - the king-sized bed had become nowhere near wide enough for reasonable distance; but he was soon to find that intimacy with a stranger was not as easy as it was in the old days, the days of love-the-one-you're-with, the singles bar pickup days of the East Village.  At his age he was not even  given a second glance. 

Yet, he was not old, not irrelevant, and certainly not past his pull-by date.  If only there were opportunity and good measure, he might be once again in his sexually emotional prime. 

The chance came with Marge from Accounting, a young woman with a father-fixation, an oddly receded hairline, a tendency to run to fat, but with a blonde vivacity which she adopted and husbanded from Cosmo, Elle, and Vogue. 

It was this father fixation that was the trigger.  Now, Mr. Pappas was no great shakes, no entrepreneur, scion of industry, man of arts and letters, but a simple typesetter turned computer programmer.  His influence on Marge was of the simplest, most basic variety - he loved and doted on his daughter, so much so that she thought he was the lover of her dreams.  Old, nose-hairy, clotted and insignificant Artur Pappas would be her male model forever. 

And so it was that when Harry, desperate for female attention, and impatient for the sexual satisfaction that would come with successful mating, met Marge, equally on pins and needles waiting for Mr. Right, the relationship was destined for fruition, 

Martinis and oysters at the Mayflower, two Quaaludes in the taxi, a delirious night in a second story walkup in Adams Morgan, and the deal was sealed.  They were a couple - an illicit, unusually paired one, but necessary.  If either one ever bothered to think beyond the bedroom, the Piper Heidsieck and the take out, they would have known that this was an affair of unfortunate necessity and not romance. 

They grasped and clawed each other, both thanking God, both as delighted as schoolchildren with a new toy, a new teacher, or pizza for lunch.  The affair lasted for months, each lover more involved and obsessed with each other every week. The inevitability of its finale - he going back to his yellowing wife and Marge to a life of celibacy, dildoes and increasingly unsustainable fantasy - was ignored at all cost; and their weekend trysts were all the more intense and gratifying. 

December-May marriages have been limned for centuries - the rejuvenating, transforming, existential love of an older man for a younger woman is the stuff of dreams, legend, and psychology 

In fact Harry's physician when discussing the affair and its ultimate end asked him whether he was ready. 

'For what?', said the besotted, live-forever patient.  'Coming down from such a love affair is worse than heroin', said the doctor. 

The literature was filled with accounts of suicidal depression.  The end of the affair for older men signifies finality; and worse, the end of the reliving of the glories of the past. The older man is easily seduced into thinking that this idyll will last forever, that he has indeed found the Fountain of Youth. 

'It's almost worse than if you never had it', said the doctor'. The combined pain of the burial of youth, the finality of one's last love, and the irreducible return to a dour, unpleasant reality is too much for many men.  'Be careful what you wish for'. 

Duplicity, infidelity, and faithlessness are easily forgiven by women in one's elder years - too many sunken costs, too much history, too much too lose to make a fuss about men behaving badly - but there will always be a price to pay.  Infidelity always comes with strings. 

In the waning months of the affair with Marge from Accounting, Harry wondered if he could trade up. Now that a line had been crossed and he was on his own, why not Bettina from the Front Office, a Paraguayan beauty? Or Usha, Palestinian queen of the Seventh Floor?

But the variables of The Perfect Storm which had come together so felicitously with Marge, were not guaranteed to be universally operative, and after his first sallies in these women's directions, he had to face facts.  

So, the affair with Marge from Accounting ended, Harry once again became a considerate if not dutiful husband, and he looked forward to his remaining years with grim fortitude. 

The Coleman Silk character in Phillip Roth's The Human Stain', an older man in an affair with a much younger woman, far out of his social class, says to a critic, 'Granted, she's not my first love, and granted she's not my best love; but she is certainly my last love. Doesn't that count for something?'

Of course it does. The Coleman Silk character is murdered because of his affair, but Harry only soldiers on in a soggy, barely palatable but necessary marriage.  Ah, the ways of the heart. 

The Feral Catfight In Washington - Power Doesn't Corrupt Absolutely, It Just Makes Women Ugly

'Toss the whole lot of them'. said one voter after watching clips of the President's State of the Union address and the feral antics of Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar, two hysterical women trying to shout the President down, howling, unhinged animals baying at the man at the podium. 

These women were not the only ones in the voter's sights. The memory of Kamala Harris. former Democrat candidate for President, who went on rabid rampage to try to discredit Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh, or the howling banshees Jasmine Crockett, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, and Premila Jayapal, all of whom flap around squawking like chickens in a henhouse. demanding absolute attention.  These women are insufferable bullies, bellowing, deformed, gaping caricatures of political irresponsibility. 

 

The Congressional hearings where members of the Trump Administration are obligated to sit before Congressional panels to answer questions about their performance in office.  The Democrat members of these committees take these opportunities to do everything to disparage, humiliate, bully, and dismember those sitting before them.  All sense of civility, respect, or reasonable inquiry is left at the door, as these wolverines attack. 

For the first time in recent memory, administration officials have fought back, refusing to sit quietly, smile, and toady up to their interrogators. Each one - Bondi, Patel, Hesgeth, Bessent, Homan, and Gabbard have returned fire, incensing those on the dais used to deference, polite accommodation, and complaisance. 

It is easy to get elected from a district where voters don't know any better. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got elected because she was the rice-and-beans candidate, a Puerto Rican woman who promised Park Avenue living to constituents who lived in South Bronx projects, a jamboree of white hatred, trash-and-burn promises, island jive, and some hot chick sexual allure thrown in.  'Una chica con salsa' was all the barrio needed to know to elect a woman whom Sen. John Kennedy (LA) says is the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle.  

Now, every American knows that the farther down the electoral chain you go, the worse it gets.  Municipal politics are a joke - walkin' around money, nepotism, fraud, incompetence, and venality.  State legislatures are one step removed from the bottom of the barrel but their transparently arrogant misuse of power and money-driven excesses are legion.  Congress is not far away.  It doesn't take much to pander, promise, and speak in happy nostrums to get elected and stay elected. 

The path to visibility and public responsibility has been a long one for women. Not so long ago in the post-war years of the Fifties, women were still homemakers, mothers, hostesses, and volunteers; and only in the Sixties when American society went through a civil revolution and women's rights were championed and abilities recognized, were women finally given their due. 

But transformation is not an easy, smooth process. At first women thought that to succeed in a man's world, they had to behave like men but even more so. Therefore in the early years of accession, men were targets of an overdue vendetta, an emasculating, man-eating juggernaut of women in the boardroom. 

As time went on, women realized that they could be in touch with their feminine side and be the office versions of the kind mother - acting with discipline, love, and understanding - but the business world no matter in what era it operates has no patience for commiserating dalliance.  Women found a balance, their own niche and gender neutral but gender aware management. 

Except in legislative, electoral politics where the arrogation of bullying authority is de rigeur, the accepted way, the only way to show your party's colors at seminal moments.  There is plenty of pushing and shoving done in the corridors of power, but there is nothing like the Congressional hearing to strut your stuff, to show the country at large what you are made of, the stuff of leadership and command. 

The perfect storm of arrogant, uniformed, base leadership as epitomized by AOC, Omar, Tlaib, Crockett, and others is caused by three factors - first you come from a safe district and one that doesn't know shit from Shinola, one in which if you are as predictable as the sunrise in your racial and ethnic promises, you will get elected.  Second, politics does not demand intelligence nor never has.  It has always been an affair of posturing, promise, and a silver tongue.  No one expects rocket science from a Congresswoman. 

 

Third if you happen to be a woman of color, you are a protected species.  Any criticism can be taken as racist and uncalled for.  Last but not least there are some women who have never made the elision from homemaker to social prominence, and they are stuck in that first phase of nasty, misandrous, vengeful ignorance. 

So the burlesque side show of The Squad (progressive Congressional women of color) and The View, a cabal of women deliberately honed to maximum cunt bitchiness, are not surprising.  These women both in the halls of Congress and on their airwaves are examples of what the Sixties, years of progressivism, and gender-racial-ethnic entitlement have produced. 

So when the two poster-girls of the progressive movement, Omar and Tlaib - were shown on screen at the State of the Union speech, Tlaib with froglike maw open so wide you could see down her gullet, the blush was off the bloom of the rose.  They had been outed as idiots. 

Oh, yes, well there are plenty of men behaving badly Schiff and Blumenthal are two of the most unhinged, entitled, Washington politicos around; but there seems to be nothing unleashed on the public like these completely untethered banshees. 

Kamala Harris was bad enough, all garbled and incoherent, banging on about being a woman of color and that her time had come but since nothing else was in that pretty little head of hers, most voters thought she was a joke and roundly defeated her. 

But now?  This stable of uppity, crowing, insurmountably charmless women is simply too much, over the top even for a political party which has run on vituperative hate for a decade and which has shown no signs of temperance. 

Every dog has his day, and these women will soon fade from public view.  They have already become caricatures, pilloried on social media, lambasted in the serious press for their wild, ranting, bull riding. They might still have hopes for higher office, but even the tone deaf, stone-stupid voter has begun to see through their circus charade. 

Trump has brought to the White House attractive women who stand their ground - far cry from the ugly, hysterical women who attack them - and the country can see the best despite the worst.  After their showing at the State of the Union, the days of Omar and Tlaib are surely numbered, and the country will give a big collective sigh of relief. 

'Wherever People Are Rich Together' - The Great Gatsby, Jeffrey Epstein, And The American Dream

They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.

This was what Nick Carroway, narrator and central character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby said about Daisy and Tom Buchanan. 

The Buchanans were the idle rich - homes on Long Island, unimaginable wealth, and the status and privilege that it provides.  Yet, 'they were careless people, Tom and Daisy'.

They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

 

Nick is fascinated with Daisy - she shines like silver, her smile is bright, 'her voice sounds like money'. At the same time he is repelled by her insincerity and facile composure.  He is attracted to her but repelled by her.  'I am the only honest person I know'. says Nick in the story's introduction, and because of that, despite his recognition of Daisy's unusual beauty, affability, and charm, cannot help criticize her. 

At the end of the novel, his doubts are justified.  Despite her renewed love affair with Gatsby, his selfless act of responsibility (taking the blame for the car accident which killed Mabel Wilson), Daisy and her husband leave for Europe without a sign, call, or gesture of recognition of Gatsby's death.  They are, as Nick said, going off where people are rich together and leaving mess they created to be picked up by others. 

Gatsby is a self-made man, a millionaire, a man without Tom and Daisy's culture and class, but desperate to show off his success.  He, too, is wealthy beyond the reach of most people and more than the equal of people like Tom only whose inherited wealth has given him the stage. 

The source of Gatsby's wealth is only surmised - his association with Meyer Wolfsheim, a gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series suggests bootlegging or something far more sinister.  His parties at his Long Island estate were renowned - they were jamborees of wealth and privilege, insubstantial and capricious, thousands coming without invitation to eat and drink at his expense, and none of them coming to his funeral. 

They were also 'people being rich together' but nothing of the Buchanans' sort, only lowbrow parties for people with highbrow aspirations. Those who attended Gatsby's parties were just as careless about what they left behind as the Buchanan crowd. 

Fitzgerald understands the American fascination with money and its display, either the reserved, aristocratic Chippendale and old silver Buchanans, or the bourgeois excesses of Gatsby.  He is far more critical of the entitled rich - the Buchanans - than the nouveau riche, Gatsby, for America is all about striving for more.  Gatsby doesn't know any better - he has no idea how his world differs from Daisy's and how a marriage between them, despite the simple, innocent romance of previous years is impossible. 

'You're better than the rest of them, all put together', Nick says to Gatsby despite the fact that he has admitted that Gatsby stands for everything he hates.  There is room, even in a gangster, for friendship, admiration, and love. 

Jeffrey Epstein's parties were no different than Gatsby's - they were showy, glitzy, low-brow affairs which attracted the self-made, people like Bill Clinton, born and raised in trailer parks with the same aspirations as Gatsby. Clinton writes in his memoir about how he knew he was destined for greatness and set to work on achieving it at a very young age, chauffeur to Arkansas political royalty.  Every one on Epstein's list were of the same ilk - bourgeois to the core, lovers of wealth, glamour, and all the perks of wealth. 

They were not just Americans - the great Gatsby-esque parties of youthful beauty, abandon, excess, and secure privilege were irresistible.  There was something about being rich together that had an ineluctable allure.

The guests at Epstein's parties were not the rich of Tom and Daisy - old money, New England, Wall Street, industrial turn-of-the-century private incomes- and had no interest in being rich together like them, all leather and fine tailoring, paintings by Gainsborough, furniture by Townsend, the Yale Fence Club, Park Avenue and Southampton. They wanted to be rich together like Gatsby's guests, a 'look what I've got' cavalcade of new money and earned and bought influence. 

Epstein's list is long. It seems like everyone who was anyone visited him on his island.  It wasn't enough to be rich alone.  It was the collective wealth, the universal wealth, and the same heady bourgeois desire to spend and be seen spending.  Whatever happened at Epstein's parties was kosher.  How could such an assemblage of wealthy, ambitious men of influence and power do anything wrong? There was an unspoken but mutually agreed upon ethos - if the likes of Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and others like them were there, ethnics, morals, or proper behavior were never questioned. 

The Epstein parties were not only the rich being rich together, but scenes of opportunity - the crass bottom of the American dream. There were chances for all kinds of intimacy - business deals could be begun or concluded, sexual affairs arranged or consummated, political friendships cemented.  Sub kucch milta hai -  everything is possible - the old Indian aphorism in a society where rules don't always apply, was never more pertinent than in Jeffrey Epstein's jamborees. 

Still, it is amazing that Epstein and Ghislaine were able to attract so many of the world's rich and famous to their island.  These were not quiet little dinners on a terrace in St. Bart's overlooking the Caribbean, nor elegant soirees, nor black tie affairs with cello and orchestra.  These were indeed worthy of The Great Gatsby - grandiose, opulent, caviar affairs where anything goes. 

Epstein understood the dynamics of association like no one else.  He was a genius at event planning, a master of great and grand ceremonies, who stood top hat and tails at the center of a three ring circus.  One man and one man alone - Jeffrey Epstein - stood at the center of this ambitious, hungry crowd, and gave them each what they wanted.

In the highly-charged, often chaotic political atmosphere following revelations of Epstein's party excesses and the serious crimes committed, critics have overlooked the social dynamics of the situation.  These parties were remarkable and unique for their drawing power, their immediate sense of camaraderie, their uncanny tapping into male egos, and a brilliant understanding of how and why people group together. 

Much has been written about individuals, their guilt by association or their direct involvement in Epstein's criminal activities; but little about the parties themselves - the enabling environment for abandonment of common sense let alone morals.  There is a lesson in the parties, an explanation of not why rich people do rich things together but how they can stray so far from center once there. 

A Most Unpleasant Woman Gets Her Way - The Road To Washington Is Littered With Bodies

Betsy Finch was stolid.  While she never really understood the difference between that and 'solid' she preferred what she thought was a more figurative way of describing her will and indissolubility, another term which  she thought described her perfectly. A woman of stature, imperviousness, and integrity. 

This all was all when she was twelve, a precocious pre-teenager given to a fertile imagination and balletic fantasy. 'Grow up', said her father, a druggist who wanted more from his only child than compounding drugs, selling pressure stockings and cough medicine.  It was a good living, but nothing like what he had hoped for.  

He had failed both medical and dental school, enrolled in the state university's pharmacy program, did creditably, passed the state exams, and began work as an assistant in Zackin's Drug Store on Main Street in New Brighton. 

There was competition from larger, more well-established stores to be sure, but he was confident that the personal touch of an independent pharmacy would stand him in good stead.  He was right, and before long he took over from old Mr. Zackin and went on to build the enterprise into one which perennially received Chamber of Commerce honors. 

His daughter was a handful, a package of piss and vinegar that he never expected, given how patiently common were his parents and the woman he married.  No, there was no moss growing on Betsy, a girl of uncommon ambition, pursuit, and intelligence.  She was not particularly beautiful, although creditably so, interesting to a certain kind of boy, and sure to make her way to courtship and marriage with few problems. 

Yet this simple, conventionally prescribed path was not the one she chose; or rather was chosen for her, nature always winning out over nurture, and that stolidity was just kind way of describing her obstinance, a digging in of her heels, a remarkable inertia. Along with it came a certain preposterousness - a hussy at such a young age not only unusual but a marvel - an absolute conviction of rightness that beggared the imagination of parents, teachers, and classmates alike.  

She hectored, badgered, and humiliated her way to elected office, and once in position ruled with an authoritarian misery that belied her young age. As President of her high school Senior Class she was a terror, defying teachers and administrators alike, showing her understanding of the promise and limitations of school government, and challenging them at every turn.  

She was universally unliked, unwanted, but feared.  She had something on everyone, and more intrusive and scurrilous than J. Edgar Hoover ever was, she compiled dossiers of innuendo and suspicion. 'Information is Power', said the old adage still valid after centuries, applicable from the smarmiest cracker marriage to the halls of Congress. 

She never confronted people with the information she had, but insinuated it.  She found that even the innocent suspected that some forgotten or overlooked misdemeanor of peccadillo was in their closet. Keeping people guessing was more potent than having it out with them. 

The judge in a criminal case involving the Mafia in the movie The Untouchables, is told that his name is on the list of those who took bribes from Al Capone.  He was as innocent as any judge could be, but he lived in such a questionably ethical world, that he supposed he had crossed the line somewhere or somehow.  He dismissed the fixed jury and Capone was found guilty as charged. 

Betsy knew that politics was no bed of roses but wanted it no other way.  For someone of her ilk, a nasty woman without a scintilla of propriety, ethics, or even good taste, a primrose path would have been too easy, beneath her dignity and supreme, Machiavellian conscience, and no fun at all. 

It takes quite a bit to lower the ethical, moral bar in official Washington set at the very bottom of the ladder. Duplicity and downright absurd self-importance not only go with the territory, but are part and parcel of the political character.  Politicians not only are doing each other in at every turn, but every waking hour is spent calculating others' demise.  It is not just a cutthroat game - the neat slice of the guillotine - but a foul, filthy one complete with the rack, the bastinado, and vats of boiling oil. 

Progressives insist that such chicanery and downright wretched behavior is necessary in a crusade against evil, for that was what the fight to remove Donald Trump from power had always been about. The ends justify the means said liberal operatives, and went after the man with every possible scurrilous scheme they could concoct.  

Lawfare, unbased accusations, innuendoes, and blatantly absurd attacks were within the purview of the righteous.  Anything goes when it comes to such a pernicious presence in the Oval Office. 

Meanwhile, others less obsessed with Donald Trump went on with their lying, duplicity and bald infidelities as though nothing had happened.  They cheated on their wives, left them on feeding tubes while they took off to Argentina or Chile to be with their Latin lovers, lied about paternity and paid others to take the fall for illegitimacy, cried great torrents of tears in abject false apologies when found out, and returned to office on the promise of turning their lives around. 

Washington was the perfect venue for the up and comer Betsy Finch - a place that couldn't have been more suitable for morally untethered, free-and-easy with the truth, soul. Ivan's Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, says that he exists because without him life would be a thudding, church every day, holy bloody bore.  'I am a vaudevillian', he says, not the dark, demonic evil that Christianity has concocted.  'I play tricks.  I playfully deceive.  We need each other'. 

'There is no fun in rectitude', said the aphorist Ogden Nash in one of his ditties, one of many catty observers of human nature who can only enjoy the folly.  Betsy was delighted in what she found in Washington, a marvelously suspicious, underhanded, greedy lot.  The whole city was a jamboree of excess, an uber-Barnum & Bailey circus, an empty frolic of greedy ambition. 

Everyone in Washington wants to be liked but few are.  Take the howling banshee dyad, Tlaib and Omar, two rabid political wolverines shouting bloody murder and racism across every platform, arrivistes of color - loudmouths, screaming meemies, braying jackasses with no shame. 

'I like them', said Betsy, admiring their circus act at the President's State of the Union address.  It takes considerable self-importance, lack of dignity, and opportunistic trough-feeding to to what they did.  They were the examples of progressive politics, marvels of bottomless ignorance. 

'And I love Washington', Betsy went on to say as she made her way up through the ranks, up and down Independence Avenue, Capitol Hill, and the West Wing to a position of prominence and renown.  All the while chuckling and chortling at the Sarah Bernhardt operatic charade she put on, Queen of the Town, sought after by men and women alike. 

'We are looking for a few good men', said the old Marine Corps recruiting poster, a copy of which had been framed and posted in an office in the Ronald Reagan building, seat of bureaucratic excess and next on the DOGE docket.  'Fat chance', said Betsy, and went on to sell her snake oil to a line of expectant customers. 

The State Of The Union And The Unhinged Hysteria Of Caged Wolverines

'It is what it is' goes the viral meme; a bit of existential pop wisdom, accommodating to the common man inundated with AI, the screeching harridans of Congress, a bevy of incomprehensible medical options, a short, dreary life, and hectoring wife. Better to let go, to recline in the chaise longue, take life easy because the alternative is nothing but headaches. 

Of course Epictetus and the Stoics came to the same conclusion, but framed their opinions in tightly-woven philosophical treatises having to do with free will, cognition, control, and emotional equilibrium.

The revaluation of external objects brings with it a tremendous sense of confidence and inner peace. Grief, fear, envy, desire, and every form of anxiety, result from the incorrect supposition that happiness is to be found outside oneself. Like earlier Stoics, Epictetus rejects the supposition that such emotions are imposed on us by circumstances or internal forces and are largely beyond our control. Our feelings, as well as our behavior, are an expression of what seems right to us, conditioned by our judgments of value.  If we correct our judgments, our feelings will be corrected as well. 

 

The idea of philosophical resignation predates the Greeks.  The Aryans, settled at Mohenjo-Daro after a long journey from the steppes, and extending their influence throughout the Indian subcontinent, preached the same doctrine.  The caste system, a social organization designed to limit secular, worldly expectations and free the mind for more spiritual endeavors, has been central to Hinduism for millennia.

Although often criticized by Western observers who see the system as a limiting, exploitative mechanism of elite control, the caste system is fundamental to Hinduism's core belief in spiritual evolution.  Right, disciplined behavior according to well-defined rules is not incarcerating but liberating.  The world is maya, illusion, and tempted by it will only lead to continued penance and inability to achieve spiritual enlightenment. 

There is nothing more antithetical to this philosophy than today's American progressivism, no better on display than at President Trump's recent State of the Union address when two members of the far Left, unhinged, wild, and bellowing like caged animals, tried to shout him down.  They yelled and howled, called him names, shook like St. Vitus' dancers, spat insults and threats. Politics for them had gone beyond the pale.  With Trump in office, the world was a place seething with hate, animus, and terrible ambitious lust.  They had gone overboard, crossed into a devilish, Satanic world of demons and dark, horrible figures. 

Vicki Adams had been brought up properly in a world of decorum, respect, tradition, and legacy; and would never devolve into such screeching, intemperate, crazed behavior.  Her father had been a judge and her mother a professor, both professions which rely on thoughtfulness, careful analysis and exegesis, and rational results.  They had been progressives of the old school, raised with the conviction that the poor, the marginalized, and the forgotten had a place in America; and that social and economic reform was the way to righting the wrongs of capitalism.  

So it was with a grimace and a shameful recognition that these two harridans were spokespersons for her party.  They were advocates for inclusivity and diversity and resented Donald Trump's insensate and violent attacks on their people - the brown and black newcomers to America who had an automatic, unquestioned right to remain. 

While everyone has a right to question the use and extent of Executive power, these women had, thanks to their ugliness, become caricatures.  Images of their outbursts at the State of the Union speech went viral and images of them as howling baboons, fat, rooting pigs, hyenas, wolverines and sideshow freaks, half-woman, half-banshee were on every social media platform. 

Yet Vicki could not deny the sentiments behind the women's outbursts. The President had indeed gone beyond the bounds of decency and responsible governance.  His ICE agents were nothing but SS storm troopers, latter-day Gestapo, Stasi thugs, rounding up and herding legitimate asylees into cattle cars and shipping them off to concentration camps, gas chambers and ovens. 

She looked at herself in the mirror, a trembling, shaking wreck of a woman, hair in straggles, eyes wide and feverish, face contorted and twisted; and took a deep breath. 'I am going off the deep end', she said. 'I must recalibrate'. 

The infection, however, had become systemic.  There was no room in her remade organism for quiet reflection and temperance.  The man in the White House had descended upon America from some desperately evil place, a Miltonian Devil, a horrific Satanic creature.  These were not ordinary times, and as such demanded extraordinary action. 

While she watched clips of the bellowing cows, Tlaib and Omar, again and again; and each time wished that they did not look so simian and ugly, she couldn't deny their passion - her passion.  If Trump were not stopped, democracy itself would falter, and America would turn into an autocratic dictatorship. 

Vicki took a deep breath, fixed her hair, put a dash of rouge on her cheeks, touched up her lipstick, adjusted her dress, and left for tea. 

She tried temperance for a while - crafting editorials, speeches at garden parties, calm resolution and logical insistence - but it never took.  She felt bottled up, strangled, speechless.  While that man, that...

And here as always words failed her as the bile rose in her throat, as that old familiar feverishness returned, and as her venomous, irrepressible hatred came front and center.  That evil presence that demon...and her voice became loud, ferocious, and insistent, a wild Cassandra, a wolf howling at the moon.  She had been transformed, irrevocably changed.  The hinges had not only come loose, they were undone, and...and....'The Crusade is waiting'. 

Brown University Professor Emeritus Harrison Levitt Perkins had this to say about what he called 'the febrile infection of political hysteria. Writing in The American Journal of Forensic Psychology, he said:

The Haitian descendants of Dahomey practice voodoo in which hysteria is a sign of demonic exorcism.  Possession is normal in a world filled with evil spirits, and few souls have the will, resources, and psychological barriers to resist.  Without these wild, untamed outbursts, howled to the sound of tribal drums and eviscerated fowl, the demons would have congenial homes from which they would continue to pervert and destroy. 

Political hysteria is no different.  Although the possessions of secular reformists might be thought rational, secular, and justified given the state of world affairs, it is as tribal, demonic, and irrational as the voodoo ceremonies in the hills above Kenscoff. What Americans witnessed at the  President's State of the Union speech was no different than tribal primitivism at its most primeval.  

 

If Vicki could have been so transformed from proper Main Line Philadelphia debutante, Vassar graduate, and serious professional, then one can only imagine the epidemic proportions of this 'febrile infection'. 

'Nutcases' was how one observer saw the display of Omar and Tlaib.  He had no truck with Epictetus, theories of intellectual virality, or political parsing but knew what he saw.  Unkind perhaps, but not without merit. 

When Politics Defines, Politics Destroys - The Dehumanizing Of America

The common meme today is that America is a divided country. We are divided every which way, by race, ethnicity, gender, religion and a hundred other sub- and mini-categories. 

It is not enough to simply be - a unique, irreplaceable, irreducible being unlike any other, made up of a special complex of emotions, perceptions, humor, artistry, talent and intelligence - but some additional signature is required.  

Moreover, each category has its ascribed values, assigned by political philosophers.  Being white to some automatically signifies racism, white supremacy, and intolerance. To others in means inheritance of European civilization, heir to Greece and Rome, empire, advanced learning and creativity.  Being black indicates primeval intelligence, the wisdom of the forest, a natural supremacy derived out of tribal instincts, and native evolution since the first homo sapiens. To others it means that this native tribalism is the very cause of perennial social dysfunction in the diaspora. 

Being male or female needs distinction, disaggregation. Regardless of your genetic profile, where do you fit on the gender spectrum?  Given your family history of mixed races and ethnicities, with which do you identify? Are you black or white?

There is another, more pernicious aspects to identity - regardless of who you are, you are judged by your political allegiance. From a liberal perspective, being conservative is grounds for cancellation. No  amount of intelligence, humor, fatherhood, or faith can compensate for your insular, uncharitable, harsh and intolerant individualism. 

Eric Fox and Robert Lake first met when they were twelve, both students at a small country day school.  They liked each other, played together, roughhoused, made pizza, wandered in the woods behind the school, and tracked rabbits and raccoons deep into the Southington mountains. 

They didn't know why they liked each other, and never gave the question a second thought.  Of all the boys in the seventh grade and all the permutations possible, Eric and Robert became friends.  Was it intelligence? Both boys were at the top of the class. Playfulness? Risk? Defiance? All the above?

No one can account for friendship at that age.  There are no easy markers - excelling at mathematical reasoning, sexually adventure, high-end athletic ability, or common social graces.  At twelve, you are simply children, boys of a similar social milieu but not yet with the trappings of commitment, belief, or allegiance. 

Eric and Robert remained friends after country day school, were classmates at Lefferts, one of New England's most recognized preparatory schools, and were residents at the same Yale college. Their lives increasingly diverged - their academic and social interests were quite different, and their career paths went in opposite directions, but they saw each other in the dining hall, on the quad, and at the bookstore. 

After graduation they lost touch - military service, international travel, marriage, children; but they always considered themselves friends. 

College in those days was an apolitical time, and political identity was far from the thoughts of either boy.  If anything they were conservative at heart - both young, attractive, intelligent, and wealthy, and with the early adulthood confidence in their abilities and bright futures.  Yet a number of years later, Eric had a political awakening.  He became angered at the world's inequality, poverty, destitution and the indifference of political elites to do anything about it.  

The black man was still suffering under the yoke of white, segregationist racism, women were still second class citizens, and the country was still ruled by an Eastern urban elite. In short, Eric got religion, a liberal secular version with no less passion and true belief as the real thing. 

Robert never changed from his earlier college conservatism.  He only became more politically articulate and was able to express his foundational belief in individualism and free enterprise in political terms. 

When he and Eric met at a college reunion, Eric wanted to talk politics and was surprised that his friend held none of the same convictions that he did.  How could this be? Eric wondered.  After all they were products of the same social and academic environment.  How could his friend have been so infected, so inalterably intellectually elite, so indifferent to the plight of the many?

After a time, and an increasingly desultory friendship, Eric cancelled his friend.  Political philosophy defines and expresses worldview, he said.  It is what you are no matter what you were.  He could not conceivably be friends with someone who saw the world in such harsh, uncompromising, unsympathetic ways. 

Robert objected.  If they were friends at twelve before politics, society, and environment made any difference and only natural, spontaneous friendship was at play; and if they liked each other then for no other reason than spontaneous affection, then they should always be friends. 

Eric was adamant. There was no such thing as 'natural affinity', only environmental determinism he said, quoting Lacan and Derrida.  We, political animals now in our prime, formed by variables beyond our control but accepting them as definite, cannot revert to some faux idealism of natural law. 

This ending of a friendship for political reasons, this cancellation of a true bond, explains why progressive insistence on identity is so pernicious, denying as it does 'natural law', innocent affinity, and most of all individual character and personality. 

A black man will always be black first and foremost and will always be seen through that racial lens. Identity makes it even harder to know people for who they are - blinders on a horse, enforced vision, categorization without exit. 

Eric spent his years a social justice warrior, a progressive's progressive, an indefatigable reformist until, surprisingly, he changed direction.  There is an old adage - give a liberal enough time and he will always become conservative - that has always held true.  Life and its circumstances have a way of intruding on true belief, and maybe the world is what conservatives have always believed - a Darwinian, competitive territorial enterprise.,

 

That might have been what turned Eric around; but more likely in his later years the boy returned - or rather had never gone away but was only waiting for the right moment to reappear. Eric was back, reverted to essentials, 'givens' as he used to call them in his Ayn Rand days, and he called his friend, Robert. 

A gift of old age, Robert said, one of the few.  Facing the end of one's life, politics no matter how securely held, is not all that important; and it is definitely not the defining quality that determines friendship. 

Both men are much more limited than in years past, and a whole continent now divides them, each on a different coast; but the friendship is anew, and both men thank God for it. 

Memoir Of A White Slave - Years In A Berber Tent Made Her The Perfect American Wife

Mary Putnam was raised in privilege, descendant of the earliest settlers of the New World, builders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, devout Puritans who went on to found the New Haven plantations and important religious settlements in New Jersey.

Isaiah Putnam had been a member of the Davenport expedition, organized in response to what had become according to him 'a flaccid, errant and false expression of Protestant faith'.

One of Yale's colleges is named 'Davenport' after the New England cleric who in addition to settling the lands along Long Island Sound, constructing an important harbor, and making profitable and equally beneficial compacts with the Wampanoags, founded one of the British colony's first institutions of higher learning.

 

Isaiah Putnam was instrumental in all of these initiatives, and passed on this historic legacy to his many children and grandchildren.  Mary Putnam was the last in this storied American line, and proud of it.  She was devotedly patriotic to her heritage, America, and the white European race to which the new republic owed a significant debt. 

Mary was educated well - Miss Porter's and Smith College - and was about to marry a descendant of another important New England family, the Cabots, when she decided that she needed 'space to roam' and settled on a trip through North Africa. 

She had always been fascinated by the nomadic Berber tribes of the region - the essence and epitome of medieval chivalry, a stolid warrior mentality, and a survivalist instinct which enabled them to live for generations far from civilization. 

Warned of Berber/Moorish barbarity - the French were never multiculturally oriented and had always divided the world into civilized and uncivilized, and the Berbers were definitely in the crudest, most elemental category - she was told to stay close to home, but she disregarded this advice, and set off into the Mauritanian desert with little more than an adventurous spirit, considerable naïveté, and a virtuous sense of something better than the confining, limited life she was leading. 

She travelled truck routes at first, no more than appearing and disappearing tracks in the Saharan sands, accompanying half-breeds hauling canned fish, detergent, and beer to remote village shops on the route to Algeria.  She had no plan, no program, no itinerary, so intent was she to let life be and let the desert unfold. 

It was at one of the truck route's most isolated stops that she met a group of Berber nomads whose resources had run low and who, despite their suspicion of foreign influence, had been forced to stop and barter for grain. 

The leader of the troupe, Aderfi Amirzagh was what Mary had always imagined as a Berber prince - tall, elegant, with a marvelously beautiful Semitic face, Islamic beard, and dressed in flowing white robes. 'Come with us', he said, beckoning to the young white woman.  'We will show you the desert'. 

How could this chivalric, proud, beautiful man pose any threat, any danger? And without a second thought, she agreed and rode off with Aderfi and his nomadic brothers.

It wasn't long, of course, until she was invited into Aderfi's tent for tea and conversation, both of which led to proposals and sexual intimacy.

Mary did not refuse or reject these overtures.  This would be her moment in the Arabian Nights, chosen from a harem of dark-eyed beauties to be the consort of the prince. 

She was not disappointed.  Anointed with fragrant oils and in the demi-darkness of wicked lamps, she was taken by her prince in a way she had never been taken before.  It was remarkable, unexpected, a delight she had never expected but always hoped for. 

The caravan went on through the desert along the old trade routes from the Malian salt mines to the Phoenician coast, a long, slow journey by night and early morning and evening, meals of ground millet, camel fat, and roasted goat. 

There was a traditional brotherly camaraderie among those in the troupe, an extension of the generosity and sharing respected in the larger Berber community; and it wasn't long before she had lovers other than her prince who visited her in her tent at night. She submitted willingly, not because of any interest, but out of a sense of belonging.  In Berber society women were owned by men, obliged to do their bidding, cook meals, bear and care for children and be otherwise unseen, and she felt to be one of them. 

As antithetical as this was to the liberal, Christian, European traditions in which she had been brought up, she had incorporated so much of the progressive philosophy that stressed cultural relativity and value that she accepted her new sexual role as valid and unchallenged. 

Looked at from afar, far more independently and dispassionately and through an objective lens, Mary had become a white slave, tethered and bound, a commodity to be shared, traded, and bought and sold. 

Aderfi's troupe encountered another from the oasis of Ouazatte, the affiliated  tribe of al-Aksam and negotiated a trade - the white woman for five camels, a goat, and privileged access to the well at Aman. 

Mary had never expected such a journey, such an immersion in a foreign culture, let alone a slave-owning, misogynistic one such as that of her guardians; but in her innocence and naivete she was complaisant and willing. 

After many such barters, trades, and sales, her troupe ran into the French Foreign Legion, whose lieutenant freed her from captivity, lined up the Tuareg insurgents who had been her captors, and summarily executed them, leaving their corpses to dry and be picked over by carrion birds. 

Returned to America, she felt at a loss.  How could she possibly return to a life in the suburbs, married to and cared for by an accountant, a junior partner, or an investor?  She looked at the subdivision of Fairlawn, New Jersey where Bryce Caitlin, Executive Vice President of Farnworth, Prentice, & Billings intended to move after they were married and was dumbfounded at the nightmarish awfulness of the place. 

Yet she agreed to marry, such was her now well-understood lot in life.  The Berbers had taught her obedience, dutiful obligation, and acceptance; and the lesson remained.  It mattered not whom she married, as long as she was taken care of -  a woman's life, thanks to her weakness, her fertility and her unique reproductive ability, was unidimensional.  All the rest - law partner, anesthesiologist, professor, vice-president - was irrelevant, a confabulated fiction, a progressive fantasy. 

There was only one part of the bargain that could not be abrogated - being taken by a male positivist, a man confident of his authority, command, and sexual potency.  Whether a Tuareg, Bedouin, Arab desert trader, or Wall Street investor, the contract was the same. 

Bryce Caitlin failed on all accounts.  He was the epitome of The New Age man, a considerate, demurring, kind and considerate soul, and so it was that Mary, inheritor of white privilege, Anglo-Saxon honor, and Christian womanhood went back to the desert. 

Bryce and his like were not men but imitations, caricatures, cartoon images.  Male complaisance, feminism, latter day autonomy and feminist chutzpah were chimeras, faux news, irrelevancies. 

Nothing was heard from Mary Putnam after she disappeared into the Sahara, although rumors flew.

No one ever grasped the real reason for her disappearance into desert obscurity.  Few men or women would ever understand how a well-brought up woman of prominence would ever choose a lif among savages, but Mary understood and would never go back.

Donald Trump's Magical Mystery Tour - Hoopla And Confetti, Tears And Flapdoodle

The American Left has never understood Donald Trump and probably never will. From the moment he arrived on the political stage until now, they have been befuddled, gobsmacked, dismayed, and horrified. How could this vaudevillian, this Borscht Belt tummler, this imposter, this fool, this grandmaster of deceit ever have been elected?

 

Twice, they say, they had nominated a true savior - women of weight and substance, import, intelligence and good will - and twice they had been roundly defeated by this circus clown, a man with no depth, a bourgeois nappy, a...

There could be no words to describe the feeling of bilious, vile hatred for the man.  Not only were the hopes of America sent packing, but the interim years of the Biden Administration - four years of fundamental, revolutionary changes for the good - had had no impact.  The idiot was returned to office and was now ruling with a vengeance. 

After so many years of lawfare, screeching howls of misogyny, racism, homophobia and innate bigotry - none of which stuck and only served to add coal to the fire of an already vindictive president - the man was not only still in office but running roughshod over them. 

Wails of misery, torment, and agony were heard up and down Pennsylvania Avenue as liberals forced themselves to walk past the White House, to watch the parade of beautiful blonde young things coming and going, not a black face among them; to hear the blaring horns of triumph playing in the Rose Garden, to see the silhouettes of this unholy cabal of white supremacists strutting from East Wing to West Wing. 

 

'What hath God wrought?', said Bob Muzelle, reverting to his Biblical training never forgotten after years of secularism.  He caught himself too late.  His oath had been uttered and heard by his confreres. However, the man in the Oval Office was indeed an apostasy, a visitation, an unholiness, something deserving of righteous Old Testament wrath. 

When pressed for reasons for this bilious hatred, Bob could only sputter. 'He...this man...this...', he managed without finishing his thought.  It was not only that the question itself was maddening, suggesting there still needed to be justification for liberal criticism, but that the animus within had grown to such proportions that it was unutterable. 

The President had secured the borders, cleared the decks of useless, wasteful government bureaucrats, clotured all debate on the insanity of gender choice, bombed the Iranian nuclear facility to smithereens, rid the Caribbean of a Communist dictator, assisted Israel in its existential time of need, and freed private enterprise from imprisoning taxation, laws, and regulations.   America was regaining status in the world, leading a conservative revolution in Europe, and expressing Machiavellian will and resolve. 

And yet and still, the Left could only shout, 'Racist!' louder and louder with more passion and insistence as though the turning up the volume and shaking like trees in a storm could make a difference.  The Left had nothing in the armory.  Its gunracks, shelves, repositories, hangars, and missile silos were empty.  Gone were the halcyon progressive days of Lafollette, Brandeis, and Gompers, men of principle and intellectual fiber. All that was left of the movement were hollow bellows. 

Meanwhile conservatives were jumping with joy. Finally and at long last, their voices were being heard and finally a real American president, a man like them, was in office.  Trump was indeed middle-brow, a bourgeois man of yachts, mansions, glitz, glamour, and arm candy. The new White House ballroom, the revamped Kennedy Center, the parties, the formal events, the whole atmosphere was all what Americans wanted, what they liked, and what they aspired to. 

 

Yes, his policies mattered and the dismantling of the presumptuous social agenda of the Left was long overdue, but it was his persona which mattered most.  He was a man after their own hearts. 

'But how could they?', asked Bob, still immured within his own progressive redoubt.  So convinced was he of the absolute righteousness of the supremacy of the black man, the essentiality of the gender spectrum, the profound philosophical wisdom of socialism, and the dangers of the warming climate, that anything else was errant, foolhardy, absurd nonsense. 

Conservatives couldn't wait for the latest off-the-cuff remarks from the President, his Borscht Belt, Grossinger's one-liners, his outrageous impressions, his zero tolerance for stupidity, his braggadocio, hilarity, and effusiveness. 

They also loved his machismo - no idle threats, no posturing, no vain saber-rattling.  He just went in and bombed the shit out of Iran's nuclear bunkers, sent a commando unit to capture and remove Maduro and sent warships to the four corners of the globe.  

They admired their man's 'So, sue me' response to the threats of his opponents.  He had earned his chops on the mean real estate streets of New York and nothing intimidated him.  He was willing to go for the jugular at the slightest intimation, play the hardest hardball imaginable, and never lose a wink of sleep because of it. 

 

Donald Trump should be a mystery to no one, and his magical mystery tour - a roundhouse assault on bad government, intellectual chicanery, and liberal idiocy complete with bassoons, banners, festoons, and marching bands - should be no surprise. The fact that America has never had a president like this is no excuse for ignorance.

'What next?', said Bob. 'What possibly could come next?', but that agonizing thought was the halcyon cry of Trump supporters who couldn't wait to see what new, marvelously ingenious initiative would come out of the White House. 

Of course for Bob and his colleagues, it really didn't matter what came next, for they were already instinctively prepared to oppose it, to damn it, and to dismiss it. The solidarity of absolute belief is a thing of wonder.  No reason, no logic, no reflection, no historical context, no philosophical thought can penetrate the perimeter.  Everything is settled science for the progressive.  It is an a priori world of first principles.

For the conservative, life is as it comes. A priori has no meaning or relevance whatsoever.  Life is a perennial wheel of fortune whose only axis is human nature - and that hasn't changed since man came down from the trees.  In the conservative zeitgeist there are no surprises, only delight in seeing what life has next in store. 

'Oh, my God', Bob moaned, again belying his secularism, but the oath was out of his mouth before he knew it.  Things couldn't possibly get any worse, but they did. Every day was a new assault on universal values, goodness, and right behavior. 

Ironically at that very moment a parade crossed in front of his perch in Lafayette Square in front of the White House - phalanx after phalanx of blonde, blue-eyed young women, twirling batons, marching proudly to drums and cymbals, heads held high, breasts thrust forward, all smiling. The rear guard carried American flags, oversized pictures of Trump and placards saying, 'MORE TO COME!'

It was the magical mystery tour parading right before his eyes. The gall of the man! The very idea...but again Bob's voice trailed off in the March wind.  He didn't get it and never would. 

The Queen Of The Jalisco Cartel - How An Ambitious Dancer Made Her Way On The Stage And In Bed

Maria Luisa Fox was a dancer from Guadalajara - a line dancer and then a runway queen, and finally the lead dancer of the Rockettes at Rockefeller Center in New York.  She was a prima donna, a woman who knew her own talents, intelligence, and allure, and thought the world was open to her. 

Of course, New York is not Guadalajara, a town of serapes, tacos, and Montezuma's revenge, controlled now by the cartels who have the government, the Federales and local police in their pocket.  Yet it is still a nice place, more American now than Mexican, what with so many retirees from El Norte settled there; but a place to come back to, to relax on the front porch, listen to rancheros, and watch Mama make enchiladas. 

New York is a jungle, especially for an ambitious woman like Maria Luisa - a comer, a desirable commodity for sale like everything and everyone is in New York - and no matter how she tried, the right doors to Broadway remained closed.  No matter to how many producers and directors to whom she sent her portfolio, she got no callbacks. 

Maria Luisa's family was non-political, more of a que sera sera, cultura de la hamaca family.  The cartels meant business and were everywhere.  Not exactly like Stasi and Sevak, the notorious Secret Police of East Germany and Iran, but an endemic presence. 

Maria Luisa had always been a favorite of Don Miguel Miranda, a high ranking member of the Jalisco cartel but a gentleman, courteous and accommodating in his interest of the young dancer. 'Anything you want, Maria Luisa, you know you can count on me'. 

His favors were generous but modest - flowers, jewelry, an Easter bonnet, dinner at the Marriott for her entire family - but she knew that he was serious in his offers.  What would she have to give in return? Better not to think about payment due, although there was not a drop of intimidation or veiled warning in his promises. 

And so it was that she accepted his offer to travel with him to Acapulco for the weekend.  Separate rooms, of course, but all expenses paid; and if she were so inclined, they might become more intimate. 

The weekend was an idyll, the best accommodations, food, and drink.  She was treated like a princess, and she had to admit that she was moved by his generosity and attention.  

It was shortly after that trip to Acapulco that she returned to Guadalajara and asked to meet him in private.  She was finding it difficult to get the break on Broadway she knew she deserved, and perhaps he had friends in New York who might be of help. 

'Of course, mi amor', he said, and within a few weeks she was informed by the administrative assistant of owner of the Belasco Theatre that he would be pleased to make her acquaintance.  Saul Feinberg, the producer of a musical now in pre-production would also be there. 

Maria Luisa never asked Miguel what he had done to arrange this meeting, and knew that it was better to keep silent and be grateful.  Whatever offer he had made was the right one, and she got the part which she wanted and was most suited for.  

Sleeping one's way to the top is nothing new either on Broadway or in Hollywood.  Any ambitious starlet or theatrical rising star understands the sexual dimensions of success; and in her case Maria Luisa not only got the part but was treated as a queen when she returned to Mexico. For her there was no question about the arrangement, and she repaid Miguel with sincere affection. 

She became well-known in Mexican cartel circles - not quite a gun moll, but the consort of one of the most important figures in the drug underground. The couple was an event, seen at the best watering holes in the capital, on the beaches of Baja and Cancun, and everywhere where it paid to be seen. 

The life was seductive, one of pure pleasure, respect, and admiration; and she found herself spending more time in Mexico than New York.  After the run of the Broadway show in which she had an important role, she deferred other offers, and wondered whether life with Don Miguel was ultimately what she wanted - glamour, fame, wealth, and pleasure without the work. 

There is no doubt that life on Southern plantations in the antebellum South was elegant, grand, and beautiful, very Cavalier and sophisticated. The two worlds - slavery and the cultured world of mansions, lawns, live oaks, and formal balls - could indeed co-exist and while there were grounds to criticize the former, there were still good reasons to champion the other. 

The same was true of life within the Jalisco cartel.  Yes it was a gangland menace, a drug-running threat to governance and civil order; but it was also the home of some of the most swell-to-do men and women in Mexico.  It might not exactly be high European-style society, but it was certainly bourgeoise at its most opulent - a bit overdone and Baroque in places, but all in all as glamorous as anything anywhere. 

'Dance for me', Don Miguel said to her one evening on the lawn of his palatial home overlooking the ocean, and dance she did with plies, twirls, staccato folk steps, and graceful swanlike bows.  Don Miguel was entranced.  How lucky he was to have found her. 

The day she met the President of the Republic in the palace's private chambers was a day to remember. Maria Luisa knew that the cartels had influence at the highest levels, but she never knew how much.  She and Miguel were treated like royalty, honored foreign dignitaries, respected guests.  Little of any import transpired, but the President's warm welcome alone showed the level of respect accorded to Don Miguel. 

She had become so used to the cartel life that she paid little attention to the news of internecine violence, collaboration with MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha, and the vendetta killings in three states. 'It's just business', said Mafia dons after waves of vengeful killings, and so it was with the cartels. Everyone has to make a living, and the demand for drugs in El Norte justified the supply and the necessary means to assure it. 

The Broadway producers who were her sponsors had of course learned of her other life and were hesitant to place her in another show.  If the press got onto this trail, God only knows where it would lead.  So again Don Miguel asked for and arranged another visit to Broadway, Maria Luisa was chosen for an important part yet again, and doubts were quelled. 

It all fell apart, however, when El Mencho the drug kingpin of all Mexico was killed by a combined force of federales and US agents.  Mexico was in flames and the cartels were at each other's throats after blood.  One of Miguel's closest associates was murdered in front of one of Mexico City's most exclusive clubs, and he told Maria Luisa that he would have to disappear for a while. 

After a number of weeks went by, rumor had it that he too had been murdered, and that the idyll was over. She was indicted by a New York federal court, deported back to Mexico, and returned to Guadalajara to live with her mother. 

She was smart enough to know that living such life would have its pitfalls, its up and downs, and perhaps even its minor disasters; but for a woman like her - ambitious not only in terms of career and social position, but for living itself - it was all worth it. 

Cartels are not all that bad, all things considered. 

Serapes, Tacos, And Montezuma's Revenge - Mexico, Cartels, And Mayhem

As of this writing (2/23/26) Mexico is aflame. The drug cartels are wreaking havoc in the country in reprisal for the killing of their supreme jefe. This display of violence - burning cars, armed assault on police, destruction of commercial properties - has shown that the government is not nor never has been in control of the country. Worse, as many have suspected, the government is in the pocket of the cartels.  Unable stop them, they have joined them and have built offshore bank accounts, homes in St. Tropez, and villas on the Caribbean. 

Now, most Americans know little about Mexico except diarrhea; and although the country's tourism department has advertised places like Cancun, Guadalajara, Cabo St. Juan, and Acapulco as tropical idylls, attracting thousands of credulous Americans every year, they are nothing more than explosive tinder boxes in the hands of the cartels.  Most tourists to Cancun still get  diarrhea, but they get some soft breezes in return. 

The country is a mess, and the economic growth, five star Michelin meals in Mexico City, and a solid trade in tomatoes and lettuce, is just window dressing.  Mexico is a Third World country as corrupt as any African dictatorship, perhaps without the secret police, dungeons, and summary executions, but an ungoverned and ungovernable place nonetheless. 

Many older Americans remember their first trip to Tijuana, a quickie across the border for cheap booze and cheaper whores. 'You want to see my seester?', pornographic postcards, rotgut tequila, and rolled by greasers in shithole whore houses was what they got, but still kept coming.  It was a foreign place, full of promise and adventure, and no amount of sleaze, rancid whiskey, stinking serapes, and mangy dogs was going to dampen adventurous enthusiasm. 

Mexico was a joke, a South of the Border getaway from censorious, Puritan America. There you could watch as many dirty movies as you wanted, drink from morning till night, sleep with dark-haired senoritas, and go home with the clap, broke, but happy. 

NAFTA, the cross-border free trade agreement signed a number of years ago helped jumpstart the economy, and supermarket bins were full of Mexican produce.  Of course you had to scrub them, soak them in potassium permanganate, and peel them before eating, but it was a start - fresh produce all year around. 

Farm labor was Mexican, lettuce and strawberry picker, most illegal, but necessary to keep Sacramento Valley humming, and it was only when Joe Biden open the borders and said, 'come one, come all', did Americans get a good dose of Mexicans, and didn't like what they saw.  If the country was so great, why didn't these people stay homes?  It wasn't that the price of lettuce would go down, but sanctuary cities and their taxpayers were spending billions to house illegal immigrants in three-star hotels with a per diem that beggared most Americans'. 

The Mexican government, under a deal with the cartels, every so often showed the flag - planned, mutually agreed upon incursions into known cartel strongholds.  A few shots fired over the heads of the gang members, and a few pickups riddled; but in the main it was all for show.  The cartels went back underground to do their business in peace. 

Now with US help, a drug kingpin has been killed; and this time it is not like when Pablo Escobar got arrested, a quiet reassembly of the hierarchy and then business as usual. This time, the cartels decided to show their muscle both the Mexican government and to the United States.  The violence sent white tourists scattering in panic from airports and streets.  Told to shelter in place, they have been hunkering down in hotel rooms and condos until order is restored; but that is a fanciful promise.  No one knows when the mayhem will end and when the cartels have proven their point. 

Los federales, the state police, have kept petty crime to a minimum all for the sake of tourism, but leaving the cartels alone.  What police officer with a family and a baby on the way wants to confront bloodthirsty cartels?  What federal judge wants to try and convict the few cartel members unlucky enough to avoid federal protection and have his home firebombed as a result?

So Mexico looks like a nice place to visit - safe streets, nice restaurants, good weather, and cheap flights - and the cartels, given America's insatiable appetite for drugs, remain underground, sated, and happy with spectacular profits.  If there is violence, it is between cartels, and the operative Mexican policy is to let them kill each other off. 

The cartels are well-organized, politically savvy, open to new investment, and completely and absolutely bloody-minded. They have no problem with MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha, the Salvadoran gang now with a foothold in Los Angeles. A little extra muscle clearing the trade routes from the south, and helping enforce the status quo is welcome.  While not exactly brothers, the cartels and Mara are cousins in brutality and arms. 

Even the Somalis decided to get into the game - not on the muscle end of course, for these skinny little Africans were not intimidating unless they were behind a Russian machine gun on a pirate boat - but on the distribution end.  Minnesota has looked the other way in an atmosphere of diversity and inclusivity, and Somalis have made billions through fraudulent networks.  Why not use this sanctuary and political blindness to make ten times the money made through empty storefront daycare centers?

So give Mexicans credit. The cartels are even more powerful than the Mafia ever was and their reach extends far beyond Mexico's borders.  The Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Juarez cartels are like the five big Mafia families, each with its own turf, willing to defend it at any cost but agreeing and cooperating when it is in everyone's best interest 

It is also a hydra, a many headed snake - kill the likes of kingpins like Escobar or El Mencho and a hundred others will scramble to take their place.  The violence in Mexico now is not the chaos of a political vacuum, it is a show of strength.  Soon some other brutal leader will head the cartels. 

'Mrs. Sheinbaum, she don't know what she doing', said Maria Valdez, taking a break from cleaning bathrooms. But Sheinbaum knows exactly what she is doing.  She is in bed with the cartels, presents an anti-American nationalistic posture to calm her leftist supporters, and refuses American help because in her heart of hearts and offshore bank accounts she wants no help and is quite happy with the status quo. 

Everyone in Mexico except Sheinbaum and the cartels would be happy if the US military came in, took over, and wiped out every last one of the cartel leaders, destroyed their infrastructure and supply lines, and put an end to the violence.  However, Trump is quite busy, on alert for an invasion of Iran, ready to help Israel if Gaza heats up, and at odds with Russia in Ukraine.  An invasion is possible, but doubtful. 

The days of serapes and tacos are long gone. Montezuma's revenge is still around, but the rest of the landscape is far different than it was.  Mexico is a failed state, one which has done wonders with window dressing. Americans like their cheap tomatoes and strawberries and are content to look no further in understanding the socio-political dynamics of the place. 

Cartels rule! That is the only lesson to come out of the mayhem and universal civil disorder in Mexico. Everyone this side of the border knows it, knew it, or should have known it; and the time for reckoning has come.