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.