Heavenly Bodies, The Real Foundation Of Conservatism - Beauty And The Ugly Women Of Social Justice

Bob Muzelle looked out at the White House from a bench in Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue.  He was feeding the pigeons, nibbling at a ham and cheese sandwich, and wondering exactly why he was sitting here alone, disconsolate, and without the comfort of one of the beautiful young things coming and going from the seat of power.  

 

It wasn't that Bob wanted to change his stripes.  God forbid! He had been a lifelong progressive and would never think of backing down from that principled aerie.  The world needed more compassion, concern, community, likeminded association, and yes, collectivism; and he would fight for social justice for all his livelong days. 

It was just that the journey, however satisfying it had been in political terms, had been a washout when it came to good times.  One thing about progressives, he had to admit, there was no room in the canon for superficiality, externalities, and bourgeois attention to looks. As much as he hated to say it, the standard issue progressive woman was as ugly as sin - beautiful on the inside of course, filled with an inner charm and loveliness, but whatever that irresistibility was, it stayed deep within these wiry-haired wretches. 

'Maybe I'm being too harsh', he said as the pigeons he was feeding flapped off in a flurry after a young boy ran into the flock, startling them and sending them to the other end of the park.  'There was Esther Pilchman', he remembered, Jewish looking but with a Biblical, Mediterranean beauty as he imagined Jezebel or Delilah; but too many underground meetings, too many sunless summer days in the basement apartments of co-conspiring socialists, too little sleep and too many devil dogs had left her pudgy, sallow, and drawn - more suited to a Great Neck split level than a pasha's harem.  

'Or Patience Flowers?'  She had potential, Bob remembered.  She was at least blonde, which alone gave her a certain appeal, but in keeping with the ethos of the movement, never washed it, an anti-bourgeois sentiment as expressive as her refusal to wash both sides of the dinner plates. The bourgeois world is too stuffed to the gills with things for me to add even an iota.’

'Things' were never just things, but meaningless gestures, inane pastimes, distractions, and inanities.  Everything around her - dress, posture, attitude, preference, furniture, and accommodations were all bourgeois, signs of intellectual indolence and indifference. 

'And of course...'; but Bob stopped here before naming another of his colleagues.  They were all a dismal lot, and in comparison to the raving beauties walking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, a sorry, tired-looking, ragged bunch. 

Bob had taken ugliness in stride, as a matter of course and as a sign of inner worth; but as he got older, immured in a Bethesda split-level with his hatchet-faced wife of thirty years, his eyes, thoughts, and desire turned to the Republican Party.  Trump's women were all lookers, women in positions of power who put on make up, had their hair done, wore designer suits, and were stunning examples of the deification of beauty. 

OK, maybe Kristi Noem was a bit too aggressive with the make up and eyeliner, a bit tarty and pasty-looking, and the other Cabinet women tried a bit too hard to look great; but the interns, the aides, the second and third in line were stunners, bright young things with that particular innocence and glorious good looks that shouted success.

Progressive women never got over this reverse ethos - the rest of America was trying to look Hollywood- and runway-ready while they never bothered to change their underwear, proud as they were of their 'female scent'. 

What was worse, the movement seemed to attract unappealing women.  From the days of the Jewish cabals on the Upper West Side, to the feminist clutches of the 70s, to the pierced, blue-haired, overweight harpies of Antifa, progressivism drew souls from the most unattractive, ugly corners of American society and let them loose. 

The Republican party from its patrician days, to the brush-clearing Reagan and Bush years, through one administration after another, was a crowd of beautiful people, wealthy, golf playing, Nantucket summering, tanned and healthy people who had no shame in parading their beauty, their stylish fashions, their perfect smiles, flaxen, silken hair, cornflower blue eyes, and a symmetry valued through the ages as the mark of female perfection. 

Bob had never even gotten within fifty feet of women like that and wouldn't have known what to do if he had.  There was something intimidating about beauty and the confidence that it instilled, something elite, upper class, indomitable. 'I never even tried', Bob said as the pigeons once again flocked around him as he tossed them bits of his lunch.

He never even had a proper wedding - that would have been too bourgeois, and his wife, as deeply committed to the progressive cause as he, adamantly refused.  Her parents were eager to splurge for their only daughter - an expensive band, ice sculptures, filet mignon, Moet Chandon champagne, and the finest French wines - but Corinne was having none of it.  They signed a few papers at City Hall, got drunk with friends in a Dupont Circle basement, and went back on duty the next day. 

A Republican wedding! Ahh, now that was something to write home about.  He remembered attending one, the marriage of the daughter of the Ambassador to the Court of St. James and a young Wall Street financier.  The only reason he had been invited was an old boy connection, a college friendship that had remained desultory at best for years; but in any case there he was amidst beauty, plenty, and shameless extravagance. He had loved it, and the memory stayed with him for years. 

Bell curve notwithstanding, there were no unattractive women at the wedding.  They were all beautiful and well-heeled, stunning, bright, and sunny while he sat their with his hatchet-faced wife now of many years, feeling as left out and irrelevant as ever. 

Now, Mrs. Wentworth's establishment was well-known in Washington power circles as the go-to place for sexual 'comfort'.  Adele Wentworth was a madame of impeccable honesty, trust, and secrecy; and as importantly managed over twenty engaging, seductive, and talented women. 

‘Anything you want', a colleague had once told Bob many years ago - a gift for good marketing and management - but she did indeed have everything from dark Persian seductresses to the most stunning Iowa farm girl blond ingenues. 

That was the whole point of prostitution at this level - not just an unencumbered roll in the hay, but a sexual fantasy, a delight, a dream; and so it was that for the first time in his long marriage Bob considered the possibility.  The more time passed, the more demanding the desire became until he began to make inquiries, where and how; until finally, up to here with stifled sexual urges, the biological clock ticking (he wasn't getting any younger), and the empty days and nights taking their toll, Bob consulted Mrs. Wentworth.  

'What would you like?' she asked, and the rest was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.  The girl was so nubile, so young, so fresh and beautiful, and so attentive, he quickly forgot that she was only a commercial lover.  That was exactly what Mrs. Wentworth had always promised - an out of body experience, an encounter in your dreams not your reality 

It is too much to ask for Bob to go to the dark side.  His progressivism was too ingrained, innate, and permanent to give up; but he finally got it, and now he understood.  There was indeed an existential side to the political divide, and he had chosen the miserable, scratchy, unpleasant, and ineffably unattractive one.  Conservatives were not chattel to political fantasy.  Their individualism, belief in free enterprise and expression, acquisition through merit, and uncommon rejection of idealism gave them a leg up on beauty.  It in fact was at the very heart of conservatism, its hallmark, its ethos and meme. 

Bob kicked a pigeon for no reason other than it was there, so mired in his own miserable life.  The beautiful blonde woman from Mrs. Wentworth was only a stranger passing in the night, and he returned the next day to his predictably sodden marriage, job, and future.  'Goddamn it!', he shouted at the pigeon as it careened off into the bushes.