'The Bitch Set Me Up' - The Endemic Corruption Of Municipal Government

Marion Barry, Mayor for Life, was mayor of DC for many years, and won reelection again and again despite the lowest socio-economic indictors of any major city, endemic crime, the dysfunctional inner city, and Third World poverty level. 

 

He was popular because of his generosity, his walkin' around money, his embrace of entitlement, reparations, and giving away the store to his black constituents.  During his reign, the black population in DC was 70 percent, mostly poor and living in ghettoes across the Anacostia River, and in crowded city centers near Prince George's County. 

He was dismissive of the white population concentrated in Wards 2 and 3 despite the fact that they contributed the lion's share of municipal taxes.  He knew that as much as these white residents hated him and every elected voted in a bloc for any candidate but him, he had electoral democracy on his side. 

The white professionals who lived in these wards were liberal to a man, progressive in outlook and political preference, and most had never once in their lives voted Republican, but Barry was too much.  The city was known as The Murder Capital of the US during the crack epidemic when ghetto drug lords in consort with Jamaican crewes fought bloody battles for distribution rights, turf, and hegemony.  Despite the harshest gun laws in the country, the city was awash with illegal guns, and drive-by shootings, executions, and street corner shootouts were so common they never made the news.  

DC was a miserable place, tough to abide, and tougher to live in; and yet because of Barry's civil rights credentials, a coffers-open policy for entitlement money, a no-show job patronage for his most ardent supporters across the River, he was beloved by his black constituents.  His was a city hall which governed in name only but as long as the patronage and walkin' around money continued, and as long as he stuck it to the white man, he was King of DC. 

Among the white population of DC Barry was remembered for three things he said.  First, when the city was covered with over a foot of snow and the white wards never saw a plow, Barry said, 'It'll melt', putting the complainers in their place, a roundhouse punch which said, 'Nothing doing', the city is mine. 

Second, when he won another resounding electoral victory with not one vote from either Ward 2 or 3, he said, 'Get over it'.  He would be mayor for life despite the whining Karens of upper Northwest. 

Third, when he had been caught in an FBI sting smoking crack with local hookers, Barry said, 'The bitch set me up'; but his arrest was simply something he could not undo.  He was finished, done for, and a new hardline, tough balance sheet mayor was appointed to head a Congress-appointed government.  Anthony Williams was eventually elected, and the Barry days were over. 

When news of his arrest hit the streets, white DC residents cheered, but his black supporters agreed with him.  Besides, crack, ho's, and crack ho's were nothing new to the ghetto, commonplace, and a part of the inner city fabric.  His arrest was no more than the white man putting an uppity black man in his place. 

However, DC remains the same.  Despite hundreds of millions of federal and local grants said to improve the abysmal conditions in the slums of the nation's capital, there has been only desultory progress.  The truancy rate is well over fifty percent, murder, assault, and rape are still atop the leader board up there with Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis, and the ghetto is still a nasty, no-go place. 

DC City Council members have been Barry clones ever since his departure and DC's return to Home Rule. Under the aegis and protection of the Biden Administration and a complaisant Congress DC passed many give-way, de facto reparations, and entitlement laws.  They were among many municipal governments which after George Floyd defunded the police, decriminalized all but the most violent crimes.  DC was once again the carnival of corruption it was under Barry  

Now a new 'Democratic Socialist' Mayor will take office next year, and she promises to empty the treasury 'to make DC a welcoming home for all'.  All public services will be free or available at nominal cost, community policing will replace enforced discipline and crime surveillance, and welfare rather than opportunity will become the ethos. 

Of course DC is not alone in its corruption, mismanagement, and misrule.  Chicago, the home of dead-man voter, 'Vote Early and Often' elections, the Al Capone era of Mafia-coopted governance and jurisprudence, and the ward politics of Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin, has never budged from its sinkhole political reputation.  Minneapolis gave away millions to fraudulent Somalis out of concern for 'inclusivity' and 'doing the right thing' for needy asylees, and the true cost of the deal is yet to be uncovered.  Without a doubt someone in power bought a new Mercedes. 

The mayors of cities with significant black populations have ridden the progressive tide and given way taxpayer money with impunity, all in the name of inclusivity, diversity, equity and reparations for slavery. 

Smaller cities across the US have not been exempted, and they too regardless of racial composition have seen a windfall in kickbacks, unnecessary public works, donor patronage, and insider deals.  Millions have been spent on unneeded curb and sidewalk repair, park 'improvements' and unnecessary 'renovations'. 

How could this happen? 

When a longtime resident of New York City was asked how the current Socialist Mayor of the city could have been elected, and in a few short months has gone far to bankrupt the city and force hundreds of high tax-paying investment and high-tech firms and wealthy individuals to flee, he said that Mamdami simply looks like the thousands of immigrants in Queens and Brooklyn and his promise to give them everything for nothing was the best campaign strategy ever. 

The conservative economist Thomas Sowell has been a critic of government, both federal and local for taking money from those who earned it and giving it to those who have not - all with no accountability. With no such accountability, the tendency to take money and give it away for political and personal financial rewards is irresistible.  

  

It is easy to revile the rich for their greed and racist insensitivity and the need to redistribute their wealth to those who deserve it - as Sen. Bernie Sanders has done - and to be a millionaire with three homes and a luxurious life style.  No one is holding his feet to the fire.  No one who has bought his progressive cant hook, line, and sinker has bothered to look at consequences, rate of return, risk, compromise, or the bottom line.  

Municipal governments' accountability is even less. Those like DC's are uniformly democratic socialist, so there is no 'other side of the aisle', no inquisitive press, no high stakes.  Municipal governments tend to be progressive because there is more in it for them to be 'generous'.  It is easy to get elected if you can actually take from the rich and give it to the poor as DC has done with its venal transfers of wealth from Wards 2 and 3 to Wards 7 and 8.  The Washington Post before Bezos ownership was in lockstep with the redistributive, reparations mindset of the DC city council and rarely came down hard on its profligate no-accountability spending. 

Residents of one Ward 3 neighborhood watched as a perfectly good service alley was torn up and replaced by a new one at a cost of millions.  Who benefited?  Not the garbage trucks who picked up the trash without issue, not the rare car which had mistakenly turned into the alley.  Not the homeowners for whom the alley was nothing more than a service route.  

Or the new sidewalks in one of the area's wealthiest neighborhoods were people drove, never walked; or the universal handicapped curb cuts when residents had not seen a wheelchair in decades and Uber rides would have been far more cost-effective. 

Inefficiency, mismanagement, and self-interested dispensing of taxpayer money is par for the governmental course, getting worse as one descends the scale.  Montgomery County, a wealthy jurisdiction adjacent to DC built bike lanes along a well-travelled commuter route and in so doing closed two lanes of traffic increasing congestion and pollution; and to this day not one bike has been seen on the new lanes.  The dedicated lanes go no more than one block and then dead end.  It is the bike lane to nowhere, and yet the county built it because it felt good to do something for the environment. 

It is no surprise that the Unites States is always halfway down the international corruption list.  Americans have been cheating and conning since the days of itinerant snake oil salesmen and Elmer Gantry preachers.  We came kicking and screaming to civic order and the restrictions of laws and regulations but quickly figured out ways to make money from it all. 

So, you get what you deserve. Vote your conscience and still get screwed; but that is the American way. 

Evolutionary Destiny - Intelligence, The Bell Curve, And Making Way For The Best And The Brightest

Christopher Manning had been able to figure things out by the time he was two.  He could help his mother put together the Ikea table she was struggling to assemble, he got the drift of language, parsed English grammar and even managed the conditional, and understood cause and effect, risk and reward, and cost-benefit by the time he was three.

 

He slept little, keeping his parents up past eleven, could be a pill at times, but soon got the picture - throwing tantrums was simply a waste of valuable time when there was so much to learn. 

Other such bright children might have focused their intelligence and become musical prodigies, but Christopher's mind was too far-reaching and curious for the exploration and mastery of just one thing.  He might become more focused when older, but for now, the world was a marvelously complex puzzle to be solved. 

 

By the time he entered kindergarten, he was already able to read, and play chess, so boredom made him a restless, often irritable child.  His parents spoke with the teacher who patiently explained that public school was for all children, and it was her job to bring the less able up to the standard of the rest.  'We live in a democratic society', she snipped at Mr. and Mrs. Manning, parents who thought their child was the center of the universe. 

She had been promoted from one of the District's worst schools deep in the heart of the inner city to the Wilson School, one of the city's best.  Located in a solidly white, upper middle class, professional ward, Wilson defied the city's homogenizing, 'democratic' reforms which allocated millions on special education and little on the gifted and talented. Parents compensated for this bias and made way for their bright, ambitious children through aggressive PTA involvement and parent advocacy. 

The many lawyers in the neighborhood saw to it that parental investment in resource teachers was protected, and the brightest children could learn quickly at math, reading, science, and logic. 

The liberal city council, the even more progressive school board, and the teachers' union mounted their own defense of cooperative learning and advantages for the less able, and won a court battle in which the presiding judge ruled that such parental involvement went far beyond cooperation and invaded the right of the city to mandate educational programs it saw fit to administer. 

So, the Mannings took their son out of Wilson and enrolled him in a special elementary school in Virginia, a feeder for the Thomas Jefferson School for Math and Science, one of the countries best-known, and best-performing competitive public schools. 

Christopher thrived there, for it was a place where there were no artificial barriers to ability.  If a child like him was able to read at a fifth grade level, he was matched with others of the same ability and grouped accordingly.  The same went for math, science, and logic. 

Competition was encouraged at the school - the usual public school emphasis on self-esteem, coloring within the lines, multiple intelligences was completely absent, and children were taught to reach beyond what they thought possible and to test their abilities against others. The familiar 'Good job!' support of the mediocre was absent and stars were given only for the highest, objective achievement. 

The school of course came under criticism for its approach to learning, for instilling an elitist sense of privilege among the all white and Asian students enrolled there.  How would they ever learn empathy, consideration, and acceptance of those in society who had fewer advantages? If tax dollars were to be spent, then they should be apportioned according to need, not privilege. 

The principal of the school was not just an educational administrator, but politically connected; and despite the overwhelmingly liberal cast of the county, he was able to maintain an even keel and keep the naysayers at bay.  He was convinced that it was the best and brightest who should benefit most from tax dollars, for they would be the ones who would contribute most to society. 

He held his own against charges of white supremacy, elitism and racism.  He was eloquent in his advocacy for the most gifted and used to best advantage his political connections with the biggest investors in the burgeoning high-tech corridor of the county whose children were attending his school. 

In the next election, the county turned surprisingly Republican and conservative.  Virginia's southern and southwestern counties had always voted Republican but for different reasons.  Rural 'bass boat' Republicanism was not the kind emerging in Northern Virginia where it was focused on just the issues of excellence, individualism, and opportunity promoted by the principal.  The county was by no means a conservative enclave, but it at least emerged from its uniformly progressive cocoon. 

Christopher's school of course was not the only public school in the nation which had refused the cant and specious obligations of the advocates of progressive education. Not surprisingly 'competitive' schools in Texas and Florida proliferated where conservative government openly supported them. 

'Only the best for Texas' was the rallying cry of one of the state's conservative legislators, a man up from poverty in West Texas whose tenure in the state legislator was only a stepping stone to higher office.  He had taken nothing from the public trough, never once had his family relied on welfare, food stamps, or public 'generosity'.  He had made his way thanks to native intelligence, ambition, and energy; and the thousands of children like him, born at the right end of the bell curve, should not have to suffer the indignity of being told they were just like everyone else, thrown into a lumpen proletariat of mediocrity. 

The movement, thanks to Florida and Texas educators gained traction, and despite the opposition - there was nothing that infuriated progressives more than favoring the best not the least - the program expanded. 

This was helped by recent Supreme Court rulings restricting affirmative action, the most racially biased, corrosive, and destructive initiative in American higher education.  Thousands of unqualified students were admitted to universities and colleges, failed miserably despite intensive remedial education, and dropped out in debt and with no qualifications for entry into society.  These students had taken the places of those more qualified and with more social and academic potential. 

Since those rulings, schools like Christopher's were no longer under the same scrutiny and suffered less political opprobrium.  It was increasingly recognized that favoring the best and the brightest was indeed in America's interest - in everyone's interest. 

Christopher who had begun to lose his interest in study because of the depressing, enforced educational communitarianism of his old school, brightened immediately in his new, fostering environment.  In due course he went on to Thomas Jefferson, MIT, and Stanford's post-graduate program in advanced mathematics.  He never looked back. 

Thanks to the experience of Christopher Manning and the principal of the high-end public school in Virginia, the move to privatize K-12 education gained attention and currency.  The public system as currently configured was beneficial to no one.  In the District of Columbia alone, the truancy rate was over 50 percent, barely 25 percent of students read and did math at grade level, and the parents of more able students had either watched their children suffer or found the means to transfer them. 

Won't privatization lead to a sink hole of impoverished, low-performing public schools where the most able students have fled to better offerings leaving the least able alone?  Yes, but that sink hole will not be any worse or deeper than it now is.  There will always be a bell curve and the best and the brightest will always be at one end and the least able on the other.  All the best intentions of liberal educators cannot change that calculus. 

Christopher Manning prospered and so did everyone around him.  He was one of Darwin's fittest, and society, part of that evolutionary algorithm responded.

Panic In America - Ebola, Hantavirus, Global Warming And The Con Game Of New Age Healing

Felicity Jones was a born worrier.  When she was a little girl she worried that the unusually cold April with its twin frosts would deny Spring; that she would be crippled by polio and spend the rest of her life in an iron lung; that she would be orphaned, and that no man would ever love her. 

Extreme social anxiety is a relatively new psychological disorder.  In the America of earlier times, colonists, settlers, homesteaders, and shopkeepers were too busy to worry about incidentals; and in the days before modern medicine, longevity was a matter for God and Fate.  

In Felicity's day, when prosperity gave people time on their hands, anxiety was epidemic, and the consumption of mood enhancers, tranquilizers, anti-depressants, and emotional boosters followed suit.  America had become the world's most anxious nation and the most doped up, which was a good thing, for suicides maintained their basal level and barely registered in mortality statistics. 

Existential worry - the conviction that the next day might be one's last in a storm of frightful, uncontrollable African viruses, the final scorching incineration of the planet, or the nervous trigger finger setting off nuclear Armageddon - was a new psycho-social phenomenon.  In other words, in addition to personal emotional anxiety, the stock-in-trade of psychotherapy, more and more people were worried about universal disaster. 

Felicity had what had been described in the early months of the disease as 'COVID Panic' - a completely unhinged and terrifying conviction that this was The Big One, an epidemic of Biblical proportion, the plague that would wipe out entire populations.  She was not alone, for the American government with the advice and counsel of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the designated COVID czar, who under the guise of prudence, extreme caution, and heightened vigilance enacted draconian rules of behavior.  Masks and social distancing were mandated, shops, cafes, and restaurants were shuttered, schools were closed, and downtown office work halted. 

In previous influenza epidemics like the Hong Kong flu of 1968 a far more serious disease during which nothing much was changed and life went on, people got sick and died as they always had. Most recovered and the whole episode was filed, archived, and forgotten ('Shit happens', said hippies).  COVID on the other hand was treated like an existential nightmare; so it was not surprising that it sent many people like Felicity Jones over the edge. 

She duck-taped all her windows, retrieved her mail only after it had sat in a disinfection container for three days, scoured and rinsed all canned foods - the only foods she would eat - scrubbed her counters, sinks, and floors twice a day, huddled in an air-purified room, and triple-masked, came out only for bathroom pit stops and a hasty bite to eat. 

Just when the epidemic seemed to be slowing, scientists at the CDC announced new, even more deadly strains of the virus, and Dr. Fauci went on national prime time television to warn Americans not to let their guard down.  'This one is a real killer', he said. 

Just when Felicity thought she could relax and give a sigh of relief, she found herself redoubling her protective efforts.  Her hands were red and raw from scrubbing, she lost weight because of her restrictive diet, and she looked a mess; and now the routine had to be begun again. 

Completely shell-shocked and emotionally spent, she was in no condition to deal with any other such problems, but they seemed to keep on coming - and in fact she stayed glued to the news to hear of any new biological threat.  When Ebola broke out again in eastern Congo and spread like wildfire, she was sure that it was only a matter of weeks before this flesh-eating, alien nightmare would surface on American shores. 

When the hantavirus was reported in Texas, she again became the madwoman of Albemarle Street, a crazed, wild-haired character that children were told to stay away from.  When H2N5 emerged from an open chicken market in Shanghai and spread as far south as Guangdong and as far north as the Tibetan order, she awaited the worst. 

The arrival of the screwworm, a hideous flesh-eating creature that penetrated the skin of live animals and humans, ate their flesh and organs, rendered them mad and then killed them, she completely lost it, went around the bend, hysterical and panicked beyond hope.  If it hadn't been for Axel Burnham, a newly minted psychological advisor, coach, and healer, she would definitely have thrown herself off the Brooklyn Bridge. 

 

Axel had been a bolt-fixer on the still-human assembly line for John Deere farm equipment in Chillicothe, Ohio when he realized that there were far easier ways to make a living.  His family and friends had all gone to him for advice and counsel when they were suffering from the loss of a loved one, dealing with cancer or a troubled child, or just needed a patient listener.  'You should hang out a shingle', his Aunt Mary said. 'Hundreds of people will pay for your help.  Why do it for free?'

So Axel, an enterprising and ambitious man, went online and enrolled in a virtual learning program which would lead to a few months hands-on training and internship after which he could become a bona fide counsellor to the troubled. 

And so it was that a shaken, emotionally distraught, at the end of her rope Felicity Jones sat in Axel Burnham's small, windowless counselling room, dainty handkerchief in hand, dressed simply and as well as she could manage, and looked hopefully at the well-groomed, handsome young man in front of her. 

As new at the game as he was, Axel relied on his old-fashioned, tried and true 'sincere empathy' algorithm, a fancy way of saying listening to people's grief, an approach which had always worked in the past, although the farmers of Chillicothe were never as tightly wound and discombobulated as Felicity.  

He hesitated, wanting to open with, 'Now, what seems to be the problem?', but that sounded too much like General Hospital or the other afternoon soaps his mother watched when he was little, but simply said, 'I'm here to help you'.  

His mix of New Age nostrums, warm water therapy, a here-and-there Freudian reference, and a Whole Earth wellbeing program was just what Felicity needed to calm her nerves; and Axel was indeed a good listener.  She went on forever, banging on about COVID, Ebola, climate change, the Tsetse fly and the suffocating carbon emissions polluting every cubic foot of formerly breathable air. 

Felicity was the perfect patient for Axel to begin his new career, for she was so completely out of control and desperate for any kind of solicitude, that he could try any of the alternate therapies he had learned from The Roberts Advanced Psycho-Counselling Method online course. 

Dr. Phillip Roberts, designer of the course and a seasoned practitioner in alternative psychotherapy, had put together an eclectic mix of meditation, hatha yoga, and the practices of the martyred saints and drew on each when called for. 

Axel was particularly drawn to Roberts' focus on the martyrs.  St. Sebastian, for example, the saint who died a slow and excruciating death, pierced by a thousand arrows, had smiled in heavenly repose, so in control was he of his body and mind and in perfect harmony with the universe. 

'If he could do it, so can you', Axel said to Felicity. 

Slowly but surely, Felicity came out of her tremulous, fearful state and felt human again.  She had been foolish to worry so much about the simple matter of a virus when men and women far more evolved than she had accepted their fate and the world around them and met their maker. 

Axel tried the same deal with his next patient, a woman from the South End who had tried to kill her husband, had been sent to Ottaway for five years where she had become addicted to Fentanyl and as part of the conditions of her parole was sent to Axel.  The parole board couldn't care less about whom she went to, just so that she was out of their hair. 

He tried everything in his grab bag, and not only did nothing work but the woman called him out for 'bald chicanery'.  He was a charlatan, a snake oil salesman, a guttersnipe, and a fool, and if she had to spend one more hour with him, she would break his neck just like she tried to do with her ex-husband. 

Chastened and intimidated, Axel agreed to a compromise.  Pay him, don't bother to come in, and he would give glowing reports to the parole board. 

He felt a bit guilty about this, but he wasn't wedded to some online profession any more than he was bolting struts in the tractor factory. 

It just goes to show you what a great country America is - fucked up for sure, completely wacko on this COVID, Ebola, climate change nonsense, but the generator of entrepreneurs.  Finding a niche was what the enterprise economy was all about, and Axel had found a good one.  Off the wall, inveterate, loose-shunted worriers, gullible true believers and New Age shell game conmen like Axel.  A perfect match as old as the hills. He just had other fish to fry.

Barbarism, The Heart Of Darkness, And Human Nature - The Reality Few Want To Face

Joseph Conrad wrote about Africa and its threatening primitivism. In The Heart of Darkness, Conrad tells the story of Kurtz, who according to the manger of the Central Station, was one of the new breed of colonists sent out by the Company, charged with both dominating the ivory trade and bringing civilization to the natives.  

Yet in his tragic end he became more African than the Africans. In arrogating divinity to himself through a manipulation of tribal beliefs; and by maintaining complete control over the natives because of this assumed power, he rules absolutely, amasses a fortune in ivory, and becomes an authoritarian ruler.  Yet his assumption of African demonic spiritualism has a price.

As he speaks his last words, ‘The horror…the horror’, he finally understands that having descended completely into the primitive, having abandoned all traces of Western moral civilization, he is far worse than the natives of the jungle..  While the Africans who carry out ritual sacrifice are doing so as part of a sophisticated cosmology, Kurtz, when he encourages such sacrifice and ritual cannibalism only to promote his own longevity and power, descends into a completely amoral universe.

Marlowe, the narrator of the story, sees Kurtz as a courageous man willing to abandon his Christian beliefs and to consider the power and primitive glory of African animism.

“The earth seemed unearthly”, Marlowe says. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one.

They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend.

And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore.  

Marlowe is right, and Kurtz is a Nietzschean Superman, one who has been able to look over the edge of humanity and see what it really is.  Yet as much as Marlowe rightly acknowledges Kurtz’s search for understanding and meaning in the most unlikely and threatening places – it indeed takes courage to peer over the edge and to look into one’s own ‘heart of darkness’ -  he does not see the frightening, existential horror that might come of this search.  

Kurtz looked over the edge but died with the terrifying notion that not only he but all of mankind was indeed primitive; that ‘civilization’ was nothing more than a balm, a protective veneer, or at best a restraining order to violence.

Marlow forgives Kurtz for his ‘unspeakable rites’, whatever they might be and he chooses not to know.  He overlooks his arrogance and delusional conceits; but he admires his indomitable will.  Not only has Kurtz survived in the savage, primitive jungle, he has thrived.  Unlike most Westerners, he not only has adapted to the jungle, but adopted, manipulated, and used its ways.

Most of all Marlow – and of course Conrad – admire his unflinching look into his own heart of darkness.  He knows what he has done and feels no remorse.  He only feels the terrifying horror of realizing what all men are capable of.  Kurtz has never looked away, accepted his vision, and died with its horror on his lips.

“The horror, the horror’, whispered by Kurtz just before his death, was his final acceptance of his untamed, primitive soul and the inescapable barbarity of it.   The wilderness was not just an environment, but something alive, a complete, integral organism both prehistoric and terrifying in which men who, equally primeval  and uncivilized, were reminders of humanity’s savage beginnings.

Kurtz never tamed the men or the jungle but ruled over both through fear, intimidation, and an expression of absolute and indomitable will.  As death approached he understood that he had neither civilized, nor exploited, nor governed; but by means of the same primitive savagery, he expressed the same  amorality of a universally violent, aggressive, and insatiable human nature as he found in the natives.

Despite millennia of human history to the contrary, American progressives have refused to look at human nature for the hardwired, innate, ineluctable force that it is - aggressive, territorial, and self-defensive. Despite thousands of years of universal war, civil strife, savage tribalism, and unholy terror, they insist that the tide can be turned.  Absolutes have no place in a progressive vision. There is no such thing as permanence. The worst of humanity can be brought within a humanitarian, compassionate, considerate community. 

Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot are not distant memories of ancient history, but features of the Twentieth Century.  Few centuries have seen the wholesale barbarism of Pol Pot who sent millions of Cambodians to their death in the killing fields, unmindful of their humanity and determined only to create a Maoist state. No century has seen genocide on the scale of Nazi Germany. Every other attempt at genocide or ethnic cleansing, such as that of Serbia in the recent Balkan war, or worse the Hutu campaign against the Tutsi is but a shadow of Hitler's campaign to exterminate the Jews. 

Stalin's Siberian gulags and Mao's forced marches killed millions in totalitarian regimes disingenuously claiming that collateral deaths were necessary in revolutionary times. 

Perhaps the most determined, savage, and barbaric leader in history was Genghis Khan who with his Mongol-Turkic army thundered out of the Central Asian steppes, slaughtering millions and extending his empire from Japan to Europe.  He was not the first violent leader in history for his campaign took place only in the 13th century.  He had plenty of historical ancestors in the Chinese dynasties and in Medieval Europe; but the intensity, scope, and scale of his barbarism was impressive by any standard. 

Violence of course extends far back into pre-history when the most primitive Paleolithic peoples killed each other for territory, hunting rights, and authority. 

There is a hilarious comedic riff on violence making the rounds on social media.  

The world hasn't gotten violent. It has been violent since the beginning. When Cain killed Abel there were only four people on the earth and he killed one of them.  He was responsible for killing one-quarter of the world's population.  No war, no genocide, nothing even comes close

 

That should do it for idealism, but those who want to believe in progress towards a more verdant, peaceful, accommodating world will do so regardless of the evidence to the contrary. 

'That is the miracle and mystery of humanity', said Robert Finch, Professor Emeritus at Duke University borrowing ironically from Dostoevsky who condemned humanity for buying Jesus's disingenuous claims of salvation and wanting only miracles, mystery, and authority.  

We are an adaptable, marvelously supple race, capable of change for the better.  There is no reason why now cannot be the time to once and for all tame the violent energies which have characterized us and turn them into utopian promise. 

Hope built on premise built on assumption - a familiar algorithm but unfortunately just whistlin' Dixie. Human nature will remain as is until recombinant DNA technology can extirpate the nasty bits and replace them with 'Jesus genes' as Professor Finch has called them.  However if history has shown us anything, it is that humanity is quite capable of messing things up. God only knows what a genetically modified, 'improved version' of human nature would look like. 

'There have been recent wars, no doubt', Prof. Finch goes on, 'but the savagery has been replaced by the Geneva Convention - our sane attempt to limit the horrors of war'. 

The Geneva Convention was not the panacea to horrific violence its promoters claimed that it would be. ISIS was as savage as they come, disemboweling and beheading to intimidate and instill mortal fear, thus paving the way for the march to an Islamic caliphate.  In so doing, they adopted the very techniques of Genghis Khan who impaled severed heads on stakes along the roadside leading into the next village in his path. Every major power on earth has stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

'We can't just sit by', said a peace activist in Washington; but to do what?  There have been few times of peace in history - the Cold War and Pax Romana, the first being thanks to a nuclear standoff, the second due to absolute rule of empire. 

Standoff is our best hope. Keep the missiles pointed at each other with the promise of mutually assured destruction at hand - that is giving peace a chance - and until and unless that parity comes about, be prepared for battle. 

Angola (LA) Maximum Security Prison up until recent, modest reforms, was as savage and primitive as Conrad’s jungle. It was an an inversion of society.  While same rules of human nature apply among inmates – survival, self-interest, and territorialism – since Angola is a maximum security facility where many inmates are serving multiple life sentences for murder, there are fewer consequences to the violent expressions of it.  In such a lawless environment, there is even more reason to lose whatever socialized patterns of regularized life on the outside. 



It is hard to imagine the brutality of a society without consequences.  The inversion is even more twisted, since the guards, faced with the pure, hateful menace of violent inmates who long ago shed the last vestiges of usual morality, also lose theirs:

In a remarkable hearing that explored torture practices at Angola, twenty-five inmates testified…to facing overwhelming violence in the aftermath of an escape attempt at the prison nearly a decade ago.   These twenty-five inmates -- who were not involved in the escape attempt -- testified to being kicked, punched, beaten with batons and with fists, stepped on, left naked in a freezing cell, and threatened that they would be killed. 

They were also threatened by guards that they would be sexually assaulted with batons.  They were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves.  They were bloodied, had teeth knocked out, were beaten until they lost control of bodily functions, and beaten until they signed statements or confessions presented to them by prison officials.  One inmate had a broken jaw, and another was placed in solitary confinement for eight years. (MR Magazine)

Not only did inmates subject each other to ‘unspeakable rites’, the prison guards were complicit in the amoral mayhem.

Although one might be quick to dismiss Angola prison as an exception –the violent, amoral men incarcerated there must be an exception – serious philosophers have doubted the essential goodness of human nature.

God destroyed the world in the flood because it has become an evil place. He acted again in Sodom and Gomorrah, but that devastation did nothing to quell the evil instincts of his Creation.  As a last effort, he sent his son to try to teach the world peace and goodness, and that too has failed.

So, there it is - violence is as common, universal, and perennial as ever.  Not a bad thing, just a thing.  If it weren't for aggressive territorialism and Darwinian competition,  civilization would not have progressed.  Look at it that way. 

Who Could Possibly Believe In Islam? - Free Entry, Simple Rules, No Jews, And Vestal Virgins, That's Why

Ahmed Barsoum dreamed of an Islamic heaven - vestal virgins, fragrant gardens, lush tropical fruits, and eternal pleasure - woke from his revery, and dropped to his knees at the call to prayer by the muezzin of Islamabad, one of the prescribed five recorded by Epic Records. 

Ahmed was a devout Muslim, prayed five times a day, observed all holy days, went to the mosque for Friday prayers, and raised his children in strict accordance with the principles, rules, and obligations of Islam.  This obedience to The Law was important for he wanted to be certain that his entire family were favored on Judgment Day and would join him in paradise. 

When his prayers were over and after he prepared himself for the workaday routine necessary in this vale of tears, he walked briskly to his car.  He was not an engineer, doctor, or lawyer - his religious studies had always took precedence over secular topics - but he was quite happy at Bridger Toyota where he had become a successful salesman, known for his patience, due diligence, and carefully modulated insistence. Muslims from the entire metro area all came to him, knowing that such a man of God would treat them with honor and respect. 

Ahmed was born in in Lebanon but came to the United States when he was a child of twelve - right on the cusp of language fluency after which age he would always have had an accent, but coming in under the threshold he sounded just like any one of his suburban Maryland neighbors.  

This unaccented English fluency was a distinct benefit, for in these days Americans are still wary of Muslims, have  not yet forgotten 9/11, and read daily reports of Islamic terrorism in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. 

He insisted to anyone who would listen that Islam was a peaceful religion, that those suras which critics said called for death to the infidel were no more than calls to religious militancy no different than Christianity.  Although Jesus preached peace and love, every since the Crusades Christians were responsible for war, civil unrest, and general social mayhem. If there was ever a bellicose religion it was Christianity. 

Ahmed believed without hesitation that Islam was the world's one true religion because Mohammed was the last prophet.  His presence on earth signified the end of religious dissent, doubt, and disbelief.  After him for all eternity there would only be Islam, Allah, and his Prophet. Islam was a religion which defied probability and chance.  Even in the vastness and timelessness of the universe, there would be only a Muslim god, his religion, and his messenger.

Knowing that one was truly of the people chosen by God to join him in celestial paradise, and that to assure such ascension one had only to abide by the five pillars of the faith - Declaration of Faith, Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving, and Pilgrimage - made belief easy.  

It was enough to say that 'There is no god but God (and) Muhammad is the messenger of God', get down on your knees five times a day, fast for a month (and that only between sunup and sundown) give to the Red Crescent, and have every intention of making trip to Mecca. 

Allah in his infinite wisdom knows that the poor, the disadvantaged, the handicapped, and the unfortunate cannot make the Hajj, but as long as they have the intention of so doing (Sura 134 'Devotion in the heart is worth a thousand journeys to the Kabbah') they too can be saved.

It is no surprise that Islam is spreading throughout the world.  None of this Christian hocus pocus, fantastical cannibalistic notions (what else was eating the body and blood of Christ?), and hypocritic fol-de-rol about neighborliness, compassion, and welcome when the Christian capitalist world is a savage, dog-eat-dog affair. 

The Jews? Enough said about that imperialistic, arrogant religion.  'Let's not get started on the Jews', Ahmed said to his Muslim friends all of whom to a man thought that the international Jewish conspiracy, that unholy cabal of greed, insolence, and arrogation of power, was responsible for the world's ills and was alone guilty of stopping the advances of the world’s one, true religion, Islam. 

These were the days of heightened awareness of anti-Semitism, so Ahmed had to choose his words carefully, but when his dander was up, there was no holding him back.  The Jews of Hollywood had infected the country and the world with their Zionist message, Jews' money-grubbing instincts had amassed a fortune used to disassemble all more reasonable expressions of faith, and their imperialistic desires have been responsible for the slaughter of millions of Muslims. 

Here Ahmed had the Quran on his side, and he had memorized the various suras which called for the extermination of the Jews and the final cleansing of the earth of all Jewish vermin. The Nazis were on the right track and but for a few untimely defeats could have finished the job. 

Ahmed always stopped himself at this point, said a devotional prayer and begged Allah's forgiveness for his intemperance.  Of course He, the Almighty, had the universe well under control and far be it from him, Ahmed, to speak for Allah.  

Islam is an evangelical religion and every Muslim is obliged to preach the gospel to the infidel - giving him a chance to convert to the one true religion before he is ‘removed’, and Ahmed did his best.  He knew that he had righteousness on his side.  For those desperate for religion, offering them free entry, the simplest of all possible rules, no Jews, and a celestial paradise of infinite pleasure, was an easy sell. 

Catholic indoctrination was a mean affair - catechism, Sunday school, hellfire and damnation, and eternal punishment - and only a very few were able to make heads or tails out of the labyrinthian dogma of the Church.  They believed because their parents believed - they slid into an off-the-rack suit rather than choosing designer.  The Muslim, regardless of his origins, bowed down in reverence and obedience every day of his life without asking why.  There was no why in Islam, only because. 

Although anti-Islamic sentiments were spreading, the untoward, barbaric attacks by the Jew and his American consorts in Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah were enough to show the world the insidious savagery of non-Muslim religions. 

American progressives completely understood.  Muslims, diverse peoples of color, joined in solidarity with their Latino and black brothers, pointed the way to a truly inclusive world, one of peace and prosperity, so with the likely victory of American liberals in the coming elections, Islam would be safe from the insensate attacks on its goodness. 

Only intellectual sceptics were unsure - most Muslim-dominated parts of the world were poor, backward, and unproductive.  Wherever one found Muslim enclaves, the tale was the same.  The Azerbaijanis in Georgia, the Sunnis in India, the Africans in Europe - all were abysmally low on any socio-economic indicator. 

There were no Muslim scientists, AI engineers, software startup geniuses. There were no Muslim Nobel Prizes in the hard sciences and mathematics, all of which categories were dominated by Jews, Chinese, or Indians.  Islamic 'culture', if that is what it must be called, was a failure. 

When Ahmed heard this, he immediately jumped to the defense.  Perhaps Muslims were performing less well than they did in the Islamic Golden Age but that was because the praise of Allah and a place in his heaven was far more important than any secular enterprise. 

It was hard to be a Muslim in America these days, but God forbid he should repatriate to Lebanon or any other country in the Middle East.  No, his evangelism belonged right here on Route 7 in Arlington, Virginia, selling Toyota cars and trucks, serving the faithful and preaching to the infidel. A hard row to hoe for sure, but he was up to Allah's work. 

Islamophobia is not the right term for those who criticize Islam - 'phobia' means fear, and no Christian fears Muslims.  Muslims have been roundly defeated in every war they initiated against Israel, have been shown to be no match for Western power; and although they have been successful in certain terrorist acts, they have been neutered and are much less of a threat.  

Muslim hate is the better term - intense dislike for a religion which has arrogated political power and in so doing divided and corroded stable Christian, Western countries while contributed nothing, offering nothing, promising nothing but a fictitious salvation.  

'We should be tolerant and inclusive', say progressives; but the West is finally rejecting the posturing nostrums of the Left and countries throughout Europe and the Americas are turning politically conservative and radically Christian.  The cat is out of the bag, Americans are increasingly unintimidated by the lecturing Left.  Islam is a problem, a big problem. 

Voter ID - 'Who Dat?' - Up From Slavery, An American Fable

Pharoah Jones grew up in rural North Carolina, the son of sharecroppers and the great-grandson of slaves.  His mother named him Pharoah after Pharoah of Biblical times, the tyrant who kept the Jews in bondage and only when God endowed Moses with the power to part the Red Sea, were the Chosen People able to escape to the Holy Land. 

 

When asked why she named her son after the Egyptian tyrant and not Moses, the liberator of the Jewish people, she said that the ancient Egyptians were black, Pharoah was a powerful ruler, and no little North Carolina black baby was 'gwine to carry a Jew name'. 

Pharoah, now the drug kingpin of Anacostia, the deep inner city of Washington, DC, looked back with love on his days in the piney woods tarpaper shack where he tended the chicken run, drew water from the well, and chopped wood until his arms ached.  That's the kind of boy he was, uncomplaining and full of warm affection for his mother and grandmother and respect for his father. 

This was the way of the colored man, the Negro, and the black man in the South; but for Pharoah it was nothing but background and no different from that of any cracker white boy from the hills.  They were both born barefoot and poor but destined to become Americans - successful, respected, and rich. 

Pharoah had no hatred for the white man or anyone else.  Slavery? That was a thing of the distant past not to be dwelled upon or featured in one's life.  To do so would be to revive or perpetuate it, to continue to be a slave, to live forever in a broken down shack eating cornpone and fatback.  No, the young boy knew that he was not long for the piney woods, and someday he would buy his momma a brand new house in the big city. 

Pharoah was a smart boy, smarter than most, and born with uncanny savvy.  He knew when to yassa the white man, when to scurry back and forth doing his errands, when to stand up and be counted, and when to cut bait and fish in a bigger pond. 

He could turn on the charm when it came to that - he was the boy in the Ebenezer Baptist Church choir that the pastor noticed and took a shine to.  Pastor Williams gave the boy special chores around the church, honed his sense of duty and responsibility, and was more than willing to help him make his way in the world. 

Pharoah, however, needed no help.  Despite his choirboy image, Pharoah was quick to learn a trade - one of the few open to black people from the backwoods at the time.  He learned how to engage, cadge, and filch from the ingenues- those who were taken in by the young man's charm and affection and trusted him - and he soon learned the classic American lesson - 'A fool and his money are soon parted'.  

He soon had more money than his pappy and granddaddy had seen in years, but rather than spend it on corn liquor and women, he decided that he would invest in both; and before long in partnership with parties from Charlotte, he built a reputation as a canny investor, top manager, and brilliant entrepreneur. 

He muscled out the white boys, the backcountry road hotrodders running white lightning, and took over the trade. He assembled a crewe of young men like himself - agile, strong, and determined black men - and soon he was the man to see in North Carolina. 

This, however lucrative and socially appealing, was slim pickin's for the ambitious Pharoah Jones, and before long he made his way to Washington, DC where he apprenticed to Leroy Jackson, the drug kingpin of Anacostia.  Jackson was not unlike Frank Lucas, the Godfather of Harlem, the drug lord of New York, born and raised in rural North Carolina who became the most influential black man in the Tri-State area.  

Jackson not only ruled Anacostia but all the inner city neighborhoods of Washington.  He was versatile and accommodating, and made millions off whatever was the drug of choice - weed, cocaine, crack, heroin, and Fentanyl.  He owned a stable of hundreds of women and managed the business via his loyal managers who were not just pimps but masters of commerce.   

Pharoah quickly learned everything there was to know about Jackson's operation, but remained loyal and faithful to him; and only when the old, revered man retired to Bimini, did Pharoah take over the business.  He was just as savvy and ruthless as Jackson, and made a fortune. 

Now, Pharoah not surprisingly was a man without a face - a man without any official identity. No driver's license, no Social Security, no bank account, no social media, no nothing. It was as though he did not exist.  He left no trace, no telltale signs, nothing. 

This was America, Pharoah thought.  He was a pioneer, a rugged individualist, an off-the-grid master of all he surveyed and had never once capitulated to the confining, defining, corrupting demands of society.

As always, there was no racial bias or hatred in his attitude.  Whether white or black, politicians were as zealous for power and authority as anyone; but because they had the Constitution behind them, arrogation of power was a simple matter. Pharoah might buy politicians, police, and judges just like his predecessor and the Italian mafiosi before him, but he would never capitulate, give up his individualism and join the mainstream. 

Which is why Pharoah laughed at the flap over Voter ID and the patronizing, self-serving, venal attitude of progressive Democrats towards black people whom they assumed couldn't put two and two together let alone get a driver's license.  

Every one in the 'hood from the dopers and johns to the dealers and pimps who serviced them had identification, had bought into the system. As much as these men were social outliers, living on the margins of white society, they still had been co-opted, something Pharoah would never do. 

It was indeed laughable that here he was at the very pinnacle of American success with a treasury of millions, atop one of the biggest enterprises in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area, but the only black man within miles around who couldn't show a valid source of identification.  The fact that this official anonymity was his modus vivendi, his signature, and his persona - a deliberate, willful act to remain beyond the clawing forces that were out to unman him - was ironic. 

He was as clean as a wiped I-phone, a non-person but never a non-entity.  Non-entities do not hear cash registers ringing and filling offshore coffers with millions. They rule the roost, command respect and attention.  They are as American as apple pie but just don't show up anywhere. 

Voter ID?  What a joke, thought Pharoah.  What a pathetic, transparent, ridiculous charade. It meant nothing at all, a fantasy, a political chimera while the real business of black people was managed by none other than the invisible man, Pharoah Jones.

The feds knew who he was, but could never find him - he was the elusive chameleon of the ghetto, changing shape and color, the human boson, the quantum physics of probability. He was a genius, local boy made good, the model of the American dream, and all the suits wanted to do was to put him behind bars. 

Never, not in a million years.  True heroes never die. 

What Makes A Good Politician - Patriotism, Honor...Wait, That's Not Right! A Tale Of Political Divinity

Harlan Evans had always been a popular boy.  Girls loved him and boys wanted to be like him. He wasn't particularly handsome, intelligent, or athletic, and yet he was always prom king, president of his class, and chosen the most likely to succeed.  

Harlan had two qualities which made him irresistible - a silver tongue and empathy.  When Harlan listened to you, you felt like you were the only person in the world who mattered, and what he said was the most sensitively chosen, perfectly attuned expression of his understanding, his intentions, and his charm. 

No one could resist him. Young men took him into their confidence as though he were a father confessor, and women felt so respected, admired, and valued that they fell for him head over heels.  And this was even before he graduated from high school. 

Fitzgerald said it best about Gatsby and he could have been writing about Harlan Evans:

He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

 

'You've got a great career ahead of you', said the dean of students who had followed Harlan during his years under his watch.  There was something successful about the boy.  The dean couldn't quite put his finger on it it, but he too was charmed by the boy's interest, patience, and uncommon empathy.  These qualities more than intelligence, intellect, or insight would carry him far. 

As his popularity grew - he was no less sought after and admired in college as he was in secondary school - he came to realize how easy it was to get whatever he wanted with very little effort.  Professors loved his interest in their lectures and graded him far above the quality of his work.  Roommates were generous and affectionate.  He became a member of the university's most prestigious secret society reserved for the best, the brightest, the most well-bred, and the most likely to succeed. 

A strong moral foundation is built through adversity.  Moral choice - doing the right thing - is often difficult and must be parsed a thousand different ways and in the end, whatever the individual chooses, the individual is stronger, more respected, and more responsible. 

Harlan had never had to face such dilemmas in his life.  He had always done what suited him, but did it in a way that eased him through any narrow passages or across rough patches with hardly a notice.  His genial, accommodating, patient ways were tickets to ride free.  He had no moral foundation, no centralizing, ordering ethos, no set of principles. 

This lack of a moral center did not make him immoral.  Far from it.  His easy social success was made possible by never stumbling into the wrong corner, offending someone, stepping on toes, or pushing his way to the front of the line. 

People made way for him, granted him passage, deferred to him, and happily watched him go.  He was successful because he was always on an even keel.  He never ruffled feathers or gave people pause.  Everyone thought that he had their interests at heart, not his.  He, in their opinion, was one of the most generous and considerate people they had ever met. 

The Congressman from his electoral district had heard of this remarkable young man and was anxious to meet him, perhaps invite him to Washington to work on his campaign. The Congressman was as charmed as everyone who had met the young man and with his canny, practiced, and insightful political instincts knew that Harlan was the real item.  He and the people of his district would be proud to have such a promising talent in Washington. 

 

Harlan's political independence at first worried the Congressman.  Independents were notoriously untrustworthy, wavering souls and indifferent soldiers; but Harlan in his typical, ingenuous, patient, and empathetic way easily convinced the Congressman that loyalty was more important than principle in life; and that he would be an unwavering and unerring supporter of whatever policies the Congressman supported. 

Now, Congress is filled with many who believe that a sucker is born every minute, and that you can fool most of the people most of the time, but they get coopted into rabid party politics.  Take the ranking member of one of the House's most influential committees, a man who had won election thanks to a silver tongue and a gracious complaisance; but whose power and authority went to his head and he became a party enforcer, a man of limited vision, spiteful personality, and downright meanness.  He was feared, but the days of being liked were far in the past. 

Partisan politics and the viral instincts therein were a kind of euphoric drug for the ranking member.  He saw himself as a gladiator not a conciliator; a killer rather than healer.  He had reason to the top of the heap and would remain there by hook or by crook. 

The ranking member was nonplussed when he met Harlan. Who was this underling sent to him by his colleague from an unimportant, insignificant Midwestern district?  Yet after only a few minutes with the young man in his chambers, the Congressman had lost all of his military huffiness, his rigid bearing, and his grimace.  There was something likeable about the young man he could not quite define - something attentive, personal, even intimate.  This was not the way politicians were supposed to behave.  One was always on one's guard, watching one's back, and ready to parry and riposte. 

Harlan had been sent into this den by his patron who by then had understood the almost magical effect his young protege had on people; and since favors were needed from the ranking member, why not send in Harlan as an advance team of one?  His simple charm would soften the old man up and make compromise easy. 

The ranking member was so taken by the young man - he could not deny desire - that he approached Harlan's mentor if he might be available for a transfer.  The ranking member would be very appreciative, this an unmistakable offering that his colleague could not refuse. 

From the hems of power to power itself, that was the story of Harlan Evans whose service to the ranking member, his natural political camaraderie, and his instinctive ability to create communities of which he was the center, enabled his rise to electoral victory. 

He was found a comfortable seat in a district not far from his own, was sent out on the hustings, and not surprisingly won a convincing victory.  His policies? They were unnecessary.  His promises and his genuine commitment to fulfilling them was enough. This bait-and-switch was the stock in trade of politicians, but the electorate was usually on to them and demanded more substance, proof, and results. 

Not so with Harlan.  He was treated more like a divinity than a politician.  His words were never inflammatory, accusatory, or untimely.  He spoke in measured, simple, and heartfelt tones.  He was believable, as simple as that; and he joined his fellow representatives in the House with a policy chest as empty as it was before the election.  If there was ever a Representative with such high approval ratings and so devoid of ideas, it was Harlan Evans. 

Of course, he could talk a good talk, and wove personal anecdotes with homey philosophical tales, all embroidered with fancy stitching, but he never boxed himself in, never once betrayed that inimitable ability to say nothing and be believed. 

There were those in Congress who had caught on to this chimera and challenged Harlan to fess up, to admit his shell game and to come clean; but such was Harlan's savvy and confidence that he welcomed these naysayers into his chambers, treated them as royalty, made them feel welcome, wanted, and admired, and walked out with them, embracing and smiling. 

Harlan was a secret admirer of Jesus - secret because he kept any intimations of faith to himself, and because he had none - because Jesus in life and in death was able to win over millions of believers on the basis of promises alone.  If there was ever a man with more natural charm, seductive influence, and the ability to turn the most recalcitrant apostate to him, it was Jesus Christ. 

'Mustn't let that go to my head', Harlan said, smiling at the face in the mirror, allowing himself a bit of levity before the rounds of the day. 

Faith has many colors after all and had a missionary caught wind of Harlan's irony, they would have jumped on the challenge; but Harlan as always kept his own counsel.  Jesus and his equally persuasive, promises only emissary Paul would be his closeted heroes. He kept an original Dore lithograph of The Temptation in the Desert on his office wall.  'Now that was Jesus at the top of his form'.