The Happy Fortunes Of An African Dictator - Money Galore , A Yacht, And A New Home In St. Tropez

Alphonse M'bele, Supreme Leader of a West African state, long in power, and beneficiary of generous grants from the United States, was wondering where his next check would come from.  Not that he was living hand to mouth by any means.  M'bele had a king's ransom safely secured in offshore bank accounts, but 'development' was coming into question, and formerly generous countries were becoming more circumspect and cautious about their 'investments'. 

 

M'bele was once asked by an international development official how the money his institution had so generously granted had disappeared; and why the children of the Western Province were still without schoolbooks, a hot lunch, and tin roofs over their heads. Impatient, frustrated, and angry that the millions in foreign aid provided to this poor, desperate country had gone missing, he pointed at the President and said, 'I demand an answer'. 

President M'bele smiled at his associates, stood up slowly, drew himself up to his full, impressive height, straightened the folds on his embroidered white silk caftan, and said in his familiar resonant voice, 'Mr. Rosenthal, I am here thanks to my family, my tribe, my friends, and my country; and I will repay them in that order'. He motioned to his aides, and walked slowly, magisterially out of the ornate, high-ceilinged replica of the ceremonial hall of the Elysees Palace. 

The American sat down, shuffled his papers, and looked at the gold sconces, the Tiepolo-themed ceiling, the Carrera marble, and the wall-sized portrait of the President, dressed in a military uniform bedecked with medals, adorned with hand-woven gold epaulettes, gold buttons, and a red ceremonial sash.  He had been schooled, insulted, and berated by this petty tinpot dictator, this black African hoodlum, this....

Here Rosenthal shook his head, rose slowly rose from his seat, gathered his composure and walked with as much dignity as he could muster down the long allée to the carved oak doors, and out into the bright, baking African sun. 

Development was not supposed to be this way, he thought.  There must be some humanity in the continent, but after years administering and managing soft loans and grants designed to alleviate the poverty and the suffering of its people, he saw that nothing of substance had ever come from his country's generosity. Every red cent of the millions of dollars earmarked for health, education, and welfare had gone with the wind, disappeared. 

This was the last straw.  Never before had he spoken so honestly and never before had he been rebuffed with such dismissiveness.  He, after all, was an appointed representative of the United States government, a respected official, a man here on a people-to-people mission of mercy, and this baboon had spoken to him this way? 

The very next day he went to the office of the American Ambassador and complained.  Something must be done, Rosenthal insisted, to bring this man in line, to see our money invested where it was intended, to show respect for the intentions of the American people. 

The Ambassador smiled, thanked Rosenthal for his honesty and his concern, and went on in rotund oratory to praise President M'bele for his defense of the United States at the United Nations, his open-ended contracts with Exxon Mobil and Anaconda, and his personal friendship with the President of the United States himself. 

 

Rosenthal waited for the Ambassador to finish and started in on his prepared speech.  'With all due respect, Mr. Ambassador....' but the Ambassador raised his hand and said, 'Let me stop you right there, Mr. Rosenthal, before you embarrass yourself.  The ties between America and this great, black, African nation are indissoluble, and we will do whatever we can to strengthen them'; and with that Rosenthal was shown the door. 

Traffic had come to a standstill outside the Embassy.  In fact all traffic had stopped, pedestrians had moved to the curb and stood at attention.  For what seemed forever, a quiet hush came over the streets until sirens were heard coming from the east, announcing the passage of the Presidential cavalcade, led by a phalanx of Harley-mounted police, armored Suburbans, and finally the magnificent 1937 Rolls Royce Phantom, brilliantly polished and restored to mint condition from which M'bele waved to cheering onlookers. 

What irony, thought Rosenthal.  What a slap in the face.  What a monstrosity; but there it was all compressed in the twenty minutes spent on Embassy Row - the cravenness, the corruption, the venality on both sides. 

'Have you heard the news?', asked a colleague of Rosenthal when he returned from the Embassy. 'Trump has closed down USAID.  We're finished'. 

The chicanery, the blatant, bald-faced American corruption would finally be over.  The scam had been outed and dismantled. More power to the White House.  Although Rosenthal would have to find work, at least it would not be the smoke and mirrors game which he fronted for so many years. 

In M'bele's palace, the mood was somewhat different.  'A pittance', replied the President to his chief financial officers. 'A drop in the bucket.  A spit in the ocean'; and with that he received a call from the Chinese Ambassador who offered his country's services.  In the blink of an eye, the tables had been turned but M'bele's fortunes not only remained untouched but increased.  

The Chinese were well-known for their Machiavellian politics.  Sell them oil, gas, and rare earths at concessionary prices, and they would look the other way.  No more moralistic badgering from the United States.  No more hectoring, no more conditionalities.  It was open season once again. 

The very next day Lao Ming Tze was welcomed with pomp and circumstance to the Presidential palace, festooned with Chinese flags.  An honor guard fired a twenty-one gun salute as the Ambassador stood beside his car, looking up the steps to where M'bele waited.

'This is my day, and a fine one it is', M'bele said to an aide as the Chinese Ambassador made his way to his welcoming arms.  A new home in the south of France and one atop the highest mountain in the Alps, a symbol of African supremacy, the rightful place for the black man. 

'Fuck 'em', said Trump when he heard the news of the new Sino-African alliance. 'We've got other fish to fry' and a new cover for his policy of America-first rare earth mining of the Arizona desert, eliminating dependency on this shithole countries like M'bele's.  'Let the chinks have it', the President said, dismissing the messenger. 

This is the new geopolitics.  Everyone ends up happy.  M'bele is delighted with his newfound wealth and homes in St. Tropez and beyond.  The Chinese are happy to have secured minerals long sought but hard to secure in war-torn Congo; and Donald Trump is delighted that he can now make good on his promise to make America an economically independent country. 

Harry Rosenthal thought he might try the World Bank to pursue his career; but balked at the thought of more toadying to the likes of Alphonse M'bele, rounds of renegotiated loans which are never repaid, conditionalities which are never respected, mountains of exaggerated Baroque wealth in every Presidential palace up and down the continent.  No thanks, I would rather sell used cars rather than go along with that charade. 

And as irony and fate would have it, that is exactly what he did - Associate Sales Manager at Bill Page Toyota in Arlington, Virginia, an upbeat place, regular hours, modest but acceptable paycheck with benefits and incentives. 

 

M'bele chose to sleep with his Fulani wife that evening - the beautiful, light-skinned model from the northern tribes, his favorite, and the one he always chose after a victory.  They drank champagne on the Presidential balcony, watched the sun set over the river and the mountains beyond, and retired for the night. 

White Linen Tablecloths, Crystal, And Fine China - The Racism Of Elegance

Parker Anthony grew up on Beacon Hill, the latest in the line of a New England family descended from English royalty (the Duke of Northumberland), American patriots (Paul Revere, Lexington and Concord), and early Twentieth Century captains of industry. 

Parker had prepped at St. Paul's, was schooled at Yale, and at only 30 became a partner in Burr and Longstreet, Wall Street's premier investment firm.  He lived in Groton Long Point on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, in a house built by a great grandson of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, Palladian architect who had carried on the tradition of classical English architecture in America; and landscaped by Frederick Law Olmstead. 

 

Aristocrat, financier, legatee of storied British history, and patriotic American, Anthony was the best of both worlds - proud of the New World and even more proud of the tradition of English royalty which had presided over the greatest empire the world had known and given its colonies learning, jurisprudence, civil society, and wealth.  

His family had never stirred from their noble, conservative traditions - it had been the dukes, earls, and viscounts who had presided over the civilizing culture of Britain and their legatees in America were the caretakers of tradition, as Christian as St. George, as English as Shakespeare's Henrys, and as politically conservative as the Lords of the first Parliament. 

The Anthonys were not just heirs to a tradition, they were living examples of it.  Their home was appointed in the finest American and British furniture, Revere and Townsend, and the best Empire cabinetwork. Whistler peacock furnishings, elegant Persian carpets, and the very finest silverware of Abercrombie and Sanders.  At the same time, their home was welcoming - the ethos of fine taste and culture was universal, and for those who appreciated it, evenings spent there was far more than entertainment.  It was an experience. 

Parker Anthony's home was a cultural island, a unique redoubt of the best of England and America.  It was there, no different from the Surrey estate of his great ancestor, Algernon Percy, Fourth Duke of Northumberland, that the finest minds and talents of both continents assembled.  The guest list was one of honor, dignity, and brilliance.  

 

It was an island, of course, because early Twenty-first century America was as far from the sophistication, taste, and cultural armory of the Anthonys.  In fact in recent years America had grown into a 'culture of appeasement', a term coined by a colleague to refer to the abject servitude to Africanism - the core of the new 'Year Zero' thinking of the the new Left.

Year Zero, of course, was Cambodian dictator Pol Pot's term for the inauguration of a Maoist state, a moment when the past would no longer exist.  The killing fields were testament to Pol Pot's murderous ambitions, and butchering dictatorship, one far worse than Stalin or Mao could ever imagine. 

The American Left was just as uncompromising as Pol Pot - the brutal, oppressive, racist colonial past of Europe and the early days of the new American republic were to be expunged, deleted from history, consigned to anonymity as if they never existed. 

 

In its place would be an ethos based on race, gender, and ethnicity at the center of which would be the black man - the very symbol of the new, progressive America.  Child of the forest, attuned to nature and the subtle currents of prehistory; strong, able, and preternaturally intelligent, the black man would repopulate white America and turn it into a new world of high natural nobility.

Parker was nonplussed.  It was one thing to urge social reform - after all Oliver Cromwell did his patriotic best to democratize England; and although the nation happily returned to monarchy, he was part of the ebb and flow of politics - but it was another thing altogether to reject the motherlode of values inherited from Europe. 

Europe was no different, Parker had said.  Politicians from London to Budapest were warning of the de-Europeanization of the continent.  Within a generation, Europe could be Muslim, radicalized and isolationist.  This new majority - like the American Left and its coalition of color - would erase Western values and replace them with medieval torture. 

Parker listened to distant rumble of thunder over the Sound - the North Shore was getting the rain which would soon be over Connecticut.  A few yawls and catamarans were reefing their sails while the more experienced sailors were running with the wind to make it to port before the storm hit. Parker smiled, having been caught out on many a summer afternoon like this.  The decision was always this - reef or run - but he and his father had always had a second sense for water, wind, and current.  

He turned from the window and watched the servants put the final touches on the dinner table, polishing the last fork, adding a zinnia to a bouquet (Fall was quickly approaching), and making final adjustments to the symmetry of the wine glasses - all a marvel of elegant perfection, a table of balance of shine, color, and transparency, a constellation of crystal, silver, and starched linen, 

The dinner table was more than just the proper way to serve guests.  It was the centerpiece of a tradition which dated back centuries.  There was no difference between the assembly of dukes, duchesses, and earls of 18 century England and this evening in America. 

Parker and his family had never treated anyone with disrespect.  Although America's progressive cant and diaspora mentality was unsettling - the tribalism of forest, veldt, and savannah was to be honored despite its primitivism and its status of received wisdom dangerous, divisive, and damaging to the commonwealth.  Minority rights and democratic inclusiveness were one thing, but raising the specter of profound underdevelopment to the level of kings and courtiers was absurd. 

The storm cleared over the Sound.  Sails were unfurled and courses set for the Atlantic or safer harbors to the west.  The air was always particularly clear, briny, and brisk after thunderstorms, and he opened the French windows to the verandah where he waited for his guests to arrive. 

Not only was the anomaly of race, gender, and ethnicity being promoted - the championing of the formerly enslaved for nothing more than their suffering; the cheers for the medieval societies of Gaza and the West Bank - but Europe, the continent that gave civilization to the world - laws, learning, art, music and high culture - was being described only as an oppressor, a predator, and a force of evil. 

The Gao and Ghanaian Empires that ruled West Africa in the 6th and 7th centuries CE left nothing behind - a scouring of the land and intent on extensive rule left no room for culture.  There is no architecture, no formal gardens, no bridges, aqueducts, or roads. Nothing other than oral history, the songs of griots, and the mythological tales handed down over the generations to suggest their presence and influence.  

The rest of the sub-Saharan continent was ruled by tribal chieftains - warring, slave-owning, confined societies.  The chronicles of European travelers to Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, Mungo Park and Rene du Chaillu among them, reported savagery, cannibalism, and tribal inhumanity. 

Every society has its dark ages, but Africa has barely emerged from its own.  The continent is a morass of tribalism, underdevelopment, poverty, and misgovernance; and this, thought Parker, was to be the cultural counterpart of London, Paris, and Rome?

It was one thing to nationalize the newcomer - to give every new American the chance and the opportunity for advancement, influence, and wealth; but the African diaspora has remained ineluctably linked to its enslaved past and its tribal origins.  Eventually and hopefully the ties will be loosened or broken and black Americans will join the mainstream; but to assume some native superiority, by fiat raise them to the pinnacle of American society, and to replace the words of the Constitution and the ethos of the Founding Fathers with street culture is absurdity. 

The evening's guests began to arrive.  There was Dame Elizabeth Fowler former prima ballerina of the New York City ballet, guest dancer with the Bolshoi, philanthropist, patron of the arts, and owner of Far Oaks, Frank Lloyd Wright's only waterfront estate.  She was escorted by Henry Wadsworth Banning, great grandson of Ezekiel Banning, Newport shipbuilder and investor in transatlantic trade. 

There were the Fieldings, Sir Compass Atkins, recently knighted by King Charles, Mr. and Mrs. Atwater Parsons of Philadelphia and Palm Springs; Dexter Vibberts, Nobel Prize nominee; and the Hatfield Scarboroughs of Sewickley. 

Coats and hats were taken, drinks and canapés, and the dinner served.  It was another memorable occasion.  Parker was proud of his guests, his family, and his home.  America might be going through some unfortunate times - this happens every few generations or so when the old socialist fervor of times past gets new life - but there is no way that the country can survive without its past and those, like him, who were appointed to preserve, protect, and promote it. 

'Racist', claimed an editorial piece in the New York Times calling out faux aristocrats like the Parker Anthonys as throwbacks, unrepentant colonialists, and champions of white empire; at which Parker smiled as he used the newspaper to start the blaze in the Severn Library, the repository of the complete works of Audubon and Fielding. 

Beauty Is Back! - The Return Of European Classical Beauty And Hollywood Allure As DEI Disappears

Alicia Marvin was a beautiful child, and all the old ladies of Groton Long Point fawned over her, marveled at her silken blonde hair, her cornflower blue eyes, and perfect features.  God had made an Eve, the very essence of feminine grace and symmetry; and Mrs. Farquharson never stopped talking about The Miracle on Lincoln Street, the wonder child, National Velvet come to Connecticut.

'Be careful it doesn't go to her head', Mrs. Farquharson said to Alicia's mother, a beauty in her own right who had been discovered by Vogue and spent her time on the cover for many years before retiring from the spotlight to manage her family's estate, a hundred acre property with a Birchfield home overlooking Long Island Sound. 

The old lady needn't have worried because the young girl came into her own at a time when her particular beauty - classic, white,  European, and stunning - was out of favor and in its place was 'inner beauty', the intelligence, generosity, and compassion hidden within...well, might as well call a spade a spade...ugliness. DEI might have had its principles of universality and progressive values, but anyone watching the Parade of The Other could only see an aberration from the norm. 

Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but an objective constant, painted and celebrated since antiquity.  Symmetrical features, luminescent eyes, full lips, and luxuriant hair all express health, wealth, and well-being as well as being pleasing to a natural sense of geometrical order (the golden mean is universally appealing), and sexual appeal.  

The ideal of feminine beauty has not changed in millennia; and statues, masks, frescoes of Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Persians have portrayed the same perfectly proportioned face.  Whether such perfectly formed features and their harmonious composition signified health, wealth, and well-being; or whether there was some innate human appreciation for and valuation of harmony, the historical record is clear.  While some women because of some unusually outstanding feature or a sense of presentation and theatre might have been considered attractive, they are anomalies. 

Alicia's bone structure, facial symmetry, and the classical features that have been admired ever since antiquity would single her out as one in a million.  Her genes were configured with bits of her ancestors who were not themselves particularly handsome or beautiful, but who had physical traits which when combined with others, would contribute to Alicia’s golden mean.  The almond shape of her eyes, her aquiline nose, her fine mouth would all come from relatives long forgotten, but it was some other Mendelian miracle that sorted them out in perfect proportion. 

The arguments against universal standards are based on a more general philosophy of relativism.  There is no such thing, say proponents of this theory, of universal anything – no all-inclusive morality, ethics, intelligence, or beauty.  A priori has no meaning, no relevance, and no purpose other than to promote a particular, Euro-centric world-view.  Even the most casual look at history belies this notion.

And so it was that in the face of historical determinism and the persistent, undeniable, unequivocal standards of female beauty, American progressives created an alter-image of female appearance, one which deliberately and aggressively promoted 'un-beauty' and the idea that if America got used to the new version of allure - that defined by unseen but presumed intelligence, wit, class, and ability - the old white, stereotypical images would not only fade from view but would be discredited. 

Un-beauty would become the new norm, and no longer would blonde, blue-eyed starlets take center stage.  

The most radical of these social reformers insisted on stretching the limits, defying rather than simply dismissing old notions of the feminine ideal, and photographs of large, high-shelved, aggressively obese black women began to appear in the legacy media, all without comment or observation.  These women were to be taken for their whole selves, their inner value.  Physical appearance was insignificant and irrelevant, and bold images of deliberately unattractive women were the whole point. 

Even farther-fetched was the promotion of transgenders as the new sexual being - a transformative evolution of the whole notion of beauty and sexuality.  Championing the butch tough-girls of Bernal Heights, ugly as sin in work boots and flannels as America's new woman was not enough.  Progressives felt the need, the urgency to take the paradigm to its logical conclusion - bearded, hung truck drivers turned frilly girly girl. The public was to suspend disbelief, and to ignore the telltale signs of masculinity and look at these figures no differently than they would look at Marilyn Monroe or Scarlett Johansson. 

And then it happened - Sydney Sweeney, a beautiful, young, blonde, blue-eyed model appeared in a Levi's commercial saying, 'I have great jeans' a playful double-entendre playing on her obvious physical beauty, her great, inherited genes - a statement that white, traditional, universal standards of beauty were back. 

 

The contrivance of the Left, the fantastical promotion of everything but white, female beauty, a socio-political statement at the core of progressivism was suddenly outed.  It only took a few months of the Trump presidency to call out the deviousness of the agenda, to once and for all reclaim history.  

The standards of female beauty which have remained unchanged for millennia, and the most expressive modern version of that ideal - the young, blonde, blue-eyed, lithe and alluring woman -  would be on full display.  All men - black, white, and in between - want that woman, want to have her, taste her, take her. 

And so it was that Alicia Marvin joined the Trump White House, and became part of the new zeitgeist of alluring feminine beauty.  It was the Twenties again, Gatsby-esque parties on the South Lawn, young women coming and going, transforming the White House from a menagerie to a place of classic beauty. 

The tables were turned, and just as the Biden Left wanted ugliness to demonstrate inner worth, the Trump Right wanted to show that beauty and brains were not incompatible, and that when you looked for one, you often got the other. 

The touted, criticized, vilified whiteness of it all was the point.  There was no denying Americans' European heritage.  The country itself was a child of the Enlightenment, heir to kings, queens, cavaliers, courtiers, and great civilization.  Not only was the relativistic posturing of the Left wrong - all cultures, African and European among them were not all equal in importance and achievement - but the supremacy of Western European culture was primus inter pares. It was not to be derogated, but championed. 

So just as the Left had conflated goodness with ugliness, the Right linked whiteness and Europeanness.  It was not the racist, Nazi-era sentiment assumed by progressives who saw their shibboleths fall one after the other, but a statement of equivalence.  

Alicia thrived during the Trump years, was finally appreciated if not honored for her 'great genes', her gift of remarkable beauty.  Her MIT PhD and internship at Bell Labs was not unusual - there are plenty of smart women in America - it was her stunning beauty that everyone remembered and remarked upon.  Sexist, as progressives claimed, a residual misogyny?  Hardly.  Beauty was finally back and out in the open.