The Politician, The Courtesan, And The Slave - The Odyssey Of An Ambitious, Untroubled Man

Harrison Phelps had always had ambition, and from the earliest age knew he wanted to be more than a druggist's son, a Presbyterian, and a good boy. He wanted to be somebody, somebody important, a person with impact, someone who mattered; but here he was tethered to a pharmacist, a Rotarian, an indifferent golfer, a churchgoer, and a regular guy.  

His mother chafed under the 'awful modalities', as she put it of New Brighton life, and wore cultured pearls and St. Laurent although it stretched the family budget.  She for one would not sit idly while the world passed her by. 

Harrison's success began with his mother's annual fancy-dress New Year's Eve gala, held in his home, catered by Swedish chefs, and attended by New Brighton's finest, attending only because of his mother's panache, beauty, and unmistakable sexual and social allure.  There was Sybil Bernstein, a Jewess as beautiful as Nefertiti, with the poise and grace of a prima ballerina, and with the sharp intellect of a  Madame Curie. 

There was Anita La Cava, dark Sicilian beauty; Marie Everton, an aristocratic heir to the Cabot and Lodge Boston fortunes; and Missy Trowbridge, whose low-cut bodice of Victorian lace, adorned with heirloom lockets and brooches, led him to impossible adolescent desire. 

The men - aka husbands in tow - were the town's burghers, doctors, lawyers, and opticians and had nothing to offer the young Harrington.  They were addenda, supernumerary to the stunning Sybil and Anita, dismissed as such and faded from view as the evening wore on, 

If only I could have women like Sybil, the young Harrington mused, and not be collared and corralled by the likes of their husbands, life would be a dream.  If only...

But 'if only' is all it takes in a desirous, ambitious boy like Harrington, and soon enough he would pursue the reality not the fantasy of his young desires. 

He was a bright boy, particularly good at math and languages, and on those merits made his way to Lefferts and Yale graduating with distinction. 

Yale had been both a proving ground and a diversion - he summered with the best of them on the Vineyard and wintered in Gstaad, learned the ways and wiles of the upper classes, but time passed slowly, eager as he was to be released from the traces that had bound him for all of the short two decades of his life. 

 

Such ambition, desire, and moral impertinence were exactly the qualities required for success in America, and without planning or plotting the trajectory of his future, or sussing out the variables of success, he made the elision from Yale to Wall Street without a glitch.  He and the Street were made for each other, and before long he was partner in Morgan Stanley, a wunderkind, a once-in-a-generation talent, a young man with brains, ability, and a marvelously amoral, nihilistic sense of profit and promise shared by few.

'We have a slaveholding past', said his mother one day out of the blue.  He knew that she, a Daughter of the American Revolution, patriot, and amateur genealogist had been looking into her origins, but was surprised that she had uncovered anything of note.  A grandee, he mused, a plantation owner, lord of the manor and of all he surveyed, cotton king of Georgia, wealthy beyond his dreams; and his musings were not far from the truth. 

 

His mother's family, the Carters, were direct descendants of King Carter, landowner and developer of the Northern Neck of Virginia, that fertile peninsula extending to the Chesapeake Bay between two rivers, the Potomac and the Rappahannock. Carter had been gifted land thanks to his uncle, the Duke of Northumberland and thanks to Carter’s enterprise and savvy, he turned the land grant into a tobacco bonanza.  

When the land wore out and tobacco was no longer the crop it was, he moved south and made millions more from the vast cotton plantations of the Mississippi Delta.  He became in a short time the king of King Cotton. 

Whereas Harrington's liberal friends (Yale was just beginning to turn out Freedom Riders) would have been nonplussed and abjectly ashamed at such a revelation, he was delighted.  Slavery appealed to his instinctive Nietzschean instincts - the accumulation of labor and capital in one package, master of a thousand such economic oddities and profiting a hundredfold. Imagine! Hiram Carter a relative!

Harrington married well to the great granddaughter of an aristocratic Southern family descended from the first English cavaliers to settle Virginia and North Carolina.  The wedding was nothing but impressive, all the perks and privileges of wealth and status on display. Felicia Lancaster was an English peaches-and-cream beauty, a woman of charm, pedigree, breeding, and inimitable grace.  Together they made the perfect American couple. 

Of course not everyone within Harrington's orbit agreed, for most had found the principles of Marx, Engels, and the French socialists more than enticing. Not only had they forged their own quite distinct way but they dunned Harrington for his racist, antediluvian views. 

 

None of this mattered, and when he was approached by the political kingmaker of Georgia and urged to run for political office, he readily agreed.  It was time, now that his portfolio was secure, and land, family, and reputation were safe and sound, to make a bigger difference. His sound patrician, early American, patriotic Enlightenment values should be aired, especially at a time when America was foundering in moral debt, anomie, and desperate liberalism. 

He turned out to be a gifted speaker with a silver tongue, able to convince thousands of the rightness of his ideas.  Although Georgia tended conservative, it tacked briskly to the Right after Harrington finished his campaign.  He was elected by a landslide, and his district for the first time in recent memory went red. 

He won thanks to a foundational conservatism, but an all-encompassing integrational message. 'I may be the descendant of your masters', he shouted to an all-black crowd, 'but because of it I am the most ardent and devoted supporter of your rights you will ever find on this earth'.  

Of course this was only political finery.  He had no more support for the proto-African, dysfunctional black communities of the inner city than the man in the moon, but if looking that way got him elected, so be it.  There are no moral winners and losers in American politics. 

He won hands down and represented his district well, bringing home the bacon when called for, rejecting flimsy, idealistic liberal propositions when required.  There was only one thing left for him to do in his imagined life trajectory. 

Harrison, child of good if only modest middle American upbringing, proper Ivy League education and prosperous business career, could have any woman he desired; and when he was elected to national office, his desirability only increased; but this Valmont, Lothario, Casanova success was not enough.  There was still icing to be put on the nihilist, Nietzschean cake.  

He needed a hooker, the top-of-the-line, high-priced courtesan to complete the picture.  A pure, unadulterated, unvarnished picture of uncaring, unmoral, indifference.  The one statement which would tell all of his finality and amoral perfection that few could claim. He would indeed ride over the herd.

Mlle. X was just the one - a beautiful Palestinian beauty rescued from the ashes of Gaza, given a home and purpose for being, and recruited into the best known brothel in the Nation's Capital - and Harrington became a faithful, remunerative customer - so much so that he was seen, unconcerned if not proud, in public with her.  There was no riding with the herd in political or sexual matters.

Washington is of course not Paris where the likes of Presidents Mitterrand and Sarkozy cavort publicly with their mistresses, and opprobrium surfaced; but Harrington held his ground, defied critics and moral naysayers, and was reelected. 

 

Americans are not boobs, and despite claims to the contrary and the patronizing rants of the Left, most want unapologetic, uncompromised, defiant men like Harrington to represent them.  The turn to the right in American politics is less about economics, taxes, and tariffs than about virility.

Crude? Racist? Patriarchal? Perhaps, but only seen through a myopic, distorted lens. Harrington Phelps was not only the American, but the human, and finally and at long last, voters woke up to reality and cast liberal cant and faux idealism aside as the circus freak show they now knew it to be.

Fraud, As American As Apple Pie - But For Somalis? Scams Are A Lot Easier Than Running Pirate Gun Boats

Fraud is as American as apple pie.  There have been con artists, tricksters, shysters, shell games, Ponzi and get-rich-quick schemes, and snake oil salesmen since the founding of the Republic, and surely before then under the noses of our British masters. 

 

Just in the past few years we have seen the likes of Jeffrey Skilling and Enron, Bernie Madoff, and Rudy Kurniawan, the Indonesian wunderkind who bilked millions out of credulous investors in a magnificent wine fraud.  Rudy bought decent but unremarkable surplus wine stored in casks in Europe, bottled it under skillfully aged labels, and sold it to wine aficionados at sky-high prices, knowing they would never open the bottles but sell them to equally credulous investors for a profit. 

He had a remarkably sophisticated taste, and could identify vineyard, terroir, and year with accuracy.  He was eloquent in his description of each and every one of these wines, discovering fragrances, hints, and suggestions that captured the complexities of the very best wines.  So when he sold his dreck to his growing circle of friends, they believed him.

Bernie Madoff did the same thing with his Jewish friends, associates, and colleagues.  He dazzled them with his knowledge of the most arcane financial products, convinced them of his ability to quadruple their investment in a matter of months, relied on his Jewishness and standing within the Jewish community to add credibility, and made millions. 

Skilling was a master of the creative financial instrument, and found ingenious ways to create fabulous empires of wealth built on nothing but air, ships will come in promises, and trickery so complex that the SEC went on wild goose chases for years before untangling his fraudulent web. 

Snake oil salesmen - itinerant hawkers of patent medicine so popular in the 19th century - were equally adept at snookering the rubes from the farm.  They did it with testimonials, a silver tongue, modest prices, and quick getaways. 

P.T. Barnum, master of the three ring circus famously said, 'A sucker is born every minute', and his freak shows, displaying the most impossible human and animal creations, raked in thousands.  

Abraham Lincoln stated that you can fool most of the people most of the time, but then added the caveat, 'but not all of the people all of the time'  - enough truth and enough currency to cover the legions of smalltime crooks and conmen throughout the land. 

Municipal fraud in America is common, and much of it goes unnoticed.  Unneeded sidewalks are rebuilt, alleys resurfaced, roads reconfigured to accommodate non-existent bike traffic, millions of dollars are poured into social welfare schemes which have never worked and never will while enriching managers and sponsors. 

Infrastructure projects worldwide are known for their endemic corruption.  Every contractor whether in India or America cuts corners here and there, a little less cement in the concrete, some 'impurities' in the asphalt, cost 'overruns' costing millions, planned obsolescence so that the whole kit-and-kaboodle will have to be rebuilt, resurfaced, reconstructed in a few years. 

Government spending is the right place to look for massive fraud. Government officials are the only ones who can spend money without measuring performance and without consequence - i.e. without accountability. There is no bottom line as there is in the private sector, no CFO breathing down your neck to see that upward tick in profits and out-the-door consequences for intimations of a downward spiral.  Government can spend like a drunken sailor without anyone paying attention.  Good intention is all that counts. 

Which is what led to the COVID-era massive fraud in Minnesota. The Biden administration poured billions of unaccountable money into schemes to mitigate the effects of the virus.  Everybody got a piece because like AIDS, the disease was said to be everyone's, and the largesse from treasury coffers was to be spread widely.  

The Administration knew that through these funds it could create an increased and even more widespread dependency on the federal government.  More than ever government would be the nation's caretaker always acting in the public interest, the place where all Americans should turn in times of need.  COVID was a way to help build the state. 

 

Everyone is heir to the American history of fraud, but some are more particularly quick on the trigger.  The Somalis are known for three things - intractable civil violence, endemic government corruption, and offshore pirating.  Somalia is the example of a failed state.  Anyone in Somalia who expects to survive let alone prosper, must resort to thievery, extortion, intimidation, and manipulation.  Those who came to America, imbued with this ethos, saw the most amazing cornucopia before their very eyes.  Not only would they be able to carry out Somali tradition of thievery, but instead of making thousands, they could make millions with no one noticing. 

It's the same thing with Nigerians who have perfected credit fraud to an art, and before Congress caught on had robbed billions from unsuspecting Americans.  Most international development consultants have 'No Nigeria' clauses in their contracts to avoid spending even a day in a country where shakedowns begin and end at the airport - a country so corrupt that even Nigerians are amazed at the depth, extent, and yes, genius of the schemes. 

So it is no surprise to anyone that the Minnesota fraud ring has siphoned millions of federal, state, and local funds into Somali pockets and into those of their countrymen in Mogadishu.  If Nigerians could do it, so could Somalis.  Oh, but moralists say, the Somalis were worse because they took food from the mouths of babes, targeting childcare programs.  The Nigerians were democratic.  Their victims ranged from top-level World Bank officers to post office workers. 

The Minnesota COVID fraud is the perfect storm - a naturally, historically credulous  American population who thinks doing good is ipso facto good; a federal administration anxious to spread walkin' around money to build its own reputation and influence; and a corrupt ethnic group for whom bilking, robbing, and pilfering is endemic.

The American Left led by arch-ur-Somali Congresswoman Ilhan Omar insist that this is not a Somali problem, and any attempt to tar the Somali community with the same brush is racist; but this is like saying that ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab terrorism is not Islamic.  Identity politics, invented by the Left to avoid responsibility for racial and ethnic dysfunction and anti-social behavior, is itself a fraud, but out it comes by Omar and her progressive shills. 

A tempest in a teapot, this Minnesota Somali fraud.  Of course it happened, and of course it will happen again.  Perfect storms are not as uncommon as one might think.  Give the Somalis credit.  They saw what was in fact a government fraud - the Biden Administration fearmongering the American public into Orwellian submission - and Americans willingness to roll over, and took advantage of it. Ahh...the American Dream, making it. 

Love In A Foreign Language - Leaving Intellect For Sexual Intimacy, D.H. Lawrence In The Jungle

Bartleby (Bart) Phipps had never intended to be a world traveler, growing up in a conservative middle class family in a small New England town.  His father, a lawyer at the small family firm of Beatty, Phipps & Collier was a member of the New Brighton Country Club, Rotary, Kiwanis, and St. Maurice's Catholic Church; and his mother was a homemaker, volunteer, and member of the Hospital Auxiliary.  There was nothing unusual or unseemly about the Phipps family, and Bart's father was sure to keep it that way. 

Bart's early years were modest and unremarkable, a good student, a reasonable athlete, and a rising member of the community.  His only straying from what seemed to be his prescribed path - Yale, law school, prestigious K Street partnership - was his fascination with things foreign.  It only took a look at the illustration of the Cafe Des Deux Magots in his French II grammar to give the settled world of New Brighton a shake; and when Alain de Villiers-Rochefoucauld joined his country day school as an exchange student, he was convinced that his future would not be in Connecticut but somewhere far removed. 

Lefferts and Yale were only de rigeur stops along the way to a profitable career, good marriage, and homes on Nantucket and St. Bart's; and treated as such. Not exactly a purgatory (there was the delightful Michelle Green), but a right of passage.  

And so it was that not long after graduate school, another credentialed waystation, that he went overseas as far from his predictable future as he could get - to Africa and a Sahelian country bordering the Sahara, profoundly Muslim, traditional, with romantic remainders of the long French colonial past (the two ex-colonial sisters from la France profonde who ran the Amitie pension with paper and pencil, did marvels with the capitaine from the river, entertained the voyageurs in from the bush with Pastis and foie gras). 

 

It was there that he met Antoinette de Miramon-Fargues, an economist with the French embassy and heir to Valliere, the chateau in the Dordogne, the forests in Alsace, and a hotel de ville in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris.  She had a premier education at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the university which has produced France's political and industrial elite, had co-authored papers on the economic impact of unionism, and had chosen a career in diplomacy rather than academia or national politics. 

Surprisingly, she spoke little English.  She had little interest in learning the language so immersed had she been in French culture, and since her work had carried her throughout the former colonies of the empire, she was at no disadvantage.  In a few years, without English in the emerging EU and the global economy, she would have indeed been disqualified for many positions, but for now she was happy in her monolingual world. 

She spoke some English of course, but it was broken and formal; and when Bart asked if he could join her at the bar of the Amitie, she answered in French, then a hesitant, 'OK'.  

Love affairs often begin easily between two foreigners in a foreign land  The disassociation and the distance from one's own country and the responsibilities of family, marriage, and brotherhood left far behind make the affair uncomplicated by external conditions and more susceptible to romance in the old sense of the word.  Something unreal or unrealistic.  Something with very temporal possibilities - that is relationships that started in Bamako, Kinshasa, or Niamey would stay there, remembered, but only as apart of another life. 

  

It was within this context and these expectations that Bart and Antoinette began their affair. Neither one looked beyond the town, the desert, the souks, mosques, and the foreign enclave, for although there is future in any relationship, they had no interest in it.  An affair here, transitory and unreal though it might be, was theirs and theirs alone, confected without constraint or the expectations of others.  

All of which makes the subject of language intriguing.  Antoinette spoke only broken English, and despite Bart's promising start with French II and the Cafe des Deux Magots, he had never gotten much past the conditional tense.  

There are some experts in socio-linguistics who say that a relationship between people of different languages can never have the intimacy of those from the same culture.  Without humor, they say, perhaps the most identifiable trait of being human, and the one which most differentiates man from the apes, partners will always remain on different planes.  Humor is the most subtle, the most perceptive, the most insightful of the range of human characteristics - a world of asides, double-entendres, and intimations - and without being able to share that particular vision, couples will necessarily remain apart. 

Others claim the opposite.  Language is an intellectual artifice behind which individuals often hide.  Logic, exegesis, precision, experiential range all interfere with the more important emotional and physical connection between people.  Lovers may stumble over language, but if they are aware, they will leave it aside and develop the relationship toward what one critic calls 'one's inner rooms'.  A Lawrentian vision. 

As in most things there is a third way - progress and procedure. Enjoy the moment broken grammar is fixed or vocabulary added, and fluency begun. 

Bartleby was of the 'artifice' school, perhaps because his life up until then had been defined by language and written expression.  Lefferts, Yale, and graduate school had all been cognitive, analytical, expository places.  He had defended theses, written critical essays, spoken at colloquies and conferences.  His job was to convince, to persuade, and to deflect criticism. 

 

Here, in the middle of nowhere with a woman to whom he was attracted without knowing her or why, he turned the corner. 

At first he stumbled, mimed, and signed to try to express simple practical coordinates, and she was no different.  It was a lingua franca, a mix of French, English, and guesses from German and Romance languages; but soon the serendipity of the friendship was clear.  They were both Type 2, people who dismissed the idea of the essentiality of language and stopped trying.  Lovemaking sealed the compact.  Nothing more was really necessary, but the touches, smiles, and little acknowledgments said all that needed to be said. Again D.H. Lawrence. 

Did Bartleby and Antoinette know each other? Had they not had other, compromising lives, might they have become fully intimate - that is minds engaged along with everything else? 

Perhaps, but that didn't matter.  There is something special, unique, and unforgettable about 'trysts in the jungle' as Josef Conrad once described the inevitable partnership of foreign bodies. Everyone who has been involved in such affairs knows full well that they shouldn't go on,  Myth is persistent because it is never challenged.