The Awful Misery Of Social Reform - Doing Good Is Seeing Everything Bad Until One Day...

Bob Muzelle woke up one day - the kind of summer day that inspired Shakespeare, a day of warmth, sunshine, fair winds, and the promise of love:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate

He looked out the window, smelled the scent of apple blossoms and freshly-mown grass, saw the sun sparkle on the water of the birdbath where bluebirds and finches had come to drink, felt the light breeze that fluttered the lace curtains...but before he could smile, he remembered who and what he was, and that the beauty in his garden was just a chimera, a false prophecy, an errancy. 

Bob was a progressive, one committed to doing the right thing for decades; and there had always been wrong to right.  The black man still suffered in penury and pain, millions of women trapped in men's bodies suffered every time they lifted the toilet lid but wanted it down, tens of thousands of refugees were seeking a better life, the climate was warming disastrously, and pestilential diseases were growing in remote African forests. 

As much as Bob hated to admit it, he was profoundly Christian.  Suffering was both the wages of sin and the way to salvation. Jesus suffered on the cross for the sins of mankind, so numerous that only his death on the cross could absolve the sinner and show the way to salvation.  Suffering was both a sign, a penance, and the way to God's heavenly kingdom. 

He never would have put it this way - religion was an obstacle to social reform and the secular utopia of the progressive future; but there it was.  He, a suffering man out to right the miscreancy of the world and to relieve the poor, the marginalized, the put upon, and the destitute of their suffering, was a martyr. 

In this ironically Christian universe so abjured by Bob, one filled with ignorance, arrogance, and brutality there was also a devil - a satanic creature at the very center of a world turning at his command to to evil.  Donald Trump had arrived out of nowhere as devils do, installed himself at the center of the world and began dismantling the organs and architecture of good.  Since his arrival in Washington, America had become a fiery hell. 

Bob glanced out the window before leaving for the day ahead, and the scent of apple blossoms brought him back for an instant to years past.  As a child he sat in the apple orchard on a day just like this, the sound of bees buzzing for pollen, and the whirr of a lawnmower the only other sound.  God was in his heaven and all was right with the world thought the little boy, having just received his First Communion and as happy as anyone could be. 

Bob shook his head at the impossibly romantic, absurdly treacly memory, something confected out of his Catechism and the fairy tales of Robert Louis Stevenson read to him in bed when he was sick.  He could quote The Land of Counterpane by heart, and that day the verses came back to him as though he were still a child

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

 

'What's happening to me?' Bob wondered, for reminiscences like this were almost a daily feature. There was no way that he could shake visions of toys under the Christmas tree, Easter dinner, summer days in the orchard,, the sound of his mother singing to the wartime tunes on the radio.  He remembered her apron, the high heels she wore even in the kitchen, the voices of his friends from across the lawn. 

These were not the visions of his political memory.  His childhood was one of bourgeois sanctimony, selfishness, and heedless social insularity.  It was a time of brutal confinement of women, the consignment of the black man, the insidious, corrosive influence of the Church, and the manners of pomposity; and yet he could not fixates on these, the forerunners of the racism, misogyny, and homophobia of today. Scenes of baseball on the green, boating parties on the lake, and the smell of Thanksgiving dinner were crowding them out. 

He slammed the front door and stormed out of the house, barreled down the Parkway and made his way to his downtown office.  There where he should have felt at home - photos of Martin and Ralph crossing the Pettus bridge, gay pride flags ripped and torn by police thugs at a demonstration on the Mall, a large, Rothko-like tableau of a multicultural rainbow, a small desk figurine of Rosa Parks - he was only irritated, angry that the happy visions he had come with were crowded out by a roomful of anger. What was supposed to energize him, reinfuse him with the passion and zeal for social reform, only depressed him. 

He had spent his entire adult life bemoaning the way things were, damning them for a faux, infectious stolidity.  Everything in his world was wrong, in need of reform and recalibration.  Every black face he saw on K Street reminded him of Jim Crow and the pain of enslavement; every Lexus shouted white supremacy, every tarted up woman had been bought, bartered, and sold by the patriarchal system, every hot wind blowing down Independence Avenue brought the impending reality of climate Armageddon. 

Now in their place were treacly thoughts of childhood? A meandering into an invented, childish fairy tale?  Was it old age?

That night at dinner, head hung low over the meatloaf, he sobbed, 'I can't do this anymore' and looked pleadingly at his wife, Corinne. 

'Why, Bob, what on earth is the matter?', she said, incredulous at the sight of this usually upbeat, energetic, positive man in such a state; but Bob could only shake his head, mix a few peas in with the mashed potatoes, and sob again. 

A copy of the Yale Alumni Magazine was on the coffee table, and this morning he had read about his classmate Fielding Cabot.  'Spent another glorious summer on the Vineyard with Marty and the grandchildren, son Alexis a presiding judge in Schenectady of all places, daughter Phylicia managing her brood in Paris and St. Tropez...'  A parody, the usual outlandishly self-promotion perhaps, but it sounded good to Bob whose life was closer to the poor souls he was anointed to help than his wealthy, well-to-do, successful classmates with their sailing on the Sound, winters in Gstaad, and summers on the Island. 

 

'I feel shabby', Bob said to Corinne. 

Could he actually chuck the black man?  Let him stew in his own juices in the ghetto? Give him up for good to his pimps and ho's after fifty years of trying to civilize him? Or the fucking climate?  More ice than ever on the Antarctic ice shelf, no sea level rise, no apocryphal incineration of Iowa cornfields.  Were the dykes of Bernal Heights really worth a second thought? Or the flouncy queers parading from Bay-to-Breakers?

The dam had broken, and long-simmering, long held-in-check abominable presumptions burst forth.  It felt good, like a healthy upchucking after a plate of bad fish, a release, a catharsis.  He had spent his whole life manufacturing throwaway, cheap things.  Life had never been a bowl full of cherries.  What was he doing trying to reform a world which had never changed from its Hobbesian vision of being 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'? Folly.  A waste of time, and he had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. 

'Fuck it', said the new Bob once he had shaken himself out of his self-pity and sickening moroseness. 

He had never made much money from his travails, certainly not of the likes of his classmate, Fielding Cabot; but enough to punch his ticket to a small condo not far from the beach in Sarasota, no view of the Gulf, and no swimming pool but a metaphorical step into a new life - the last step perhaps, given his age, but a comforting one nonetheless.  He was going to...God forgive him for his apostasy...enjoy himself. 

The Canny Nature Of Seduction - The Vixenish Rasputin Of Main Street

Alicia Barton had never intended anything more than making her way; and certainly not walking the halls of the Capitol, hand in hand with one of the most powerful men in Washington.  Yet, there it was as plain as day - a simple, good, Christian girl in bed with a man as familiar to the nation as Rice Krispies and milk, influencing decisions that would make or break a nation, rolling over when asked, and asking but small favors in return, small favors which turned into large ones until she was known as The Rasputin of Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Such is the nature of men and women, a given since the first sentient ape - a pas de deux of seduction, favors, and a sexual balance of power always tilted a woman's way. Shakespeare understood the dance better than most.  His heroines were canny, shrewd, and indomitably ambitious - to say they were the power behind the throne would be doing them injustice.  They were the power.  

Without Lady Macbeth, the Thane of Cawdor would never have risen beyond a pretender to the throne. Poor man, in the grips of a terrifying woman who wakes her husband, drills him in the art of murder, and makes way for both their royal futures. 

Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the weak and spineless Henry VI of England played a crucial role in the Lancastrian cause, leading armies and orchestrating plots to secure her husband's crown and her son's inheritance. 

Volumnia, mother of Coriolanus engineered his rise to power and then featured in his demise.  She was a canny, unprincipled, devious and ambitious woman for whom the desire for power and ambition displaced any maternal feelings she might have.  In fact she used her maternal influence to bend and sway her son in ways that suited her. 

Dionyza cowed her immature and uxorious husband and despite his demurrals plotted to murder Marina, daughter of Pericles, left in her charge, thanks to her charm, beauty, and intelligence threw a long shadow over Dionyza's plain, unmarriageable daughter. 

Gertrude, Hamlet's mother wedded two kings, knowing full well that her second husband had murdered her first; but played the loving wife to her husband Claudius and manipulated her weak, indecisive, and pusillanimous son, Hamlet. 

Clytemnestra was a Shakespearean prototype, inviting her lover to take up residence with her in the palace while her husband, King Agamemnon is away fighting the Trojans, and then persuading him to kill Agamemnon when he returns to Greece with a concubine. She uses the same maternal influences as Dionyza when the learns that her son, Orestes, plans to avenge his father's death and murder her. 

The list is endless - powerful, canny, ambitious women who despite living under a stern patriarchy, still managed to control the men in their lives.  Ibsen's characters, Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, and Hilda Wangel are indomitable in their wish to dominate men even for now particular gain.  Hilda sends The Master Builder to his death because she could. 

Alicia fit perfectly in this mold.  She, like these women was unstoppable, irresistible, and completely without compunction.  She, like Hilda Wangel had nothing to gain from her influence over the Senator.  It was just a fulfillment of what could be.  She was a Nietzschean from head to toe - the exertion of pure will was the only validation of the individual in a meaningless world. 

Her seduction of the Senator did not happen just like that.  She patiently moved her way up the Congressional ladder from interns to aides to the men in power, all of whom were taken by her perfectly manicured charm. In her arms, they were king, convinced of their virility, seductiveness, and charm.  It was they who lured Alicia to bed and not the other way around. 

Now this particular politician should have known better.  As Chairman of the most powerful committee in the Senate, he was no stranger to political intrigue, internecine battle, intimidation, deception, and strategy; and yet there he was sharing state secrets with Alicia who had not just seduced the gullible, needy physical and emotional side of the man but the intellectual one.  Her canniness was viral, insidious, and quiet.  Before he knew it he was hers entirely. 

How did Alicia come by this devious brilliance? Her father was a model of middle American rectitude and responsibility.  Her mother was an attentive and loving parent, a tireless community volunteer, and a deaconess at her church. 

Neither Shakespeare nor Ibsen tell how their heroines came to embody such Nietzschean will, amoral ambition, and insatiable desire; and Alicia's parents were befuddled by their daughter's singleness of purpose, her ability to charm teachers, pastors, parents, and friends. It all came naturally to her, a second nature; and the most perplexing part of it all was that she had no goals in mind, no eyes on the prize, no one object of ambition.  This charming moral chameleon had interest only in influence itself and for that she was one of a kind. 

The world is filled with ambitious women - women who want control of their children, the bank account, their circle of friends, the corporate ladder, the social register - but Alicia wanted none of that.  It was beneath her to want things so pedestrian, so predictably ordinary, so common.  She  rode above Nietzsche's herd, alone, tireless in her ambition, and a perfect fit for rule. 

She could have been a politician, a Senator, a President; but needed no such ordinary validation.  It was enough to bend others, to seduce and convince them, to draw them into her web of indistinct but powerful ambition. 

She did nothing with the secrets shared with her by the Senator - secrets of inestimable value to friends and enemies alike.  Secrets are Washington's currency, and the more and longer they are kept quiet, the greater their worth.  She had amassed a treasure trove of secrets, the wealth of Croesus, a king's ransom; and she wanted none of it. 

When she finally left the Senator and Washington, she could have left a rich woman; but returned to Main Street with nothing but a portfolio of good wishes and references that secured her future from Wall Street to Chillicothe 

She was not old, but not young either; but age did not matter, for that indescribable ability to get others to do whatever it was that she asked did not lose currency over time.  As a wealthy matron of Fifth Avenue, Nob Hill, Rittenhouse Square, or Beacon Street, timelessly elegant, and with an unforgettable welcoming charm, she would, as always, be the only one in the room. 

The Return Of The Russian, Ottoman, Persian, And Chinese Empires - The Marvel Of The Greatness Of Higher Order Cultures

Vladimir Putin has not hesitated to confess his desire to restore the greatness of Russian Imperial history, its Tsars, royal courts, influence, elegance, and glory. 

Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has made similar claims.  The Ottoman Empire was one of the world's most extensive, influential, and durable; and it was preceded by sultanates, parochial kingdoms, and Islamic fiefdoms.  In the fourteenth century the Mongol-Turkic armies of Genghis Khan rode down from the high central Asian steppes and conquered the world from Europe to East Asia. 

The Shah of Iran in exile is impatiently waiting for the demise of the usurping ayatollahs and mullahs of the Islamic revolution of 1979.  His father, Shah Reva Pahlavi ruled the kingdom of Persia just as his ancestors did.  The glories of Persepolis were never forgotten, nor was the magnificence of the imperial courts. 

Once the Islamic regime has been routed, the prince will return to Tehran as the legitimate heir to Persian history and will reset the cultural compass on its imperial path.

President Xi of China looks to his country's dynastic past as he leads the nation to world power.  He is but the latest in the line of emperors who ruled China with determination and thousands of years of cultural history. Although China is a modern, Communist-Capitalist hybrid, it hearkens back to its Confucian, dynastic, imperial roots.  Its dominance today is a result of its profound moral rectitude, the conviction that China is indeed the center of the world, and its consistently patriotic ethos. 

Arnold Parker was a royalist - an admirer of Louis XIV, the Sun King, the architect of Versailles, the most influential monarch of all of Europe, and the regent who expanded France's cultural influence to the ends of the known world.  He was a devotee of the imperial Tsars of Russia who, building on a foundation of Orthodox Christianity, Slavic pride, and the might of royal military power, extended Russian influence from the borders of Europe to the Far East. 

He was a student of Turkic history and was awed by the power and influence of a small tribe from Western China that came to conquer the world.

He was a student of Chinese dynasty, and while imperial China limited itself to influence within its traditional borders and was closed to outside influence until 1857, it was unmatched for courtly elegance, sophisticated learning, and profound religious, ethical, and moral values. 

Japan under its emperors and shoguns had created a disciplined, martial, culturally secure, and powerful nation.  While Hirohito overreached and imperial Japan arrogated world authority to itself, after the war it regained its confidence, respect for history, and imperial destiny. 

Arnold understood popular uprisings - the beheadings of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the murders of the last Tsar Alexander and his family, the revolutionary zeal of Mao Tse Tung, and the democratic reforms of Ataturk - but he still hewed to the principle of empire, inherited, aristocratic, regal, imperial rule.

Which is why he was appalled at the influx of African immigrants to Europe and the progressive diffusion of central Christian, European cultural values.  These immigrants, more at home in a tribal, primitive rainforest than any civilized, cultural environment brought nothing to the continent.  There was no positive cultural influence and assimilation as there was when the Frisians, Jutes and later Normans and Romans came to Britain.  There had been nothing but an extension of tribal primitivism overlaid with Islamic redemptive cant. 

The migrants were not becoming European - Europe was becoming African to the detriment and destruction of its cultural integrity from the British Isles to the east. 

'An invasion of the most savage, incontinent, insular, and ignorant migrants in Europe's history', Arnold wrote in Foreign Affairs; a result of Europe's own glandular malfunction - some deformed notion of Christian kindness cynically accepted by immigrants who wanted nothing of European culture but all of its wealth. 

'Have you ever been to Africa', asked an Afro-centric, credulous supporter of open immigration to which Arnold replied that of course he had.  And there he had seen nothing but primitivism, tribalism, and ethnic divisions, all of which were co-opted by Big Men who turned post-colonial independent nations into corrupt, venal fiefdoms.

The slums of Lagos alone - rotting, fetid, miserable excuses for community - should have been enough for Europeans to say 'Basta!' when a shipload of Nigerians landed in Cyprus or Sicily, but they welcomed them with open arms, credulous, ignorant, and historically vacant. 

Needless to say royalism is not the theme of the day, and Arnold was arbitrarily cancelled as a racist and anti-democratic demagogue. Yet France was in flames, their inclusive, equitable policies of diversity gone bad - St. Germain des Pres was in flames, shops on the Rue de Rivoli vandalized, cars in the 7th overturned and set on fire, the northern suburbs had become as inchoate, undisciplined, and riotous as any inner city ghetto in America. 

American progressives have made clear their intention to place the black man on the pinnacle of human society where he belongs.  A denizen of the forest, attuned to the vibrations of nature, living a sentient, proto-intelligent existence, he above all should be recognized as the next generation of human genius. 

The reality of the African diaspora as well as the millions of Africans still living either in abject urban poverty or rural tribal backwardness belies this assumption. 

Arnold's royalism has nothing to do with racism, Euro-centrism, or historical envy.  It was only a recall of the foundational principles of cultural supremacy.  Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, Plato, and Aristotle were not accidents, nor were Augustus, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius.  They were products of culture, of civilizations which honored intelligence, spirit, creativity, and moral rectitude. 

Cato the Elder's triptychs - the foundational texts for the education of the next generation of Roman leaders - focused on governance, military strategy, and colonial rule; but they also included lessons on civility, honor, courage, patriotism, fidelity, respect, and compassion. 

Such multiparous, comprehensive lessons are gone in Europe and America - not only from schoolrooms but from political and civic life. 

'I am a Roman', said Arnold. 

And so it was that Arnold was cancelled for anti-democratic, seditious, even treasonous sentiments; but he never demurred, never once wavered, never gave an inch to multiculturalism.  

Neither a Cassandra, a man of principle, or a voice crying out in the wilderness, he was simply a student of history, suspicious of received wisdom a the cant and true belief it allows.