Elegant Deception - Truth? The Beautiful Art Of Charm And A Silver Tongue

“Charm and a silver tongue will get you everywhere”, Farley Burnham told his young son. “The only lesson you will ever need to know.”  This bit of wisdom is of course was not new, and ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ was the guiding principle of P.T. Barnum, the greatest huckster in American history.

Although there have been plenty of pretenders to his throne, none understood the absolute gullibility of the American consumer more than Barnum.  No matter how exaggerated his claims or preposterous the creatures in his side shows, people packed his big tent and kept coming back for more.

The list of evangelical hucksters is long and storied.  Starting with Amy Semple McPherson, many followed in her footsteps - Billy Sunday, Elmer Gantry, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Rick Warren. Every Sunday these pastors and many more like them sold a bill of goods to the faithful who packed their revival tents and mega-churches, filled the offering baskets, and wrote generous checks.

Dostoevsky suggests that Christ was the original huckster, offering man the promise of redemption and salvation but guaranteeing him nothing and consigning him to a live of hunger and misery.  Christ’s rejection of the Devil’s temptations in the wilderness and His crafting of a message of hope to billions who would follow him – “Man does not live by bread alone” – was no more than a bill of goods.

Everyone is on the snake oil circuit – salesmen, politicians, Hollywood moguls, evangelical preachers, and the Catholic Church.  Ivan, railing at Christ says that the Church never took Him seriously but were overjoyed at His words which provided the foundation for millennia of deception, manipulation, and venality.

Robbie Burnham went on to an impressive career in law – the profession in which the power of persuasion is supreme.  Too many facts will confuse a jury, too few will leave them unconvinced; but a few facts spun within elegant, smooth, and sophisticated oratory will win them over every time.  

The best lawyers know that this fluid, seductive, and engaging oratory is not reserved just for opening and closing arguments, but is never be absent.  The questioning of witnesses is an opportunity to display confidence, an apt theatrical ability to introduce suggestion and innuendo, and to embellish the principle themes of the legal argument.

The impeccable dress of successful trial attorneys complements their eloquence.  A well-tailored, expensive, but tasteful suit, matching silk tie, and modestly stylish Italian shoes are the symbols of confidence, professional attainment, and ability.  A handsome man in an Armani suit who addresses the jury with charm, clarity, and an unhesitating, well-timed delivery is unbeatable.

Robbie knew this, and was especially careful in selecting jurors who not only would be favorable to the legal arguments he would make but who would be admiring of him.  He selected women who wanted him and men who liked him – not hard to do in a society which places supreme importance on looks, charm, eloquence, and wealth. 

Of course charm, looks, and a silver tongue, are only ninety-percent of success; and Robbie never slacked in his legal preparation – careful review of precedent, the facts of the case, inconsistencies to be exploited, weaknesses to be exposed.  It was no surprise to anyone that he was The Lawyer on K Street.

As much has his adversaries tried to come up to his impeccable standards, their futile attempts made them even more secondary.  When Robbie and the prosecutor were standing side-by-side, no one could help but notice the prosecutor's ill-fitting inexpensive suit, cotton socks, badly-patterned tie, and scuffed shoes.  He was public sector from head to toe, and while jurors might identify in principle with government and respond to lawyerly appeals to democratic spirit and judicial equality, they wanted to be Robbie.  His demeanor, carriage, and perfectly-turned out attitude spoke to the aspirations of the jury, not their current life.

Donald Trump has none of Robbie Burnham’s grace and sophistication, nor his polished silver tongue; but few politicians can match him on the stump.  Trump is a master of a particular kind of oratory – not the stirring, brilliantly crafted speeches of Marc Antony who won a credulous, emotional crowd with his irony, his turn of phrase, and his diffidence, but one of bombast, vaudevillian low humor, and a carny barker’s appeal.  

Trump, jowly, overweight, bad hair, and ungraceful, can never compare to the harmonious sophistication of Robbie, but he can turn a crowd his way in a minute.  His one liners, ad hominem right-on cynical caricatures of his opponents, and his unconcealed mockery are part of his shtick, all delivered with perfect timing, gestures, and attitude, but balanced with an equally exaggerated patriotism and political savvy.

It is the nature of the Left to be serious.  There is nothing to laugh about in today’s racist, homophobic, Robber Baron era, they say.  Climate Armageddon is near, adventurous wars on the horizon, regression to a patriarchal, fundamentalist, boorish past is upon us.  Let the buffoon in the White House laugh and make fun of us, they shout, his time will come.  Their principles are permanent, unalterably good, and persuasive in their own right. There is no need for oratory. 

There is no room for reasoned argument on the stage with Trump, only a tit-for-tat fabulist show.  Few progressives, harnessed as they are to an old-fashioned faux rectitude and old chestnut notions of kindness, compassion, and understanding, cannot possibly throw charges around like old-style political mudslingers. Their supporters, it seems, would prefer losing while maintaining dignity and respect for the essentiality of the progressive agenda than winning at any cost.

Because of Trump’s time in Hollywood, on television, in Las Vegas, and on the streets of New York; his art of the deal, his outrageous personality, and his unabashed courting of the low bourgeoisie  - yachts, mansions, football, NASCAR, and arm candy – he is quintessentially American.

Robbie Burnham’s friends suggested that he go into politics, but although he had been able to win over juries for decades, living in a world of nothing but Alexander Hamilton’s unwashed masses would be too much.  There would be too much compromise involved, too much repetition, and far too little reward.  

The power of the Presidency was nothing compared to looking into the eyes of jurors, seducing them, winning them over, making them believe him.  This was real power, influence, and authority.  He had no shills, no cheering supporters, no political machine.  It was he and he alone in the arena, and he loved it.

Diversity - A Beautiful Bisexual Octoroon Scams Progressive Washington With Charm And A Bit Of Color

Back in the Nineteenth Century, New Orleans was truly a diverse city, proud of its interracial culture, its mix of Caribbean, Creole, black, and Anglo residents. In this heady brew one wasn't just of mixed race but a quadroon or octoroon - one-quarter or one-eighth black - and this classification had its own set of rules, perks, and prohibitions.

Octoroon consorts were considered among the most desirable for white men. They were beautiful, Caucasian-featured but with copper, light mahogany, or burnished oak skin that gave only a hint of their parentage.  The client could have it both ways - crossing the color line without censure, and enjoying the delights of a foreign -looking princess. 

Octoroons could step out in New Orleans society, never in the highest echelons of course, but nevertheless in good company.  Adela Beaumont was considered an international beauty, compared to Nefertiti, Cleopatra, and a Phoenician princess; and she was often featured in magazines for both blacks and whites. 

Although Adela enjoyed a privileged and storied reputation, she could never aspire to any class above her own.  Racial tolerance even in welcoming New Orleans had its limits.  This never concerned Adela who was visited by wealthy men from the Americas to Europe. 

Emmanuel de Miramon-Fairmont was a French aristocrat, a man of eclectic but fine tastes in wine and women who had heard of the legendary Adela Beaumont and her alleged French royal  heritage.  It had been rumored that in the days before the Haitian revolution, the Third Duc de Guiche, a Bourbon second in line for the French throne, had relationships with a number of Haitian women of whom was Adela's great-great grandmother.

Emmanuel booked his travel to New Orleans by steamer from Le Havre, and spent long days awaiting his arrival at the Port of New Orleans.  He was not disappointed, invited Adela to be his concubine, and promised her all the treasures of Europe. She agreed and thanks to her beauty, charm, and savoir-faire became the toast of Paris. 

 

This is all preamble, for the story is about Lutece Millington, also an octoroon, who lived in rural North Carolina but who, thanks to her beauty, natural sophistication, and enviable charm had other desires. She came into her own in the era of 'diversity', that peculiar American political ethos which recognized the colored, the ethnically diverse, and the sexually fluid and gave them social priority.  As in all cultures and subcultures, beauty has always given added luster to already desirable ensembles, and Lutece felt that it was the right time to leave Booneville and head north. 

The progressive canon being what it was - featuring diversity in all its forms and including them along fluid spectra of race, gender, and ethnicity - Lutece's sexual orientation was a plus. From the age of twelve when she blossomed into a fully mature, desirous, and vitally sexual young woman, she realized that she was sought after by both men and women, neither of whom could resist her seductively mysterious origins.  Although many suspected her parentage to be that of most mixed race women - fieldhand, tenant farmer, and former slave - they willingly suspended disbelief and imagined her a Persian princess. 

Black men who characteristically want only the whitest women as sexual prizes were no different.  They followed Lutece like a pack of bloodhounds. Lutece wanted  no part of them.  Her white ancestry had diluted three-quarters of whatever 'Bama blackness she had in her, and she was not about to roll over for some homeboy. 

White men, however, were the most insistent.  The idea of actually living diversity, not just talking about and promoting it, was something else indeed; and what greater honor than to squire the likes of Lutece Millington and show the world their political commitment and virility. 

It was a matter of serendipity, pure luck with a little ambition added, that she met Mrs. Buxton Longworth, a woman who, despite her ties to the Roosevelt family and the wealth and social privilege that came with it, was a woman on the prowl; and when she saw Lutece sitting alone in the Russian Tea Room, she made her advances.  She must have this oriental beauty at any cost. 

The affair became the talk of Georgetown, for although Mrs. Longworth's bisexuality had been rumored, it had never been confirmed; but the besotted Buxton never hesitated to show off her love in the best social circles; and before long it was the stunning octoroon who became the center of Washington's attention. 

The Nation's Capital is like that - it fixes on something, anything, and makes it a cause celebre, a shibboleth, a temporary icon; and the beautiful, mixed race, bi-sexual Lutece was it.  She was fawned over, given public fora, adulated like no other. Progressives were delighted to know that someone like Lutece - young, nubile, beautiful, and sexually complaisant - was out there. Liberal lesbians were the toughest Bernal Heights bull dykes, blue-haired, nose-ringed, ugly Subaru-driving butches, and here came Lutece, a woman out of pasha's harem or the Arabian Nights.

Finally, they applauded, the real face of diversity.  For progressives it was like the Second Coming, a long-waited, spiritual epiphany.  This would show the country club Republicans across the aisle what diversity really meant. 

None of this was lost on Lutece, a savvy, politically attuned woman as well as a sexual siren; and so it wasn't long before she left the rather staid and dour Mrs. Longworth for more spicy fare. Men who otherwise might be put off by a gay woman - despite the caricature of men loving lesbian pornography, these well-heeled gentlemen wanted to avoid any semblance of gayness either way - forgot their hesitancy, and jumped whole hog into the competition for the delights of the beautiful octoroon. 

Lutece was no concubine, consort, or kept woman by any means.  She, like most women gifted with a special allure, used their charms to best advantage.  'Feminine wiles', that old-fashioned and now discredited misogynist term, never lost currency among the brightest women, and Lutece was a master. She easily had the swells of Washington wrapped around her little finger.

She was not adverse to lavish gifts, weekends on St. Bart's, and dinners at the best restaurants; but kept her eye out for her political future.  One of these men would surely be able to place her somewhere in the hierarchy; and so it was that a junior Congressman from a neighboring Southern state, as smitten with Lutece as any of his more senior colleagues, offered her a position in his office.

As smart as they come, Lutece took every advantage of the office, sleeping with the Congressman when necessary, but heading his initiatives on a number of progressive causes. She was indifferent to them, cared little for their supposedly utopian promise, and found them ponderously officious; but until something better came along, she was agreeable. 

With Lutece around, politicians could check off diversity boxes with pleasure and ease. This was no dutiful exercise of fidelity to the movement, but one of pride.  Here was a woman who embodied the very best of the New America, a beautiful, mixed race, mixed sexuality goddess. 

During this heady period of her political acceleration, Lutece discouraged the advances of women, most of whom were second fiddle, either married to someone who mattered or wannabees, in any case not worth the trouble.  Moreover, the whole bi-sexual thing was never a keeper in the first place.

She enjoyed the spotlight, for she was invited to speak at a variety of public forums.  She could be counted on to look great, to flaunt her racial and sexual mix, and to mouth the words of her ambitious handlers.  Before long, someone decided it might be time for this now well-known woman with an impeccable progressive pedigree to run for office; but by then Lutece had had enough of the Washington merry-go-round, had managed not only to turn a profit from her stay but to manage a multi-million dollar Wall Street portfolio. 

She was last seen in Santa Barbara at a party with the Windsors but that bourgeois royal scene was but a stop along the way to something more je ne sais quoi, or at least accommodating to her now highly refined, eclectic, 'diverse' tastes. 

'An American hero', said one observer of the Washington scene who was onto her political brilliance, a woman who could work a crowd, take progressives for all they were worth, and claim both sides of any aisle or street. 'I wonder where she is now?', he mused, but  he really didn't want to know.  Icons are not real, after all. 

Running Bear Makes Millions Off Stolen Land - The Biggest Indian Scam Since Casinos

Running Bear Holmes, otherwise more popularly known as Harry the Horse, wore his hair long, tied neatly back but still conspicuously Indian. He kept a picture of White Wolf, Comanche chief known as the bloodletter of the plains, an Indian so savage that he raped, dismembered, disemboweled white settlers before beheading them, burning their corpses, and left them hanging on gibbets for the Union troops to see. 

 

Although in the end it was a losing battle, thanks to White Wolf and his brothers, hundreds of scalps and white women were taken. Nevertheless, although Indians might have been lords of the plains, there was nothing left except wampum, reservations, firewater, and turquoise trinkets.

Then came The Great Idea - in an era of white guilt and shame for the genocide of Running Bear's people, there was money to be made, and thanks to progressive angst, the Pequots made millions from the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut as did the Chickasaws and Choctaws in the West.  Ownership was made easy - all you had to do was to prove that you were an octoroon, one-eighth Indian and the State gave you totin' privileges to white cash. 

 

Savvy chiefs rounded up the financing, made easy thanks to their tax free status - i.e. the chances of profit were enhanced without a burdensome tax bill - and light oversight. The white men of Connecticut, having decided to indirectly pay reparations to the Indian, didn't dare to look carefully at the books.  So when Chiefs Rising Moon, Lie-by-Fire, and Evening Lightning went to Bear Stearns in New York, they were treated like visiting royalty. 

Investment bankers bowed and scraped, opening their doors and vaults to the Indians who they and their ancestors had so summarily annihilated. Each and every one of the delegation looked very Indian - the copper skin, long black hair, beaked nose, and Asian eyes - but the Armani suits were the perfect foil. 

These were redskins who had some Kemosabe savvy and good taste.  It didn't take long for the loan to be negotiated and approved.   

Now, a long time had passed since those heady days of the first casinos; but there was still enough residual white liberal guilt around for there to be money made.  In recent weeks the idea of 'stolen land' - Indian territory confiscated by white developers and turned into malls, shopping centers, and luxurious homes - gained currency.  Notable celebrities announced that they were going to divest themselves of their ill-gotten gains, do their moral duty, and return the property to the Indians from whom it was illegally taken.  

'Return' was a point of contention. It might mean giving the land back gratis, selling it at a heavily discounted price, or simply agreeing to transfer title but to sell at market rates.  Although progressives felt uncomfortable with all but the first option - after all, if their white ancestors had robbed the Indian of his land, it should be given back with no questions asked - there were many who insisted that there were no Roberts' Rules of Order when it came to reparations and current owners need not lose their shirts. 

The other issue, the big one, was to whom the land would be returned. Most Indians whose tribes had 'owned' land two hundred years ago were dead and buried or living in some shithole reservation, off the grid, drunk and homeless, so exhaustive DNA searches would be necessary to figure out who was an octoroon and who was fudging the record.  Wasn't all this 'native American' thing going a bit too far. Weren't a few casinos enough to show the world that we cared?

It just so happened that the Minnesota Somali childcare scandal was hitting the news.  They had been outed and the multi-billion dollar scam was surely over and heads would roll, but these Africans had bamboozled untold millions out of credulous state and local legislators for years. Why not take advantage of the whole DEI, don't-look, black and brown can do no wrong ethos, and make some money?

And so it was that Harry the Horse pimped himself up in feathers and warpaint and went to the states where Indians had lost the most territory to the Union.  'Stolen land' became an Indian meme, and these local governmental bodies were quick to respond. California had already passed legislation for black reparations, so strike while the iron is hot.  Rejecting Indian claims would be tantamount to racial discrimination.  

Harry and his braves made a quick trip to Minneapolis in supposed solidarity with the Somali scammers, but in reality to find out from the horse's mouth how they did it.  Naturally Abdi and his compatriots were wary of the Indians, but when told that they would be included in the schemes as junior partners, they opened up. 

 

There really was not much to reveal.  The white liberals they tricked were as clueless and addled by progressive cant to such a degree that anything black had to be a good thing . 'Just do a rain dance', said one Abdi to Harry the Horse, 'and you're in like Flynn'. 

The first sally of Harry and his band was to California, a state already used to the idea of reparations and home to over 200 native American tribes, and in a remote area of far Northern California, they found the ideal stomping ground - a modest-sized town built smack dab on top of Karuk Indian land.  It was only a question of generating political support (there had already been 'diversity' codicils put into eminent domain laws), picking a profitable, high-earning property, and send in tribal lawyers to finalize the deal. 

'There used to be a few Karuk around here', said a Councilman, 'but if they're still alive, they're on the rez'. 

'We don't need real Karuk', Harry replied. 'Just a few octoroons, sign them up in a class action lawsuit, and the rest will be as easy as pie'. 

'What's in it for us?' the Councilman asked, but Harry was well-prepared for the question.  Municipal, state, or reservation politics had all been the same - on the take, as shameless a bunch of cattle thieves, honest heirs of the Old West.  

'Plenty', he said. 

The news of the coming deal went public - the town council wanted to get Sacramento on their side, backing them in all legislative, legal, financial, and Constitutional matters.  The Governor was particularly pleased that Running Bear (he chose to use Harry the Horse's formal name) had chosen California to begin what he described was 'a long overdue recognition of the plight of the Native American who....'

Here the Governor launched into a prepared speech praising the great indigenous tribes of America, their contribution, and their valor for twenty minutes until he was hooked off the stage like a bad vaudevillian. 

It is too early to tell how the California-Karuk venture went, how easily the transfer of land went back to the tribe, and most importantly how much money changed hands; but if the Somali enterprise and the Foxwoods casino deal were any indication, Running Bear would soon be a very rich man indeed