Ugliness - The Race To The Bottom In A Reverse Progressive Utopia

Melanie Barnum was committed to the principle of public education.  It represented the best of America - a place for all regardless of income, race, or ethnicity and the perfect example of the storied melting pot. 

Her children were sent to public schools although thanks to her husband, a successful business owner, they could have gone to private schools; and in Washington, DC there are many which have educated the best and the brightest for over a century.  

As everything in the Nation's Capital, they are divided by politics. St. Albans, modeled after the English 'public' schools Eton and Harrow, is soundly traditional, Episcopalian, and conservative.  Sidwell Friends, a Quaker school proud of its abolitionist past and early progressivism has been home to the children of liberal lawmakers and public servants for almost as long. 

Other schools, while not of the academic standing of these two institutions, nevertheless pride themselves on the same educational rigor, social discipline, and moral principle.  

Families which can afford a private education for their children, do so without reflection.  The idea of diversity as an ideal means nothing when it comes to preparing their sons and daughters for the successful life expected of them.

Some schools, like Sidwell Friends, let their abolitionist past get the better of them, and adopted an affirmative action admissions policy which within a few short years challenged the intellectual superiority of the school. Progressive parents, while committed to the principle of black reparations, became increasingly hesitant to send their children to a school which although acting on principle, necessarily lowered its academic standards; and sent them instead to the best private boarding schools - Exeter, Andover, St. Paul's, Groton, and Loomis. 

 

Other DC private schools held the line, admitted a few minority students but only on the basis of academic performance and potential. 

Melanie Barnum resented this white flight, this abandonment of moral principle and right behavior, and openly criticized those families who left proper democratic schooling for the aerie of the wealthy and the privileged. 

This obduracy, this unshakeable adherence to a questionable principle, was the hallmark of her overall thinking.  She was a lifelong progressive who never once questioned the canon and was seen at every march for abortion, every conference on affirmative action, Diversity Equity Inclusion, and climate change. 

More telling was her embrace of what the Movement called 'the fancy of beautiful privilege'.  They abhorred the train of blonde, blue-eyed young women who made their way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, who were featured in Presidential cameos, and who became the signature of right wing conservatism. 

These women were the icons of a political philosophy which favored appearance over substance. The stereotype of the ditzy blonde was never more current than within progressive circles in which unattractiveness meant seriousness.  The ethos of diversity produced its champions - the obese, the misshapen, and the short.  The physical characteristics of the women were reminders, physical examples of Thomas Hobbes' famous statement about life being short, brutish, and ugly. 

Ugliness made a point.  Shabbiness was a sign of oppressed white poverty and thus a symbol of commitment to social change. Worse was the fashion statement that accentuated these unfortunate traits - blue hair, tattoos, nose rings, and Dollar Store clothes. 

Melanie, always a stalwart progressive who was never ashamed to act out her principles, volunteered at a local DC public school. Most of the children read below grade level, and she was recruited as resource volunteer to help them.  What she found was far worse than she expected.  Not only did these children read below grade level, they could barely pick out letters from a basic primer. 

They came to school intermittently - truancy in the DC schools was well over fifty percent - and were from dysfunctional, fatherless homes, raised by illiterate grandmothers, and had little incentive or ability to learn.

Melanie's charges not only couldn't read, they couldn't add simple numbers.  The educational algorithm being what it was, classroom exercises were aimed at improving the lot of these students while any students with ability or especially talent were forgotten, recruited into groups of 'cooperative learning' where they learned nothing and were expected to help 'the less fortunate'.

As much as she hated to admit it, the school was a morass of low-level intelligence, educational indifference, in an atmosphere of social ugliness. It was nothing like St. Albans or its sister school, Cathedral, where prominence was universal and the Greek ethos of physical beauty, athletic prowess, and intellectual achievement was standard. 

She berated herself for the comparison.  The St Albans and Cathedral students were beneficiaries of white privilege, legatees of wealth and Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and were members of an elite ruling class that perpetuated insularity and anti-democratic sentiment. 

Yet there was something alluring about these schools - boys in white shirts and ties attending high church services, showing skill and prowess on the athletic fields, all a universally attractive student body, and being prepared for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 

She shook off the vision, plugged away at little LaShonda trying to get her to recognize the difference between an 'L' and an 'I' with no success. Despite the millions spent by DC to upgrade the physical infrastructure of the school - large, modern windows, wide corridors, study spaces, etc., it was still a miserable place of desultory learning where discipline - the reining in of dangerous anti-social behavior - was the teachers' seemingly only responsibility. 

Her attendance at her adult meetings - all rallying points for strategic revolt against conservative efforts to set back progressive advances in diversity, distribution of wealth, neutering of the corporate classes, and climate sanity - only deepened her depression.  These women were morose and unpleasant.  The problems they were facing could only be met with anger, frustration, and hostility.

There was no optimism let alone brightness and certainly no happiness.  The unkemptness of the women, their deliberate lowering the fashion register to near zero, the clambering for recognition despite their profound unattractiveness left Melanie withered. 

If there are so many problems in the world, then how can a conscionable woman look at herself in the mirror, tart herself up, put on something designer and go out with a clear conscience?  No, desperation requires the look of desperation. 

The old adage states: 'Give a liberal long enough and he will become conservative' - testimony to the eventual distaste for idealism - and the evolution of Melanie Barnum was no different.  In her case it was ugliness that did it.  She could have put up with the febrility and the ponderousness, even the absurdity of many progressive claims; but she couldn't take the ugliness and the disdain for anything positive, beautiful and stunning. It was a race to the bottom, and she had had enough. 

Finally and at long last, she could look in the mirror and see a still quite beautiful face; run her hands over her breast and down her thighs and know that she had kept her figure, run her fingers through her still luxuriant hair and step out and be noticed. 

 

When Black Is White - The Closing Of The American Mind

Mary de Bennett watched the Argentina-England FIFA World Cup Final and said she and everyone she knew was against Argentina - a racist country which eliminated diversity with the landing of European settlers. 

 

Of course they conveniently forget that Portugal, Spain, England, and the Netherlands - also World Cup contenders - were international slavers and responsible for transplanting the African diaspora in the New World.  If sports allegiance is to be based on presumed racial oppression, than these countries should fall under the same shadow of opprobrium and hate.  

 

Worse even than this historical hypocrisy is moral blindness, refusing to see, acknowledges, and accept that  Africans and African origin Europeans and Americans dominate world sports.  The American NBA, WNBA, and NFL - professional basketball and football leagues - are overwhelmingly black.  Olympic events - especially the short distance events - 100, 200 hundred yard dashes and hurdles - are dominated by black athletes.   

Small countries like Jamaica can field teams that successfully challenge much larger ones.  France's FIFA World Cup team is almost all African origin players. There can be only one logical explanation - individuals of African origin are genetically predisposed to athletic success. 

How can American progressives not at least consider the possibility that these criteria which determined the very nature of the black diaspora were correct; that it is not a coincidence that black athletes dominate no matter the sport? 

Mary de Bennett was one of these deliberately myopic individuals.  She was neither dumb nor unschooled.  Yet despite the evidence as plain as the nose on her face, she rejected it and said that it was a product of schooled, inherent white racism.  Black American basketball players, oppressed by the white man and deprived of country clubs and suburban fields could only play basketball on nasty, netless courts.  It was their perseverance, and cultural context which produced them, not genetics.

And what of the American football SEC where black players excel to an unheralded degree, their talents honed and developed on the same fields as their white brothers. 

The list, the examples, and the evidence progressives say are insurmountable - there is something more than culture, environment, and circumstance involved; and progressives not only have not looked at the issue but have determined not to look at it; for to do so would be to label them as racist. 

'To assume that blacks are genetically predisposed to athletic preeminence is heinous and racist'.  End of story.  Facts, evidence, logic are left at the door. Yet why is this conclusion so rejected? One dominant characteristic does not ipso facto exclude others. There is no reason why athletic ability and intelligence cannot coexist. 

There was recently a study of Ethiopian highlanders from which most champion distance runners come.  Ethiopian children born and brought up in Ethiopia were compared with Ethiopian children borne and brought up in Europe and the results were informative - both children showed the essential lung capacity and oxygen blood carrying capacity critical to long distance running 

 

The obvious was proven - there was something up with these Horn of Africa runners; and by extension the relationship with genetic physical disposition and performance was proven.  

American swimmers - white by and large - have a particular body type, the long torso and arms needed to propel them efficiently through the water.  The African body type so essential to running - well developed, large, and strong thighs and buttocks - is of no use in the pool. 

Again Mary de Bennett refused to consider the obvious. She refused to accept the fact that polar ice was increasing not decreasing, that geophysical data showed little or no sea level rises and no unexpected increase in Atlantic hurricanes or Midwest tornadoes. 

So what is it about the liberal mind that refuses to at least consider evidence that might counter or contradict their progressive assumptions?  What makes the liberal so fearful of even looking at data coming from the poles showing increasing, not decreasing ice? Or the actual costs of electric cars, considering ethics (child labor), environment (lithium and rare earth mining, and coal-fired electricity production), toxic waste disposal costs, etc.? Or the bio-physiological absurdity of the gender spectrum and the assumption that sexuality is a choice? Or that Israel is genocidal?

Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind in 1987 long before the cancel culture of today in which he warned of progressive 1984 groupthink and mind control - a viral epidemic of assumption and presumption over logic and objectivity.  He could not have been more prescient.  The American Left has campaigned on a platform of ideals - what a compassionate, diverse, loving, uncontentious world would be like - without a whit of evidence that such utopian illusions could ever become reality - and have done their best to cloture all argument against the fallacious premise. 

 

In a country founded on the principles of the Enlightenment - logic, analysis, exegesis, and conclusion - how could such an airy, fantastical program have been devised let alone promoted?

Professor Arturo Schwartz of Cornell has offered an explanation.  In an article in Science he wrote this:

Hope and optimism are keystones of the American condition.  We are a country of hopefuls. What after all is the ethos of opportunity, the conviction that one's condition however dire, need not remain so if not hope? Such belief in possibilities, even improbable ones, is at the heart of American liberalism. Progressives have conflated the hoped for results of unerring, absolute conviction with secular action; but in so doing marshalled a monumental suspension of disbelief. If we say it often enough and with conviction, it must be true

Mary de Bennett looked at the inner city slums of Washington DC and did not see a teeming, uninhibited, tribal ghetto - dysfunctional, crime-ridden, and insular - but the expression of African American identity and the emergence of soul despite white oppression. 

She ignored genetics, history, Biblical wisdom, and common sense and believed in gender choice, the gender spectrum, and the fungibility of sexuality.  She ignored the fact that the illegal immigrants who in the millions overwhelmed the host country, offered nothing except numbers for gerrymandering and saw only a stream of needy refugees, innocent people seeking asylum. 

 Energy self-sufficiency is not a blow to the environment and the planet but the geopolitical means to counter Russian and Chinese hegemony.  Capitalism creates wealth and opportunity, the wealthy do not keep their money under the mattress but invest it to create jobs, build companies, and facilitate economic progress. A muscular foreign policy and the willingness to use force is the Machiavellian lesson of history and not bald adventurism. 

 

Argentina won the World Cup semi-final and a colleague mentioned that their victory was all the more impressive because they had no African players on the squad - a disadvantage impossible to overcome.  Mary howled racism, and suggested that her colleague retract such a baldly prejudiced statement.  Or Norway, he said, the whitest country on earth and the whitest team on the pitch. Shouldn't we be rooting for the clear underdog?

Listening to such passionate ignorance is one thing, but living with it quite another, for the political intensity bled over into other areas.  Racial prejudice, inequality, and white supremacy were at the heart of all evils, and she became a vigilante to out the worst cases of false assumption.  She saw injustice everywhere - a bad marriage was the result of male patriarchy and male oppression.  

The slow integration of Latinos into the American mainstream was the result of white supremacy and capitalist manipulation.  Conservative focus on individual responsibility was nothing more than moral arrogance and hermetic thinking. Philandering was a result of the persistence of the male troglodyte mentality - an unreconstructed remnant of the Paleolithic.  

She was  God awful, a harridan, a compulsive, judgmental, impossible woman; and her husband, tired of her lecturing harangues and increasingly febrile and nonsensical conclusions spent more and more time away from home until finally he sued for divorce.

Mary was shellshocked, unbelieving, and distraught. She had only been telling the truth, pointing out error, opening eyes and ears to the world's problems; but her mind was as closed to the realities of marriage, co-existence, and compatibility as it was to climate change, racial dysfunction, and geopolitics. 

A closed mind is a mind closed to every distinction, to every shade, every nuance.  So addled by political hysteria, who could expect her to be thoughtful, rational, and reasonable regarding her personal life?

The unashamed, unapologetic conservativism of Donald Trump has helped to right the balance.  He from the bully pulpit of the presidency has called out the presumptions and idealistic assumptions of the Left.  Black is black and white is white he said, and the nation began to take down their rainbow lawn signs, speak clearly and distinctly about what they saw, and finally rejected the cant and manufactured premises of the Left. 

 

Vixens, Harridans, And Toxic Femininity - The Sequelae Of Women's Liberation

Much has been made these days of toxic masculinity and how men are congenitally predatory, abusive, and dismissive of women - ogres, troglodytes, prognathous throwbacks to grunting Neanderthals.  Combined with whiteness, toxic masculinity becomes a poisonous potion, a virulent viral plague. Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir only hinted at the ugly nature of men; and it took another generation to fully expose their innate, foul brutality.  Men were now the enemy. 

However, Edward Albee turned the tables in  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf .  Martha is drama's harridan - a brutal, man-hating, vixen - and his George is the weak, sorry victim of her fury.  

There is some hope at the end of the story - they have so flayed each other to the marrow that perhaps there can be a new beginning; but real life's episodes, certainly as brutal and venomous as Albee's will turn out badly. There is no way that a couple with such profound psychological drivers and pitiful weaknesses can possibly go on from such an emotional holocaust. 

Tennessee Williams, whose characters are often timid, shy women looking for love - Alma of Eccentricities of a Nightingale is perhaps the most telling - has also created characters of the very opposite disposition.  Maggie the Cat is a duplicitous, treacherous woman who wants only money, reputation, and dominance but he can't hold back his admiration of this beautiful, stunning example of feminine will. 

Ibsen and Strindberg created strong willful women who despite the strictures of a socially conservative Victorian society bested men at an every turn.  Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, Hilde Wangel, and Laura in The Father are consummate manipulators understanding men's weaknesses and foibles and taking every advantage of them. 

Shakespeare's heroines are cut from the same cloth.  Rosalind, Viola, Portia, the other women of The Comedies tolerate their inferior suitors, make fun of them, and then, as society demands, marries the best they can.

So given this social, emotional, and political ebb and flow why are women still a protected species? The American Left in classic doublespeak has championed women as the superior sex, but demanded protection from naturally predatory, abusive men. Yet Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Strindberg have shown that women need no protection and with intelligence, savvy, will, and ambition can get what they want from men. 

 

So why have modern women been so insistent on taking their pound of flesh, hectoring the disappointing men they marry? Why have they stayed married despite all signs that point to dissolution and preferred to nag, irritate, and badger instead?

The image of the hag, the badgering, incessantly critical, unhappily married, resentful, unpleasant woman should have been long ago relegated to the archives.  Successful modern day women have either acquired enough financial capital to leave a bad marriage; or have, like Shakespeare’s heroines, figured out how to get the best out of their husbands and their marriages to satisfy their needs; but most women still have neither sorted out their independence nor learned from the Strindberg playbook.  

Instead, women go toxic with their bickering, bitching innuendoes and never confront men on the battlefield, equal in strength, open and martial in their intentions, courageous and honest.  They are still confused, caught between their patriarchal upbringing and modern 'Be All You Can Be' propaganda.  They are examples of toxic femininity - the unspoken sequelae of sexual liberation. 

Belinda Potter was one of these women.  Not unintelligent or clueless and a woman with a perfectly good career, social position, and family, and certainly a woman who did not need to resort to the shrewishness of the put-upon wife, Belinda took her daily pound of flesh. 

She, despite her publicly calm, confident demeanor, was petty, nasty, and unpleasant at home.  There was something innately twisted about her, some unavoidable detritus from a patriarchal past, some dutiful warnings from a very harried mother, that made her avoid the usual quid-pro-quo contractual dialogue with her husband - something she was very good at in the office - and go after him with extreme grievance 

Women cannot simply leave men alone - there is some unstated, but hardwired rule - giving an inch means capitulation, losing a hard-won foothold, taking a step back to patriarchy, nominal respect, and demission to second-class citizenship. 

Marriage is no longer the limiting, No Exit prison it used to be; but most women still treat it that way.  Confined within its arbitrary borders because of psycho-social imperatives set down in childhood, women are betwixt and between and cannot help flailing away at the men they have agreed to wed.  They may not be Albee's Martha, but a close approximation. 

Belinda had loving but somewhat imperious father who ruled his mother with draconian efficiency but treated his daughter like the princess in the castle; so from her earliest years she was conflicted - princess or dutiful, obedient consort.  She loved her father but as society began to feminize, she doubted his integrity, and adopted the then-current meme - men were no good. 

She treated her male suitors with diffidence and with an unbendingly critical judgement found none of them suitable.  She was wary of the virile, confident men and dismissive of the demurring and patient.  She was a role model for uncertain women, and a harridan to the men who gave her wide berth. 

Motherhood complicated the issue - men were necessary, and that meant some kind of arrangement. Of course she could opt for single motherhood - picking a genetically suitable lover and having his child whether he agreed to it or not - but that option too had been compromised by her upbringing.  As overweening as her father had been and as complaisant as her mother was, it was still a proper nuclear family, an ideal at the time. 

So Belinda took the middle road and got married to a decent, passably attractive, promising father and acceptable housemate; but it wasn't long after marriage that she resorted to her old ways; but within the confines of marriage her diffidence and judgmentalism became a pound-of-flesh affair. The nitpicking, and low resolution but continuous hectoring began. 

Belinda, however, never counted on this man's reaction.  She erred in her judgment and picked one with more gumption and male prerogative than she thought; and in short time he was in bed with any number of willing, desirous women. 

Now what? she wondered.  This was not in the program, outside the design.  Men were supposed to heel, not jump and run.  

Her first instinct - again thanks to her mother - was to let it ride.  This disruption was only the result of an imbalance,  a temporary maladjustment of ying and yang.  He would come back like all men, and the marriage would return to normal. 

Her second instinct was of course to take him to task, confront him, give him his orders and rechain him to the doghouse.  

When he did return - that is, ceased his tomcatting and resumed normal, expected husbandly duties - she didn't confront him but upped the vixenish pressure, and made life miserable for him, sending an unmistakable signal which only forced him to leave once again.

One might be tempted to feel sorry for Belinda, caught as she was between the Scylla of background and traditional upbringing and the Charybdis of feminism; and overlook the pound-of-flesh syndrome unfortunately common among women in similar circumstances; but generosity is hard to come by.  This nasty transitionary period has simply widened the sexual divide.  Men, emerging from the penumbra of feminism and progressive cant have become more assertive.  Marriage is a porous affair, a permeable arrangement.  Mistresses, lovers, and paramours - always men's privilege - are back, exposed, and out in the open. 

Hard as it might be, women will have to put up or shut up - a harsh, and previously unconscionable idea, but the new algorithm. 

Belinda stuck with it.  Divorce was so tiresome.  Gradually she became like Vita Sackville-West wife of Harold Nicholson in the famous open marriage of the early Twentieth Century.  The hectoring, whingeing, nitpicking, and badgering stopped.  She had fewer lovers than her husband - again a reversion to her early life - but it wasn't quantity that mattered.  It was the paradigm - and no one was happier than her husband who had it all - beautiful young lovers and a wife and children to come home to.