The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker - A Sodom And Gomorrah Makes Sin Look Good

New Brighton, a small town in New England was pretty much like Thornton Wilder's fictional Grover's Corners.  Everything was in its place, settled, and secure. Much had changed since Wilder's time but New Brighton still was a model town where you could raise children, walk downtown, and join your neighbors at church suppers. 

 

Of course there were outliers - Norma Carlson gassed herself with the exhaust of her old Plymouth, Zoe and Doc Hansen got himself entangled in a love affair he never should have begun; but all in all people were content and happy. The town had negotiated the Sixties without too many young people going off the rails, survived civil rights (easy enough because there were no black people in New Brighton), feminism, and made it through the Vietnam War with valor and courage. 

Sinclair Lewis pilloried towns like New Brighton in his 1922 novel, Babbitt - towns of patriotism, boosterism 'and every other 'ism' a narrowminded burg like Zenith could muster'.  Lewis had no patience for the joviality, Rotary Club camaraderie, and faux jubilees of a town full of itself and men like Babbitt who thought it was the greatest place on earth.

 

Lewis was kinder in Main Street where a young woman from the big city tries to reform the town of Gopher Prairie but falls afoul of its parochialism, righteousness, and defiant cultural emptiness.  She leaves her husband, goes back to the big city, realizes the presumptuous of her ways, and returns to husband, son, and home. 

In Dodsworth, Lewis takes on the American bourgeois woman of means who thinks only of joining the swells of Europe before her youth has gone, and of living the life to which she feels entitled.  She is a caricature of wealthy disillusionment, of women who can never be satisfied, who haven't the intelligence or insight to appreciate the emerging, unique, commercial culture of America. 

Her husband is a Babbitt - a booster of Zenith, a successful businessman with a faith in America and embodying the very spirit that enabled it to grow and prosper - but he is not a pompous fool.  He is a good man without pretention, and he suffers at the hands of his vacuous wife. 

Small town America has always been the subject of abject ridicule, a dismissive slight without foundation.  Small town America was the heart and soul of the new republic - honest, hardworking, entrepreneurial, religious, and patriotic, the very values cited by Jefferson.  Yet, cities grew and along with growth and prosperity came art, literature, and a sophisticated cafe life - a natural home for an indifference to simpler, more foundational values. 

At the time of this story, New Brighton like many other small towns in America, found itself squeezed by the big cities nearby - not in terms of land development or radical urban transformation, but culture.  Young people in New Brighton wanted big city life while their parents wanted to to conserve the past, to preserve those very American values which were the foundation of America. 

Yet the allure of the big city did not just attract the young, it affected everyone.  The confines of a small town - inhibiting, cloistering, infantilizing - were seen clearly for the first time, and the town began to change from within. 

Sexual propriety, once received wisdom in the town, became a thing of derision, and before long Emma Baker, longtime dutiful wife of the town pharmacist began to take indiscriminate lovers.  Harvey Small, the town optometrist punched his ticket every Friday evening for a weekend with Fannie Mae Barker, formerly of New Orleans, now residing, thanks to Harvey, in a small condo on the Upper East Side.  Sister Mary Joseph shed her habit, her faith, and her virginity and was the talk of the town. 

Civic propriety - obeying the laws, regulations, and stipulations of society - which had long been the cornerstone of New Brighton rectitude - eroded, and the town became a mini-epicenter for money laundering and bank fraud. Harrison Plummer was as canny and deceptive as Enron's Jeffrey Skilling, and used his small independent bank as the fulcrum for much larger doings. 

Yet the town somehow maintained its Grover's Corners image.  On the surface it was still a model of rectitude, faith, and neighborliness. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne in The House of the Seven Gables wrote of the indelible influence of the past, and almost mystical presence of family and town history which influence the present; and so it seemed with New Brighton.  

The worst offenders, those who represented the polar opposite of what the town was a hundred years ago, were still intent on showing the town as it should be.  An article in the New York Times as part of a five-part series on small town America, limned the praises of New Brighton:

The smell of freshly baking bread, the cheery welcomes, the friendly, efficient, respectful service at clothiers, barbers, diners, and banks all were signs of a very American spirit that has always been at the heart of the republic.  Up and down Main Street, the town displays its pride, its patriotism, and its faith

The greatest boondoggle ever, said most residents who read the article, a masterful charade, a marvelous bit of tomfoolery.  New Brighton was indeed an American town, but not that limned by the Times reporter.  It had become simply a mini-version of American bourgeois society - rapacious, sexually indifferent, indecent, amoral, and ambitious - and, best of all, had perfected the art of deception. Image was everything.  There was enough of a centripetal social consciousness in the town for everyone to hew to its old ethical and moral center.  

The residents of New Brighton knew their Bible well.  God created Man but soon after the Creation found him wanting, and so sent the flood to destroy all but a select few. Noah and his family would repopulate the world with goodness. 

When that did not work, and Noah's descendants turned out to be just as vile, faithless, and immoral as those before him, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah in a fiery blaze, a message to the world that order and faith would return or else. 

That too failed, the lesson was not heeded, so God sent his only begotten son, Jesus, to earth, to die on the cross for the redemption of all sins and to promise salvation for all who followed him, and that - as the residents of New Brighton and the rest of the world saw - didn't work either. 

There are still churches everywhere - a good, Hollywood display of divine mercy and salvation - but they stand alone amidst all the seedy goings-on around them. Image is everything. 

New England has never been home to religious revivals, but if it had been, fire and brimstone preachers would have taken to the pulpit to call out the moral degradation of the town and the hypocritical show of good behavior.

As it is, New Brighton remains your typical American town - butcher, baker, candlestick maker up front; Sodom and Gomorrah behind; and a Hollywood happy ending to all. 

African Dictators - Charity, Foreign Aid, And Nothing Down, The Greatest Scam Of The Century

Justin Blair had worked for Africa Development Associates, a non-profit agency funded by the US government to assist African countries on their path to economic development.  As such he was a frequent visitor to many sub-Saharan nations which after independence charted their way to full membership in the commonwealth of nations but which fell short.  Colonialism, went the current meme, was an insidious, destructive, and demeaning movement with lasting effects, so it was no surprise that African nations on every point on the compass were finding emergence into the competitive, modern world difficult. 

On that assumption, liberal Western governments decided to give them a helping hand, and millions of dollars in foreign aid and the expertise that accompanied it were handed out on trust.  Surveillance, financial vigilance, and private sector accountability would be unnecessary given the good will, spirit, and intelligence of the continent's new rulers. 

This generosity was a boon to the big men who took power after independence. No fools and anxious to repay those who helped them accede to power and to play the credulous, black-loving European nations for fools these men quickly consolidated power and authority, and ruled their fiefdoms with an iron hand. 

 

They were as canny as any modern European dictator.  In fact many African regimes with their secret police, amply and generously financed military, and brutal, intimidated, unrestrained power were as successful as Stalin.  Their gulags were as cruel and penitential, their bullying, threats, and insidious influence as universal and effective as Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti. 

These big men had no interest in civil governance, nor any interest in any constituency except those willing to support them.  They encouraged international private contractors to mine their natural resources and took a healthy bite from each negotiated agreement.  Everyone was happy, for the oil, gas, and mineral companies made millions from African underground wealth, the big men were delighted, for their Swiss and offshore bank accounts grew, and Western governments, turning a blind eye to corruption, praised them for their important developmental advances. 

And so it was that Justin Blair was sent as special State Department, Agency for International Development envoy to a resource-rich central African country.  Wined and dined and put up at the new five-star hotel built on the banks of the river, its top floors overlooking the canopy of a thousand miles of forest, Justin was always eager to travel.  He knew that his job was not to reform the N'gomo government, but to keep the President and his associates happy and supportive of America. 

During his watch millions of unaccountable dollars were 'invested' in the country, and at each non-performing audit, loans and grants were renewed and doubled.  'We have learned from our mistakes' was the popular meme in official Washington, as Congress, anxious to keep a foothold in Africa and a bulwark against Russian and Chinese influence, and to show their African American constituents that they meant business, kept the sluice gates open. 

The World Bank's Annual Development Report was a classic of self-interest.  The Bank, sitting on trillions of dollars of reserves, was in the business of lending them, and few if any country's loans were ever cancelled.  The report was high-chicanery and obfuscation, charts, numbers, equations, and quotations all pointing to 'a better job next time'.  It was a joke. 

Everyone was in on the scam.  The Scandinavians, seeing socialist potential in the person of Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, gave him untold financial resources.  France and the UK, hoping to retain at least some presence in their old colonies were equally generous; and the big men raked it all in, siphoned it off to Aruba and Barbados, and lived like kings.

The Minister of Finance of a West African country when challenged by a US contractor for total non-performance and for the disappearance of $11.5 million in grant monies, adjusted his burnous, took a sip of tea, and stood to his full six-foot height, and replied.  'With all due respect' he began and went on to give a post-independence history lesson.  'I am in high office because of the undying support of my family, my tribe, my village, and last but not least, my government; and I will repay them in that order'. 

The political algorithm was different in Africa, Justin Blair knew.  It wasn't so much venal political corruption as it was in the West but a moral corruption - the repayment of sacred debts. The Big Men of Africa - all of them - operated under a different code of principles if not honor.  

The United States, still beholden to political exceptionalists who insisted on accountability and the proper implementation of reformist conditionalities, kept up the hypocritical drumbeat.  The State Department kept banging on about doing the right thing, but turned a blind eye when the Big Men did nothing of the sort. 

They caviled, bitched, and moaned about the Chinese who went to Africa with no agenda except national self interest.  They told Angolan dictators that they would rebuild the country's entire transport infrastructure for a guaranteed, permanent, below market price of oil.  Simple. No judicial reforms, no demands for free and fair elections, just a mutually favorable deal. 

Justin Blair was a favorite of Joshua N'gomo and his colleagues in neighboring nations all sitting on billions of underground wealth and welcoming to the invitations and support of the West.  Justin was complaisant, dutiful to his terms of reference provided by the State Department but also accepting of N'gomo's.  Justin would recite chapter and verse of America's conditionalities - reform of the judiciary, free and fair elections - and sit quietly while N'gomo nodded and looked elsewhere. 

Under the penumbra of 'moral corruption', there was no chance in hell that the United States would make any headway against the Chinese in Africa; and yet its diplomats and development specialists kept banging their heads against a wall.  'We must do right by black people' they and their Congressional supporters insisted. 

It all came to an end in President Donald Trump's second term when he abolished USAID and put an end to the scam of complicity that had persisted for so long.  Other foreign aid agencies like the development banks were still in business, and Justin had no difficulty securing consultancies.  When Justin returned to Africa under new auspices but with the same tacit understanding, he was enthusiastically welcomed by President N'gomo, put up at the five-star Independence Hotel and introduced to Fatima Diallo, a Fulani princess, who would be his companion for the duration of his visit. 

International development was still alive and well, thank God, reflected Justin.  And as long as there is credulousness, a persistent debt to the black man, and an exceptionalism that no Western nation has been able to expunge, there always will be. 

The American Lumpenproletariat - The Masses Hamilton Feared Are In Power

Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson when debating the architecture of government for the new Republic, differed on electoral representation.  Jefferson was a populist, a man who believed in the absolute right of the majority, their wisdom, and their foundational presence.  Hamilton disagreed, was concerned about a mob mentality that had been witnessed many times in European history and had been central to Shakespeare's historical drama. 

 

Mark Antony in Julius Caesar wooed the fickle mob and turned them against the conspirators who murdered Caesar.  Roman tribunes in Coriolanus incite the crowd against Coriolanus.  In the infamous Jack Cade's Rebellion in 2 Henry VI, Cade was masterful in inciting the crowd, and the rebellion was both a political provocation and a spectacle of popular power. 

In 1837, Abraham Lincoln wrote about lynching and "the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country – the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice."

Hamilton never convinced Jefferson of the errancy of his populist convictions, but did force a compromise - the creation of an upper body of legislators similar to the British House of Lords which would act as a buffer between the mob and the enlightened leaders of government. 

Hamilton would be dismayed to see how the American Senate has become the same lowbrow mob as the unwashed who elect them, joining the House of Representatives as a catcalling, simple-minded, venal bunch of political thugs.  

One, however, cannot criticize Congress for its lowlife, barroom nature; for they are stand-ins, surrogates, doppelgangers for the masses who elected them.  Congress - American government - is nothing more than mob rule, and the electorate no more than marginally educated, uninformed, credulous masses. 

In Marxist theory the Lumpenproletariat  is the underclass devoid of class consciousness. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the term in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society.  Class aside, the theory holds true for modern day America. The lower classes are as unthinking and as unintelligent as pre-revolutionary Russian peasants.  

Mob rule in America has increased dramatically over the last few decades as the theory of Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) took root and expanded.  Americans were not one people, as Jefferson and Adams conceived them, forming a nation with a common, central ethos; but subdivided into a hundred different 'identities'.  

Sexuality alone was broken down into over fifty categories of gender choice, and race and ethnicity were no different.  Progressives encouraged each group to celebrate their uniqueness, to remain separate, distinct, proud, and defiant. 

The country, already violently divided politically - there is no room for compromise, mutual agreement, or settlement between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives - is a political chaotic mire where the lumpenproletariat howls, Congressional representatives shout, and the country descends into political anarchy. 

Yes, there is still a government, ruled by Constitutional law; but when it is no more than a shill for the masses, governing and governed become one.  Government disappears; which is why the autocratic regime of China - the second most powerful nation in the world and rapidly becoming the first - is appealing.  

The Communist leaders have understood the fickleness, ingenuous separatism, and narrowmindedness of the people and have decided that a unified country, regardless of the means of unification, is far better than one divided by parochial, incidental interests.

America is inundated with political chicanery, false accusations, innuendoes, and ad hominem attacks.  The electoral process is far more in the gutter than ever before - even including the insane savagery of the Adams-Jackson campaign of 1828, one of the dirtiest, hateful, and falsely accusatory of any before or after. 

The media today are saturated with political attacks, bullying, race-baiting, foul and putrid accusations.  The American voter is inundated, and consequently violently partisan.  The hate for Donald Trump is historic, and the propositions of the radical Left never more absurd.

The disease is so universal that it has infected every segment of American society.  There is no longer a calm, rational, thoughtful, meditative electoral group interested in the welfare of America and society as a whole. Professionals and Walmart greeters are one in animus, hate, spite, and vindictiveness. 

Marfa Potter lives in University Park, a leafy, well-to-do neighborhood of Washington, DC.  Most residents are lawyers, NIH scientists, university professors, accountants, and investment counselors - a group which collectively should be counted on for measured, considered decisions on political, economic, and financial issues. 

Nothing of the kind, however, and the virulence of hatred for Donald Trump and all conservatives is beyond the pale.  It is a neighborhood of hate, cancel culture, suspicion and unfounded accusations; and in so doing residents are no different from the most uneducated conspiracy theorists of white Mississippi.  They have both chosen their political allegiances on the basis of assumptions of good and evil, fomented and propagated by small minds. 

Marfa was a neighborhood vigilante during COVID.  She bought every unbelievable, wild supposition by the government who claimed received wisdom.  One by one the assumptions of official Washington were shown to be meaningless and false - six feet social distance in the open air, viral spread on surfaces, masking, air purification and all the rest - but meanwhile a more viral panic spread throughout the country.  Schools were shut down for no reason, small businesses closed, and an air of universal suspicion spread. 

It was like the infamous radio broadcast by Orson Wells in 1938.  Millions of Americans actually believed that an intergalactic hostile alien force had begun to wage war on Earth.  Panic spread, whole communities became terrified, unhinged, and lost.  

Trump hatred is epidemic. The Left has convinced the masses that he is evil, an incarnation of Hitler, an insurrectionist, a pedophile, a racist, and a misogynist - all this while he finally secured the borders, relieved the private sector from prohibitive regulations and taxation, removed dictator Maduro from Venezuela, destroyed Iran's nuclear capacity and limited its support for terrorist client states, waged war on the useless federal bureaucracy, rolled back the most absurd woke propositions of the Left. 

The hatred, therefore, is nothing but feral - a wild animalism based on some weird planetary alignment. Marfa, her University Park neighbors, and all-believing Americans far and wide took it all for granted, fit it into their own personal ethos, and were loud and irreversible in their outrage. 

No Kings?  Better to live under a stable, consistent, disciplined, orderly regime based on a common ethos - e.g. China, its Confucianism, its dynastic history, and its absolute conviction of destiny - than to wake every day to the caterwauling of fools.