'Come Hither' - A Woman's Seductive Allure Lost In An Uppity Age

Lucretia Billings had always known that she was destined for something important, not just aprons and frilly dresses like her mother.  No, she would make something of herself, a name, a reputation, a place in history.  The old days of Kinder, Kirche, Kuchen were long gone and those of feminist arousal, championship, and destiny were upon her.  

Of course, daughter of a most appealing, seductive femme for a mother, she had her work cut out for her.  Lucretia had been properly schooled in the arts of subtle feminine persuasion - the arts of Cleopatra, Mata Hari, and millennia of women who, gifted with natural beauty and sexual appeal, learned how to use them. 

Mrs. Billings, Lucretia's mother could have had any of the young, wealthy, attractive suitors who came calling at Hastings Court, her ancestral home; but waited patiently until she had the prize caught in her carefully-woven web.  Cabot Potter Lodge had always been in her sights - scion of one of America's finest families, Harvard graduate, and junior partner at Locke, Burnham & Fiske - and she wasted no time in seducing her prey. 

Securing money, position, influence, and social status with no more than a voluptuous figure, sensuality, and a breathless come-hither allure was far easier than punching a Wall Street clock, or fighting little nasty Jews for prime New York real estate. 

And so it was that the upbringing of young Lucretia was consistent with this moral philosophy - women have something that men want and will fight for, so why dawdle?  'Men are darlings, but they are fools', Mrs. Billings told her daughter, 'and the sooner you realize this, the better'. 

But life, society, mores, and ambitions never remain the same, and Lucretia's generation valued other things like work, professional success, adulation, and power.  Women have for far too long labored under a male yoke, she was told, and revolution was at hand. Grasp the reins of power while you can. 

So the young, nubile, ineluctably seductive and alluring Lucretia became an uppity woman - a bitch, a cunt, a harridan in search of her rightful place atop society's ladder.  Her classmates at Columbia dressed her, directed her, and made her into a New Age woman, ready to do battle. 

At first Lucretia felt disoriented.  Her heritage and her upbringing could not so easily be dismissed.  More importantly she knew that feminine wiles, that limned and poetically endorsed trait of the most endowed women, were far easier weapons with which to storm the battlements than the screeching creeds of feminist cant. 

Yet her sisters insisted that she lose the eyeliner, the blush, and the décolleté and fold into the fare of the militant Left.   Confronting misogyny and the racism and homophobia it spawned required frontal attack not the backdoor, insidious, and outmoded tricks of a pre-feminist era. 

So, Lucretia marched with her feminist sisters, banging up against age-old prejudices and assumptions, howling and screeching to no effect.  Men in power did not want legions of bull-dykey looking women bustling up to their redoubts.  Women were a pain the ass to begin with, and now with all this feminist curiosity, were intolerable. 

One encounter with a Republican operative, on the sly in the basement apartment of a Dupont Circle duplex, was enough to convince her that her and her mother's way was right.  A little pussy aimed in the right direction could do wonders 

Congressman X of District Y was an easy mark, a pushover, a john in need.  Lucretia could have her way with him, this desperately lonely striver with a cunt for a wife. 

The old ways are the best ways, Lucretia knew. Why waste energy, resources, and time in proposing, postulating, and demonstrating when the key to influence was in the bedroom?

The Congressman didn't exactly change his vote, but his colleagues were nonetheless surprised at his conciliatory gestures to the right.  Pillow talk was indeed the operative vehicle in official Washington, and Lucretia was a master. 

A woman with sexual allure and political savvy can go places in Washington, and before long Lucretia was known - not as a courtesan but a woman of intellect and influence. She had seduced the Congressman's mind as well as his body - the easiest thing in the world for a savvy, confident woman to achieve, 

The War Between the Sexes is a misnomer, because men have laid down their arms before women conquerors since time immemorial.  Rosalind, Viola, and Portia of Shakespeare's Comedies, women who run rings around their besotted suitors, are eternal woman - a naturally powerful, controlling interest in sexual politics. Physical strength and socially endowed privilege? Nonsense.  Men can be outbid, outperformed, outclassed by women at every turn - not by the force of will but by sheer, irresistible desire. 

 

Why would a woman of Lucretia Billings’ caliber and pedigree even bother with the likes of Congressman X?  Because she could.  Reminded of the Animal Farm meme, 'Four legs good, two legs bad', she claimed what women always knew - women reign and always will. 

Not only do women have a jump start because hound dog men once getting a whiff cannot back off, but because they control paternity, the hole card of sexual poker, the future is female. 

'What's life like in Washington?', asked Lucretia's Great Aunt Margaret, a woman of the old, old school without a clue of anything after 1938; to which Lucretia responded, 'Fine, Aunt Maggie, just fine' and poured herself another Lustau Reserve sherry.

Lucretia made her way famously in Washington - never a courtesan or paid consort but a woman of natural sexual promise and influence. She flew under the censorious radar of official Washington, was the nouveau Hostess of Georgetown par excellence, sought after by young swells, arrivistes and political insiders alike. 

When it was time to leave Washington - a matter of lines and wrinkles, boredom, and disinterest - she retired happily to her home in Chillicothe and when her bonds matured, to a villa on St Bart's. 

A Bitch, A Hag, And A Dummy - America's Hilarious Electoral Side Show

Just when the American electorate thought that Kamala Harris, defeated Democratic candidate for President, had receded far in the rear view mirror, she unofficially announced her intention to run against Donald Trump in 2028. 

Now, Harris didn't just get beaten.  She got trounced, no surprise to anyone except the most partisan Democrats who never looked past her 'I am a woman of color' campaign meme, ignored her ganglionic, impossibly convoluted, indecipherable speeches, and took her vacuous, presumptuous grasp of policy as kind and compassionate. 

Her Salem Witch Trial accusations of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh, vicious, ad hominem, excoriating charges were far and away beyond the usual lack of decorum and civility of Congressional hearings.  The woman was a harridan, a succubus, without a scintilla of respect, discipline, honor, or grace.  She was a holy terror, a battleax, a wailing, flailing wolverine, a honey badger without decency. 

The palace coup that she engineered to get rid of Joe Biden was again no surprise to anyone of both parties.  She saw that the old fool had lost his marbles, and she was there to shove him under the bus. 'The American people need strong leadership', she said when she assumed the mantle of Presidential candidate, and with Biden out of the way, she went on a tear. 

There was, however, no there, there.  No meat, no substance, no nothing.  From her first speech to her last, she was shown to be an empty bucket - a vain, mindless, ambitious woman with not a glimmer of sense about how to govern. 

And yet she is back?  How could that be? Hadn't the American public had enough of this intellectual fraud? And hadn't her fires been doused by such a decisive electoral defeat and the subsequent dissection of it?  The campaign was nothing more than 'I am a woman of color' and 'Donald Trump is evil', devoid of any policy, program, or initiative that suggested ability, intelligence, and respect for the American voter. 

Liberal American woman have seemingly not had enough caricature and lambasting. They ignore the images of fat, blue-haired, bellowing Karens seen everywhere and are energized by them.  Harris's crafted image of black righteousness and woman power is their icon, and they are lining up behind her.  2028 will be her year - their year - finally, and once and for all as the American republic becomes universally female. 

If Harris wasn't bad enough, Hillary Clinton, another entitled woman who was roundly defeated by Donald Trump and who ran a similarly presumptuous campaign of righteousness, has risen from the political dead and signaled her intentions to try again for the Presidency.  

Had she been elected, instead of ICE mayhem, the bulldozers razing the hallowed bureaucracy, caretake of the poor and disadvantaged, the misogynistic, racist, and homophobic policies, they would have had kindness, inclusivity, and compassion.  It is not too late. 

Hillary Clinton never understood that she was a devilishly unattractive woman - no less of a bitch than Kamala Harris, riding along with her on the lower rungs of likeability.  No one really liked Hillary Clinton. She, like Harris, was just a symbol of 'the time is now' feminism.  Who could like this loud, cackling, pushy arriviste?

It is only a sign of the Democrat bottom that she is even considering another run for the Presidency.  The Party can only come up with a fraud, a bitch, and an old hag and call it victory? 

If Harris and Clinton aren't bad enough, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx slums and claimant to the mantle of 'woman of color' who has added ethnicity to the claim but who has nothing in her intellectual portfolio but identity, is also a pretender to the throne. 

'She is the reason why instructions are put on the shampoo bottle', said Louisiana Senator John Kennedy and nothing the woman has said has proved him wrong.  'Great news!', AOC shouts from a viral cartoon. 'My IQ test came back negative'. 

She aligned perfectly with her constituents.  Of what use was foreign policy to a little Puerto Rican woman from a poor Congressional district whose voters knew little more than rice and beans, hanging out on the stoop in the barrio, and drinking Cuba Libres?  She talked only of La Raza, the great Puerto Rican and Dominican people, and the wave of Latino power surely on the horizon.  

Gone would be the public housing blocks in the South Bronx, white-engineered concentration camps for people of color, and in their place would be elegant, windowed high-rises, even more towering and impressive than anything downtown.  Gone would be the pulperias and tiendas with empty shelves, and in would be Whole Foods and the myriad boutique groceries of the Upper East Side. 

This took no intelligence, no intellect, and certainly no knowledge of economics or economic history; so when tested on Milton Friedman, AOC was befuddled.  Her aides gave her helpful prompts. 'Free to Choose', one hinted, but the Congresswoman looked just as lost in the weeds as ever. 

'Ok, free to choose, but what? A pastrami sandwich?', and with that she slammed her fist on the retro-Fifties Formica counter of her kitchen, and shouted, 'Basta.  I am who I am'. 

'The triumvirate of stupidity', Senator Kennedy has said, referring to Harris-Clinton-AOC as 'a pile of rocks dumber than a stone quarry', and yet there are some liberal woman who would like to see all three ascend to the pinnacle of power.  President, Vice-President, Secretary of State in an all-woman cabinet of people of color.  

Even though forewarned, Kamala Harris can't help herself.  In a recent interview on MSNBC, she said, 'The time is now, for soon the present will be the future, and for those whose past is the present and always has been, the future can ever be'. 

'It's not starting off well', her unofficial campaign aide said to his colleagues in an open-mike aside. 'We need to shore up the dike', to which they all howled with laughter at the double-entendre; but given recent history the woman was not to be shut up. 

Hillary keeps banging on about Trump this and Trump that with not a scintilla of her experience as Secretary of State and Senator showing through.  She is still running on diesel fuel, Trump hatred, and woman power.  She smells AOC sniffing at her hems and Kamala barking away as the lead dog in the race, but can't seem to find the right position, the winning niche. 

Americans can only hope and pray that these woman disappear before they have to suffer more nonsensical abuse.  Down the oubliette, a trap door opened and shut before anyone notices; but that's just whistlin' Dixie.  Once bitten by the political bug, the virus is impossible to cure.  

The Bridge To Nowhere - Boondoggles, Scams, And The Seedy Nature Of Local Government

Montgomery County took a perfectly good four lane feeder road linking a major urban hub with important thoroughfares to downtown Washington and Virginia, and made it two car lanes and two bike lanes. 

The County Supervisor, testifying at a public hearing said:

We feel that the reconfiguration of Little Falls Parkway will confirm the County's environmental focus.  We are committed to the progressive move to self-propelled, environmentally friendly transportation.  The skies above will be brighter, the air cleaner, and our byways made quieter, more friendly, and more accommodating for all. 

The completed project has done nothing of the kind.  No biker has chosen to ride the bike lanes for the a few hundred feet of cycle freeway only to merge with busy commuter and commercial traffic and end up on two of the region's major thoroughfares. 

It is the road to nowhere, a stunt, a politically devious and administratively wasteful project.  Not one bicycle has been seen on the new dedicated lanes, and traffic now with only one lane in either direction, is stalled during morning and evening rush hours. 

'If we build it, they will come' is the old saw used by public planners since time immemorial, and Montgomery County was no different. 'You may not see much bike traffic on our new road now, but its time has not yet fully come.  When bikers see the advantages of dedicated lanes, a scenic environment, and safe access beyond, they will flock to Little Falls Parkway'. 

Now, Montgomery County is not the first jurisdiction to build roads to nowhere, make improvements where they were not needed, disrupt a perfectly good, well-functioning system for no apparent reason.  In a nearby residential neighborhood in Northwest Washington, DC, a perfectly good service road, an important passageway for trash pickup and other heavy vehicles was ripped up and replaced.  The old road was as solid as the Hoover Dam.  It took weeks to just jackhammer and remove the old concrete which was as thick as a fortress wall, laid down to last a century. 

'It needed it', said the Councilman responsible for the works. 

In one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Washington, perfectly good sidewalks and curbs were torn up and replaced.  Not only were the old sidewalks perfectly good, but this was a neighborhood of two -car high-end SUVs where nobody walked.  

None of this should be a surprise to anyone, given the fact that local government has  been as corrupt as Sodom and Gomorrah since the first urban settlements; and infrastructure projects a cash cow for contractors, their municipal supervisors, and politicians.  

There hasn't been a public works project in the District of Columbia that has come in on or under budget since home rule, and most are subject to significant cost overruns - not just tweaky little adjustments, but major revisions. 

Everybody profits. Labor unions are delighted that their members are put to work and could care less about the viability or reasonability of the job.  Contractors salivate when granted priority status with the municipality, for they will be the first to receive generous awards, all of which can be doubled or tripled with overruns. 

The Minnesota childcare and transport services frauds are nothing special.  The District of Columbia alone has built hundreds of millions of dollars in public service infrastructure which lies boarded up and graffitied after a few years of desultory use.  Mammoth extensions of public schools, far beyond the demand and built in 'anticipation' of a demographic boom which by any actuarial or economic analysis will never happen, are common. 

'Little black children deserve better', said the councilman for one of Washington's most impoverished and crime-ridden inner city districts; so a massive renovation and expansion project was quickly approved despite the fact that the truancy rate in that ward exceeded 70 percent, and the schools were no more than prisons with lockdowns, armed monitors, and a few color-within-the-lines classes. 

The Montgomery County Executive was a die-hard environmentalist, and he engineered the most unsafe hodgepodge of bicycle-friendly disruptions of any jurisdiction.  On the assumption that cyclists can do wrong, and that vehicular traffic must always give way, traffic rules and regulations have been abandoned for cyclists, and as a result bike paths interfere and conflict with safe, properly conservative vehicle traffic. 

The County built a dedicated bike lane which crossed the major on ramp to the area's principle interstate, and neglected to regulate bike traffic to avoid accidents.  Given the presumption of right and the absence of any stop signs, warning lights, or indications to dismount, cyclists are smashed to smithereens every year...and drivers are blamed. 

The problem is threefold - the easy cover of social righteousness (bikes are good for the environment; services for poor black people require no more justification), the easy money always available from infrastructure projects, and the direct and indirect payoffs (walkin' around money) to constituents who profit from the public sector jobs thrown their way by municipal politicians. 

During Mayor Marion Barry's tenure in Washington, he made sure that all the voters of the city's black wards voted for him and spared no expense to assure it.  The black residents of Anacostia cared little about utilitarian, cost-benefit, risk-reward analyses of infrastructure projects.  Building them means day wages, salaries, and kickbacks whatever their stated purpose. 

Most of the taxpayer money comes from Washington's wealthy, all-white Ward 3 - a ward which has consistently voted against the corrupt lineup of politicians repeatedly returned to council seats and City Hall, but these elected officials know that the rest of the city will vote for them.  They don't need Ward 3 votes, only its money, and given Washington's demographics, this scam will continue ad infinitum. 

LaShonda Evans, bright star of the black community, and longtime advocate for a Mamdani democratic Socialist style of governance, put it this way to Washington's white community:

We the people, we the black people, legatees of the wisdom of the forest and the lessons of the street, and inheritors of the primal instincts of power from our African tribal ancestors, will rule.  There can be no questioning our right to govern and your duty to support us. Slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and systemic racism is all you need to know when you sign your name to the check. 

Walkin' around money was to be endemic and universal - indirect reparations at the municipal level. 'We will rebuild the city in our image'. 

LaShonda is not alone in her racial bombast. Many if not most large American cities have black mayors and city councils.  Chicago is perhaps the best example - a race-baiting, self-interested, political incompetent Mayor who has seen profit in every George Floyd, anti-ICE demonstration and every road to nowhere.  Chicago, the home of Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink Kenna, the most influentially corrupt politicians of early Twentieth Century history, has continued its corrupt, ward politics days.  'Vote early and often' was the meme, walkin' around money found its apotheosis there. 

Alexander Hamilton saw this coming - the will of the people was suspect and popular rule an idealist's chimera - but he would be dumbfounded at what he would see at the base of the pyramid - municipal democracy rotten to the core. 

Only demographics will change the corrupt nature of Washington politics.  The city has become known as Metrosexual Heaven and the influx of white, educated, upwardly mobile voters gentrifying the city, turning old slum neighborhoods into vibrant, modern cultural meccas; and eventually this demographic shift will have its effect.  More accountability, more conservative governance, and a modicum at least of political propriety if not honesty. 

But that, Aunt Margaret, will take time.