Dreams Of A Political Arriviste - The Consort Of A Kingly Leader And Finding Him In Washington

Barbery Byfield was a typical girl of her generation - coquette, ingenue, but with that precocious sexuality that most girls affect but she had in abundance.  She was indeed a Lolita, a nymphet, a girl barely out of high socks and school uniforms, who had desires well beyond her age. 

When she read the Arabian Nights, or Rapunzel, Goldilocks, or The Fairy Princess, she did not let them float happily in her fantasy.  When she dressed up in sequins, crinoline, and glitter, she was not just pretending to be a prima ballerina, noticed by the Tsar of Russia and invited to the Winter Palace.  She was that ballerina. 

When she saw pictures of the palaces of Persepolis, Constantinople, and Babylon, she was not just an imagined princess of the pasha's harem, but was that lady of exotic charms. 

She spent her classes daydreaming, imagining a world far beyond Chillicothe, Ohio, the farm, the cornfields, and the Methodist church - a world of wonder, limitless possibilities; a life of sybaritic pleasure, sexual abandon, frankincense and myrrh.  

Her grades slipped, her teachers critical, and the principal dismissive.  'Unless your grades improve, Miss Byfield, I would be remiss if I didn't remind you of your responsibilities', said the principle, an old queen never satisfied; but Barbery knew that her future was not in conjugations, the Hundred Years War, or Jeffersonian expansionism. 

Where was it, then? she wondered.  'Dreams are misfortunes in disguise', her mother had warned her, a woman who had had her share of promising but ultimately disappointing love affairs.  In fact, Mrs. Byfield was never entirely sure that Barbery was the offspring of Mr. Byfield or the ravishing Viscount of Northumberland who had swept her off her feet, treated her like a queen, then left her for the Duchess of Kent.  

Such is the stuff dreams are made of, she recalled; and best warn her daughter off such fancies before it was too late. 

But too late it was, for whether a product of genetic destiny or environmental influence, her daughter Barbery followed in her footsteps, enamored of the princely life, the romantic, and the wellborn. 

'At least keep your knickers on

, her mother finally said to her precocious daughter, 'until Mr. Right comes along', but those were words of an older generation of women.  Hers, feminist, demanding, and impatient, was different.  If she wanted a trail of disappointed men behind her, so be it. 'Reputation' today was more a question of dominance and success than virginity. 

It was a fine line to walk, the one between the slatternly and informed choice.  There were the usual suitors from which she assessed like Portia - Bobby Parker, captain of this and that, a bit slow off the mark but zesty and confident; Alfonso Evans, eccentric artist with little talent but with an insouciance which appealed; Dickinson Putnam of the Putnams, the Putnams of the Davenport expedition, the Salem trials, and the founding of New Haven; and Ralph DiMarco, goomba, the first New Haven Italian to be admitted to Yale, a political foundling with all kinds of connections and good in bed. 

Women have made fame, fortune, and history thanks to their ineffable and irresistible sexual appeal.  Margaret, wife of the weak King Henry VI, tired of his shilly-shallying rule, took over the reigns of power, defeated the French and saved England from foreign rule.  Cleopatra made short work of her Ptolemaic adversaries, and ruled Egypt for decades, in the meantime bedding Julius Caesar and having two children by him before luring Marc Antony into her bed chamber.  Ibsen, Strindberg, Dreiser, and Lewis wrote of indomitable women who took what they wanted and left a trail of men behind them. 

The problem was this: there was no American royalty, no cultured legatees of a thousand years of history, not even a significant aristocracy to speak of.  Yes, there were the Cabots and Lodges, Rittenhouse Square, Beacon Hill, and the Waldorf, but they couldn't hold a candle to the Bourbons or the Windsors. 

All that America had was this unwashed, hungry, bourgeois class of go-getters - the Zuckerbergs, Bezos, Buffets, Gates, and Jobs and their successors; so Barbery's fantasies of a palatial life were as fanciful as ever.  Times had changed. 

Or had they? Was an affair with an Ohio Congressman, an important member of the Ways and Means Committee of Congress, he heir to the wealth that only a few years in elected government can provide,  not the same as a rung on the ladder of viscounts, counts, and dukes but a reasonable aspiration?  Distasteful perhaps, but equivalent. 

So with a higher prize in mind, Barbery shared her bounty with others in Washington, moving her way up from interns to Congressional aides to inner circles. 

It is supposed that the political elite is a notch above the rest, more savvy, canny, and worldly wise; but the reverse is true.  These politicos, especially those with tenure, were particularly vulnerable to the blandishments and advances of young women like Barbery. 

As Shakespeare well knew, men are boobs and women can run rings around them.  Viola, Rosalind, and Portia were marvels of misandry, dismissing men like so much lint.  Lady Macbeth and especially Queen Margaret wife of the Danish regicide king and uncle to Hamlet, were the most well-known examples of native feminism.  Not to mention Tamora, Queen of the Goths or Dionyza harridan and murderous queen. 

 

So these fools in Washington would be easy pickings; but would bedtime with the nation's philanderers  be any satisfaction of Barbery's desires?   Would a liaison with the likes of Newt Gingrich, Mark Sanford, John Edwards, or even Bill Clinton, duplicitous, craven, heartless idiots, be the apogee of her ambition?

Doubtful.  Washington has no aristocratic sophistication, no Old World cavalier culture, no royal entitlement, and worst of all, no class.  It is a barnyard, pigsty, rutting free-for-all. 

Yet there is value and honor in accepting the challenge and wearing the laurels of victory.  So what if Congressman X is a rube from the sticks? Having him prostrate, vulnerable and hers was worth something.  Perhaps not in the annals of Mme. de Maintenon or Marie Antoinette, but a statement nonetheless. 

And so it was that Barbery Byfield found her home - not the Palais de Versailles or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon exactly, but a fertile ground for dominance and sexual satisfaction, the very essence of woman. 

 

Was the President of the United States immune to feminine wiles?  No President in American history led a faithful, uxorious life.  Every single one of them had a mistress except perhaps for Jimmy Carter who admitted only to having 'lust in his heart' which of course counts for the same thing, almost. 

Donald Trump has a beautiful younger wife and during his long career has squired the most desirable women; and since all men even at an advanced age think of sex every waking moment, the President would certainly be fair game. 

Particularly now when he is at the top of his game he would be at his most susceptible. All powerful men reach an inviolate plateau, a no-fly zone, an untouchable position from which they feel they can do anything without prosecution.  Especially in a president's second term in office, his last by Constitutional injunction, he feels more empowered and immune than ever. 

Former President of France Nicolas Sarkozy kept his mistress in the Presidential Palace, the Elysees, at his beck and call.  President Mitterrand's lover and illegitimate child mourned at his grave alongside his wife and legitimate children. 

There would be no fuss - there could be no fuss - if Barbery moved into the presidential quarters, but that was  putting the cart before the horse, engaging in one of her romantic fantasies before political reality.

The old adage - men will always be men - has not changed in millennia. Men are and always will be suckers for sexual attention and will throw fidelity, trust, and honesty to the winds for sexual adventure. 

In fact the older a man gets, the more insistent he becomes about expressing his virility; and a May-December affair, if ever achieved, can be transformative for an older man.  

Now, Donald Trump might be a hard sexual nut to crack, but he's no different from John Q. Public, wanting that nubile, silken freshness that only the likes of Barbery Byfield can offer. 

At this moment Barbery is in wings, but soon will show herself in all her marvelously seductive allure,  Why Barbery, you might ask given the tarts, comers, and glamorous showgirls of the world? Because some women have it and some don't, and this President  among all before him knows what's what.

What A Great Country! - How A Somali Pirate Turned A Fraud Ring Into A Drug Empire Under The Nose Of The US Government

Bashir Abdi was born and raised in Mogadishu.  He had never known anything but civil disorder, mayhem, and political chaos.  His country, Somalia, had been this way for decades - a lawless, ungoverned and ungovernable state, and to survive one had to rely on wits, ingenuity, craft, and fearlessness. 

 

His father, Barre, had brought him up with the survival skills necessary in such an unstructured society.  The rules that applied elsewhere- honesty, fairness, justice, consideration, and compassion - not only did not apply in Somalia but were tickets to an early death. 

No, the Abdi boy was brought up in a culture of harsh reality, violence, cruelty, and self-interest.  At a very young age Bashir accompanied his father on the pirate boats that plied the Indian Ocean.  He learned how to fire a machine gun and was trusted with manning the M240 mounted on the prow to lay down suppressive fire as they approached their target. 

Later as a young man, he was entrusted with leadership and had brought home a number of high-value assets.  He was also a member of the X-7 militia, a paramilitary group turned into gangland crewe responsible for 'sanitizing' the city and making it 'clean' for extrajudicial rule.  Fortunes were made in the lucrative drug trade, for Mogadishu became a key transit point for Southeast Asia heroin, a trusted depot given the military acumen and ferocity of its managers. 

'It is time to go to America', Bashir's father said to him one day.  'There is more money to be made there in one day than in a lifetime in Somalia'. 

Barre Abdi also knew that as well as profiting mightily, his son would not be killed.  American authorities were easily convinced to give immigrants and easy pass, and would overlook 'minor' infractions of the law.  More importantly, shooting a black man no matter what the circumstances, was simply not done in the United States, so the young man would be safe from harm. 

Entry into the United States over the years had been possible, especially if one had the financial resources of the Abdi family.  The thousands paid in bribes to American officials - from the border patrol to the courts - made illegal entry a simple matter.  

The Abdi money was not needed, however, since Bashir entered the United States during the Biden Administration, well known throughout Africa as an easy mark. Biden and his Congressional supporters made it known that all were welcome.  He and his fellow progressives felt they had a duty, a holy obligation to right the wrongs of decades of American imperialism, neo-colonialism, and racial oppression of Third World nations and to give succor and asylum to anyone fleeing that world. 

Given this political stance and the myopia which went along with it, the fraud, embezzlement, and financial crime committed by the Somali community grew geometrically.  No one in the Administration dared look at Somali books, for doing so would have been tantamount to racism.  There was already a widespread popular belief in the endemic criminality of the black man, American or African, and investigating him would only confirm that rancid prejudice. 

Since the local police, the FBI, and the wider network of federal law enforcement agencies were told to look the other way, the Somalis raked in hundreds of millions a year, built financial fortunes, and were looked at within the underground community of scammers, fraudsters, and snake oil salesmen, as brilliant profiteers. 

Bashir Abdi felt quite at home in Minneapolis despite the bitter cold.  He was welcomed as a hero, thanks to his reputation and that of his family, perhaps the most successful criminal operatives on the African continent - and that was saying something given the widespread endemic, universal corruption in every corner. 

'We will teach you all you need to know', Bashir was told as he settled in to his new white collar role.  At first, of course, he missed the thrill of the chase, the roar of quad Yamaha 350s, the gunfire, and the final assault; but he soon got used to a life of leisure. 

The government of the United States at every level had been so snookered, so completely bamboozled by the ethos of 'diversity' and 'inclusivity' that Somalis had a virtually free rein.  Child care centers which were no more than empty storefronts with welcoming signs, eldercare transport services without a single vehicle, and home visit nursing care without a nurse to be seen were the rule. 

'What a great country', Bashir said to his colleagues after evening prayers and a night with a Somali princess; but he was becoming increasingly bored with the simple routine.  Yes, his Aruban bank accounts were swelling, but he missed the life of excitement and adventure he had enjoyed back home.

Fraud was a profitable enterprise, but it lacked mojo, risk, and reward.  Drug running had been at the center of the Abdi business, so Bashir naturally considered that avenue of profit here in the United States. 

There were two avenues open for an enterprising man like Bashir - one was the lucrative cross-border trade in California-Mexico, but that was locked down by Latino gangs.  No one crossed Mara Salvatrucha, MS-19 or even intimated joining their ranks.  Bodies were littered on both sides of the border for just that. 

The other was the smaller but still lucrative drug market in New York City.  Frank Lucas had made hundreds of millions through a canny marketing scheme - buying heroin wholesale direct from Southeast Asia, shipping it on military transport planes shuttling between Saigon and New York, and selling it at a competitive price on the street. 

Lucas was long dead and buried but the drug trade in Harlem and beyond was still not only viable but rewarding.  Bashir had a feeling that with his credentials - black men in Harlem had heard of Somali macho derring-do and liked it, and understood the need to be more canny about their investments.  A veteran of the biggest scams going in the United States would be welcome in New York. 

While Bashir started as an accountant - well, more of a financial advisor - he let it be known that he would be a valuable asset in the muscle end of the business.  He had shown no mercy on the high seas and was known up and down the Somali Coast as the Genghis Khan of piracy, and there were enough upstart factions causing interruptions in the now standard-issue trade, that some measure of 'discipline' was called for; and he was the one. 

The reputation that preceded him was well-deserved, and in a few short months bodies were showing up in the Meadowlands, drug sales returned to normal, and the domain of the new drug lords of Harlem increased by leaps and bounds. 

Never one to turn his back on friends, family, and community, Bashir returned to Minneapolis and began to transform what had only been a scam into a serious, American-style, gangland operation.  He used his Harlem connections as sources of heroin, meth, and Fentanyl, built a cadre of loyalists within the Somali community, and selected the best and the brightest to work for him. 

Within a short time, the streets of Midwest cities were filled with his products; and the local authorities, still under restraining orders and unable to investigate anyone in the black community, did nothing. It was a bonanza, a jamboree, an operation that simply printed money. 

With the election of Donald Trump, the aggressive operations of ICE, and the long-overdue investigations into Somali Minnesota fraud, Bashir knew it was time to leave.  He knew the day would come as it did for Frank Lucas and the Big Men of Africa - not in federal prison but in his villa in St. Tropez which he had already bought and furnished.  Since his record was clean - federal authorities in the US never even suspected his level of involvement in the childcare fraud or the drug trade - and with generous payments to EU authorities, his residence in the South of France would be undisturbed. 

Everything in life is subject to the dictates of the bell curve; and even in a continent only known for misrule, corruption, venality, abject poverty, and medieval tribalism, there can be bright stars, men of brilliance, enterprise, and creativity.  Bashir Abdi was one of those stars and at last report was living decently and well on the Cote d'Azur. 

We Are The World - Realpolitik And The Fantasy Of Peace, Cooperation, And Good Will

Charles M'bele, longstanding President of a central African republic, sat back on the south verandah of the palace and looked out over the river, across the thousands of miles of forest to the ocean.  'Africa', he said, to a foreign visitor, 'is the future'. 

The visitor smiled, in country on a humanitarian mission and hopeful that the President would turn his attention to the starvation, pestilence, and economic misery of his people.  So far, no such luck, as M'bele had visions of a grand African renaissance, one to challenge the West and the white race for global authority. 

'We Africans', he said, 'are inheritors of Lucy's legacy', referring to the discovery of the first human being in the Olduvai Gorge, 'and we will inherit the earth'.  

He poured the visitor another glass of bonded 30 year single malt, lit a Cuban cigar, and watched the smoke drift languidly over the balcony, across the formal gardens he had fashioned after Versailles, and disappear into the mist over the river. 

M'bele had been in power since a violent coup in which his militias and South African and Israeli mercenaries toppled an elected president of the opposing party, a party of 'devilish intent, endemic corruption, and venal ambition.' 

Following his ascent to power, he built an impregnable empire assured by a loyal army, a brutal secret police, and a system of imprisonments and generous gifts which kept partisans guessing, loyalists firm, and those wavering in prison. 

'The world is in a flurry', said the President, and went on to cite the many international efforts at peace, cooperation, and reconciliation. 'Folly, hysteria, foolishness', he said, walking over to the balcony at the sound of distant gunfire. 

'Our neighbors', he commented to his concerned visitor, 'who have not learned our lessons of peace and security. 

The President was right, of course.  Dictatorships are good for one thing at least - peace and national security.  The regimes of the Duvaliers in Haiti made the country an idyll for foreign visitors.  The Olaffson was filled with writers, artists, and dancers, French restaurants served Michelin-starred meals from the harbor to Kenscoff.  Iran under the Shah was a modern day Persepolis - elegant, majestic, and safe thanks to Pahlavi and Sevak, his notorious Secret Police. 

 

The civil uprisings across the river from M’bele’s palace were the result of weak-minded, soggy, addled puppets who never learned how to rule.  'Don't worry', the President went on as heavy artillery fire was heard echoing in the forest.  'They won't come here'. 

The President picked up the phone by his side, spoke a few words, smiled, and announced that the interview was over - important business awaited him. 

Now, as much as Western democracies criticized M'bele and his authoritarian rule, his refusal to join any international agency, and his anti-democratic sense of imperial justice, he was the rule rather than the exception. 

Machiavelli writing in the 16th century understood human nature - man's ineluctable aggressiveness, territorial ambition, self-defensiveness, and survivalism.  Rather than suggest ways to a more considerate, compassionate, and unified world, he stated that peace was the result of stalemate or conquest, nothing in between.  Wars will always be fought, but should be engaged only to establish and secure national interests. 

 

The world order today is exactly as the Prince predicted.  Russia, China, and now, finally the United States are forcefully and unapologetically promoting their national interests and using every means to secure them.  Putin, Xi, and Trump are members of a new world order - a Machiavellian one where power is exercised and parity is sought.  

The force of arms, as Clausewitz famously noted, is diplomacy by other means.  The armies and arsenals of each of the three nations is impressive to say the least; but the lessons of the Cold War are resonant.  With thousands of megatons of nuclear explosives aimed at each other neither the Soviet Union nor the United States was tempted to pull the trigger. 

M'bele of course would never be invited to join this powerful triumvirate.  His nation was an impoverished, fifth-rate country with just enough mineral wealth to interest foreign donors; but he considered himself of the same ilk.

‘How do you say', he once said to a group of supporters, 'namby-pamby?' and with a guffaw and toothy smile to his attendants, he claimed his place as a member of the militant elite of the world. 

One Worlders have been around for decades, promoting international peace and harmony, demilitarization, healthy compromise, good will, and understanding. Yet they have been no more important or influential than streetcorner preachers, idealists with an abiding faith but no grounding in history, human nature, or geopolitical reality. 

American progressives are no different, challenging the Machiavellian Trump to stop his military incursions and withdrawal from international consortia and join hands with allies in a common front of good intentions.  NATO, the G7, the EU colloquies on transatlantic cooperation, the United Nations General Assembly, says Trump, are all hopelessly weak, flaccid, indeterminate organizations, taking up space and taxpayer dollars. 

Diplomacy, a la Clausewitz, is showing off American military might and defying any country to challenge it.  Former President Truman authorized the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to send a message to the Soviet Union. Look what we've got, and we're not afraid to use it. 

'Harry Truman, my kind of man', said M'bele, a student of American history who knew that with the election of Donald Trump, Truman was back.  

Of course, M'bele could have reached back a lot farther in history to conclude what he did.  The Hundred Years War, The War of the Roses, the countless bloody conflicts in the rest of Europe, China, Persia, Turkey, Japan; the tribal conflicts throughout Africa, the civil strife, uprisings, revolutions, and beheadings par for the course for millennia were evidence enough of the permanence of territorial conflict and the irrelevance of conversation. 

'I am a man of peace', he said, and he was correct as far as that goes.  For decades under his authoritarian rule, no shots had been fired in anger or revolt.  Of course in the early days after the coup, he was merciless in his search-and-destroy missions, burning entire villages suspected of disloyalty, beheading dissidents and impaling their heads on spikes leading in and out of questionable towns; but once security was established, peace reigned. 

Africa is the mirror of the political environment of the developed world.  Big Men, authoritarian dictators rule on all points of the compass.  All have loyal armies, insatiable secret police, and arsenals full and ready for deployment.  Whether internal or external, any threat to power must be met with overwhelming force. 

The progressive Left in Europe is on the run.  Their accommodating, politically naive policies have led to millions of unwanted, illegal immigrants who vow to Islamize the continent, an erosion of traditional European, Christian, Greco-Roman values, and impending chaos.   The Right is resurgent in Italy, France, Britain, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Poland and Hungary among others.  A reemergence of nationalism and regional identity. 

'Stay for the parade', M'bele told another foreign visitor.  'You will like it'. 

The parade in honor of the thirtieth year of M'bele's rule will match anything the Soviet Union managed on May Day, he said. 'Tanks, artillery, ranks of disciplined soldiers, martial music, and triumph!' 

The visitor of course demurred.  He was as anxious to get out of the country as quickly as he could, such a nasty, horrible place; but he smiled graciously, accepted a generous present from the President, was escorted to the airport by a phalanx of armored limousines, helped on the plane by welcoming airline staff, and never returned.