Joe Biden’s Diversity And The Surprising Role Of Bill Bixby, White, Straight, Privileged Male

“What about Bixby?”, suggested President Biden.  We still haven’t filled our white, straight, male position.”

“Too white”, said Kamala who was overseeing top level Administration appointments. “Too straight and too, well, out there.”

“But he was with us on most votes”, the President responded.  “He’s a good man”

Biden was having trouble filling the last senior Administration appointment.  He had appointed gay and  transgender activists, black BLM street cavaliers, no nonsense feminists, Latino farmworkers and house painters, welfare mothers, and ‘abortion now and always’ pro-choice take-no-prisoners women.  

Yet, despite the objection of Kamala and the progressive claques in Congress, Biden felt obliged to appoint a straight white male.  Such people were a part of America’s diversity, Biden claimed, and worth a place at the table.

“Absolutely not”, retorted Harris. “They are the other, the discredited, the dismissed”, she shouted. Appointing them would be tantamount to nominating former Nazis.

Werner von Braun, Joe reminded her, was a prize catch after the war.  “We should not be too judgmental when it comes to our interests”.

So who was this Bill Bixby other than a scion of a New England patrician family, descendants of Whigs, Southern apologists, and old line conservatives?

Bixby was indeed  the inheritor of very conservative, patriotic, nationalist genes. His ancestors had been English noblemen whose officers had fought Washington on the field of battle, whose ancestry dated back to the first days of English sovereignty, whose forbears were instrumental in the expansion of empire, and whose even more remote but equally storied family had laid the foundation for English empire.

While keeping, revering, and honoring this legacy, Bixby’s consistent respect for the democratic principles of Cromwell, gave him modern credibility.  He was a man who understood the importance of monarchy, aristocracy, and principle; but who also understood the nature of popular rule.  His great grandfather was a firm supporter of Alexander Hamilton who argued with Jefferson and insisted that popular rule was mob rule, and that polity required an aristocratic buffer, a democratic in-between.

Bixby’s conservative principles stood him in good stead with the early Republicans of the modern era; and even Democrats appreciated his historical foundation and Constitutional principles.  In the early 60s, Bixby changed parties, for he thought that  liberalism was the necessary anodyne to inchoate nationalism.  He was a man of both parties – committed to the Enlightenment principles of the Revolution, but aware of the realities of a pluralistic society which needed legal and social protection.

Two terms in Congress where he bucked the agenda of the radical Right and fought for the principles of conservative individualism, autonomy, small government and religious freedom, gave him bi-partisan legitimacy; and it was no wonder that he featured high on Biden’s to-do list.  Not only was Bixby a white, straight male, he was patrician and accountable.  He was an example of the best of America – a privileged white man who had come to realize the errors of his ancestors’ ways, who had done due penance, and was ready to serve the progressive cause

So Bill Bixby joined the ranks of black radicals, transgender superheroes, scratchy Mexican wetback-turned-workers’ rights-champions, demanding, uncompromising lesbian feminists, and a grab-bag of all other disaffected minorities.  Or so the story went.

He was admitted and accepted with some skepticism.  Can a leopard ever change his spots? And yet his temperance, good will, and especially logical espousal of the progressive canon was enough.  He might not be ‘one of us’ but if he could prove his bones, he might be,

What these progressives could never understand was the indissoluble permanence  of proper breeding, heritage, education. Although he might have been tempted by the liberal  principles of Lloyd George, Bertram Russell or even by the romantic notions of Martin Luther King, he remained unshakably conservative, an admirer of Winston Churchill and empire, and a belief in the civilizing nature of colonialism, the higher- order evolution of English law, jurisprudence, and administration .

There was no way that Africa or its freed slave diaspora could possibly match up.  In time, with help, counsel, and good advice perhaps; but in the short run, never.  The refugees from civil wars in Latin America were to be noted for their courage, pluck, and desire for a better world; but they would need a generation at least to match the civil probity, liberalism, and democratic principles innate in earlier Americans.

So Biden’s shills and protective coterie were right.  Bill Bixby could not be  trusted.  For all his claims to inclusivity and civil harmony, he was a Hamiltonian elitist at heart.  Popular rule, populism, and majority democracy were historically discredited, idealistic notions. While Bixby may have embraced the notion of evolutionary democracy – equality, equal rights, and common law – he was an aristocrat at heart.  His people and not the ruled were responsible for the efflorescence of the arts, ideas, music, and science of the Renaissance and the spread of Enlightenment thought.

“I still think he’s too white”, said Kamala; but Joe insisted that he was what the Administration needed to consolidate its now iconic banner of ‘Unity’.  What better way to show commitment to inclusivity than to include a man who, despite his roots ,has understood and accepted the wisdom of our Canon?

Uncle Joe was once again bamboozled, betrayed by his own WASP wannabee desires.  Ever since he was a boy growing up in an immigrant Irish neighborhood, he was beset by abuse – ‘Mick, shanty, lace-curtain Irish, go home’.  He desperately wanted to be like Barton Hetherington III, to go to exclusive prep schools and Ivy League universities, to be one of the in-crowd, to have his path to power and glory already paved for smooth sailing.  It was not to be, but Joe never lost sight of higher order, patrician America.

At the same time he was never comfortable around The Castro, Bay-to-Breakers, Folsom Street Fair transgender kings and queens, or around the indecipherable mishmash , the potpourri of American ‘diversity’.  Stick to your own kind was the meme he followed; but given his chosen profession, he had to demur and look the other way.  “We are one”, he was forced to sing and intone; although everything within him said ‘No’ and ‘Never’.

So Bill Bixby was Biden’s kind of guy, and he wanted him as a close adviser; but Kamala, his now lockstep coterie, and his progressive allies in Congress wanted no such thing.  in fact, for his closest advisor he should choose LaShonda Little Horse Robinson – a mixed race black and American Indian mestizo, an outspoken lesbian and naturalist. She spoke for the real America, not the likes of William Farquhar Bixby III.

“Well, we’ve got to have him”, said Biden; and despite the hue and cry from the Vice President on down to the Squad and below, Bixby was appointed, nominated, and approved.

In his seventh decade of life and fourth in government service, Bill Bixby  was finally his own man. He was ready to become the real the power behind the throne, and happily took up his post and the sumptuous office adjacent to the President.  His white face, his patrician bearing, his impeccable American credentials would finally be shamelessly on display.  The up-and-comers, the pretenders, and the multicultural wannabees would have to wait their turn.

He was the only thing standing between Biden and progressive anarchy.  If it weren’t for his sage, temperate advice, the Administration would have gone whole hog for transgenderism, international compassion and conciliation, and a radical restructuring of the financial and economic bases of the American economy.  He cheered BLM, the women’s march for abortion, gay pride, solar power, and wholistic medicine; but in private counseled and advised the President otherwise. By the time Kamala and her claques caught on to Bill’s deviousness, it was too late. Bill singlehandedly prevented a democratic fire sale.

Like Kamala Bill Bixby did not seek nor demand a public forum. He was confident in his counsel and on its historical precedent and took quiet pleasure in knowing that he had prevented a progressive catastrophe.  Run for public office? Never, said Bill. What on earth for?