When Corruption Meets Corruption - An African Dictator's Visit To The Harris White House

Prince Alfonse M'bele was the longtime president of 'a dump with oil', the rather nasty reference made in the the halls of the State Department to a miserably poor, crime- and civil strife-ridden country whose only interest to Western donors was its vast energy and mineral reserves. 

The country had for years been on the State Department's priority list because of - and only because of - these resources.  Otherwise it was a pariah - public executions, political refugees, Tonton Macoute-style secret police and a steady stream of dollars and euros to private off-shore bank accounts.  If there was a more corrupt country in Africa, diplomats and CIA analysts had not found it. 

The President lived in a palatial mansion on a promontory overlooking the ocean.  It was done in the style of the Palace of Versailles down to a Hall of Mirrors and a formal garden.  The President liked to take visitors to the palace, stand on the balcony, and wave his arm across the maze-like gardens and the blue sea beyond.  'I did that', he said, giving his visitor the broad, generous M'bele smile and a warm embrace. 

 

Diplomacy and foreign aid stopped here.  M'bele, despite many requests, had never visited the White House.  That would be asking too much, and the thought of one Africa's worst dictators standing side by side with an American president would send the wrong messages.  No, said the State Department, let the dollars and oil flow, and leave it at that. 

'Why has President M'bele not been invited to the White House?', asked the new American President, Kamala Harris. 'We want to be seen extending our hand to all Africans in a sign of solidarity and cultural communion'. 

Harris had during her campaign made her African heritage and the special interest the American people had in restoring social and cultural ties with the continent.  It was not enough to base bilateral relationships on oil and rare earths.  The time had come to recognize the cultural and historical importance of the continent from which her ancestors and those of millions of black Americans had come. 

 

'But the public executions, Madam President...', insisted her aide de camp and chief personal advisor, a black woman selected for her loyalty and familiarity with things African.  

'Public executions?', she quickly replied.  'Thousands of black men have been wrongly accused and tried and are languishing in American prisons. Their life of incarceration, this wanton and blatant deprivation of their human rights and separation from country and family is no different from the public punishment of President M'bele.  Which is why we must free American prisoners and work to establish the rule of law in Africa'. 

 

Oration over and quite pleased with her sense of moral equivalency, she turned to other matters; but before she did, she issued an executive order to her aide. 'Invite him'. 

When M'bele received word of this Presidential invite, he immediately began preparations for the visit and whether or not he should wear the tribal leopard skin robe fashioned after his hero, Mobutu; or should go dressed in Armani.  It was a rhetorical question because 'that woman', he knew valued her African heritage above all, diluted as it was by racial impurity.  Showing up as a proud, traditional African leader will be the frosting on the beryllium cake.  'She will love it', he said. 

American exceptionalism has stuck in M'bele's craw for years.  Who were they to tell black Africans what to do when our continent is the cradle of civilization and we are the first to emerge from the forests as men? He was just as proud of his moral parallels as Harris. 

'Well said, Mr. President', his senior advisor commented.  'Well said indeed', and went on to second ever motion his president had made concerning American hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty. America was, after all the country that killed millions of Vietnamese in the jungles of Southeast Asia, supported Zionism and the murderous, genocidal regimes of Israel, and killed thousands more Muslims in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. 

Our public executions - executions of traitors and enemies of the state - are morally right and politically justified and who are they to tell us how to run our country?

The preparations for the official visit to Washington went on apace in both capitals.  M'bele had selected an entourage of the most beautiful women in the country, women whose African, European, and Caribbean heritage - traces of Portuguese colonization, Cuban military and economic support, and light-skinned Fulani ancestry made them stunningly appealing.  'That Harris woman', the President said, 'will find herself in these beauties, and all America's men will want them'. 

On her side of the Atlantic, President Harris also was attentive to cultural detail.  Her receiving line should be made up of America's finest black people - athletes, musicians, and entertainers, a potpourri of what one would find at the newly-inaugurated National African American Museum not far from the White House.  

She searched in vain for black academics but came up with only the cheap shot performers like Cornel West, moneygrubbing turncoat who bilked Harvard, then Princeton, then Harvard again, riding affirmative action and bellowing blackness until everyone was sick of his charade; and of course the ambulance-chaser in chief, that chicken-neck Al Sharpton who was in your face everywhere you looked. 

'Africa comes to America', was the meme, the tagline of the upcoming state visit, and so it did in all its tribal finery, drums, native dances, spears and masks.  The M'bele contingent spared no expense for a cultural extravaganza, a show of roots, cultural legitimacy, and human origins. 

The American conservative press was of course not quiet, and roundly criticized the new American president for so hawking racialism and African idolatry.  The man with whom she sat next to eating collard greens and fatback was a mass murderer who had just recently 'removed' three hundred and fifty 'miscreants' mowed down as they tried to 'escape' from federal prison. M'bele had more blood on his hands than Mobutu, Idi Amin, and Robert Mugabe combined; and that was without even considering Eyadema, Barre, and Charles Taylor. 

And this was without even raising the dubious question of moral equivalency.  Most of Africa split its sides when watching the side show of American transgenderism - the swishy skirts and high heels, the buggering, the emasculation, and the woman-worship were disgusting examples of moral turpitude. African men were proud of their machismo, their harems, their serial affairs, and their potency.  How was this twisting deformity of God's plan ever considered moral? And this hammering down of little boys' energy and sexual enthusiasm?  This crackpot feminism and glass ceiling nonsense? 

Of course there was a bit of hysteria on both sides, but the myth of American moral exceptionalism had been debunked and discredited long before the likes of M'bele ever set foot in Washington. How was keeping the American black population enslaved through entitlement, another word for a political permissiveness that never calls to justice ghetto dysfunction? 

Pimps and ho's are welcomed into the national discussion on culture? Assault and rape are understandable expressions of black rage and frustration at continuing white supremacy and Jim Crow.  Affirmative action denies individuality, individual worth and talent and throws all black people into a grab bag of leftovers. 

 

How can 'Abortion for all, any time, any place' be morally justified when legitimate moral objections have been raised and summarily dismissed.  Where is the moral equivalency between abortion and the death penalty? 

So, once the official dinners, ceremonies, and exchange of gifts are over with, what is left is two very morally compromised presidents.  No one is suggesting that the moral failings of the United States are in any way the equivalent of the wholesale slaughter in Africa - it is just the hypocrisy, the venality, and the self-serving intellectual myopia of both that rankles.  

China has the right idea - impose no conditionalities on trade or foreign exchange,  Roads for a fixed below market price for oil.  Purchases for rare earths, industrial diamonds, and other natural resources which include planned 'overruns', a blind eye to a given percent of payment added for investment in personal accounts in the Caymans. 

The M'bele-Harris event went off well, despite the carping and bitching from the conservative wings.  It was a celebration of culture and a cementing of financial and economic bonds.  As the tom-toms and African bass drums beat a native rhythm to M'bele's formal exit, the American President smiled.  'Well done', she said to herself. 'Well done'.