There Was Never Anyone Like Harry Muster - The Washington Success Story Of A Dunce

Harry Muster was a graduate of Yale, a scion of a family of old English rectitude and propriety, one of many generations of Musters who had gone to New Haven, but a man with only a kind of dopey complaisance that got him through the Gentleman C provisos of the university, but left him without any wherewithal for his second act.

He raided Hadley Hall, the women's graduate dorm, played bladderball on the Old Campus, and took the NY, New Haven & Hartford to New York on weekends to meet his St. Grottlesex classmates at the Yale Club.  

His first three years at Yale were happy, carefree ones, without undue academic stress, without concerns for his future - a seat on the NY stock exchange and partnership at Locke, Burberry, and Gunston awaited him - and most importantly a harem of girls who had gotten a whiff of his family's extraordinary wealth and social position and who had conveniently overlooked the fact that he was a clueless, aimless negotiator of life's twists and turns. 

For some unknown and ungodly reason - so said the Episcopal side of his family - he found the Yale Chaplain, a man of distinctly secular progressive sentiments and as far from pastoral counsellor as the Man in the Moon, a spiritual leader of immeasurable proportions. God would notice the bruises inflicted by Bull Connor and the bites of his attack dogs and reward accordingly.  

Life might be a journey to The Promised Land but not before a few stops in Selma and Montgomery. Most Yalies thought the chaplain a weightless arriviste and political climber of no significance; but Harry Muster thought him the answer to his prayers.

 

He became the Chaplain's acolyte, and followed the man around from New Haven to Tuscaloosa, sitting in, marching, parading for the black man, eating at segregated black lunch counters, and filling Woolsey Hall with his nostrums about black 'nobility'.  

Harry, without an original thought in his head followed a man without much in his, and together they made the perfect team, guru and chela, Zen teacher and one-hand-clapping disciple, the two together, present and future, marching for God and Man.  

There was no room in this cabal a deux for anything but love for the 'man of the forest', a Thoreauvian primal being that needed a leg up in the modern, capitalist world, so much so that Harry wanted to be black, to think black, and to love these high-shelved women from the Louisiana bayous. 

After Yale, Harry, thanks to the Chaplain, secured a fellowship at a premier Midwestern seminary which was known less for its doctrinal exegesis and pastoral mission than for its social activism.  The Dean of the school had been on the same busses headed south as the Yale Chaplain, and they had shared more than a few beers along the route.  'Thank you for sending him our way', said the Dean, and Harry went out west. 

 

He was lost in the classes on Biblical exegesis and Koine Greek, hoping for something more simple and direct and found himself foundering in academic parsing and esoteric interpretation until he graduated to the lessons on community organization. There he was in his element, no thinking required, only love, ambition, and purpose. 

On the steps of the grand neo-Gothic library, surrounded by cap-and-gown and Bibled academic deacons, Harry graduated, but again had to ask, 'What next?'. 

By now progressivism had sunk its roots deep into American soil and its sprouts had become the top pick of the political elite.  'I am a liberal', Harry finally and conclusively averred, and on to Washington he went, referred with kudos by both the Dean of Students at the seminary and by the Yale Chaplain, now an old man retired surprisingly in Sarasota where he owned a condominium and who was seen every morning sunning himself in a chaise lounge. 

First intern, then aide, then counsellor, then possible and likely candidate for the 4th District of his home state, Harry had done well for himself. 

For a man who had never been sure of what was what, Harry was unfazed by the twisted political shenanigans of the nation's capital.  He might not understand what all the fol-de-rol was about, but he was man enough to storm the enemy. 

As it turned out, Washington needed no thinkers - since they had dismissed Adlai Stevenson, pointy headed intellectual, decades ago they had embraced brush-cutting, peanut-farming good ol' boy machismo ever since.  Harry was in his element. 

In progressive Washington it was commitment that counted - a passionate, ineluctable, absolute belief in the natural superiority of the black man, the indisputable demise of heterosexuality, and the received wisdom of economic equality.  All revolved around the pole of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  The white, privileged descendants of predatory European colonialism were forever supernumerary, life's rejects, hopeless cultural vagrants. 

As a charter member of the Environmental Defense Fund, The Black Lesbian Coalition, One Wall Street, and the San Francisco Coalition For Homeless Rights, Harry was an indefatigable warrior for justice; and as such was tapped for greater things.  LaShonda Evans, senior advisor to Kamala Harris in her  campaign for the Presidency wanted him. 

Despite his age - an old Yalie, however much his wealth and/or academic excellence might still be fresh, was still an old man - and despite his association with the old guard, with the accommodationists Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, alte kockers and political supernumeraries, he still had some traction left, some passionate pull. 

He saw Kamala Harris as the very embodiment of all that he had fought for.  Imagine! A black woman poised to assume the Presidency of the United States, thanks in part to his unerring and unwavering support and activism.  'Praise be to Jesus', he said before he realized the words that were coming out of his mouth; but there was a good chance that The Lady would be sent packing by the demon himself, the anti-Christ.

As of this writing Harry, Kamala, and every last claque, shill, and progressive socialist in Washington is on tenterhooks.  What if, what if....

If Trump does win, all the collective, treacly ribbons of progressive Utopianism will finally be tossed into the dumpster; but Harry, at last able to sleep at night, never gave defeat a second thought 'We will prevail' he said before turning out the lights.

He had made it, and win or lose he was in the big tent, the Show, numero uno and he would never go back to Chillicothe