Human Nature Remains Unchanged Since The Paleolithic - But The Chimera Of Social Justice Is Still Hanging Around

Bob Muzelle was a dyed-in-the-wool progressive and had been ever since childhood.  His father had been an old-time Lafollette and Debs liberal who was an active member of the labor movement, long-time socialist and Soviet apologist, and prophet of the coming new age of compassion, cooperation, and peace. 

 

Bob fondly remembered discussions around the dinner table when his father and uncles would speak against capitalism, the oppression of the worker, and the evils of Wall Street.  No dinner was complete without Uncle Harry's apoplectic rage, waving a chicken wing like a flag, standing at the end of the table shaking with righteous anger, shouting down the fools and ingrates of the country who were complaisant, complicit in the great Republican con game. 

'Sit down, Harry', said Aunt Tilly who had had more than enough of her husband's spittle and wild-eyed apocalyptic visions of hell; but once Harry got his furnace fired up, it took time to cool it down, and he flailed on for another ten minutes until his energy flagged, his chicken got cold, and his lettuce began to wilt. 

Despite the Grand Guignol aspect of Uncle Harry and his bombast, Bob took his words to heart. The country was indeed suffering from capitalist perversity, and he for one was going to do something about it.  He would carry on in the footsteps of his forbears and help achieve the vision of a more verdant, peaceful, and compassionate union. 

Although Yale was calm and quiet during Bob's college years - the fiery, revolutionary period to follow was unthought of so Old Blue, traditional, and aristocratic was the university in those days - but even though his classmates were still drinking at Mory's, tailgating at the Yale Bowl, and headed off to investment banking, the news filtering up from Selma and Birmingham caught his attention.  'When one person suffers indignity', said Uncle Harry, 'the human race suffers as well', and so it was that Bob, intellectually primed by his dinners in Great Neck, became infected with the viral passion of civil rights. 

 

The Negro could do no wrong, and the white man's obligation - his solemn duty - was to remove his chains, care for him, and restore him to his proper place among the highest, most sentient, most apt and able human beings on earth.  

For decades Bob fought in the trenches of progressivism, bloodied, mud-stained, beaten and bruised by conservative thugs, but he was undaunted; and just when he thought that the fight had been won, that a New Age was upon him, Donald Trump was re-elected President of the United States; and within the first few months he dismantled government and took down the very pillars of consensual, participatory, generous progressive rule.  The past was being wiped off the board as though it had never existed.  

The heart of the matter, dismissed by Bob and his colleagues was the permanence of human nature.  Man was not born compassionate, considerate, and generous but came into the world a wailing, thrashing, greedy, self-centered infant. Of course wars and internecine squabbles have been the menu du jour every day of the week, every decade, every millennium. 

The fact that collaboration has become part of a political hymnal, raised to moral status, and claimed as a right when it is nothing but an instrument of increasing self-interested outcomes, was imagsimply warm, cockles-of-my-heart emotional treacle, purely fantastical, a confected feel-good chimera. 

'We cannot give up, we mustn't give up, we will never give up.  La Lucha Continua', shouted Bob to an auditorium filled with progressive partisans all desperate for a glimmer of hope as the sound of Elon Musk's wrecking balls and bulldozers echoed up and down the hallowed avenues of the nation's capital.  Yet hope was a rara avis these days as one by one the shibboleths of the Left came tumbling down, the language of the destroyers grew more and more inconsiderate and uncompassionate.  Not only was government being dismantled, but Donald Trump was after the very ethos of America. 

Why is this turn of events such a big surprise?  Did progressives like Bob really think that the Biden Administration signaled the end of history?  Francis Fukuyama felt that the fall of the Soviet Union indeed was.  The Cold War, the threat of nuclear Armageddon, international aggression and predatory territorialism were things of the past.  A new age of cooperation and peace had arrived. 

Of course within a few years his absurd premise was proven wrong.  Not only did the demise of the Soviet Union simply set up a bowling alley of falling pins and bloody resets among its former republics, everyone got into the act.  Islamic terrorism became the enemy, and its goal of an international caliphate would be achieved through violence, intimidation, blood, and guts.  The whole world fractured, as the old East-West coalitions ceased to exist. 

Why the ascension of Donald Trump was so shocking, unsettling, and discombobulating was this - progressives finally and once and for all had to see that there was no such thing as Utopia, progress, or elision to a better world.  Human nature rules as always, and Donald Trump and his legions are only soldiers in a repetitive, consistent, change of self-interested regimes.

Trump is not the evil that progressives claim.  He is just more boldly human than most politicians, admitting his territorial claims, American self-interest, and the need for an amoral, Machiavellian policy both at home and abroad. 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) is nothing more than a banner, a festoon, an icon of the unsurprising, expected change of the guard. 

This revelation is what made Bob hang up his cleats, retire to Florida, and leave the fight to others. 'If the rule you followed brought you to this', asked Shugur Cormac McCarthy's evil villain in No Country For Old Men about to kill Carson Wells, 'of what use was the rule?'; and so it was that Bob asked himself the same question.  If five decades of doing good had ended up with nothing, then was his life wasted?

The black man, far from integrated was still poorly educated, anti-social, and living in dysfunctional, crime-ridden communities.  Peace was a chimera.  No one cared about climate change, challenged as a given and dismissed out of hand.  Capitalism was not only the engine of the economy but the revived ethos of the country, etc. etc.  

So, retirement was more a penance than a reward, for Bob could not help revisiting his life choices, confronting the ineradicable truths of human nature, and accepting the dismal failure of progressive ideas.  

'I still love you', said his wife, Corinne, herself unbothered by all her husband's soul-searching fol-de-rol.  It was a good ride, like many, glad to have been on it, but very glad to get off. 

Sexual Irony - Philandering Husbands And Wives Who Love Them For It

Herman Fleishman, doctor of philosophy and fine arts, professor at the Bavarian Institute for Social Biology of Munich had done extensive research on female mating behavior, and in particular how single women fall for 'bad boys' and how married women not only do not leave their husbands for infidelity, but love them more for it. 

The first phenomenon is well known and linked to classic primitive mating behavior.  So-called 'bad boys' are the most male - aggressive, fearless, risk-taking, and confident - whereas good boys, while dutiful, respectful, and loving are the most feminized; and what red-blooded woman wants more of the same?  Of course Professor Fleishman put it differently and couched it in appropriately scholarly terms:

While survivalist logic might predict female preference for a mate most likely to care for her and her offspring and unlikely to stray, this oxymoronic, Prelapsarian conclusion fails to convince on many levels.  The sexual wanderer, the Lothario, the Casanova, the man loved by many women abhorring sexual settlement and prizing sexual conquest is exactly what women want.  They instinctively are attracted to the high-testosterone, double YY chromosomic, men of challenge and emotional hyper-charged desire.  He might not care for her, but she wants his children.

Feminist outcry upon publication was deafening.  'Professor Fleishman is the tool of the misogynist far Right, the patriarchal bullies who dismiss womanhood without concern - fools, ignoramuses, and backwater imbeciles'. 

Yet Fleishman stood his ground, and simply asked these critics to look around.  'Who are zey fucking?', he replied in his thick German accent.  

Bob Muzelle was one of Fleishman's good men - dutiful, obedient, supportive, and self-effacing when it came to his wife, a professional, feminist, and woman of some intellectual weight.  He not only stood behind his wife no matter the cause, not only agreed to her every condition and demand, but enlisted in The Cause of Women.  The glass ceiling must be broken, sexual abuse must stop, patriarchy must be tossed aside, and women must be given their due as sexual primus inter pares.  Sexual equality was good and valid only so far.  Women were the stronger, more intellectually agile, and more 'tensile' of the species, and men should accept their own role as second fiddle. 

August Strindberg's Miss Julie offers some inkling into Bob's sexual immaturity.  Julie's mother, a Scandinavian proto-feminist of the Victorian era, brings her daughter up as a man, and Julie learned how to become a sweat-stained, brute of a thing, able to master all; and so it was that in reverse Bob was trained.  He was brought up to be a sensitive, caring, sweet and demonstrative person unafraid to show his emotions - not to be a girl, actually, but to be a girl in boy's clothing, a faux female but in the vaudevillian transgenderism of the early days, a sexual double entendre. 

He was no queer, and was as horny as his mates when it came to girls and women; but because of his training, he was inept and unconvincing as a suitor. He demurred when he should have pro-acted, he waited for a girl's initiative, her suggestiveness, her intent; and as a result every evening ended in wilted, unsatisfied desires.  

Just when he was ready to throw in the towel, along came Corinne, a woman of modest means, intelligence, and desire who was more than happy to be courted by this surprisingly tentative young man, but beggars can't be choosers, and she had waited long enough in her shabby Long Island home, and so made the first move, and Bob was hooked. 

But even Corinne was surprised at Bob's bowing and scraping, a virtual Dickensian Uriah Heep "I'm an 'umble man" servility, and although Bob was an ideal husband who did the dishes, took out the trash, kept his hairs out of the sink, and deferred to her on matters large and small, she felt frustrated, angry, and cheated; and before five years were up she took a lover. 

Blanton Figgis was not her idea of a macho man, nor any woman's for that matter, but at least he was forward enough to suggest a maleness and real desire, so they met every Thursday afternoon at 4 in his Adams Morgan walkup, left promptly at 5, and were home in time for dinner. 

The piece de resistance of Fleishman's work, the centerpiece, was The Holdens.  Loft Holden was a ladies man, an attractive forty-something sexual libertine whom women adored.  The more women he had, the more other women wanted him, wanted to know what made him so sexually attractive, and wanted to be the ones to tie him down.  

Beth Amory Holden, his wife, knew of his affairs but was socially enriched by them.  Her husband was not just one of these run-of-the-mill suburban duds but a real man, and he was hers. His affairs turned her on, and when they made love she imagined being Sheila, Usha, or Luisa, taken in a hundred different locales, coming a hundred different ways. 

All this of course is anecdotal, but the more Fleishman collected similar stories, and compiled an impressive dossier of women's desires, the more convinced he was of some evolutionary compulsion going on.  Women wanted the football captain headed for State, not the computer geek on his way to MIT; the chisel-jawed boy wonder, not the little Jewish kid reading Torah.  It was set in stone, the way of all women, an evolutionary, hardwired compulsion. 

The Beth Holden affair was more complicated, more to deconstruct and decipher about the twists and turns of marital infidelity; but Freud and Jung were both eloquent on the subject.  In his seminal paper on Marital Fidelity And The Female Voyeur, Freud wrote about how the attraction of bad boys does not disappear after marriage but recurs in extramarital affair and most pronounced in the revelry of a wayward husband. 

 

The wife is cognizant and complicit in her husband's serial affairs.  She wants to be both wife and illicit lover, to have the comfort of a caretaker and the virtual excitement of a sexual brigand.  The savvy husband knows and understands this and uses it to his advantage.  Knowing his wife will be ever faithful and non-judgmental about his affairs, he is free to roam. A mutually satisfying conclusion.

When feminists read these Freudian excerpts, they were outraged.  Both men - ach, men! - had demeaned women, robbed them of their dignity and independence, and should be discredited; but again Fleishman held his ground.  He knew what was what, and he suspected that most women did too.  As much as their radicalized sisters might howl misogyny and sexually abusive abandonment, they knew that what they wanted and never once demurred from the desire, a real man. 

Professor Fleishman almost lost his position at the university, but then the tide turned and conservatives rose to power in America and Europe.  Gone were the days of woke political correctness, and freedom of investigation, inquiry, and objective conclusions and free speech were back.  

'I love women', the old professor was heard to have said, much to the consternation of still progressive women; but that burnished his resume, put a star on it, and gave him even more currency and audience. 

Muffy And Vicki Go To A Women's March On The National Mall - Sisterhood, Gossip, And Fun

'Ooo, I can't wait!, said Muffy Pendleton to her friend Victoria, giving her a big hug and a kiss.  Tomorrow was the big day, the Women's March For Social Justice on the National Mall, a show of unity and solidarity for the climate, the oppressed, the beleaguered, and the poor. 

It had been a while since women had gathered on the Mall, and it was about time for another show of strength.  The bar had been raised with the election of Donald Trump, and America had to see that his retrograde, abusive, and intolerant policies would not stand; that millions of women, mothers, sisters had banded together to voice their outrage and concern. 

'What shall we bring to eat?', Muffy asked Vicki. 

'Don't do tuna fish again, Muffy.  I'm so sick of tuna fish.  Why don't we stop at the deli and get some corned beef or pastrami'"

'Yuk', replied Muffy. 'You know I'm on a diet and if I gain a pound more I won't fit into my new dress, you know the one, the Dolce & Gabbana I got on sale at Nieman Marcus?'

'On sale? When did they do that? Do you suppose the sale is still on?'

'Time to suit up, girls', said the drill sergeant of their platoon the next day to women from Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and Kensington who would travel together down to the Mall and join the rest of the Gay Brigade - women for transgender inclusion and gender equality who were expected to be in the thousands. 

Muffy ands Vicki had debated which battalion (the march organizers had chosen to think in military terms and give a note of discipline and structure to an event which, given recent history, could become quite silly) to join.  Muffy had opted for climate, but she thought that was too old hat, or at least subsumed by Trump's gestapo Kristallnacht bureaucrat roundups, and the Immigration Forever ranks had so swelled that her voice would be lost, so even though woke was fading, it was all the more important to turn the tide, reassure Americans that diversity was not one and done, so the Gay Brigade it was. 

The problem was that Muffy, despite her solid progressive credentials, was a bit queasy around lesbians, especially the tough girl variety, all doo-dadded out in chains and leather, sporting butch haircuts, and showing off their dykey cars.  She loved them of course, but still the very idea was, shameful to admit, off-putting.

'Stop it right there', said Vicki when her friend started in on going down and dildoes.  'Sisterhood has no prejudice', and chastened, shamed, Muffy mumbled an apology to her friend and to all same-sex women.  

Now, to be honest, there were no lesbians on the bus from Bethesda.  All protestors were professional, married women with children who while perhaps tempted back in their college days, never took classmates up on their offers, and continued as straight arrows well into adulthood.  Their solidarity with lesbians was only intellectual.  

The whole idea of spending a weekend in Bernal Heights as a kind of Spring Training for the march (the Heights was a well-known lesbian neighborhood of San Francisco, very butch, very femme and quite intimidating) was undesirable to say the least.  Muffy was convinced that solidarity meant political commitment, and nothing more was required. 

 

The women on the bus sang old Che Guevara Cuban fight songs on the bus on the way down to the Mall.  They were all in a good mood. It was a lovely April morning and Washington was in its finest - cherry blossoms, dogwood, magnolia, and bougainvillea - and they couldn't restrain themselves.  What could be better than making a difference with a group of happy, likeminded women? They were the New Age Freedom Riders. 

'What about Claudia?', Vicki asked wondering where the most politically passionate of their friends was. 'I haven't seen her for ages'

'Hubby trouble', replied Muffy. 'Haven't you heard?  He went off with that Brandeis teacher, spent a weekend at Rehoboth with her, and of course Claudia found out.'

'Where did they stay?'

'Oh, God, Vicki, what on earth does that matter?  They stayed, that's all.  Maybe it was the Dewey or the Claremont...but that's not the point.'

And with that the two women watched the bus turn down Connecticut Avenue towards Farragut Square where the streets had been closed to accommodate the protestors. 

'Finally', said Muffy, stretching and breathing in the marvelous perfume of the lilacs and honeysuckle on the walls of the old Grace Church. 

The two women walked to the Capitol end of the Mall and looked for the Gay Brigade sign which would be their point de repère, their meeting point where all other gender advocates would assemble. The Mall was crowded, but they finally saw Bunny Ormand, the leader of the delegation waving to them. 

 

'My God, she looks great', said Muffy, ashamed of her rather dowdy outfit which she thought was quite fitting for such a serious event, but when she saw Bunny, dressed to the nines, elegant, coiffed, and looking stunning, she regretted her decision.  She debated long and hard that morning when she looked in her closet, imagining herself protesting in silk, organdy, or plain cotton.  'I should have gone with the silk', she thought waving to Bunny. 

'What's he doing here?', Vicki asked noticing a trim young man in a Brooks Bros. hoodie and St. Laurent sunglasses.  Burton Mayberry, the doll, the desired one, the be-all and end-all of seventh floor fantasies, was standing there looking cool and collected, alone, but no one could miss the admiring glances sent his way by the women in the crowd around him. 

Burton worked with Muffy at the Bank, a Senior Economist from London, responsible for 'the colonies' as he ironically put it, India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.  A bright young star, unattached, and dreamy.  

Muffy, with her new fine-edged independent sensibilities, entertained thoughts of love with him at the Mayflower or in his Georgetown apartment, or at his beach house on the Eastern Shore; but true to form, child of a good Catholic family and never able to shake loose memories of the nuns or the admonitions of Father Murphy, she kept her own counsel and returned every night to Ralph and his pot roast. 

'Time to go, girls', shouted Bunny to her contingent; and with that, signs, placards, banners, and flags in hand, the women marched forward, the Washington Monument in their sights at the far end of the Mall, a symbol of a very American patriotism which both Muffy and Vicki deeply felt despite their bilious hatred for the current government, the man in power, and his SS lackeys.  

Muffy felt a tear run down her cheek - a happy tear, happy to be an American after all, happy to have all these friends.  Life was good; and she gave the woman closest to her a hug and a kiss and together they marched for whatever which didn't matter.  It was the solidarity, the sisterhood, the camaraderie and the joy that did. 

A Face Only A Mother Could Love - The Myth Of Inner Beauty And The Political Odyssey Of A Very Ugly Woman

Greta Bergen knew there was something quite wrong when in kindergarten she was teased about her eyes, as wide apart as a flounder's and very hard to look at.  A choice had to be made, which one to look at - left one or right one - and even Mrs. Crandall, her teacher, wondered if she had normal depth perception...or, on the other hand whether her peripheral vision saw far more than the average child.

'God made you that way', her mother said, trying to comfort the little girl who had come home from school disconsolate, sobbing, and a snotty mess.  'But you have inner beauty'.  

Mrs. Bergen had known that her daughter would never be a beauty early on.  'What a baby!' was all relatives could say when they saw Baby Greta in her cradle, doing all they could from turning away from the bassinette, averting their eyes from the baby and her poor mother.

Of course she loved her daughter, her first born, as any mother would, and hoped that in time her features would reassemble - the eyes would migrate, her chin would recede, and her ears would align themselves closer to her head; but no such luck.  As the child grew, her already unusual features only became more so, and by the time she entered school she her face had a character and 'uniqueness' that would be hers for ever after.

Mrs. and Mr. Bergen wondered about the girl's genetic origins. Not that Harold suspected his wife of infidelity (although after Greta’s birth, he could never look at the milkman or plumber the same way). He just wondered where in her genetic past her misshapenness (and yes, that was the only word to describe her) came from.  

He exhumed old leather bound albums and looked at hundreds of black and white photos of his wife's family - the reprobate Uncle George, convicted of felonious assault but a handsome man, dapper, a Rudolph Valentino lookalike; the fey and boyish Tommy, cute even at forty, photographed on Keuka Lake in a canoe; the absolutely stunning Mildred, flapper girl, Las Vegas star, and Hollywood bit player - but none of them gave an inkling as to where his daughter’s features came from. 

 

His own family forbears were of no help - a sad sack, uninteresting lot, but they were at least regular in appearance, respectable burghers from Oneida, farmers and draymen since the Revolution.  Nothing odd or remarkable there. 

So it must have been a twist of fate, the garbling of genes through the generations which combined in an unholy mess in their poor daughter; but you had to play the hand dealt to you, and with any luck Greta would be a strong woman who would overcome her unfortunate physical heritage and be happy. 

In America there were only two ways for a girl like Greta to overcome or at least compensate for her physical unattractiveness.  The first was to submit to a surgical makeover, tighten the ears to her head, flesh out the lips, tonsure and accentuate eyebrows and lashes to deflect attention from the irremediable placement of her eyes, and complement the work with cosmetics, rouge and gloss, eyeshadow and liner, makeup, powders, lipstick and highlighters. 

The second was to play the cards dealt, make the best of your hand or somehow capitalize on it.  Greta chose this option, and decided that she would use her unfortunate physical appearance as a bold and defiant statement against bourgeois superficiality - the facile, contrived beauty of Hollywood, the runways of Milan, Paris, and New York, advertising, and the cult of the cute blue-eyed goddess. 

Social scientists have long studied the relationship between physical appearance and social success. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder.  The standards of feminine beauty have not changed for millennia. Symmetrical features, luminescent eyes, full lips, and luxuriant hair all express health, wealth, and well-being as well as being pleasing to a natural sense of geometrical order, and sexual appeal.  There is little difference between  the women painted by Leonardo and the most beautiful Hollywood actresses of today.

Such beauty has always assured success.  All things considered, beautiful women are hired first, promoted first, married first, and sought after always.   Beauty has been less important for men whose success and sexual appeal has come largely from professional ambition, family status, and wealth; but still, the tall, handsome man is always noticed, deferred to, and given the benefit of the doubt.  While women may reasonably doubt these men’s fidelity, they are drawn to them.  Male beauty implies good breeding, good nutrition, and good genes.  It is a stand-in for the more easily assessable and practical qualities.

What was surprising for the scientists was to find a link between unattractiveness and political philosophy - how one looked at, interpreted, and judged the world.  With few exceptions those women with a particularly insistent sense of compassion for the poor, the rights of the oppressed, the wavering climate, and the unequal distribution of wealth fell far off the bell curve of physical attractiveness. 

 
While liberal women - those watching from the sidelines, marching in the occasional jamboree for this or that, and consistently voting Democrat - were no strangers to Armani, Arpege, and Vogue, those in the progressive trenches, the social justice crusaders, were without exception stone brutes in appearance.  From flannel-shirted tough girls from Bernal Heights, to Habitat for the Homeless ghetto missionaries, to tireless, passionate demonstrators for civil rights and international justice, they were off the charts. 

Greta was on to something - ugliness in the face of ignorant bourgeois complacency was a badge of honor, a symbol of serious pursuits, intellectual commitment, and moral rectitude. Hundreds of these scraggly women gathered daily in front of the Trump White House, jeering the young, lily white, blonde, blue-eyed aides and interns headed for the West Wing.  Not a black woman among them, not one gay man, not one 'othered' person.  

Progressive to the core, dismissive of the superficial blandness of Midwestern farm conservatism, those jeering and howling at the gates made something of their unfortunate genes and showed the world that beauty was a farce, and that inner strength meant all. 

Now, despite Greta's realism, she had been influenced like any other normal, healthy American girl by the culture of beauty; and when it came to choosing a mate, she of course hoped for a Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Chris Hemsworth.  Yet not surprisingly the young men in her political coterie were as unfortunately graced as she; and like her, affected the most unappealing, slovenly, brashly indifferent attitude to dress and appearance. 

In an epiphanic moment she realized, 'It's all about the sex', and coupling with one of these political retreads was not an option.  Yet there was no telling how or even if dipping into the mainstream would pay any dividends - those binocular eyes, that frizzy hair, the ears...God had indeed been unkind. 

Diana Vreeland is perhaps the best example of how clothes, cosmetics, and hair style can compensate for unattractive physical characteristics.  In her autobiography, D.V., she recounts her particularly difficult childhood years,  a very unattractive child with a beautiful sister.  

Vreeland, never an attractive woman, went on to become the doyenne of fashion as editor-in-chief of Vogue and a long tenure and Harpers Bazaar.  She believed that not only were clothes important and could compensate for a lack of classical beauty; but that they added value.  She promoted the idea of style – an attitude more than a look not dissimilar from the Italian bella figura but far more dramatic.  Vreeland was never a beautiful woman, but no one noticed.

It was worth a try, and Greta's parents happily offered to pay for the makeover - plastic surgery, top-of-the-line cosmetics, haute couture and American casual clothes, the works, and after a year, she emerged from the penumbra of ugliness.  While not a stunning beauty, she was more than acceptable, and found herself the attention of not a few attractive, eligible young men. 

Her former political sisters - the ones deep in the progressive struggle for social reform, equality, and right - saw her transformation as apostasy.  She had become a Republican! an outsider, a defiling, unwanted presence.  She might as well join Donald Trump and his pretty minions on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Which is what she did.  Her years of squirreling away in the carrels of Harvard's Widener Library and across town in the economic labs of MIT were now paying off.  Her esoteric work on the nature of markets was neutral enough to brush off any intimations of Keynes, and the Trump populists saw her as a welcome addition to the Council of Economic Advisors. 

All this was incidental to what beauty - natural or acquired - means.  Successful mating; and that, of course, had been the reason for her veering off course and into more congenial waters.  She bedded one eager aide after another and could have had any of them; but again surprisingly reveled in her new, unanticipated libertinage.  Marriage could wait.  Conservatism, unlike progressivism had beauty and good times built in. 

Sound And Fury Signifying Nothing - Protest Marches As Self-Gratifying, Happy Jamborees

There seems to be a march every weekend in Washington; and the Women’s March, the March for Science, the Climate March are just a few. This weekend (4/5/25) was no different.  Marchers gathered on the National Mall to protest Donald Trump.  It was a delighted, happy crowd.  The placards, banners, and signs were effusive in their attacks on an imbalanced, insurrectionist, enemy of the people.  

The crowd cheered every speaker, raised their fists in defiance and solidarity, whooped and hollered until hoarse, and headed home satisfied, content, and extremely happy with themselves. 

The real purpose of the march was to create a sense of solidarity and a camaraderie of like-minded people, progressives who refuse to capitulate to the retrograde, destructionist, bullying of Donald Trump.  It was hatred of the man that ironically fueled the joy of the event.  The bilious, hysterical, incontinent rage felt good to express - to yell and scream finally after so many months of tamped down, frustrated, and inchoate anger.  

The joy at these marches and demonstrations is palpable. Those marches that concern women have an additional note of bonding, communal love, and belonging. Demonstrators are not angry but happy, for they are shouting in unison with their sisters, hugging and kissing in exuberant displays of female solidarity.  Their soprano voices, loud and choral, might never be heard by the men that decide, but that is of no consequence.  It was femininity, femaleness, feminism expressed joyously and with abandon. 

It all comes down social collectivity – an expression of concern for a common cause which unites thousands into a community of ideas – an identity community with markers, banners, logos, doctrines, and liturgies.  Belonging feels good, feels important, feels useful, and most importantly reflects one’s own goodness.

The marches all have a stated purpose – demand for women’s rights, more objectivity and less politics in scientific research, and immediate action on climate change – and while they may be well intentioned, their objectives are far too vague and diffuse to have any impact on policy; and this march of protest against Donald Trump was perhaps the most centripetal, airy, and breezy of them all.  

The President had done nothing wrong, at least not like Richard Nixon's dirty tricks, Watergate, and break-ins to the offices of Daniel Ellsberg; or LBJ who prosecuted the War in Vietnam despite unclear objectives and goals, causing the death of thousands.  

No, this was a magical premise of pre-crime, a Julius Caesar moment when Cassius and his Roman cohorts plan to kill Caesar for the crimes he might commit.  Caesar has hardly even intimated a desire for imperial rule, only been adamant about principles of governance and national sovereignty. 

The marchers on the Mall saw Elon Musk, the man tapped with the responsibility of identifying waste, fraud, and inefficiency and charged with the dismantling and closing of bureaucracies which were hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars with nothing to show, as a villain, a usurper, a Genghis Khan.  Yet Musk was only out to save taxpayer money, reduce or eliminate non-essential, wasteful government interventions in individual lives, and return governance to the foundational principles of the Constitution. 

Closing the borders was a necessary, long overdue, national right and priority; and Trump was unequivocal about it. Drastic, uncompromising measures would be taken to repatriate foreign nationals here illegally.  Such removal would benefit Americans - without cheap, undocumented labor, wages for American citizens would rise, a modicum of social integrity would be restored.  

The war in Ukraine, increasingly unpopular in the United States - a war with only the feeble premise of 'Saving Democracy' and resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the ruin of a country, and little opposition to Russia - would be ended. 

The ridiculousness of woke would be ended - no gender spectrum, no transgender kindergarten teachers, no outrageous redefinitions.  Affirmative action and DEI - intrusive, objectional attempts to value identity over talent, intelligence, ability, and performance - would have to go, making the marketplace much more fair, equitable, and just. 

So, what was the point of the march?  The marchers on the Mall had been so badly infected with the fabulist concoctions of the progressive Left - that Trump was a homophobic, racist, misogynist and oppressor of the weak and disadvantaged - that hatred had become endemic and ingrained. 

This was not a protest with one clear, definable, achievable objective - to pass a Civil Rights Bill, to remove Johnson from office, to stop the war in Vietnam, or to force Richard Nixon to resign - but one with only inchoate, hysterical 'feelings'. 

The ‘68 March on Washington had one and only one purpose – civil rights.  It was the most defining, momentous, and significant event of the movement which had begun with Rosa Parks, sit-ins, and the signing of the Civil Rights Act.  No one could ignore the plight of black Americans after Martin Luther King spoke at the Lincoln Memorial.



Anti-Vietnam War protesters brought the war to Washington, and Nixon was bedeviled.  Although he stubbornly hardened his stance, dismissed the protesters as renegade, anti-Americans, he paid attention; and most observers have concluded that the demonstrations, marches, and protests helped to end the war if only indirectly.

The leaders of both the civil rights and anti-war protests understood their power.  They had specific objectives – both direct and indirect – in mind, and never wavered from them.

However recent marches have been hodge-podges, potpourris of grievances.  The Women’s March a number of years ago was a stew of progressive demands.  Every issue from equal pay to abortion rights, to sexual abuse, male patriarchy, transgender acceptance, and the capitalist system which is fundamentally oligarchic and oppressive to women was represented on the Mall. 

Real activism requires both political and philosophical commitment and savvy lobbying.  In the case of environmentalism, the desks of Congressional Representatives are piled high with requests and demands from hundreds of cause-specific groups.  Environmental fatigue sets in, and the pile is simply moved.

Current causes have no immediacy.  There are no thousands of coffins of dead American soldiers arriving at Andrews Air Force Base.  No black people being beaten or attacked by dogs.  Global warming is remote, distant, and by no means the Armageddon envisaged by some.  For the time being, it means less brutal winters in Minnesota, a longer growing season and lower farm prices, and easy sailing through the Arctic Passage.



Women have never been more successful, now outnumbering men in law and medical school, increasing in numbers in media, academia, and industry.  Although feminists still insist on protecting women from the depredation of men, most women are strong, confident, and quite able to take care of themselves.

The election of Donald Trump has given common cause to progressives – perhaps the unifying enemy they have hoped for. In the electoral campaign they vilified him as homophobic, misogynist, racist, and xenophobic – all vague, passionately-felt, impossible to validate, but too melodramatic for any real resonance.  

A woman who was an organizer of the anti-Trump march when asked what he hoped to accomplish, said, “Media coverage”.  The more the public is exposed to progressive principles, the greater the chance for progressive reform.

Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth.  Progressives who see televised images of Washington marchers will feel even more solidarity and commitment.  Conservatives, on the other hand, will only be hardened in their opposition to what they see as liberal cant and interventionism.  The images of marchers, random signs, and violent encounters will only drive them further from the causes marchers intend to promote.

So, what’s the point? Why march? Why bother?

The answer is in collective progressive solidarity.  It matters little whether protests and marches will have any impact.  The point is sharing in a common, philosophical, universal movement.

This all accords marchers a certain generosity.  They are serious about their causes if undirected and vague.  Other observers have characterized marches as purely psycho-social phenomenon, feel-good enterprises of community, belonging, and personal purpose.

Whatever the motivation, marches have an unintended consequence – march fatigue.  Few members of Congress, let alone the White House or the rest of us, pay any attention to the doings on the Mall.  We are simply tired – let alone sick and tired – of the same old, same old. 

Everybody marches in America – Bay-to-Breakers, St. Patrick’s and Columbus Day, Fourth of July, and every possible combination and permutation of protest, patriotism, and pure fun.  This is a good thing.

Just don’t take them seriously.