Throwing Ukraine Under The Bus? - No, Just A Welcome Return To A Machiavellian World Order

Michael Kantor had worn a Ukrainian flag on his lapel since the Russian invasion. 'This will not stand', the pin said and so did Michael if asked.  He, of Eastern European ancestry and longstanding suspicion of Russian intent, saw Kyiv as the Maginot line - breeching it would be tantamount to complete Russian hegemony 

 

The war in Ukraine has been fought over matters of principle. From a Russian perspective it is the aggressive eastward expansion of NATO and Ukraine’s accession to it, recovery of historically Russian territory, the restoration of Empire and the greatness of the Tsars, a rejection of Western concepts of national sovereignty and an Israeli-like concern for preserving it, among others.

Ukraine and its Western supporters contend they are fighting to preserve their ideas of sovereignty and territorial integrity, the higher good of democracy and its rightful place in the commonwealth of nations,  and a progressive belief in internationally-mediated peace.

Of course there are those who argue that the Russian invasion is nothing more than Putin’s monomaniacal land grab. He is the bully on the block’s pushing and shoving because he can, a ruthless autocrat who wishes to extend Russian hegemony for its own sake and assure his place in history along with Nicholas and Alexander.

 

And there are those who see American support for Zelensky as a a money-maker for the American arms industry, a reaction to a perennial, deep-seated fear of Russia, and the manipulation of Ukraine as a useful tool for consolidating American influence in the region.

All of which contains at least some truth; but this is one war which should never have been fought.  Russian might, economic power, and authoritarian rule assured victory, and Western support of Ukraine and the Zelensky regime simply contributed to tens of thousands of deaths and the ultimate destruction of the country.  In the end, America's war of principle would gain it nothing, and increasingly disaffected taxpayers saw billions of dollars flow down a rathole with no accountability and with no objectifiable goal in sight. 

Ukraine and its Western supporters should have seen the inevitable outcome of the conflict from the very beginning and should have made the best deal possible - a granting of at least partial Russian sovereignty over Donbas, an ethnically Russian region of Ukraine whose residents would be quite happy to be reunited with the Motherland; a Ukrainian vow to withdraw any intentions of joining NATO, and a geopolitical-economic understanding between the two nations guaranteed to increase the prosperity of both. 

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the EU and its North American partners sought to isolate the newly vulnerable Russia, and despite promising to restrain NATO's hegemonic ambitions did just the opposite. Its threats to establish Crimea as a naval base for Western troops was another brazen insult to Russia which feared being encircled and needed a warm water port. 

Ukraine did not start the war - Russia was the invader - but the provocatory indirect policy decisions taken by Ukraine in consort with the West most definitely led to war.  Zelensky had everything to gain -  consolidation of his political power, untold millions of euros and dollars poured into his coffers, international prominence, and enough money in his bank account to flee to the south of France like the Haitian dictator Duvaliers when their time had come. 

Enter Donald Trump and the return of a Machiavellian, Kissinger realpolitik.  Wars should be fought only if there is a clear, definable, objective national interest; and that the laws of imperial hegemony, the unwritten rules of history, will always be in force. 

China and Russia are world powers, and the world is now divided into three equal, countervailing centers.  Productive, competitive, but accommodating relationships among Beijing, Moscow, and Washington are the foundation for the new world order.  As much as exceptionalist America would like to think that its democracy is the ideal model for governance and that it has a moral duty to promote it and to stop autocracy, central planning, and limitation of presumed freedoms, it is now, under Trump, realizing that such moralism will get it nowhere. 

Wary partnership, assuring all three countries with a fair share of world resources, wealth, and geopolitical influence, is the only way forward.  Trump has already begun talks with Russia, will hopefully conclude a long overdue deal with Ukraine for priority access to its valuable, indispensable rare earths, and will regard China as a worthy adversary with unlimited potential, unimaginable economic and financial influence, and an unshakeable government. 

Ukraine was never in America's national interest - a small, poorly run, often corrupt country with arrogant geopolitical ambitions - and using it as a surrogate, a bastion of democracy - enabled thousands of Ukrainian boys to die and keep America distant.  Now America is in a position to get something real out of it all - rare earths - and as long as Zelensky stays quiet, he can remain in power and feather his nest. He will get over Trump’s Oval Office slap and realize that his bank accounts are worth more than losing a little face.

Meanwhile Trump is playing big boy politics and intends to assure parity among the three world powers. 

Machiavelli and Kissinger would be delighted.  In fact Kissinger advocated for this solution before he died. As cited in the political journal The National Interest Kissinger was consistent in his realpolitik:

Henry Kissinger provoked outrage in Kyiv and some Western quarters for having suggested ...that resolving the conflict over Ukraine may involve territorial adjustments. Earlier in his remarks, he had stated the basis for his assessment: “the outcome of that war, both in the military and political sense, will affect relations between groupings of countries […]. [T]he outcome of any war and the peace settlement, and the nature of that peace settlement, […] will determine whether the combatants remain permanent adversaries, or whether it is possible to fit them into an international framework.”

This way of thinking is consistent with Kissinger’s longstanding affirmation of a correlation between extended periods of stability and a common commitment to the legitimacy of an international system based on maintaining a balance of power between major powers.

The common feature of periods in which balance of power politics predominate, he wrote in 1994, is the “elevation of a fact of life—the existence of a number of states of substantially equal strength—into a guiding principle of [international] order.” Put differently, a balance of power system is predicated on a common acknowledgment of relative weakness, whereby each major power concedes it cannot dominate others without incurring heavy costs and thus concludes that it is better off not trying to do so.

 

Too late to prevent war, it is time to end it; and doing so within the context of clear national interest is the only way to do so.  'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer', said Chinese historian and philosopher Sun Tzu; and Donald Trump understands this implicitly.  

Donald Trump Is One Of Us - Class Defines Us And We Revel In His Low Bourgeoisie

America is a classless society, or so the myth goes.  Democratic, populist, egalitarian, universalist we suspect those who fly first class – the One Percenters who acquire 90 percent of the nation’s wealth and spend it on St. Bart's, Gstaad, summers on the Vineyard, skiing at Val d’Isere, dinners at Lutece and at Noma for foraged urchins and sea kale.

 

In principle we ignore First Class as we make our way down to Economy – such a waste of resources which could be spent on supporting social causes. Thousands of dollars for a bit more recline.

Yet, if we were honest with ourselves, we would admit our wish to be in the front of the airplane where the stewardesses are trimmer, younger, and sexier; where the food is French, the wines Californian, and the entertainment package foreign and independent.

We may be headed for 45D but our hearts, aspirations, and American loyalties are to 3A.

The big difference between Europe and America is that there class is a fixed, stable, and predictable commodity.  Although modern EU configurations have facilitated  inter-class movement, a plumber is still a plumber and his son will join the trade, the union, and the working class with pride and reward.

In America, members of the upper middle class – professionals, senior managers, administrators – who aspire to but will never attain real American heights have made the One Percent their shibboleth, a totem to be discarded, a fortress to be stormed.  Safe in tenure they have made classlessness a cause and the redistribution of wealth their mission. Screeds against capitalism, the unequal distribution of income, the elite, the privileged, and the advantaged are their war cries. Short of social revolution, America must be reconfigured to reward the disabled, the disadvantaged, the poor, and the minorities.

The same liberal reformers, however, look with the same envy at those comfortable in First Class, those with homes in the Caribbean, Europe, and Park Avenue as the rest of us.

Since Donald Trump has taken residence in the White House – the  Donald Trump most at home in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the glitz and tinsel of runways, casinos, mansions, and conspicuous wealth – progressives are at sixes and sevens.  They who have sniffed at  First Class privilege now have the essential bourgeois American as President.

How to deal with such a betrayal?  No more Camelot, Kennebunkport, or Hyde Park; no more Renaissance Weekends, summers on the Vineyard or even vacations in Maui; but a full-blown, tinsel-bedecked, Rockettes, over-the-top Hollywood extravaganza.  Impossible to have envisaged by the coastal elites, a true American has acceded to the White House.

Obama was a cultural interloper.  A black man, Harvard-trained professor of law, husband to a professional wife and father to two dutiful children, he was all that the liberal establishment could have ever wanted.  The loss of Hillary Clinton, his all-but-anointed successor, to Donald Trump the epitome of bourgeois excess and extravagance, was a visceral, existential blow.  It simply couldn’t be! 

Worse, the shock of losing to Kamala Harris, the Great Black Hope, a proud woman who would continue her predecessor's campaign to reform America and lead it to a more peaceful, verdant, compassionate world, was disassembling.  

Yet, Trump is here with his model-gorgeous wife, his starlet daughter, and his coterie of white, happy, privileged, and ambitious family are here to stay, at least for the next four years.

Except for the disillusioned many who assumed, wrongly, that the time had come for a woman President who espoused progressive values, internationalism, civil rights, and environmentalism; most Americans are delighted with the surprising ascendancy of Donald Trump.

They embrace his braggadocio, his New York-Las Vegas-Hollywood tinsel and bauble glitz, his outspoken materialist patriotism, and his beautiful family.

He is unashamedly white, privileged, wealthy, successful, and wildly popular.  He has even eclipsed Ronald Reagan who only managed B-movie status.  Donald Trump who, in all his high-finance, showy middle-brow real estate, and low-brow television personality, is far more popular.  Ronald Reagan never made the cover of People Magazine or E!.

 

So, since Trump has been in the White House, passengers headed down to Economy are a bit less envious of First Class.  One of their own – an ambitious, socially unpretentious, confidently middle class American has made it to the White House.  It makes no difference that they cannot sip Dom Perignon, or taste Beluga caviar.  It is enough that Donald, Melania, Ivanka, and Barron can.

No one who has paid any attention has ever dismissed the idea of class in America.  We are a class-bound, socially ambitious society which occludes class issues with race, gender, and ethnicity.  We are social strivers and climbers who stumble and bumble but who want to be like those who we are not.  We might have admired the Bushes, the Kennedys, and the Roosevelts, but we love the Trumps.  They are the closest we will ever come to cultural arrival.

This is what the Trump revolution is all about and why he is President.  We know that we are all Bargain Basement shoppers, but we are at heart Trumpists who want not sedate intellectual weekends on Nantucket but high-octane trips to the Bahamas on private jets with trophy women.  We buy cheap but aspire dear.

The progressive Left has missed the point entirely.  Trump’s accession has less to do with geopolitics than with class and culture.  Less to do with white-black issues than with socio-economic aspiration; and nothing to do with race, gender, and ethnicity.

Donald Trump’s presidency is the most revolutionary in American history because it represents a true cultural revival.  For too long American bourgeois, middle class, religious fundamentalist ideals have been ignored or overlooked; and cultural contradictions dismissed.

American Airlines may be the first to offer ‘Last Class’ but not the last.   The race to the bottom while aspiring to the top is the essential American dilemma.  We will always be unwashed but hoping to be dressed in finery.

Such is the American saga.

The Blind Leading The Blind - The Blinkers Of True Belief And The Shock And Awe Of Donald Trump

Bob Muzelle was a true believer, heart and soul, mind and body, a man committed to reforming the world and making it peaceful, verdant, compassionate place. 

Over the years, the decades, and despite his passion, energy, and devotion Bob had seen no progress whatsoever.  The same entitled elitism, greed, insensitivity, and unconcern for the disadvantaged that had always been a hallmark of America was worse than ever, and the country hadn't moved an inch towards a better, more spiritually rewarding world. 

Now that Donald Trump was once again in office and fulfilling his promise to return America to the barbarity of the Robber Barons, the savagery of the Wild West, and the Biblical ignorance of swamp rats, Bob was at loose ends, a discombobulated, disassembled progressive whose rug had been pulled out from under him. 

It wasn't supposed to happen this way.  Once progressivism had taken root and had been nurtured by a sympathetic, eager, and evangelical crowd, there would be no stopping it.  No obstacle, no roadblock, no protest would ever slow its advance.  It was the true political faith, the one and only philosophy of governance, the absolute defining character of human society. 

So one can only imagine Bob's shock, awe, and depression at the first weeks of the Trump presidency, when the man fired off one executive order after another, upending years of careful seeding and husbandry, destroying the very foundations of a compassionate, caring state.  

Matters were made infinitely worse thanks to the unearthly savagery of Trump's Rasputin, the Devil himself, Beelzebub, Elon Musk who, like Genghis Khan rode through the temples of bureaucracy and destroyed them one by one - the sancta sanctorum of democracy, the institutions of progressive governance, the caretakers of the nation's well-being. 

 

'What hath God wrought', Bob sputtered, recalling the Reverend John Berkeley Higgins who had hollered and thundered at him and his family at the Third Presbyterian Church of Great Neck, singling out sinners, apostates, and spiritual rejectionists who in the Devil's army were defiling God's creation.

Bob had long ago rid himself of Pastor Higgins, God, and Jesus Christ in a mission to create a secular, communitarian nation; but the words of the hoary old goat simply were the only ones appropriate for the times. Unless something were done now, the Trump juggernaut would roll over the land and reduce it to a smoking reach of cinders. 

But what, Bob wondered?  He and his progressive mates had tried everything and Trump was still standing.  No amount of calumny and bile had touched him.  The bugger thrived on it, lapped it up and threw it back at his accusers.  Meanwhile with each court case, each indictment, each article of impeachment the Left threw at their man, his supporters grew more emboldened, more convinced of victory and total political revolution. 

The progressive intellectual war chest was empty, the idea bank left with not a scrap of legitimacy, the whole liberal proposition had been derogated, ridiculed, and dismissed; and Americans were so furious after years of being branded as backcountry retards that nothing Bob or his colleagues could propose was given the time of day.  

They had scraped the bottom of the barrel, had pandered, race-baited, and humiliated loyal Americans to such a degree that they feared being tarred and feathered and run out of Washington on a rail.

Income equality, Bob thought, now that was an idea that must still have currency; but at every mention of sharing the wealth, Bob was met by raucous chorus of jeers, taunts, and ridicule. No longer would the IRS sewer rats come swarming for their money.  Civil rights? That has always had national resonance; but again Bob was nonplussed by the reaction. 

‘Black this, black that', his taunters shouted, black faces every bloody where you look, in every ad, every sitcom; and still the inner city was a sinkhole of dysfunction.

 

Climate change, now there was a cause worth fighting for, and the average American had to be concerned about the melting polar ice caps; but here too Bob heard nothing but taunts, ridicule, and dismissive laughter.  A sham, a confected fairy tale of doom and gloom when the human race had always shown intelligence, ingenuity, insight, and adaptability. 

Myopia, opacity, or just plain blindness? How could these progressive politicians possibly not have seen how their vision of the New America was angrily received in the heartland?  DEI, the gender spectrum, the black man atop the human pyramid, Little Miss Muffet military and foreign policy; millions of gangbangers, Fentanyl, and anchor baby mothers pouring across the border? 

These were sensible ideas to whom, exactly? Patriotic notions where and how? Foundational policy?

Bob might not have been so flummoxed, so disoriented, and so lost if it hadn't been for true belief.  Progressive policy on climate, environment, the black man, gender was not just political but moral.  The world would absolutely and incontrovertibly become as progressives saw it.  There were such things as absolutes. 

So when the wheels started coming off the bus, when the train was shunted into the car barn, and when the whole movement started falling flat on its face, it was not just a political defeat but a moral one.  The Left was right to see this as an existential moment.

So, the Left is now the blind leading the blind - a stumbling, lost lot without a harbor, without moorings, and without direction.  Bob bobbed around, becalmed, rudderless, and without a puff of air stirring. Never before had the country seen so much energy, discipline, and purpose on the one hand; and such wayward orphan political despondency on the other.

Ancestry, Genealogy, And Mining The Past - The Wasted Search For Identity And Meaning

We all want to know where we come from, who are our ancestors, whether we are descended from princes or madmen, and if there might be some trace of nobility or respect. Most of us are disappointed when we discover that our family history has neither high birth nor romance but just plain folk - farmers, woodsmen, peasants, and serfs who never rose much beyond their station. 

Yet there are enough stories of strange genealogical finds that we continue to pursue our histories. There might well be a bit of lineage traced back to the First Families of Virginia or the Mayflower. A document buried in the vault of an Anglican Church on the Northern Neck might show a definite, although remote relationship to King Carter and from him back to England and the finest registries of London and Wiltshire.  

The purity of this ancestry might be diluted by interbreeding with the wives of tenant farmers or slaves, but there could be no denying the legitimacy of its origins. Most importantly, family history would not be featureless or without importance.

Americans who can trace their ancestry back to the taverns of Elizabethan England can claim a more significant lineage than those who were born, lived, and died in the mud of the West Country. Ancestral links to the Boar’s Head Tavern are worth something.  Forbears at least consorted with the likes of Falstaff and Prince Hal.  

       

Tracing ancestry in Old Europe is no pastime.  A Frenchman who can pursue his family history back to the Third Crusade or even the First is worth more than any contemporary of wealth and importance in the Third Republic.  An Englishman whose forbears were counts and courtiers of Henry II or King John have more standing than those with bloodlines of minor viscounts or third cousins of doubtful royalty. 

Aristocratic, noble, and royal Italians, Germans, Spanish, Serbs, and Poles all intermarried and created a pan-European elite. Claims to this lineage are not simply tracings on an elaborate family tree but essential to social status and privilege. Despite the French Revolution, the beheading of the King, and the execution of thousands of aristocrats, the aristocracy is alive and well.  

Not every noble went to the guillotine, and although many of the best families were dismembered, enough survived to continue the aristocratic line.  Despite marriages to commoners and the loss of land, wealth, and property, those with a storied ancestral past still rely on it for social legitimacy and status.

On the contrary, it is of little consequence whether an American can trace his roots to the Mayflower, to John Smith, John Adams, George Washington, the Duke of Norfolk, or Lord Fairfax. America is fast becoming a classless society where family roots have less and less pertinence; where the social prestige of the Main Line, Beacon Hill, and Park Avenue has all but disappeared. 

There are a few clubs - The Society of the Cincinnati, the Cosmos Club, and a dozen more like them in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York - which safeguard an Old World gentility; but in our diverse, pluralistic, and competitive society, they are increasingly irrelevant.  One is more hard-pressed than ever to find a socially prominent niche.

 

For most people fame and popular currency are enough.  Few ask about the social and family origins of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Mark Zuckerberg. They are the new classless Americans with no ascribed, historical value; only that derived from their current worth.  They have only one perspective - forward - and in that they are quintessentially American.

Yet, genealogy will not die; and although many inquirers are simply interested in completing the family tree, just as many are looking for a legitimacy which can only come from bloodlines.   An ordinary daughter of mixed-nationality parents, an indistinct member of the upper middle class, laboring successfully if not uniquely, will always be, inevitably, undistinguished unless she can find a link to an illustrious past.

This search for social legitimacy, however, cannot explain the genealogy phenomenon.  Too few Americans have any hope of finding a link to anyone of significance in American history let alone the Mayflower or the First Families of Virginia to be motivated by social status.  It has to do more with a sense of personal worth and legitimacy in a contemporary world which confers little of it.

It is difficult to be satisfied with the cards one is dealt.  Few of us are satisfied with the looks, intelligence, physical abilities, or talent programmed in our DNA. The past can afford much more; and in a society where few have a traceable connection to an illustrious history, all the more reason to go prospecting.  If one has been born poor, of questionable legitimacy, and of little social, economic, or financial value to the community, where does self-worth come from?  If not from ancestral history nor contemporary success, nor any civic  recognition, then from where?  No one can live without some pride of identity.

Yet when all is said and done, and when we are forced to reflect on a life led, such attributive values should matter little.  We all die alone, said the main character in Dostoevsky’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich.  Yet like Ivan, until we are faced with the eternity of death, we insist on fabricating meaning.  In the final accounting who we were counts for nothing; who we are, everything.

There are no rewards to proving a noble ancestry in a populist democracy.  Not so in the days of kings and courtiers, it was deadly serious.  How many wives did Henry VIII have to marry and dispatch to assure a male heir? The drama is still played out in Europe where the grandchildren of old, titled families fight over wills, primogeniture, and the right of legitimate descendants; but it is if only glancing relevance in America today.  If we can uncover some royal or aristocratic bits  in our past, all well and good.  If we can claim some purchase on past initiative, or enterprise, the history is even more valuable. 

 

Few of us are content with what we are, regardless of the hand dealt; and creating identities above and beyond that which God, Nature, or Chance have bestowed is normal, natural, and human. Which is why America is so unique.  Few are satisfied with what is but with what could be and what might have been.  Tradable personal worth is our currency,

The coming virtual world in which each individual will be able to explore his own personal dimensions will drastically devalue this currency.  A world defined by individual fantasy, imagined relationships, and invented personae has no meaning for anyone other than the dreamer.

Until then we will have to be satisfied with ancestry and image - making the best out of bad hands and bad genes, trumping up our credentials, and

The Evil Eye - The Fate Of A Marked Man In An Uncertain, Probabilistic World

Bobby Crandall had always had what was called 'a service motive', an innate desire to help others and to do good; and yet, time after time as he was doing his bit to make the world a better place, he was derailed.  His life in fact had been a series of untoward, unexpected, hapless events.  

In fact the closer he got to his goal, the more the way would be strewn with rocks and rubble that had tumbled down just as he was about to pass.  It was as if some unseen, indomitable force had its eye on him, harbored some deviational anger, and refused to let him get on with his life.  

When he was a boy he was always bruised, cut, and banged up; so much so that he was convinced that he was accident prone.  'Nonsense', said his mother. 'You're just not careful'; but as much as he tried to avoid the potholes in the road or the tree roots under the sidewalk, he was still pitched off his bike into the briars and had to straggle home, wheeling his bent, de-spoked Schwinn, to an exasperated mother. 

It got to the point that he was afraid to go outside, and he became a wheezy, dorky kid who did nothing but build Legos and work out chess puzzles.  His parents became worried.  Their otherwise normal child was becoming an addenda to the vibrant, healthy, optimistic society of privilege to which he was born.  They shooed him out of the house come rain or come shine; but the boy always returned with some malady, some wound, some untidiness that could never be explained.  

'Boys will be boys', said his father, Prentiss Arthur Crandall, industrialist, Rotarian, and civic leader - a man who ironically never had any misfortune in his life.  Not one broken bone, not one stupendous fall, not even measles; so it was with dismay and concern that he wondered about his son who was intelligent, coordinated, and strong but yet had one pitfall after another.  It was as though he were somehow marked by fate, the victim of some evil eye. 

Now, of course, the likes of Prentiss Crandall would never ever consider such things in actuality - life was a random affair, mitigated by a set of particularly good genes and happy happenstance - but certainly not the work of some supernatural trickster.  Religion was for other people, talk of the Devil a comic book fantasy, and the intervention of the supernatural in human affairs a flighty, nonsensical idea.  Why would an all-powerful, omnipresent divinity who sees all and knows all care in the least about any one individual?

While Prentiss was teeing off at the Farmington Country Club on a bright, sunny, warm Sunday morning, thousands were crowding into church begging for intercession, some acknowledgment that they mattered, some sign of compassion or at least intermittent interest.  So the thought that anything but bad luck, impatience, and dreamy inattention was responsible for his son's mighty struggle to remain upright, was unconscionable. 

 

As Bobby grew older he upped the ante on doing good. Yet, the evil eye - this is what he finally and reluctantly called it - persisted in interfering with his anointed rounds.  He was on the first Freedom Bus to Selma but somewhere in North Carolina a wheel came off, the bus overturned and careened into a ditch, and was too wrecked to do anything but be towed to the junkyard.  Some black field hands came and pulled him and his classmates out of the mud, but that was the closest he ever got to the Southern black experience. 

Marching at Berkeley for Free Speech and close enough to Mario Savio and the San Francisco hippy firebrands to jump on the stage and join them in their protest, he turned his ankle on the way up the rickety stairs, fell back into the crowd, and limped his way back to his communal house where for five days he elevated his leg and soaked it in ice.  By the time he felt he was able to join the protesters, they had been dispersed, locked up, or scattered. 

 

On his way to Algeria as a volunteer to help vaccinate desert Berbers, word came that a violent coup had just taken place, that his plane could not land, and that he would have to return to New York.  Disconsolate, and unemployed, he applied for a taxi license; but on his first night shift he got mugged, beaten, and left on the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue and 125th Street, his car hijacked and later found in the Hudson River. 

He had paid no attention to his fellow cabbies who told him never to pick up a (*****) after 7pm let alone drive him to Harlem, but the old service instinct was still very much alive and well, and he couldn't very well act on the racist warnings of others.  Now, there are tens of thousands of cab rides taken in New York City every day, and serious infractions, assaults, and robberies are a fraction of one percent of them.  Yet, Bobby on his very first day behind the wheel, gets jumped by a black man with no intention of paying his way uptown. 

Bobby gave up.  He knew that there was something other than random circumstance, negative serendipity, and simple bad luck behind his unbelievable string of mishaps.  Against his better judgement but at the end of his rope, he consulted an old Romanian gypsy whose shop he had passed a hundred times in the Bowery. 

Everything was as it was supposed to be - subdued, indirect lighting, beads, tinkly background music and the imposing six-foot presence of Madame Luisa, all dressed in Eastern skirts and medieval shawls, a crone of a woman, beak-nosed but with azure blue eyes she fixed on him as she took his hand and sat him down at the center table under an ornate Victorian tassled lampshade. 

Platitudes and good guesses, hocus pocus, and special effects; but Bobby came out no better off than when he went in.  Yet there was one thing, an almost incidental thing, a fragment of Candomblé or voodoo, and when she said it there was a sparkle in her eyes, an almost playful glance although her chant was as somber as that prayed by the priest in Kenscoff before exorcising a maiden.  Why at that moment was there a connection? 

On his way back up Broadway and into the lights of Times Square, he wondered when the next happenstance would occur - a pothole that would crack an axle and send him careening across the median, a random gunshot through the passenger window and through his neck...but the night was calm, almost serene.  He drove north and south, east and west, out to Queens and Staten Island, safe, secure, and unbothered. 

He waited and waited, crossed every street with the caution of a spinster, and still expected the unexpected which never came; and so it was that he went back to the old gypsy woman to thank her, if that indeed was what one did after a happening so supernatural; but she was nonchalant and uninterested and asked him only if he wanted a seance.  

The next day as he was walking on 38th street by a construction site, a rivet that had been dropped thirty stories above whizzed an inch past his ear and whanged and twanged off the sidewalk into the street.  It should have hit him squarely on the top of his head and drilled down to the base of his feet, but missed, and so it was that Bobby realized that his misfortunes were nothing but the luck of the draw, an old stochastic problem of probability.  

There was no way that so many misfortunes could have happened to one person unless they were looked at in the context of billions.  A rough patch, nothing more, unusual but just as possible as someone somewhere rolling sevens five times in a row. 

Epiphanies are what we are all about, creatures of assumptions and quick to jump to conclusions; but then one day it all becomes clear.  There is nothing but randomness in the world, no evil eye, no omniscient God, no nothing; and getting used to that idea in and of itself is remarkable.