Pimps And Ho's For Trump - When Capitalism Comes To The Ghetto

LaShonda and Euphrates knew something had to change, business had slowed to a crawl under Old Man Biden. Walkin' around money was chicken feed compared to the halcyon days of the crack trade, Jamaican crewes, and hookers lined up from one end of MLK Avenue to the other, ten tricks an hour, some of them, a hundred bucks from those white boys slipping over the Anacostia from the Capitol to get their joint sucked by LaToya who did a land office business from ofay drop-ins; and Eveline who whooped and hollered when Capitol brothers came calling, giving them an operatic time for the taxpayers' money, and watching them disappear into the night. 

And that was all under that Delaware fool and his cock-tease Lady Rasputin Kamala who loved black people to death, would do anything for them, pour money down the sluice and never once ask where it went.  Now business would be booming down here, the free market unleashed with all its limitless potential.  Who said that the black community was a dysfunctional shithole that needed white people to set it straight? Get them folk some religion! when all that was needed was some homegrown entrepreneurial spirit. 

All that entitlement money went down the rathole, nibbled and sniffed and wasted on malt liquor and cheap pussy, when  bigtime, organized crime would be the real thing - just like Harlem boss Frank Lucas who made billions with his Blue Magic, direct from the source, high-toned dope, shuttled in every which way, the ghetto made righteous with every shipment, and Lucas hobnobbing with Harlem's finest and the white men downtown.  Why not us?

 

It was time for a Robber Baron revival in Anacostia, start-ups and high-tech meet the street, an organized sex trade, a sophisticated drug empire, money laundering here in the 'hood and not offshore; and President Donald J Trump would be the facilitator, the intermediary, the tie that binds. 

Biden's Office of Minority Affairs, dismantled and discarded on Day One of the new Trump Administration because of its wooly, nappy-headed do-nothing righteousness was replaced by an ad hoc group of black entrepreneurs, fresh from places like Silicon Valley, Dulles, and Route 128, who would bring white start-up money to black businessmen like Frank Lucas, continue the drug, prostitution, gambling, and financial dealings but streamline them, given them real capitalist bite, and transform them from mom-and-pop small time one buck-a-shot one-offs to multi-million dollar enterprises. 

To hear these shiny-headed, Armani-suited brothers from uptown talk about it, the whole community would be transformed into a supply and demand Land of Oz.  Since Trump intended to reinstall Congressional Rule in the District, neutering the patronizing, Uncle Tom faux radicalism of the City Council and replacing it with facilitation, connection, laissez-faire - i.e., letting black people make tons of money - would be the rule.

It would finally be the black capitalism talked about decades ago but never acted upon.  The millions made would be re-invested, old shit dilapidated real estate would be bought up, developed with big return on investment.  Anacostia would no longer be the sinkhole of dopers and gangbangers, but a bright light.  It would become the Shenzhen of America, transformed from nothing to a shining, modern, deluxe city in thirty years. 

'We outta work', Euphrates said to LaShonda, admiring his chopped and channeled, silver-spinnered Caddie parked by the curb; but she disagreed, saying there was far more money to be made than a trade in chippies and a few rocks of crack.  Yes, she was proud of her talent, her business, and her prospects, but she was joining the Trumpists who were coming down here with bigtime dollars. 

The thing about capitalism was its no-questions-asked morality, or rather lack of it.  Money, the bottom line, its what's-in-it-for-me simplicity was the arbiter of value; and so there was no hand-wringing or second thoughts about was it right.  If prostitution, drugs, and gambling were the stock in trade of ghetto economics, so be it, use it, profit from it, encourage it. 

When Euphrates met Elvin P Jackson, Esq, Harvard-educated, scion of a Philadelphia financial empire, and black man, he was suspicious, doubtful, and armed; but that white-speak made sense.  Government was not the same patronizing empire it once was.  Jackson was here to do business, to facilitate, to provide expertise and investor money to help Anacostia develop along free market lines.

Trump was not concerned about how the money was to be made, what products were delivered, or how closely ghetto values hewed to those of the body politic.  Jackson was in the ghetto to help make fortunes.

Rate of return? Inestimable, since we're at ground level said Jackson, but the sky's the limit if you follow the precepts of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Hayek. 'I am here', Jackson went on, 'to facilitate, to help assure that your indigenous enterprises take advantage of free market infrastructure and mechanisms.  You will be the new Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and JP Morgan'. 

LaShonda wasn't so sure.  She envisaged a corporate hooker headquarters, the home office, a white-style brothel, clean sheets and good bourbon, refined but lifeless.  She preferred the streets, the white boy johns, a few tricks from the black Gold Coast, and a modest but predictable business; but Jackson assured her that capitalism was a buyers and sellers affair.  'You can run your business anyway you like as long as your profit margins and rate of return remain high'. 

She lit a joint, waved off a john in a Porsche, and turned to listen more carefully to Jackson.  

The thing most liberals don't understand, so mired are they in their self-righteousness and betterment philosophy, is that private enterprise is the most native to human society of any activity.  Cave men were bartering and buying and selling with cowrie beads in the Paleolithic.  Prostitution and gambling were endemic, and as soon as Gork and Thog found something cool to smoke or drink, they turned it into an enterprise. Communism failed because of its mistrust of this normal, natural aspect of human nature. 

So, old fashioned Saul Alinsky-Barack Obama community organization turned private and real, and Trump investment-minded young black men and women became fixtures in the ghetto.  The promise was palpable, and people were lining up to take part.  There was a spirit of renewal in the 'hood, one of relief and almost of joy. Of course Anacostia was still a shithole and would be for some time while the new Trump enterprise ethos took hold, but it held promise, something the neighborhoods across the river had never had. 

LaShonda did a few more tricks that day and Euphrates took his bite; but this time when they went home, they felt a note of encouragement and optimism they hadn't felt in years.