Special Note: I posted the following piece this morning (on 14, December, 2020) when Bill Barr was still the Attorney General. A few hours later…he was gone. My piece was as obsolete as buggy whips and quill pens.
Well, fortunately, if you’re in a salacious mood, you can still skip down to “2.” and get the kinky stuff.
Enjoy the thumbscrews!
1.
I’ve been thinking a lot about William Barr today. That’s partly because he’s finally come out and admitted that the DOJ has found absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Which is good. And I’m glad that he said it.
Though, also, do I hear, albeit faintly, the sound of rats, abandoning a sinking ship…?
Well, whatever.
2.
But Barr interests me for another reason. Specifically, I don’t quite understand why he’s hung in there as long as he has. Being slavishly loyal to Trump has not historically been proven to be a smart career move...as many a former aide (thrown under buses) can testify.
Though there is one factor that might explain a little something of Barr’s psychology. Some years ago, I was in a Goodwill store in Albuquerque, NM. It was one of the Goodwill’s that have used books for sale, and among them I found a very strange little paperback, Space Relations. It was a sci-fi fantasy about an earthman who is kidnapped by space pirates and taken to the planet Kossar where he is sold as a sex slave to “the beautiful, sensual, and sadistic Lady Morgan Sidney.”
Whatever Turns You On
Don’t be too freaked out by that. The book was published in 1975, and there was a lot of that sort of thing going on in science fiction at the time. Think John Norman’s Gor books. The difference was that the “top” role in sadomasochism is being played here by a woman, and the more than willing “victim” (who enjoys every minute of it) is male. I’m told the term is “Femdom.”
Anyway, I ran across the book, picked it up, glanced at it, and then put it back. It wasn’t that interesting, and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for it. Not even half price.
Okay, now skip forward to this year. I open up my copy of The New York Review of Books, and there, in black and white, was an article by Fintan O’Toole entitled, “Enabler in Chief.” It is a portrait of William Barr. O’Toole’s particular concern in the article is Barr’s connections to extreme right wing Catholic circles, which is something to be worried about.
In the article O’Toole reveals that Barr’s father, Donald Barr, had written a book in the 1970s, specifically...wait for it...Space Relations.
O’Toole is interested in Donald Barr’s book because he thinks it says a lot about William Barr’s concept of slavery (it isn’t all that bad) and social hierarchy (the more the better).
But, maybe because I’m secretly a pervert or something (you can never tell these days), I’m more interested in the fact that Space Relations is erotica. I mean, nothing against masochism. It’s just ducky if you’re into that sort of thing. And who of us hasn’t had the odd...you know...50 Shades of Gray sort of thought, straying in and out, here and there, with a little black leather and some thumb screws?
But the point is, the main character of a book by William Barr’s father enjoys being mistreated and dominated by someone more powerful than himself, i.e., the aforementioned “beautiful, sensual, and sadistic Lady Morgan Sidney.”
Might that reveal just a little about Barr’s own point of view? And why he was willing to put up with so much shit, for so very long, delivered by a man who was so obviously not worthy of such deference and respect?
*
Ah, but there is more…
Here’s the real puzzle, and what frightens me. Maybe Barr has good reason for his own…taste…for whips and chains. Albeit metaphorical ones.
But what about the rest of us?
What about the 70+ million Americans who somehow found Trump’s behavior acceptable? And, indeed, praiseworthy? And who voted for him in November and continue to support him now?
That is really scary.
Scary enough to make even “the beautiful, sensual, and sadistic Lady Morgan Sidney”…or even the Marquis de Sade, with all his whips and chains…seem genuinely benign.
At least they put no children in cages, and just might have noticed when a quarter of a million of their subjects contracted plague, and withered…
And died.
*
Until next time…
Onward and upward.
~mjt
Sources:
The New York Review of Books: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/11/05/enabler-in-chief/