Episode 24: A Private Lunch

Meanwhile, at a café near campus, President Buchmann showed her guests upstairs into a small meeting room. “It’s not Delmonico’s,” President Buchmann apologized, “but it will do for a private discussion. You should see the hole-in-the-wall diner the superintendent and his gang thought would be good for discussing business.”

The party settled in and ordered.

“So,” Senator Castillo asked Acey, “how did the sales pitch go with that boyfriend of yours?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Acey acknowledged. “He didn’t say ‘no,’ but he didn’t exactly say ‘yes,’ either. I know him well enough to know exactly what he wants, though,” she smiled seductively.

“I can’t believe I had to offer him a tenure-track position,” President Buchmann shook their head in disgust. “The faculty are not going to be happy at my bypassing the standard recruitment process to bring in someone so… reactionary. In writing, too, so there’s no way I can deny having done it. I wish you’d complete that dissertation of yours so I could bring YOU on board as a math professor. That I could slide through easily.”

“I’m happy where I am,” Acey insisted. “There was no way Mike was going to jump at teaching more hours at a pay cut to be an adjunct for you, Mom,” Acey pointed out. “It’s not even a real research position. I told you that offer was dead on arrival – a complete waste of our time. He certainly wouldn’t accept a verbal offer from me as being binding on you and the university.”

“It’s not like ‘tenure-track’ guarantees tenure,” President Buchmann shrugged. “It’s easy to find a reason to deny tenure to troublesome young professors insufficiently enthusiastic about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I’d just rather not have to wait that long to pull the trigger.”

“I’m confident you can find some excuse to terminate his contract before he gets tenure,” Senator Castillo pointed out, “if he becomes inconvenient.”

Acey frowned.

“Oh, don’t worry, Acey,” Senator Castillo assured her. “He’s not unhandsome, if you’re into ‘science geeks,’ I suppose, but you could do way better. I’m sure you’ll be getting tired of him and be ready to move on before your mother has to dispose of him.”

Whatever objection Acey might have raised was cut short by the arrival of lunch.

Acey nibbled at her salad. “But, what if I decide that Mike is the one?” Her voice inflected upward.

“The one?” her mother asked, setting down their avocado toast.

“The one I want to spend the rest of my life with?” Acey clarified.

“Why ever would you want to do that?” Senator Castillo looked puzzled. “Your mother and I and a long line of courageous activists and crusading suffragettes and advocates and rabble-rousers all the way back to… well all the way back to the original rebel, Eve herself – assuming you were to take that religious stuff seriously, we all struggled and worked and campaigned so that you could be anything you want to be. Why would you throw all that hard-won opportunity away just to tie yourself down to one man?”

“We’ve made a world where young women can have it all,” her mother counseled Acey. “You can have a meaningful career, a real voice in society, a purpose in life, as many men as you want – even a child, if that’s what you’d like. You don’t have to compromise with the system. You can be a rebel, and no one can stop you.”

“Let me tell you, cats aren’t nearly as messy as babies,” Senator Castillo smiled. “I remember changing you when you were little. I was your babysitter. I’d do my homework while you played or watched cartoons and movies, change your diapers, and put you to bed. Then, your mother would come home late, and we’d stay up sometimes until almost dawn talking about history or philosophy or politics and about how we were going to change the world. Now, thanks to your mother’s mentoring, and a whole lot of hard work, I’m about to make it all happen. Everything we ever dreamed of.”

“What was this dream of yours, Mom?” Acey asked.

“Sometimes,” President Buchmann looked wistful, “I wish I could have tried to make of my life what Roxy made of hers, but it was too early. We simply hadn’t made enough progress yet to make it possible. Of course, I had you to take care of and look after, so I had to get a stable job. I couldn’t take the risks necessary to make a go of a career in politics. I had to live through others. Teaching, mentoring, guiding not just you, Acey, but also all of my students. When I think how someone as brilliant as Hillary Clinton had to tie herself to that philandering asshole, Bill, just to get a start and be taken seriously in politics…” They shook their head in disgust.

“Those days are over now, Cassandra,” Senator Castillo reassured them, “in large part thanks to you and all the women you’ve mentored over the years. There may be some who still play by the old rules, but these days we don’t have to hide behind men who are taking advantage of us and their interns to walk in the halls of power anymore. You raised an amazing daughter in Acey, and you mentored me and so many other women like me. I mean, it’s like Acey and I are sisters in one big family.”

“The only reason you’d really need to tie yourself down to one man is if you wanted to have lots of children,” Acey’s mother pointed out. “That’s just irresponsible with the planet in the condition it’s in.” They punctuated the comment with a big bite of avocado toast.

Acey nodded.

Protecting the environment was very important, after all.

“You know, that’s just one of the many positive side effects of feminism,” Senator Castillo pointed out. “With so many women having so much opportunity, fewer are staying at home cranking out huge numbers of… well… useless eaters.”

“With women encouraged to pursue opportunities and enter the workplace,” President Buchmann observed, “the few children they DO have are effectively raised by their public-school teachers. Those teachers were trained by academics I trained and by kindred spirits like me all across the country. Teachers who, by and large, can be trusted to bring them up to be in touch with their own sexual nature, understanding of diverse cultures, inclusive of others, and ready to take their place as workers and citizens. That’s exactly how we’re building a better, more enlightened world, and making the future happen.”

“It’s better for the economy, too, not to have half the work force stuck at home baking cookies,” Senator Castillo pointed out. “All those women are out in the workforce doing productive work and paying taxes into the system rather than having all their energy and activity wasted in petty, private, personal, selfish ends.”

“You know how all the largest and most enlightened businesses are volunteering to pay for their employees to travel out of state, if necessary to get abortions?” her mother asked.

“Of course,” Acey acknowledged.

“That’s not because they’re ideologically committed to ‘your body, your choice’ after all,” her mother pointed out. “I mean, just look at their stance on vaccine mandates: no jab, no job! No, they back abortion because it goes straight to their bottom line. A woman who gets an abortion and comes back next week to keep working costs less and is more productive than one who takes maternity leave and drains the insurance coffers having a baby. That’s economics 101, and that’s why all the big companies from the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Fords back in the day, to the Silicon Valley giants now have all consistently pushed and encouraged feminism over the last century. More workers mean cheaper labor which helps their bottom line. Big profitable companies can shoulder the costs involved with implementing and maintaining a more diverse and equitable workforce far better than their smaller, more poorly financed, competitors. The ‘hidden hand’ of big corporations’ economic benefit influences them to support our freedom and opportunity. It’s a win-win.”

“Same reason the big corporations went all in on gay rights,” Senator Castillo added. “More gays mean more workers who aren’t distracted by the burden of children. Less absenteeism, not as many workers taking care of sick kids or shuttling them around to school activities. More productivity, and of course, fewer useless eaters as a side social benefit. Getting on board the rainbow coalition and building a diverse workforce is the morally responsible, environmentally conscious, and economically beneficial thing to do. Diversity really is our strength.”

“Yeah,” President Buchmann added, “but the REAL reason big employers back diversity is because diverse work forces won’t unionize. In the company cafeteria, every group sits at their own tables. If you can’t talk to your fellow workers at the next table, you can’t organize. If you can’t organize, you can’t unionize. If you can’t unionize, you have no leverage to get higher wages and better working conditions.”

“It keeps the peace.” Senator Castillo nodded. “Keep people divided against themselves and they’ll fight against each other instead of uniting to overthrow the system and cause chaos. Socially responsible investors are realizing that long term sustainability requires that companies prioritize environmental, social, and governance concerns. ESG investing ensures that only diverse companies which adhere to social justice goals will have access to capital. It’s mutually reinforcing.”

Acey hadn’t thought of it that way. “I understand now,” she acknowledged, feeling as though puzzle pieces she’d never known were related fit into each other. “Well, better at least. What I don’t get, though, is why you’re running on such a hot-button issue. I’m on board with diversity and inclusion and stuff, but there are a lot of parents who see drag queen story times and other ‘in-your-face’ promotion of diversity and transgenderism, and it turns them off. They see sexualization and early exposure to sexual material as ‘grooming,’ as a threat to their children. They have a visceral reaction against it. Why would you make such a divisive issue the centerpiece of your campaign for the nomination?”

“What you’re trying to ask,” Senator Castillo smiled, “is, ‘why would I want to run on an issue with such high negatives?’ I’ll tell you why. It’s all bread and circuses. I’m running on transgender rights BECAUSE it’s so divisive.

“The conservatives, Christians, Orthodox Jews, and their allies want to commit literal genocide against gay and trans people. They want to stop us from raising the next generation of gay and trans youth by shutting down drag queen story times and by keeping us from educating their young children about the full range of sexual identity. Our only option is to fight back, to get in their face, and to make them back down.

“It’s like a matador waving a red cape to anger and attract a stupid bull,” she explained. “The bull becomes oblivious to everything else. The picador lances the bull with a pica. The banderillo pokes the bull with barbed flags. The bull just gets angrier and angrier and more focused on the red cape, ignoring everything else. An angry opponent is a stupid opponent, easily confused and easily defeated. What’s more, if we wave the matador’s cape of transgenderism in front of parents, they’ll be so concerned about us turning their boys into girls and girls into boys that they won’t care about the next round of vaccines, they won’t notice us poking them with price controls, or digital currency, or election fortification, or climate-change lockdowns.”

“The last thing we need,” Acey’s mom pointed out, “is folks digging deeper into how we fortified the last election against Trump. They’re already taking a closer look at how we suppress misinformation and influence opinions through social media. They’re studying how we protect elections from the enemies of democracy. We pushed as hard as we could for lockdowns and vaccines, for vaccine passports, and for more social controls. But COVID wasn’t nearly as bad as we predicted. We had to relax the pressure. For now. If we’re not careful, though, people might start to ask questions that could compromise our efforts to mandate the next round of vaccines, or to implement the Green New Deal, or to force everyone onto digital currency and a social credit system, or to rally the nation against Russia and China. The transgender issue focuses the Bible-thumpers’ attention away from those more dangerous topics and onto a hot topic issue that isn’t nearly as critical.”

“Look at how the ‘never-Trump’ Republicans are tripping all over themselves to ‘end drag queen story time’ and ‘fight the trans agenda,’” Senator Castillo grinned with obvious satisfaction. “Anything instead of acknowledging exactly how we worked together to fortify democracy against our mutual enemy, Trump, in the last election, and how they helped us. Even Travis, who was something of a Trump ally, has gotten sucked into our framing. The more energy and attention they all spend fighting transgenderism, the less they have to fight us where it really counts.”

“Won’t you get burned if you pour more gasoline onto that fire?” Acey asked. “I mean, it may be good for the party and the country, but it’s not going to help you win, is it?”

“People ARE asking dangerous questions, Acey,” Acey’s mother pointed out, “about election fortification, and vaccine safety, and public corruption. If Roxy’s the nominee, the attention will be on transgender rights, not on those more sensitive issues. It’s not what the people want that matters. It’s what the party elders, the financiers, and the technocrats want that decides what happens. What they want is for everyone to pay as much attention as possible to the fight for transgender rights. Roxy’s a shoo-in for the nomination. I only hope she’ll be running against Trump, because then they’ll HAVE to fortify the election – in her favor – again.”

Acey frowned. “Transgender rights aren’t important?”

“They ARE important,” Senator Castillo insisted, “in a long range, strategic sense, just not as important in the short term.”

“Transgenderism is the next stage of human evolution,” Acey’s mom explained. “Liberalism is all about freeing the individual from the bonds of collective identity. The abolition of feudalism broke the walls between peasants and commoners and nobility and created a society in which, in principle, there was at least some mobility between classes.

“In America and France, revolutions swept away the nobility and replaced it with a certain equality of opportunity. Markets became international, and each nation’s elites realized they had much in common with those in other nations. Globalism was the offspring of this cosmopolitanism: the realization that the collective identity of individuals as citizens of nation-states must eventually be dissolved in favor of being citizens of the world.

“We’ve made steady progress toward that goal. The League of Nations, the United Nations, the system of transnational organizations and alliances, like the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum, and the host of NGOs – they form the glue that holds the New World Order together.

“We’ve built a world in which old racial barriers are being swamped by waves of immigration. We’ve built a world in which the collective identities of race and nation are crumbling away. They no longer imprison individuals as they once did. The next logical step on the road to freedom is to liberate human beings from bondage to a particular sexual identity. Sexual identity needs to be a matter of personal choice, just like a choice of profession or religion or nationality. Synthetic sex identity will go mainstream.

“That just sets the stage for the final abolition of humanity,” Acey’s mom continued. “The liberation of our individual identity requires transcending the biological shackles that imprison us. In our lifetimes, we’ll see everyone free to choose their own synthetic sexual identity. We’ll see the emergence of posthumanism, the fusion of people and machines to create beings with greater memory, and mental capacity, and strength, and endurance, and enhanced sensation. We’ll be able to interface mind and machine, upload ourselves to servers in the cloud, and achieve… immortality.”

“The Great Reset,” Senator Castillo nodded, sharing President Buchmann’s wide-eyed enthusiasm. “The beginning of the last stage of human progress. All humanity will be set free to ascend to the next level of existence. We’ll see it in our lifetimes.”

“What if some people don’t want to be uploaded to the cloud?” Acey asked.

“It’s the paradox of freedom,” Acey’s mom explained. “There may be some people who crave the captivity of our limited biology. We may have to force them to be free, so they don’t drag the rest of us back into bondage.”

“So, you see, Acey,” Senator Castillo summarized, “exciting things are happening, and even more amazing things are just around the corner. You don’t have to settle for living in this sleepy, backwater academic town dating science geeks. You’re a beautiful, accomplished, connected young woman. You can have all the men you want. They’ll be fawning all over you. Let me get you a job in Washington. That’s where all the action is. We need smart young women like you to help us run the country. You’ll find you don’t have to settle for one man, forsaking all others. Wait until you start to get older, stop turning quite so many heads. That’s the time to lock down a particular man as your meal ticket if you don’t have a real worthwhile career like mine to sustain yourself otherwise.”

“But, what about Mike?” Acey asked. “What if he doesn’t apologize?”

“The media machine is spun up to a high pitch,” Senator Castillo explained. “All the influencers, all the persuaders, all the propagandists, all the top experts who cut their teeth launching color revolutions around the world and… fortifying our electoral system here, and getting everyone who was listening to get vaccinated against COVID. They all passed the word and primed their contacts. All the talking heads are on the same message today: ‘What Dr. Andrews did IS wrong. He WILL apologize.’”

Acey frowned. “How is it possible to control the media like that? I mean, they can’t ALL be in on it are they?”

“Something like six corporations control 90% of the media in this country,” Senator Castillo assured her. “Enough of the top journalists that matter got to the top precisely because they listen carefully and do as the narrative architects tell them. As for the rest, most of them are well trained to follow the ‘thought leaders.’ When we’ve mobilized the bot army on a particular topic, like #MustApologize, anyone posting about it gets a dopamine rush from all the positive feedback from the bot army. Post off topic, or worse, AGAINST the topic du jour, and you get just the usual tepid organic response, or even have responses artificially throttled. Social media is the ultimate Pavlovian thought-control machine. No one can resist them when they turn the volume up to eleven to push a particular agenda.”

“Trump did,” Acey noted.

“An exception to the rule,” her mother pointed out. “A professional with extraordinarily thick skin, decades of experience, and an inner circle to bolster his confidence. You can see what happened to him anyway. You realize that Trump got beat by a dementia-addled kiddie sniffer who took showers with his adolescent daughter and whose son was busy selling favors and access to China and Ukraine when he wasn’t strung out on cocaine and banging hookers? NO ONE CARES, because the press is THAT GOOD at diverting negative attention, and because no matter how BAD our current figurehead leadership is, having an honest-to-goodness fascist like Trump in the White House would be a complete disaster. Everyone who’s anyone knows it, even the Republicans. So, we all united to crush Trump... and we did beat him. Just like we’re going to beat Mike.

“Your Mike is a rank amateur by comparison,” President Buchmann assured her daughter. “You ARE his inner circle, if only we can keep him from latching on to Travis. You can nudge him to the right decision.”

Castillo scowled. “That man is a menace. I still can’t believe your superintendent was able to bring him in.”

“Oh, you mean Chad Travis? Small world,” President Buchmann pointed out. “This week, the world’s eyes are on us right here. Had to expect someone on the other side would jump at the opportunity. Superintendent White got the Family, Faith, and Freedom Foundation onboard to initiate this test case, and Senator Travis is tied in with them. Should have anticipated that one.” President Buchmann raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you and he have a thing going at one time?”

“No,” Senator Castillo denied it. “We went to law school together. He was a heel and a cad then, a real bastard who thought he was God’s gift to women, and he hasn’t changed any since.”

“I don’t think Mike’s watching the news, though,” Acey tried to get the conversation back on track. “He never watches television. He was on Twitter until they cancelled him last year. Now, he’s on Gab, and something called Social Galactic; he follows Telegram channels like Aetherczar’s ‘Aetherstream,’ and ‘Chief Nerd’ and ‘Dragon Common Room,’ and others. It’s not like there’s a television in his cell. When he’s not on his phone, he’s mostly just reading Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman, or Anonymous Conservative’s The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics, or William M. Briggs’s Everything You Believe is Wrong, or Travis Corcoran’s Escape the City. He reads and reads and takes notes.”

“Hmmm…” Senator Castillo looked thoughtful. “That makes it more challenging, but not impossible. It’s harder to influence people who refuse to consume the legitimate media and instead listen to random crazies on the Internet or cranks who self-publish nonsense. We’ll have to work on that,” she said, making notes into her phone. “We’ll need more time…” She looked thoughtful, pondering the problem.

“What if Mike DOESN’T apologize, though?” Acey asked. “What then?”

“In politics, you always aim to create a situation where you win, no matter what happens,” Senator Castillo explained. “It’s called a ‘Xanatos gambit.’ If Mike apologizes, we win. I’m even prepared to let your mother’s deal with him go through for now.”

“Is that a good idea?” President Buchmann looked skeptical. “If he apologizes, we should take his scalp and hold it high.”

“If you are seen to crush everyone who submits,” Senator Castillo pointed out, “you merely encourage those on the other side who haven’t yet, NOT to submit. Crushing even those who submit is a tactic you use to clean up the last few rebels, not a tactic you use when you don’t already have a solid fraction on your side, so you can eliminate the last vestiges of resistance. Too many on our side forget that. Remember back when the vaccines first came out?

“First, it was all voluntary,” Senator Castillo continued, “and exclusive. ‘Not enough to go around, citizen!’ That scarcity made the jabs even more attractive, and people clamored to get in line to get their shots.

“Then, after the initial rush, we amped up the fear and drove the more reluctant to get their shots. They’re killing grandma! Stay away from the unvaxxed! We kept the unvaxxed from public venues like restaurants and sporting activities to pressure them into compliance. We exaggerated a little bit, promising the shots were 100% effective and your only protection. We suppressed any news or reports of alternate therapies like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

“Finally, we had a hard core of vax deniers who weren’t going to get their shots unless we really applied the pressure. That was the time to start crushing the opposition. We instituted mandates: get jabbed or lose your job. We lost the political will and the momentum before we could have taken it to the logical next step: rounding up the deniers and putting them in a quarantine camp.

“But, the point is,” Castillo concluded, “crushing those who submit only works when you’re already firmly in control. It’s still early days in the battle for trans equity, and there are still an awful lot of knuckle draggers resisting. Let a suitably humiliated and apologetic sinner acknowledge his error before the public and let him go. Leak his job offer to the press. Make it clear he was amply rewarded for his compliance, so he can’t even be a martyr for the other side. No one likes a turncoat. Handle him with kid gloves, and it will pay dividends.

“We have to LET him be rewarded. Let them all SEE him be rewarded. ‘Pour encourager les autres.’ There will be plenty of time to crush him later once he’s dropped out of the public eye and long before you have to consider giving him tenure.”

“That doesn’t sit well with me,” President Buchmann acknowledged, “but I can see your point.”

“But what if he doesn’t submit?” Acey inflected upward, still wanting an answer to her question.

“If he doesn’t submit, arguably, that might be even better for us,” Senator Castillo explained. “Then, the gloves come off, and we crush him. We do it openly and publicly.

“We’re going to have a big rally tomorrow night to ‘End the Hate.’ Our best protestors and organizers are already prepping and setting up the logistics. If we win, it will be a victory party for the ages – robust, diverse, a massive rally filling the streets, every activist from the dozen closest states will be here, full of vibrant energy, leading the entire student body from campus through town. A night for the history books. A chastened wrong-thinker publicly acknowledging his errors and welcomed into the fold.

“If we lose, well,” Senator Castillo smiled, “things might just get a little bit out of hand. It’ll be ‘mostly peaceful,’ of course. Windows smashed, buildings burned, maybe even the courthouse itself. They won’t have enough time to fortify the place like they were able to do in Portland. They won’t be expecting it. Every community in America will look upon what happened here as a reminder that actions have consequences. We have to teach them that ‘standing athwart history yelling, stop!’ is hate speech, not acceptable discourse. Try it, and you’ll get run over. It will also be a night for the history books, but in a completely different way.”

“But, what about Mike?” Acey asked.

“The consequences for Dr. Andrews?” Senator Castillo shook her head in pity. “He’ll be unemployable. Anywhere. Every progressive in the country will be looking to make an example of him. The direct-action wings will find him, and they’ll take him out, one way or another.”

“That’s why it’s so important, if you care for him at all,” President Buchmann explained, “to convince Mike to do the right thing and apologize. For you, for him, for all of us.”

Acey swallowed a final bite of her lunch.

She’d lost her appetite.

While her mother and the senator were done with their lunches, Acey had hardly touched her food.

“I’ll take a to-go box,” she told the server.

“Compliments of Zebulon and Mindswell Winthrop,” President Buchmann took the check from the server. “When those Puritans set up their endowment two hundred years ago for an annual lecture in moral philosophy to expound upon ‘the harmony of God’s grace and divine providence in human affairs,’ they could never have foreseen how much progress we’d make beyond their silly superstitions. Today’s lunch is on them.”

“Thanks again for that Winthrop Endowed Lecture stipend,” Senator Castillo expressed her appreciation to President Buchmann with a campaign-poster smile. “Nice to get a paid trip back to visit you and the alma mater.”

“Think nothing of it,” President Buchmann beamed backed as she rose from the table. “Least I could do after you landed me that sweet keynote gig at GAMMA Con in Cancun last month.”

“Oh, you were already near the top of their list,” Senator Castillo assured her as they walked to the door. “Your outspoken advocacy of transgender rights made millions for any number of surgeons and pharmaceutical companies. Least they could do for you.”

“Acey?” President Buchmann looked back, suddenly realizing Acey was still seated at the table.

“Go ahead. I’ll catch up,” Acey assured her mother. “Let me finish my tea and box up my food.”