Welmer

Soong May-ling (better known in America as Madame Chiang Kai-shek), daughter of a prominent Hakka businessman of Christian faith, was born in Shanghai in 1898, blessed with wealth and privilege at a time when most of her Chinese compatriots were suffering from the chaos that accompanied the disintegration of the Qing dynasty. Together with her sisters, Ai-ling and Ching-ling, she pursued a Western education in the US, attending Wesleyan College and residing for some time in Georgia, where she picked up a southern accent that characterized her English for the rest of her life.

The story of the Soong sisters has captivated China for generations, and the different path each sister took represents the struggles of China as it strove to find its place in the modern world. Eldest sister Ai Ling, who married China’s finance minister, is said to have loved money, while the next sister, Ching-ling, who married Sun Yat-sen, is characterized as having a great love for her country. May-ling, who eventually married Chiang Kai-shek, loved power.

The fall of the Kuomintang is well-known in the US, as it resulted in the creation of Taiwan and years of antipathy between the United States and the victorious Communist regime in Beijing. However, little is known of the massive corruption, ineffective government and abuse of power in Nationalist China, which greatly aided Mao Zedong and his peasant army by turning popular opinion against the Kuomintang. Ordinary Chinese had been through decades of misery and war, yet the majority of powerful officials in the Kuomintang were more concerned about themselves than their suffering countrymen.

To many Chinese, Soong May-ling epitomized these negative traits of the Kuomintang, and recent discoveries appear to confirm their sentiments.

After losing to President Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, Wendell Willkie set out to travel the world in service to the US. While in Chungking (modern Chongqing), he met Soong May-ling, and the two evidently took an interest in each other. After excusing themselves from a government reception, they stayed out all night, Willkie returning at 4 AM as “cocky as a young college student,” according to publishing magnate Gardner “Mike” Cowles. Cowles was staying with Willkie, and reports that Chiang Kai-shek himself came to their room in a frantic attempt to find his absent wife.

As Mdme. Soong’s affair with Willkie deepened, Willkie thought it might be a good idea to bring her back to Washington, upon which Cowles had to scuttle this plan. When Cowles broke the news to Mdme. Soong, telling her that she wasn’t going anywhere, she attacked him, severely scratching his face. As Cowles put it: “Before I knew what was happening she reached up and scratched her long fingernails down both my cheeks so deeply that I had marks for about a week.”

Nevertheless, she wasn’t deterred for long, making it to the US the next year, where she met with Eleanor Roosevelt and many major officials. As stated in Cowles’ memoirs, she had been fantasizing about global domination with Willkie at her side, and while in her suite at the Waldorf said to Cowles: “You know, Mike, if Wendell could be elected, then he and I would rule the world. I would rule the Orient and Wendell would rule the Western world.”

Of course, none of this came to pass. Willkie died within a year, and the Kuomintang, led by Mdme. Soong’s husband Chiang Kai-shek, was in terminal decline. Soon, the triumphant People’s Liberation Army marched on Beijing, and on October 1, 1949, Mao declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in Tiananmen Square (video). Mdme. Soong and her husband grabbed all the loot they could get their hands on and fled the mainland for Taiwan, and the rest is history.

It has been popular for some time for liberal minded Americans to say they don’t care what politicians do in private, as long as they do a good job in office. However, this story, as well as many, many others, shows that the personal integrity of people in power has a great effect on how they wield that power, and ultimately the people often pay for choices made by those with degraded morals. It is, actually, little different from the well-known fact that children usually pay the heaviest price for their parents’ indiscretions.

Confucius, who would certainly have condemned the Kuomintang (not to mention the PRC), had a good take on this matter:

“If you really want good to flourish, your people will turn towards the good. The virtue of a noble ruler is like the wind; the virtue of his subjects is like grass. If the wind sweeps across the grass, the grass will bend.”

–Confucius

Of course, the other side of the coin is true as well: a wicked ruler will only encourage wickedness in the people.

Despite being broke and 107 years old, Larry Haubner has defied the propaganda asserting that the married life is healthier and happier. A Dubuque Iowa native who grew up in Tacoma, Wash., he has lived a carefree, if modest life for over a century. His father worked on the railroad, and he worked in a Tacoma lumber yard prior to joining the Army at the age of 40 during WWII.

After the war, Larry moved to New York to pursue a career in opera while working as a doorman. That never panned out, but his spirit was not broken. When his sister was widowed, he moved to Virginia to stay with her, and was seen bicycling around town, enjoying nature and singing to the Rappahannock River when the fancy struck him.

Today, he takes no medications and works out daily with improvised weights. His dire financial straits are not a source of major concern, as his greatest joy is simply to be alive. However, there are others who are concerned that he might be forced into a nursing home. A website has been set up to encourage support for Larry, despite the fact that he has not been informed of the threat to his current living situation. I hope Larry and his supporters prevail.

Despite his lack of a wife, career and family, Haubner has lived life to its fullest. Maybe nobody ever told him about what was expected of him as a man, but if they did, it appears that he didn’t listen, and was not the worse for it.

Those of us who willingly take up the burdens of family and responsibility should not feel cheated, but rather should look at Larry Haubner and take note of the sacrifices that we have made. Larry has led a charmed, carefree life, and we should be happy for him. He is the living embodiment of the free, good life that can be had as an independent man, and those of us who have taken a different path can feel a sense of vindication in the knowledge that it truly is hard, unforgiving work to take up the burdens of marriage and family. In fact, we should demand some recognition and respect for climbing a steeper hill, and putting more weight in our packs.

As for Larry, may he keep on enjoying himself, and may he continue provide us with a living example of the vitality of a free man.

Maria Belen Chapur, the woman who has been having an adulterous affair with Governor Mark Sanford, has written a letter to an Argentinian TV station in an attempt to explain how she and Sanford were caught in their adultery.

The letter details the difficulties she has faced over what she characterizes as the terrible act of some miscreant who brought her affair to light. Read the letter closely, and you may find plenty of condemnation of the exposer, but not a whiff of contrition for what she did. Chapur has even suggested that God will punish the nasty person who exposed her tryst with a married man:

3. (sic) Finally, I have a firm suspicion of who did this great act of damage, which was aimed at me specifically but at the same time destroyed the lives of so many others. Since I don’t have sufficient proof and live in a country of laws, I’m obligated to keep their identity anonymous. I’m no one’s judge; I leave all that in the hands of God.

Why is it that Maria cannot take responsibility for the damage she’s done? What about the lives she has destroyed? No, no apology at all. This was all someone else’s fault. In fact, it was all the fault of whoever brought this to light

Behold her pain:

I’ve decided to send you this communication, which will be the only one, to clarify certain incorrect things that are being said and in that way put an end to the subject that, as you can imagine, is a huge source of pain for me, my two children, my whole family and the good friends, men and women, whom I’ve gathered throughout my life and who have always been with me.

And of course, to Ms. Chapur, the pain she, her children, family and friends are dealing with is not her fault at all. She was simply having a long-term, intercontinental affair with a married man, after all… Nothing wrong with that. The guy who is really to blame is that nefarious hacker, who she cannot name because she lives in a “country of laws.”

Who’d want to bet that it wasn’t a recent lover she’d cheated?

While reading the series of emails between SC Governor Mark Sanford and Maria Belen Chapur, I began to feel a sense of tragedy, and came to feel a twinge of pity for the man, who has obviously struggled with his faith, torn between all he believes in and the Dark Lady of Buenos Aires. I also felt somewhat ashamed to behold the private failings of this public man — it is as though he and his lover have been stripped and exposed before a mocking nation comprised of a multitude of those who can barely conceal their own sins. It is truly hard to cast stones when one sees a couple of pitiable sinners revealed under the merciless sun of public scrutiny. However, tragedy and human failure on a grand scale is the stuff of legends, and in it there are lessons for all people, great or small that they may be.

So I introduce another man, an Irish hero from the 19th century known as Charles Parnell. Parnell was a young, charismatic politician and a good-looking, charming man. Son of a Protestant landowner of English ancestry and his American wife, he nevertheless took up the Irish Nationalist cause, forging an Irish bloc that dominated British Parliament and brought Home Rule for Ireland ever closer to reality.

Parnell was known not only for his ability to lead men, but the magnetic effect he had on women as well. Virginia Woolf, although only a girl when he died, eulogized him in her novel “The Years,” writing that his death was like “something fading in the sky.” Parnell’s commanding presence in parliament combined with his gentlemanly demeanor in public made him all but irresistible to women. However, despite his political acumen and will, he must have been something of a romantic. Indeed, an idealistic rather than practical character would have been required for someone of his background in those times to take up the Irish national cause. Perhaps this only added to his attraction.

Eventually, it was Parnell’s romantic nature that got the better of him when he met a woman named Katherine O’Shea, better known today as “Kitty O’Shea.” Kitty was an English woman married to Captain William O’Shea, a Catholic Nationalist from Galway. Having connections with the liberal political establishment in London, she began to act as an intermediary between Parnell and Prime Minister Gladstone in the early 1880s. In time, Parnell fell in love with Kitty, which led to a hidden life with her in a suburb of London where he fathered three children by her.

One might think that a man such as Charles Parnell would have had plenty of opportunities to find eligible single women, but he was beguiled by Mrs. O’Shea, and his romantic nature led him to continue with what, in Victorian Britain, he must have known would eventually be the ruin of his career. Yet he soldiered on, advancing the cause of Home Rule, which appeared for a time to be within reach… and then the scandal broke.

Kitty’s husband, after waiting for several years – allegedly to secure an inheritance – finally filed for divorce, naming Parnell as co-respondent. Following the divorce, Parnell acknowledged his paternity of the children and married Mrs. O’Shea. Although the affair had been common knowledge in political circles, the public had no idea, and at first was inclined to disbelief. Finally the truth became impossible to ignore, and his political opponents had a new weapon with which to attack him and his cause. As his charismatic presence was reduced to a running joke, unionists and radical Catholic nationalists alike took out their knives and went for blood. As the gravity of his folly became apparent to all, Parnell’s former lieutenants turned on him, as James Joyce wrote in “The Shade of Parnell”:

“In his final desperate appeal to his countrymen, he begged them not to throw him as a sop to the English wolves howling around them. It redounds to their honour that they did not fail this appeal. They did not throw him to the English wolves; they tore him to pieces themselves.”

He did not survive the scandal by more than a couple years, dying in the arms of his wife and former mistress of a heart attack in 1891. He was 45 years old.

The effects of Parnell’s fall from grace had a profound influence on subsequent British politics, and have reverberated through Irish society for over a century. No one can say for certain whether he could have achieved a unified Ireland, but the split of his Irish Party, largely a result of the Kitty O’Shea affair, greatly weakened any chance for such an outcome.

One might blame the failures of the Irish independence movement in the late 19th century on the poor judgment of a man who was willing to risk all for an adulterous woman, but perhaps a less passionate character never could have achieved what Parnell did in the first place. There are lessons in these stories, but given their endless repetition over the years from the beginnings of history, it would be a silly fantasy to think that we will ever see an end to grand failures born of human weakness; nor should we ever expect an end to the likes of Kitty O’Shea, who will, from time to time, be the ruin of men as long as we walk the earth.

The Ashley Madison website and company have been garnering attention again, and yet people tut-tut the business without bothering to check into its origins. Having heard enough about the place, I thought I’d check into the founder’s past, and sure enough the pimp is a crook. Imagine that…

The founder of Ashley Madison is one Darren Morgenstern, who operates out of Canada, long a haven for international crooks due to its lax immigration laws that often require little more than cash for documents. Morgenstern evidently hatched a scheme to defraud people of their money through a spam campaign that relied on scaring them into coughing up money to protect the integrity of their domain names online.

Shortly after getting busted by the FTC, he went on to found Ashley Madison, the notorious site that provides a venue for adulterers for a fee. Due to changes in family law that have taken effect over the last few decades, Morgenstern is free to carry on with his online pimping business with little fear of legal repercussions. Some suggest that the guy is a “genius,” just as many did with Seattle’s own porn king Seth Warshavsky prior to his ruin and flight to Thailand.

We can only hope that Morgenstern and his partner in crime Noel Biderman follow in Warshavsky’s footsteps, but it may take the resurrection of some laws that were put away some time ago. Despite Morgenstern and Biderman’s disgusting profiteering from what is becoming a national tragedy, I have hope that these two worms lead to a reassessment of our very permissive attitude toward marital infidelity, and possibly bring the concept of alienation of affection back into play. If a few people can sue the guys for millions of dollars for helping to destroy families, then we may be able to reestablish precedent for civil liability in adultery cases.

It would be a start, and if any lawyers are reading, Morgenstern’s got a whole lot of money, and he definitely does business here in the US.

After reading Novaseeker’s latest post on escorts, I found a nice little piece on China Expat that uses the art of the short story to expose the longings and unmet needs of the men of our world to explain why there is a demand for such services. It is, indeed, a hard world out there for men, and too many of us trudge on with an empty heart, wandering in a wilderness of sorrow, unaware of what it is that makes us happy. This is why I am beginning to see the Saga of Sanford as a pathetic tragedy as much as anything else.

As for the story, I have no idea who wrote it, but it is nice, short piece that gives one an image upon which to reflect. And despite the fact that I cannot fully accept the author’s position, he certainly gives me some questions to ponder.

Enjoy:

The Fable of Lao Wang

I link to Urban Workbench, a website that promotes sustainable living, because I like the idea. It fits into my developing philosophy of husbandry, a term so easily rejected and laughed at today because it is the antithesis of our developing culture of squander and abandon. I also like the idealistic young men and women who are committed to developing a sustainable society. Sure, they may seem a bit strange to outsiders, but there isn’t really that much difference between the engineer or developer and the man who coaxes nourishment from the land. The personality and goal are ultimately constructive, and the fruits of their labor are delicious, enjoyable and fundamentally beneficial to mankind. It is a labor of love — one that is too often overlooked by those who enjoy its benefits in their insulated world of consumption and status-mongering.

Many of us are certainly familiar with the ideological excesses of certain environmentalists, who are often painted as extremists with an anti-human agenda. Except for the radical animal rights activists, it is mostly a bum rap. However, they do not help their cause with shotgun-style blasts at men in general, and they are in fact leaving out a big part of the story. This article, for example, lashes out at white men as the villains who are destroying the environment and humanity. Is this really the case?

In a way, it is, but not for the reasons one might think. A white man can only smoke so many cigars, and can only buy so many cars and suits before his interest wanes. The appetites of a wife, however, are diverse and inexhaustible. So, too, are the appetites of a whore, as Novaseeker notes in a recent post. The near-demise of many species of whales was brought about by the inexhaustible hunger of women for fashionable products, including hoop skirts, perfume and clean lighting. How many whales did it take for a 19th century woman of fashion to lead her brightly illuminated, scented and extravagantly dressed lifestyle? How many pelts of furry, aquatic mammals, did it take to sate her appetite for luxuriant coats and hats? Of course, it was men who carried out the bloody deeds, harpooning the whales, trapping mink and otters and clubbing seals, but where did the money they earned go? Why, straight back to the “ladies” who bought these products, of course.

When I got to a certain age, my grandfather, who had worked in the gold and silver mines of the Sierras, told me a few interesting stories about his youth. He recalled payday, and said that there was a long line of miners waiting to cash their checks at the bank in Virginia City. On the other side of the street, there was a long line of whores waiting to spend the miners’ money. So if you look at what was really going on, you had desperate men risking their lives underground and poisoning the environment and themselves with toxic chemicals to bring forth shiny metals that adorned the necks and wrists of women.

It would be disingenuous to blame this entirely on women, but no more so than blaming white men for overconsumption. Feminists, on the other hand, are perfectly happy to excuse the excesses of their sisters while trashing the men who provide them with the environmentally destructive products that they so ravenously consume. And the tragic thing we see today is that we have dedicated environmental activists, most of whom are white boys, stocking the shelves of Whole Foods for yet another consumption bonanza, which may seem at first glance to be environmentally beneficial, but when the entire lifestyle of the typical Whole Foods consumer is taken into account it is pretty clear that there is no net benefit to handing the finest fruits of produce over to only those who live in large houses and frequently take intercontinental vacations to indulge their fantasies of opulence.

So, in the usual manner, the environmentally conscious guys are acting as enablers to yet another cohort of consumers who are swallowing the fine fruits of their labor out of vanity and hedonism rather than any true desire to live a sustainable lifestyle. I think both sides to this debate need to keep this in mind, and although I have no problem with the production and consumption of goods that have been produced with husbandry and stewardship in mind, it would be wise for men to recognize that we are all working for essentially the same purpose, which is far from conducive to sustainability.

As we go through yet another confusing transformation of our role in society as men, the question concerning our true nature rises yet again. It is clear that there is a rejection of the “traditional” role, which has really only been the standard since the Industrial Revolution swept up most of society about a century ago, but we have little idea what comes next. Father as stolid 9-5er is pretty much out, whether we like it or not, and the gender roles that were considered proper for most of the 20th century are toppling like rotten trees in a winter storm. Men are being bled white by the old rules, not having the resources they did only 30 years ago, yet still having the same financial and social obligations foisted upon them.

However, what is still worth questioning is whether the nature of men is so malleable that we can safely remove some of the truly ancient pillars of our identity. I would say that we tried and failed to do so over the last century, and that led to some of the cataclysms that brought widespread slaughter and despair. We relegated the man to the role of protector provider only, neglecting husbandry in the true sense of the word. There is no doubt that nurturing and caring for those we love is an important part of a man’s being, but even in these supposedly progressive days we find it difficult to recognize that undeniable aspect of our nature. How could men not be caring and fostering, considering the complex world we craft with such care around our families and societies? I fully support the cultivation of the tender side of men, and feel that it is essential for a happier society, but just like women we have a dark side as well.

The dark expression of male nature is usually summed up in the word “violence,” and it is something we are undeniably capable of expressing. Violence is not an unnatural, occasional occurrence that only comes up in certain circumstances, but rather a constant current that runs beneath peaceful society like a subterranean river. As much as I would like to deny the strength of its flow, my knowledge of both history and myself as a man confirms its constant presence. Kurt Vonnegut, who saw an example of one of the most extreme expressions of human violence following the firebombing of Dresden, wrote that trying to stop war is as futile as trying to stop glaciers. So it goes.

Even so, the passions of men extend much farther than bloodlust and the desire for conquest, and we so readily ignore this that we prime our boys for battle before they even have the chance to explore their creative, constructive natures. Any man who can remember being a little boy should remember the tender love for a pet, a friend or even a project. I once had a pet cat – a little street kitten I named “Raspberry” – when I was eleven years old. I kept her in my room when she was a tiny little thing, trained her and loved her. She returned the affection, and kept me company when I went to bed. One day, when Raspberry was about six months old, she was hit by a car and killed. When I found out, I was numb for a little while, but soon I was overcome by grief. I was inconsolable for hours, crying over my dead kitten, deeply hurt by the loss. How does that sound? Is it proper for a little boy to be so sad over a dead cat? I can say that no little girl could have been any more sad than I was, but we don’t think of boys as having these kinds of feelings, despite the undeniable fact that they do. And this carries over to men — the man who loses his wife or his children is hurt as badly as anyone, but this is never acknowledged in our culture, which prefers to look the other way rather than confront the reality of his suffering. It is no wonder, then, that some men, when deprived of what they love act out their grief with suicide, or more rarely, murder.

Despite the fact that the deepest passions of most men are of a fundamentally good nature, it is worth noting that they have the potential to provoke brutality. Our wars are fought for those ideals that fill us with the deepest sense of love and duty. Our love of our land, our people and society is called “patriotism,” which has been blamed for many a slaughter. The exquisite passion of religion – for Christians, for example, the image of Christ’s final act of sacrifice – can rally armies to march and lay waste to the perceived enemy. An interplay of passion and violence wells up from time to time like a tide, and can be seen on a large or small scale, expressed in innumerable ways. One of the foremost goals of society and government is to control these passions and channel them into constructive activity. However, the key to understanding men – and perhaps humanity in general – is that although our passions can be dammed and channeled through various social constructs, they cannot be contained indefinitely.

If, today, we demand that men cork their passions, and simultaneously create a spiritual ferment through unjust, oppressive laws, couldn’t we be creating a great deal of pressure? In fact, couldn’t this actually be a dangerous situation? It seems to me that as we channel men’s lives into ever narrower confines while denying them the opportunity to express their passions in a constructive manner, men will find an outlet that is not so healthy for society in general.

When seen in these terms, it is difficult to be optimistic about the future, because the logic of contemporary American society has already taken us thus far, and future challenges will likely be dealt with as they have for the past several decades, during which increased law enforcement, transfer of wealth, and draconian laws have been brought to bear when men act out at all. Therefore, the response to men who are acting out due to an inherently unjust system that denies them the freedom to live as they would like will simply be more of the same, which will result in even more male delinquency, thus perpetuating the problem until one day we wake up and find ourselves in a totalitarian state in which very few men are happy at all.

I don’t know if this will ultimately be the result of our current system of governance, but it would take some revolutionary changes to prevent it from happening, because we are already at least halfway there. The eventual outcome of a society that blatantly oppresses men is bound to be ugly, and it would be in the best interests of those guiding policy to take note of this and start thinking about some new solutions to the trouble we’re brewing right here at home.

In a move that surely gives hope to millions of single mothers around America, Governor Sanford of SC has spurned his wife for a 44-year-old divorced woman who lives in Buenos Aires with her teenage children. Sanford spent Father’s Day in Argentina away from his own four sons — one wonders whether he spent it with his mistress’s children instead…

UN “PIRATA” CON CARGO DE CONCIENCIA

Maria Belen Chapur

Hope it was worth it, Mark!

Although feminism and conservatism share some characteristics in common, such as dogmatism and an almost obsessive fixation on symbolic issues, it often appears at first glance that their interests are inimical and that they are engaged in a running gunfight in the halls of power. However, what seems obvious on the surface often masks a murky, dark intimacy in matters of closely held prejudice, and to borrow a geographic metaphor from my hometown, a closer examination reveals frequent liasons on the Aurora strip of policy-making.

In my last post, I questioned the result of rape shield laws, which are designed to limit criminal defense. One might think that this is a strictly feminist issue, but when you study the history of the laws, it is clear that conservative politicians also favored restricting defense during the 1970s, during which violent crime was rampant. Think of the “Dirty Harry” movies, and you can get an idea of the general mood at the time. The idea conservatives had in mind was that of the no-nonsense man crusading in fealty to innocence. Despite feminist proclamations of women’s liberation, the familiar pattern of casting women as entirely innocent victims of depraved men emerged in full force during this era, and feminists, never ones to decline an advantage, endorsed with their silence the image of the tough avenger shooting and imprisoning the archetypical “bad guy” who preyed on women. This image is still with us today, and is still used to justify appalling treatment of men unfortunate enough to be portrayed as the “bad guy.”

So today we have this strange parallel fantasy of the hero-protector defending the fragile, innocent woman coexisting with the liberated woman who, herself, wields a gun or a gavel to throw hapless guys in the grave or prison. What this says is that we have a misrepresentation, or more plainly spoken a lie, that guides our treatment of the besieged man, who is the bad guy if only someone says so. It is an engine of incrimination that the typical man cannot withstand, so he generally gives up and accepts his miserable fate. There is really nothing more tragic than to see men imprisoned due to false convictions biding their time passively behind iron bars, but this is a very common occurrence. Neither the bible thumping right nor the feminist ideologues have a shred of pity for such men. Broken eggs, indeed.

However, there may be a lifting of the fog of war – a real war on men and fathers – that condemns so many innocents to the charnel house of bleached and shattered dreams. Where in the 1970s Clint Eastwood was the killer-champion who carried out extra-judicial executions of maligned men, he is now the mentor to a confused boy in Gran Torino. Where people bayed like hounds for executions in the 1980s, governor Ryan of Illinois suspended the death penalty because so many men slated to die were actually innocent.

What we can hope for is that our sons will be seen for the human beings that they are, and will not be marched through life at the end of a gun, taught to view gender-based slavery as the only alternative to ignominy or death. Perhaps the recent cases of conservative hypocrisy so poignantly displayed by philandering Senator Evan Bayh – infamous persecutor of fathers – and the adulterous Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, will play some part in exposing what is really going on in the corridors of power. It may be that we can only hope at this point, but the shackles are already beginning to rust, and the walls are quaking. It is time to stop the passive acquiescence to injustice, and to recognize that American men, too, are entitled to seek fulfillment, and even happiness — a long-forgotten concept that was nonetheless enshrined in the creation of our country.