NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
It is a warm sunny morning. Rank Majors is busy on two phones at once. He and Albrecht are sitting outside the Pie Shop with their laptops open on the table. They wave to Macadamia supporters, parking opposite, and sounding their horns in the Safeway lot.
“Yo! Fred, it’s a beautiful day in November!”
“Tea-shirt weather!”
Albrecht gets up, and shows off his red Macadamia tea shirt, with “Mac is Back” in white across his shoulder blades.
“What do you want Fred? I am buying.”
“Thanks, Albrecht, I’ll have Earl Grey tea and a blueberry muffin.”
He walks in to pick up my order.
Rank puts down his phones.
“Pull up a seat, Fred, how are you doing?”
He glances at his computer screen and taps the trackpad.
“To tell you the truth Rank, I was disappointed in the election results last night.”
“President Armond Macadamia and his VP, Feather Jackdaw, will give us American style Putinist government, and we will be the greatest, wealthiest power in history.”
“Really? Feather is a tech billionaire, what is she doing in the picture?
“She is the richest woman in the world and prosperity is what we are all about.”
“There is a serious conflict of interest there.”
“No way, her job is to bring efficiency to the government, and she has the experience to do it.”
“No government experience, though.”
“All the better!”
“Haven’t we already been there?”
“We have never had the tech resources we have now.”
“After World War II we had it over the rest of the world.”
“Right, because war devastated Europe and Japan. Now we will be on top of a much bigger global pile!”
“That kind of domination is just what I am afraid of!”
“Listen, Putin is the most astute political genius of our time!”
“You mean there are others?”
“Remember Lenin’s commanding heights?”
“Unfortunately, I do.”
“Macadamia, Lenin, Putin, Orban, for example, all understood where the power lay and grabbed it.”
“Yeah, where do you think these heights are now?”
“Media!”
“You mean the internet?”
“That, and TV”
“Makes sense to me.”
Albrecht comes over with my tea and muffin and sits down next to me.
“Albrecht, explain this media thing.”
“You see, the media allowed Macadamia to talk to real Americans. The guys put out of work by the radical left and the deep state.”
“Talk to them?”
“Right, in their vocabulary. The over-educated Liberals, find it soooo offensive. They don’t know anything. Mac’s campaign was sheer genius!”
“What about the tax cuts?”
“Yes, that’s what American business needs to bring back prosperity.”
“You know, Calvin Coolidge once broke his silence, to say, ‘The business of America is business’.”
“That’s why we have an airport named after him.”
“How is all this prosperity going to get down to ‘real’ Americans”?
“More money means more well-paid jobs!”
“Albrecht, I’ll believe that when it happens.”
“Coming soon, my friend!”
“What good do you see coming up?”
“Think of all the data the credit card companies, and others, have!”
“Not a happy thought, Albrecht, I believe they have digital profiles on all users.”
“Right! Once we have reorganized the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it can use all that to control threats to our program.”
“What do you mean, threats?”
“Okay, say there is some radical leftist Congressman who gets a little too noisy?”
“Yes, criticizing the administration.”
“Yeah, we can go in and disrupt her credit and if she doesn’t come around, we can tie her up in court until she is bankrupt.”
“You think that’s good?”
“Sure, keep the radical left out of the game!”
“I see, control of money is power!”
“The senior commanding height under capitalism!”
“It sure is, but this would be against countless laws!”
“No problem, Fred. Mac has over a hundred executive orders ready
to go on his first day.”
“You mean taking illegal actions?”
“He is immune from prosecution, don’t you remember?”
“Well, yes but this is going too far.”
“There is no such thing as too far when it comes to breaking up the deep state.”
“That sounds like dangerous talk to me, Albrecht.”
“Fred, don’t you worry. Sure, we are going to fire about a million government bureaucrats, but the best of them will get new higher-paying jobs in the new companies we will create.”
“What companies?”
“Companies running the Executive branch.”
“You can’t contract out a government agency!”
“Why not?”
“Agencies hire contractors, they don’t serve them.”
“Our companies will serve the President.”
“What about the Constitution?”
“That too, once it has been updated to the twenty-first century!”
“Albrecht, it takes a constitutional convention to do that.”
“Okay Fred, we shall have one and we shall have a majority.”
“I think you are getting carried away, Albrecht.”
“Probably! This is the most exciting day of my life and the greatest day in American history!”
Rank and Albrecht do a high five and one of Rank’s phones falls on the ground.
“What about all those government workers you are going to fire?”
“Same as coal miners or auto workers when their business shuts down.”
“Yes, the ‘real Americans’”?
“Right, those who go along with the program, will be fine.”
“What about the others?”
“Who cares? They are what we call an ‘externality’.”
“Oh! A kind of pollution?”
“You got it, Fred. Just part of the cost of doing business.”
Rank is back on a phone with cracked glass. Lark Bunlush pulls up in a red Fiat 500. She parks facing us, in the Safeway lot, under a nearby streetlight.
“Fred, what are you doing out here with those two?”
“Hi, Lark.”
Albrecht gets up as she walks over to our table.
“Cute little car, Lark.”
“Yeah, used, but it runs well, so far.”
“Great, and it’s red!”
“Yes, it is red, so what?”
“So, red won the election!”
“Oh! Albrecht, you misunderstand. Red is the color of revolution!”
“We are the revolutionaries now!”
Rank has put his phone down again, and waves to Lark.
“Come join the party!”
“You know what, Rank?”
“What, Lark?”
“Herbert Marcuse predicted that the revolution wouldn’t come until the system failed to deliver the goods, and it would come from the right!”
Albrecht high fives Rank, again.
“Yeah! And we are right, right now!”
“You want a coffee, Lark, I am buying?”
Lark looks up at a passing crow, which lands on top of the streetlight.
“Thanks, Albrecht, but I have shopping to do.”
“Looks like Herbie, whoever he was, he gets it!”
The crow lets out a series of coos, caws, and rattles.
Albrecht looks up at the crow who seems to be looking back down at us.
“Stick with us, up there, buddy!”
Lark pulls up a seat.
“Marcuse was a part of the Frankfurt School of Sociology, who developed a school of sociology called, Critical Theory. He was also a refugee from Hitler.”
Albrecht gets up.
“He is news to me! You sure you don’t want anything?”
Lark shakes her head.
“What are you doing out here, anyway? Why aren’t you down the block at the Macadamia Campaign’s local headquarters?”
“Lark, they are partying, and we have work to do!”
“Haven’t you done enough already?”
“Not even close, Lark, we are coordinating the Macadamia organization’s local activities.”
“Macadamia isn’t even a real person!”
Rank looks up from his laptop.
“He sure is, Lark, I have shaken his hand.”
“So say a lot of people, but I am telling you there was a tech breakthrough at PU a while ago and that guy is a digital replica.”
“What do you know about breakthroughs at PU?”
“Only that they have happened.”
“Be careful who you talk to about that, Lark.”
“What are you saying, Rank? Is that a threat?”
“Far from it. I have heard the same story, and I have been given that same advice.”
“Seems to me we all need to talk a whole lot more about it.”
“You liberals are just determined to cause a ruckus!”
“No, not a ruckus, just some truth.”
Albrecht comes back with coffee. He takes a sip from one and puts the other in front of Lark.“Truth? Lark, we make our own truth.”
“I know, Albrecht, but those are not facts they are fibs and lies.”
“Hey, they bring in the votes. How’s that for truth?”
“Okay, okay, Albrecht, we have been down this road too many times already. Aren’t you just a little bit worried about who controls our new digital president-elect?”
“No, I am looking forward to a new celebrity cabinet.”
“No kidding, like Hollywood types?”
“Maybe, and our supporters from all over our TV news business.”
“What do they know about running the government?”
“All they need to know is what the big guy tells them.”
More crows arrive, circling noisily.
We all look up at them and Lark points out our crow has taken off.
“That is what’s called a ‘murder’ of crows.”
“Do you think those birds are bent on mayhem?”
“No Fred, Maynard told me that is their collective name.”
“A murder?”
“That’s what he said.”
The crows settle across the street in the brilliant yellow of a hickory in Fall, leaving a couple of white droppings on the hood of Lark’s red car.
“Stay tuned Lark, you are watching history in the making.”
Lark shakes her head and gets up.
“Albrecht, I think history is repeating itself, if anything.”
Leaving the coffee Albrecht put in front of her, Lark walks over to the Safeway.