Chapter Twenty - Meeting of the Fabituso Society – February 2004

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

                                                                                                           Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Meeting of the Fabituso Society 

February 2004

It was strange to be back. Dave had avoided the Fabituso Society Meeting since the last time Bernard had bowed out in late 2001. Life goes on and people change. So the first thing that struck Dave was how very much the same this was. The same waiters, or their doubles, were pouring drinks at the bars located at each corner of the room. The same lavish presentations of hors d’ourves were laid out on the table in the middle. Even the flowers could have been the same, though of course they weren’t. Everything was real here except the perception that this represented a grass roots political movement. Now Dave knew that.

Walking in Dave had seen the same people mostly. Some of them looked a little older, a little fatter or thinner or balder but essentially they were no different. This impression was reinforced when he was greeted by some of his old acquaintances and they took up what seemed to be the same conversations that they had been having over two years ago. Everyone was delighted to see him. He said hello to Babbs, and a half dozen people he had gotten to know back then.

The attention and level of respect accorded him now, as opposed to four years ago, demonstrated just how active the gossip conduits were. Three up and coming policy guys made sure they handed him their cards and offered to send on their resumes. They had heard he was starting American Revival and were interested in jobs. Amazing; information just seeped out the cracks, not that anyone seemed to know what they were actually doing. Dave smiled to himself. They were only now beginning to understand that themselves.

As Dave chatted and listened he realized that the people were not only having the same conversations, they were also reading the same line from exactly the same sources. AR had been tracking the publishing of books by the NeoCons and the same authors were still producing books in the same form to justify the NeoCon policies. This had rather shocked Dave initially. Those were, after all, the books he had read and relied on. Going back through his mind and rethinking every issue and point had proven to be a form of deprogramming he had not anticipated needing. But given the big lie technique common to all of the books produced by NeoCon thinkers it had been necessary. Now all facts were checked against the three course protocol. Everyone at AR used it, cross checking ‘known’ facts routinely.

Dolly had found that especially useful while transitioning to the policy world. She was now familiar with the work of all of the major think tanks and able to critically analyze it for economic foundation and content and projected outcome. Dave had put a reliable Austrian economist who was presently teaching in California on retainer to act as her mentor. So much of what each of them had thought had actually been ungrounded mythology.

The Elks also had their mythology, too, though ironically enough it had proven to be more accurate that Dave’s. And of course with Elks the profit motive was absent because all Elks were volunteers.

Now Dolly routinely read the voluminous outpourings of such think tanks as Cicero and Rationality, and used their ideas in her own ongoing work for guaranteeing Americans better choices for social insurance that kept control in hands they could trust not to steal the store. She hoped to get the Elks interested in helping her interest Congress in these proposals as the desperately needed means of changing what would otherwise be a continuing series of disasters for lower income Americans. Soon they would need to find her some help with public relations. American Revival was gaining substance. Local Liberty, their outreach to those unhappy with traditional politics was increasing in readership daily. In the past week they had gotten 13,000 hits, not bad for only a month on line.

The hot topic under discussion at Fabituso this month was naturally the presidential primary season. The point of most of the excitement was the identity of the candidate for the Democrat Party nomination. The present choices were characterized only by the lack of enthusiasm they elicited from Democrats and Independents alike.

Wistfully Dave wondered what it would be like to have someone he could vote for instead of against. How would it feel to believe in a candidate as they had believed in Goldwater or William Wallace? Now it seemed like you voted just so a worse choice could be avoided, as if you were dodging a bullet aimed square for the heart of the country you loved.

Otherwise, discussion centered on the war in Iraq and the growing necessity of a draft to begin as soon as the election was over in November. As he listened Dave realized that there was a change he had at first missed. Now, when they talked about the Branch Administration some of them were nervous. They glanced around before speaking; they dropped their voices when they were critical of the continuous barrage of propaganda justifying the war that no one wanted. No one discussed the issue of the voting machines. No one discussed the curiously absent weapons of mass destruction. The bizarre story of Branch crawling under the desk in the Oval Office calling, “Here, weapon, weapon, weapon,” had made the rounds. Dave did not want believe it.

This time no one doubted Branch would be going back into office. How that really made them feel made Dave pause and wonder. Some faces had disappeared from the crowd and among those were the people who had, like him, been moderates or had supported the Wallace administration and been lukewarm on the subsequent Branch term.

Towards the end of the evening Dave overheard two men talking about the rumor that General Brad Schlephosher was considering accepting a draft for President. Hearing that there was discussion of a candidacy for the man gave Dave a momentary surge of hope. When Dave inserted himself into their circle the man who had brought up the subject said it was just a rumor. No one had been able to get the General to say if he had plans for this year. The speaker, who Dave had thought of as a NeoCon come along, sounded disappointed, too, although he looked around to see who else might be listening. Dave felt a slow draining out of the excitement that had initially started to build. The General was universally respected inside and outside of the military as well as by Americans generally. It was clear that no one was going to run against Branch from inside the Republican Party or as an Independent.

From there the same small group, who Dave learned were libertarian leaning, went on to discuss the Libertarian candidates. Dave tuned this out, heading for the refreshment table. A survey of these three individuals had already been accomplished and none of them had anything particularly interesting to say, though along with other Libertarians they spent a lot of time saying it.

When the speaker was announced Dave started easing himself towards the door. Lindsey had not shown up and when her name was mentioned no one would admit to knowing where she was. Now, Dave admitted to himself that it had been the possibility of seeing Lindsey that had drawn him here. As he walked out he wondered why this social gathering had depressed him more than most funerals.

American Revival Headquarters.

Gladys and Sam had eventually returned to Massachusetts but not before they had become part of the Revival. Between them they had vast experience with the United Nations and had provided an enormous amount of input. They had also begun thinking about how the present trend could be changed. This brought into the discussion the World Trade Association, something that Larry and Christopher had just begun to look into. It had troubled Gladys and Sam since its founding in 1995.

As they had seen with the privatization of power in California again there was a decoupling of accountability and profits. But this time the ‘members’ of the WTO were raising themselves to that level of ‘more equal that just people’ accorded to them by having incorporated – and they were asserting the right to the protection of laws while holding themselves above the laws of any particular government.

It was as if the grocer could decide not to deliver but could force you to pay not only for the undelivered groceries but for the court that demanded your money be paid and the policeman who arrested you for nonpayment. Someone likened it to the book, Animal Farm. No one laughed. It was all too true that in this world some animals were more equal than others even in a court of law.

Gladys and Sam recounted how the United Nations was intended to provide justice services between nations so that some of the ugliest evasions and predatory human behavior would be stopped.

The potential of the United Nations to do good in the world had been sadly underutilized.

It was Gladys also who told them about the girl-child she had gotten to know who had been sexually sold when she was eight years old to the American founder of HTP, the original courier service. She gave birth to a baby by the middle aged man when she was just turned nine. Because she as not an American citizen she had no recourse in American courts, but no other court could hear her. The ugliness and wrongness of it appalled everyone in the room. Dave remembered hearing the girl characterized as a prostitute who was trying to take advantage of the wealthy and successful entrepreneur. The blatant unfairness of that nauseated him. How could people use each other this way? Freedom the way he as an American viewed it was about, well, doing right things, not about the license to harm others. Yet allowing American men to abuse children was a regular form of tourist trade. How did this square with the sovereignty the Founders had imagined for the country they had dreamed of as a shining city on a hill?

Without a fair access to law, effectively some people would necessarily be less than human. The pets of most Americans had more standing in court and more rights than foreigners in many cases. As it was, the courts provided by the United Nations were closed to plaintiffs like this young girl, now a frightened young woman not yet 20 trying to care for a child of ten.

Only cases where both parties consented to binding arbitration would be heard in the one International court located in Hague. Men like the founder of HTP would never consent to that.

There were so many outrages that needed answers. By destroying the ability of the United Nations to provide justice as a service, the individuals and corporations involved were creating a world where the powerful could prey on the weak with impunity. Straussianism even went so far as to create a justification for this. Gladys and Sam, unfamiliar with the esoteric philosophy of the NeoCons were stunned, as were many others in the room when Dave told them about the seminar he had attended on the subject where these assertions were made as a matter of course.

Gladys went on to share her work through the American Coalition for Families. Again, it was inequities in the access and application of law that marginalized those without the means to find a hearing in court. America was creating its own second class citizens.

Dave made a note to look into the issues that centered on the justice system. Thus far they had barely touched on that except as it impinged on politics, as in the Orville Johns confirmation and the involvement of the Hamiltonian Society in politicizing the filling of federal judgeships.

They all wanted a world of unfolding possibility that said YES when people did good things and NO when people did things that were wrong. They all agreed that a world where that was true would come about only through persuasion and never through force. It had been hard for the most political types, including Dave, to see that the action of politics was force, but with consideration and understanding the words of now dead thinkers, they admitted the truth of it.

Any one of them was free to try an approach to a problem if they could persuade others to help out. The AR provided the raw material, analysis and thrice checked facts. This agreement had come out of one last long evening of discussion, a going away party. Dave had spent a lot of time listening to the hopes and fears of this amazing collection of people that agreed on so much about the future they were determined to create for their children.

Larry Waterhouse was the kind of guy who did not normally say much; He just listened. But when the talk turned to right versus wrong he injected a comment that shocked everyone.

“Why do you expect people to do the right thing when the right thing always costs more and never pays off?” He had asked with an almost annoyed tone in his voice, as if this was obvious. Then everyone was talking and arguing about it and a new line of inquiry was opened up.

Dave had a horrible feeling this was true. If it was it was amazing that anyone ever did the right thing.

The number of people now involved in AR had grown so that when they sat down to dinner together the table in Dave’s dining room had to be opened up to its full size. That evening they sat down 25 to a dinner of lamb prepared by Bernard and Sam. At least Bernard and Sam had formulated the menu, this being a nod to the sheep ranch that had become Sam’s refuge in New Zealand. Seven of those attending were vegetarians but the menu was varied and there were more than enough different kinds of food to satisfy everyone.

It had become a tradition for everyone to cook and everyone to help clean up afterwards. Fuzz Ball and Margarine, at first nervous about the increased human population, began to get used to having more people around. Fuzz Ball adopted a post on top of the liquor cabinet for watching the proceedings while Margarine preferred the shelf under the kitchen work center. Margarine, being female, was always more practical. She was far more likely to enjoy quick snacks from there.

Dave had learned to like raw food, which surprised him. Their first raw food enthusiast was a former libertarian whom Christopher had recruited.

The best dessert had actually been assembled by a raw food friend of Bernard’s. That confection was simply amazing. Made with the unlikely combination of mango, coconut and curry the pureed delight surprised the palate with a gentle zing, while seducing with a sweetness that left you wanting more. He was not the only one who was surprised and intrigued; he could see that glancing around the table. Suddenly he realized that doing this with the food was a metaphor for what they were doing with ideas. But really listening and understanding the visions of their former political enemies they were testing those visions by comparing them to the visions that had moved them into politics originally. Dave took another taste of the dessert again enjoying the unusual blend of flavors and texture. He smiled. The young woman who had created this dessert was just now tasting the very unraw dessert that Christopher had made. That was composed of chocolate and cherries with lots of refined sugar. She was nearly as young as Christopher and it was obvious from their body language that the interest went beyond dessert.

During the long, slow courses of dinner the group talked about the means that they had seen used to manipulate outcomes in organizations to which they had belonged. Nearly everyone had a personal story and most of them would have been depressing if not for the fact they were becoming the raw material for change.

Eventually one of the new members, a friend of Gladys’ from the United Nations, began making notes to be transcribed and reduced to behavioral strategies. Those would be used in the book AR was producing. The book, tentatively titled, “From Personal to Political: A User’s Guide to Living Rightly.”

Bernard had assumed editorship of the book and Dolly was working with him on the project. Working together gave them opportunities to talk during the day. Dave actually thought it made them more effective, working as a team. They both glowed. Dave was glad for them and sometimes just a little jealous.

Later they were all to agree this had been one of the most valuable insights they had. And the desserts were fantastic.

Lindsey in New York

Lindsey was living in a tiny apartment they had subleased from an old friend who was living in France for a year. The ratty little hole was located deep in the Village just off Bleecker Street. Lindsey spent most of her time either working on the computer or caring for her old friend Lance, who was becoming increasingly feeble over time. Although he made light of it, Lance was not well, and Lindsey knew that. His injuries, sustained during the Second World War, were slowly catching up with him.

It comforted Lindsey to make sure the man who had become a grandfather to her had his coffee and croissant in the morning. Walking over after buying it at the patisserie actually signaled the end of her day. Lindsey had begun working through the night and sleeping during the daylight hours. When Lance had his surgery she would always be there to pick him up and help him home even if for her it was the middle of the night.

Over time Lindsey had begun an online business in selling books and collectibles she picked up cheaply in thrift stores. It was a bright spot for her and there were few of those. Since her location still needed to be hidden this was the only kind of job she could have but she took to it with the zest of a treasure hunt.

During the nights Lindsey sat on a flat cushion she had bought at the Salvation Army. The exotically woven cloth of the thin rectangular pad had reminded her of a childhood book about a sultan’s palace, and there was a magic to the worlds she could touch on the internet in the long lonely hours of the nights. Lindsey was hearing stories far more astonishing than the thousand and one tales told by Scheherazade. These tales included the ancient city of Baghdad, but they took her to places the ancient bartered bride of the king could never have imagined. Scheherazade imagined thievery and death and treasures to save her own life. In the end of the story, she may have even imagined falling in love with the man who held her captive, but she could never have imagined the siren song that had taken center place in Lindsey’s heart.

Scheherazade survived through guile. Lindsey was determined to conquer with truth.

Lindsey had become a revolutionary. Born to a family who had fought in the first American Revolution on every single line of the family, signed the Declaration of Independence, and worked for the Committees of Correspondence, Lindsey had taken a lot for granted. No more. Over the course of months she had reread every word of the founding documents. She had heard them before with only her mind and not her heart. Now she understood.

Her childhood had included 4th of July celebrations when the youngest child in her family read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety to the attentive listeners. She had often wondered why the words moved her mother to tears. Now she knew. She was also moved by the proximity of the courthouse where the courageous acts of a German printer named John Peter Zenger took place.

On August 5, 1735, twelve New York jurors, inspired by the passionate words of Andrew Hamilton, had ignored the instructions of the Royal Governor's hand-picked judges and returned a verdict of "Not Guilty" on the charge of publishing "seditious libels." The Zenger trial is a remarkable story that marked the beginnings of a free press, and the stubborn independence of American jurors. The case had laid the foundation for what would a generation later become the First Amendment of the newly born nation. Astonished, she discovered her roots and the acts of the Founders moved her to a deep sense of reverence and gratitude for the sacrifices they had made.

The Internet held amazing resources that opened up new worlds to the mind and the imagination. It was during just such a journey that Lindsey first encountered the work of Coop Steigler.

Reading over a legal pleading he had written late one night, it suddenly occurred to her how empowering it would be to go into court herself. She again wondered at the courage of John Peter Zenger. Perhaps it wasn’t really possible, but she could read and imagine.

These wanderings into the world of law helped her deal with the frustrations she was finding in the real world. The law suit in New York was going no where. Dicks was handily evading deposition and Cod was still not returning her calls. What had seemed like a hope for justice was sputtering out like a candle drowning in the rain.

Was justice still possible in America?

Charlotte, North Carolina

Although Coop had stopped organizing through his nonprofit, he continued to train people who needed to defend themselves either from rapacious spouses or from the intrusions of the government. He figured that every person he trained was another person who understood what was wrong. And some of them stayed after their own problems were solved and helped him help others.

Coop now had active groups of individuals working and training in 40 states. Their efforts did not make news, but they were beginning to open some eyes to what had been going on.

At first he had thought that the problem was all about greedy, grasping women who just wanted a free ride. He had become active in father’s rights groups and helped them without thinking much about it. Then, he was contacted by a woman in Florida who had been royally screwed, and it was a father’s rights group that had helped her former husband do it to her and her three small children.

The abuse of power and the need for justice was not gender specific and it was not just the courts. It happened everywhere. Where before he had not thought much about the matter, now he started to look into the roots of the problem and saw the need to firmly tie having done the right thing to outcome. Only then the courts were reliable could that happen.

What he really needed was a case that would get visibility. He was keeping his eyes open and he was sure that one of these days he would find it. He just hoped that it would be one worth the effort it would take to ensure that the litigant took the truth home to the people of America.

That is what he had told Karen and all of the others.

“When you walk into that court, remember it does not belong to the Judge, or to the city or the county of the state or even to the federal government. The courts belong to the people so when you walk in it is your court. Remember that, live it, and make sure that everyone knows it.”

The White House

Nine months out from the election and Humstead knew that they would have to use at least three of four of the contingencies he had stockpiled. Sitting at his desk in the White House, Humstead considered which would best serve the purpose while creating the least possible negative exposure.

The next full briefing would be taking place in twelve hours. Humstead glanced down at his watch although the Waterford clock, its parts encased in gleaming gold and ticking chastely, was sitting in plain sight. The clock was a gift from a man who hoped he would manage his campaign for Congress. Humstead had declined the job but kept the clock. Shifting back in his chair he thought carefully about the meeting and which items should be emphasized as possibilities at this juncture.

The war had not been too bad overall. But Humstead was very dissatisfied with the attempts to inject role models that would provide Americans with the appropriate attitude into the public eye. And the movie had been a bomb, although he was not going to say that to the President who still liked watching it over and over again. Somehow, even with all of this power, some threads were slipping through his fingers.

Well, one of the first possibilities was distraction and the best way to do that was to get someone else in the loop to share the blame. Tapping the tips of his fingers together he gazed upwards, toward the ceiling. It was looking like the possibility of turning over formal control to the newly created government in Iraq was going to be problematical. They had put a lot of dependence on Chepolti. If that worked out as planned it would all be fine. If it didn’t, well - he could always dump it on the United Nations.

American Revival Headquarters – a personal moment

The letters and poetry that Gramps had left to Dave that had not been translated from the German had returned from the service Dave had hired, and were sitting on his desk when he had arrived home from Massachusetts. Dave had thought about asking Bernard to translate them, since Bernard had read them in the original German, and then decided he wanted an objective eye to do the work. Now here they were, just waiting for him.

He sat down and picked up the earliest letter and began to read.

Excerpts from the Letters (translated from the original German)

1931

Dearest,

You can always make me laugh, and never more than when your exasperation with some other member of my sad and rough made sex incites your entirely justified outrage. I am very glad it was not me who was your partner in that dissection. I mean in doing the dissection. I know that if you had been dissecting my poor body you would have been kind, kinder than you perhaps were to your partner. Of course he should know all of the parts first. Absolutely he should put them back in the right configuration. Shocking that he did not, but he is just a male so what can you expect? I will hope that your next partner is better prepared and does not expect you to write his part, too.

I would be delighted and honored to act as your escort to the symphony on the occasion of your birthday. Are you going to bring along your instruments – the ones you use for the purpose of dissection? This humble admirer hopes not.

Your savant of economic principles,

Jacob Forman Elderhous

Dear Mr. Turnip,

He made my blood boil. I know I should have been more polite. Mama would have been most annoyed with me for the outburst. The professor of anatomy also expressed his disapproval in the most specific of terms. He was in fact more annoyed and exercised over my behavior than he was with the inability of this nincompoop to learn to differentiate a liver from a kidney. I feel as if the man’s future patients should be warned – although it is unlikely he will ever practice medicine. He told me he is only seeking the degree to ensure that his father will not stuff him into the other family profession of soldier. His actual goal is to write poetry! While I can sympathize with the impulse to write poetry, I find it unlikely he will be able to support himself from such an economically marginalizing endeavor without far more talent than I have observed in him so far. Unfortunately, or fortunately, perhaps, he will be my dissection partner for the rest of the term. And you see I am reading the small volume that you recommended to my attention and am finding it at least entertaining enough to keep me awake for a short while each night.

The occasion of my birthday will be very wonderful and please remember to wear your most formal attire! Mama will insist and you do not want to be forced to wear my brother’s again. Have you found a job for the long vacation? I will be working in the clinic here and in that way efficiently satisfy the needs of monetary augmentation and also add to my student hours.

I look forward to the previously mentioned appointment with anticipation!

Fondly,

D.

Dearest,

Turnip? But it is so pedestrian a vegetable! I would prefer, I think to be your radish or, God forbid, even your onion. Both have more bite and character. Although one can leave a bitter taste in your mouth and the other can make you cry. Perhaps asparagus?

The acquisition of an item worthy to be presented on the occasion of natal celebration is complete. Please give the enclosed short note to your Mama. You are free to read it though I know you would be even more likely to do so if I told you to restrain yourself. Two notes under one cover of envelope and postage, you see what a good manager of money I am?

I will be missing my Friday night with the Professor to spend it with you; not that I mind. The music to be enjoyed with the Professor is far less melodious than that we will be enjoying at the Symphony. But his, of course, is oriented only to the understanding of economics.

Will your Aunt and Uncle be of the party on Saturday?

Your potato,

Jacob Forman Elderhous

 

Dave looked over the words in English and then at each letter, studying the hand writing. The paper was over 70 years old and very fragile.

As Dave slowly put them back in the carved wooden box he had bought to hold them along with the translation, he thought about the happy tones of trust that seemed to naturally blend their lives together. How did two people build that kind of trust between them? Dave’s thoughts glanced off of his relationship with Lindsey. That hurt.

It had been his relationship with Dearest Darling that had provided the direction and motivation for so much of what Gramps became in his later life. He had anchored himself in her. Having read Gramps’ diaries from later life Dave knew this had never changed. Love, real love, endures and gives us place in ourselves even when the person we love is no longer there.

Eventually he would read every word of what felt like a last message from Gramps.

Chapter Nineteen - Have I Got a Deal for You!

                         "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."

                                                                                                                    Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969),
                                                                                                                    Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

Have I Got a Deal for You!

A Change of Procedure from the Highest Level

Humstead was well aware that county and state organizations of the Republican Party traditionally acted autonomously in most things. That had perhaps been an interesting privilege at one time when the world and America was a simpler and less competitive place. But things had changed now and this would just have to change with it. The Republican Party needed some reorganization.

A perusal of the numbers for the Get out the Vote and fundraising had persuaded Humstead that a new approach was needed that would enable the Republican Party to keep abreast of the times and keep the number of Republican votes rising. Local organizations had annoying ways of projecting their own concerns on the issues and also, sometimes, failed to feel the total and all out enthusiasm for electing the candidate that they should of course feel if they were good Republicans. One little chink in the smooth running of those cogs could mean that a whole block, a whole precinct, a whole part of a county, or even an entire county might not get the full on focus required. Briefly Humstead shuddered at the thought of a whole state or part of a state being left at the mercy of a volunteer.

Voters were notional and could just take it in their heads to do something stupid, like not vote even if they were Republicans and knew that it was their DUTY to vote for the HEAD of their PARTY and a SITTING PRESIDENT even if they had a few questions about a few minor points like the war in Iraq. Thinking on this point he picked up a pen and made a note on the heavily embossed pad of paper bearing the Presidential seal that he kept on his desk.

The marketing department had done a great job coming up with titles and themes for the PARTY FOR THE PRESIDENT Campaign. Local Partiers could download some of the decorations and games to be played at the event – though it was probably enough to just have sufficient liquor to make sure the punch bowl did not run low.

Humstead shuddered a little. He had heard through his in depth snoops on the internet that there was even an organizing committee of Republicans considering voting for the Democrat, if the person nominated was not totally unacceptable to them. Thankfully it looked like a good bet the candidate would be Jack Bradstreet, the junior senator from Massachusetts, so that would not be a problem. Jack had all of the charisma of a pile of cod two days dead and unrefrigerated.

One thing about Branch, he had charisma. That had been the first thing that struck Humstead about him the first time they met over twenty years ago. He had the hard, tight good looks and the attitude that people noticed. Briefly, Humstead felt that familiar wash of sadness that his own physique was what it was. Dumpy. That was what that ugly woman from the Forum of Republican Women had said when she thought he couldn’t hear. But he had. He had fixed HER wagon. A tight little smile played over the chubby face.

Humstead had checked out the issue of loyalty voting, as he had decided to call it, but found that no law actually required a person to vote for the candidate of their party. Amazing that no one had thought this point through thoroughly enough before. Craig Humstead had turned this over to someone else for consideration. Leave no stone unturned, he always said.

Looking over the plan lay out on the huge computer screen sitting on the Louis XIIII desk where he oversaw operations for the larger campaign Humstead felt a stab of absolute and unadulterated pride. This was a real innovation. No one before himself had thought about actually changing the organization of the local party structures to help the Republican Party control things directly from the highest level. There had been some minor yapping from the dead wood in places like California. But the Republican Party was so ineffective there that they should have sent him thank you notes. Now they wouldn’t even have to pretend they could think.

Humstead shifted in his seat as he flashed through the projections for Presidential Parties to be scheduled directly from the office here into the homes and offices of activists all over the country. Just thinking about it made him tingle all over.

It was his job to see that the President was reelected and he was not going to fail no matter what it took.

The body count for Americans dying in Iraq continued to rise. The body count for Iraqis also was going up but no one bothered to count those bodies. A twelve year old boy, unarmed and watching the fighting from the roof of his home in Baghdad was shot to death. His father asked that the American who killed his son apologize. His request was ignored.

Confidential Briefing Prep.

Humstead was getting tired of this kind of thing. The President was receiving objections to the marketing plan Humstead had so carefully assembled. Humstead experienced a stab of irritation at the President. Sometimes the guy forgot just how close this thing could be. The multilevel marketing plan was simply brilliant; it was also necessary if the administration was to hold onto the presidency for the second term. Republicans would get used to it. They would enjoy it. Having parties they could understand. So why did he have to listen to all of the whining and objections?

As part of the prep work for the briefing Humstead was going over the updates on his seven layers of contingency plans. The Recall Campaign in California had been far more successful than they had imagined possible. The originator, a Californian activist, had used the Internet approach to petitioning. Obviously, this innovation was going to change petition and initiative drives. This time it had worked in their favor. Humstead made a note to look into the means for limiting its application for voter originated initiatives that would need to be defeated. The fringe crazies could be creative and would have to be countered. Having a movie star as a governor and a Republican was a piece of luck that would stand the campaign in good stead. Humstead planned to use it to the hilt. Give them some glamour and there were fewer problems all around.

The means Dicks had used to deal with the sexual accusations in California showed just how much he had grown through this last bad patch. He really should be rewarded. Humstead made a note to discuss this with the VP. Better to pass it through there first. Dicks’ book was due out this summer. Maybe they could do something for him in the White House.

Pausing, Humstead looked out the window. It was a mildly pleasant day. It might well be necessary for the VP to step down. If so, that should be managed in a way that created sympathy. Humstead glanced down at the list of potential replacements. Terrance Trotter, the former governor of Wisconsin now serving as Secretary of Health and Human Resources, was high up on the list. But there were some negatives there that would have to be dealt with. Humstead made a note. The woman who had filed papers against Trotter for sexual harassment was a Republican woman, but she could certainly be handled. They had experience with Republican women.

It was annoying but nothing to worry about in the long term.

There were other issues that were, however.

The issue of the draft had been introduced into the discussion, not from the administration but from a source with deniability. They did not want to unduly alarm young potential voters. Better they would stay home this November given their tendency to vote left.

The Democratic candidate, Bradstreet, was running a Me Too campaign on the policy on the war in Iraq so Humstead did not anticipate this becoming a real issue. He smiled. The idea of closing bases in Europe had played well at the last briefing. Those troops would then be available and the cost savings would be good for public relations as well as help the Administration direct needed resources into the war in Iraq and those campaigns still in the planning stages. Campaigns were fought out on perception, personality, and a positioning of issues that motivated specific groups.

Humstead, glancing down the list of issues deemed to have legs with their target groups, was satisfied that their ammunition would trump that of the opposition. After all, with a majority in Congress they could actually deliver.

American Revival – New York

It had been a wonderful evening. Gladys and Sam had felt for the first time as if there was some real hope for rebuilding the original vision of the United Nations, the vision they had both watched destroyed through manipulation over the past two generations.

The get togethers at the American Revival Headquarters had slowly been growing over the last weeks as more old friends and associates began talking about the work American Revival was doing. Gladys and Sam had extended their stay past what was originally planned and rather spontaneously they began getting together in the evenings to discuss the problems experienced with accomplishing their goals through the United Nations and elsewhere.

The United Nations was intended as the tool that would help humanity achieve a better world for everyone. Changing and redefining how it was used should not be a problem. Sam and Bernard had immediately seen ways this could be accomplished and Gladys, from her deep knowledge of the organization, helped them define and enlarge those means.

Much of this had been news to Dave, Dolly, Christopher and Larry. They had a very different view of the United Nations. But they talked about it in depth using the flow charts and development histories Larry had put together showing how all human organizations had developed over time. These included ancient church states, the original form of human government. They noticed the immediate tendency to hierarchy and wealth transfer, always upwards. This had nothing to do with who produced the wealth, it was clear. But finally they could see the picture. They agreed that every organization, including governments, were human tools for organizing human activities and providing such services as justice and security.

The fact was that doing the right thing, for individuals, businesses, organizations, or governments should pay off. Doing the wrong thing should exact liabilities. It was up to people to make that true.

Until now they had always viewed each other as The Enemy. Now they met and began talking. When there were disagreements they talked through them, separating the means of accomplishing those goals from the goal itself.

How to make right things pay off. It was an interesting challenge.

It had been Dolly who asked how the United Nations actually could work. Smiling, Gladys told her.

“It really started by opening the United Nations phone book. Any individual in the world could start with a delegation member or a section of their own government or NGO and/or any office in the tall Secretariat Building by simply looking in the back of the UN phone book for the list of offices - and finding the name of the very person in charge of the subject in mind. The phone books were available through the United Nations book store.

Take water, for instance. That Secretariat Office has been run by Melody Brandis forever. You look up Melody’s number; it is actually 212-000-8550. She is listed under the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs but she knows her counterpart in every UN office that has any concern with WATER. Melody headed the UN Year of Water - 2003 which has now led to the Decade of Water which is a sort of PR effort by the UN which was forbidden from having any PR functions. There is an equivalent of a Melody for every topic known to man and she was always delighted to help out, pointing the inquirer in the right direction.

Being a Non-governmental Organization with the UN allows anyone to observe, recommend, use the free communication and meeting room/translation facilities, learn about experts in their field and educate locally and globally. The big NGOs like the Red Cross and World Wildlife Fund and International Peace Committee and the World Forum of Fisherpeoples now could actually speak during sessions of the UN. Every one would hear you.

Individuals have gotten treaties passed and effected tremendous changes. You could convene a conference that drew people with common interests together from all over the world. And all of this happened without cost. The United Nations makes the facilities and the network for communicating accessible and available.

When a proposal is accepted by vote of the General Assembly it became an agenda item and the Secretary General was obligated to support it.

Gladys told them, enthusiasm lighting her eyes, that she had done this twice herself.

Continuing, she talked about other disused resources.

Across the way there is the World Council of Churches, which does not do much now, but it could. It, too, needed to be used intelligently. That is what the United Nations is; a resource, a tool sitting and waiting to be taken up and applied to solve the problems of the world.

Dave and the crew at American Revival had not known much about the United Nations. This had surprised Gladys and Sam at first, but it explained a lot. Dave, Christopher and Larry had all received their political education from the Libertarian or Republican quadrant. They had bought into the Line they were told without any checking whatsoever. Now that they reconsidered this, using the thrice checked facts rule, they were chagrined. Larry too notes. He would check the facts recounted by Gladys but none of them much doubted, given the other lies told by the NeoCons, where the truth would lead them.

Astonished, Gladys and Sam had flatly denied such a conspiracy ever existed. Gladys found the assumption funny. Sam was slightly offended.

This was the mythology of the Right/Libertarian political viewpoint that was so accepted that it was no longer even arguable. But if this was so, asked Sam, why did the U.S. government call on the United Nations when ever certain kinds of problems appeared? This had been true no matter what party was in power. Was it appropriate for America to dictate to the rest of the world on issues within their borders or on issues that affected their ability to fish and for their people to live in a clean environment? Why were two sets of standards alright?

Interestingly enough, it was Larry who responded to this. Larry had taken over the data analysis and had been correlating the political spin, party specific mythologies, with the actions of each political party and with the corporations who donated. He had deduced some time ago that a two tiered system of ethics had replaced the earlier system, one that viewed all people as equal.

Both major political parties really had adopted a monarchist world view. “Americans are worth more than people of other nationalities.” Put baldly, that was a despicable and ugly assertion. It had made everyone present cringe. Larry had not yet bothered to determine when the transition had begun. Larry asked brightly if Dave wanted him to factor for the perceived value of other nationalities as represented by decimals or percentages. Also, the dominance of this mythological perception varied throughout the American population as a whole. Did he want to look at that demographically? If it mattered he would expedite that research. Dave told him not to bother. It had happened. Who was responsible was not the biggest problem. What they were going to do about it was what really mattered.

That people all mattered equally, Dave said, was the only appropriate viewpoint.

As it turned out, the insertion of a class system in valuing human life had been an essential for the installation of a totalitarian state in several of the instances in recent history. Certainly this had been true in Nazi Germany. Larry had the numbers and had correlated the shift of public perception with the repetition of argumentation and propaganda in the days leading up to the openings of the death camps.

During this dialogue Dave felt himself moving through a strange transformation. On some level he had still believed that what they were doing was a matter of reform. He had started this in the firm belief he was going to rescue the ‘good’ party, meaning the Republican Party from the hands of its abductors. That view had gradually faded. It was now clear that many of these people had moved too far from the founding principles of freedom and equality to move back. It was unclear if freedom had ever really been on their agenda at all. Gladys and Sam had also been shocked. Their party had also failed to be a tool that ensured that doing the right thing paid off.

That this had been an intentional manipulation was clear from the source of the propaganda. This also lead to the irreducible conclusion that America had ceased having a two party system quite some time before. Both parties had become the tools of one larger interest group. The policies, the funders, those who profited, and the mythologies diverged in some areas but over all they were the same.

When Larry, going through the numbers, made this clear Dave realized he had begun to believe this some time before. He simply had not yet verbalized it, even to himself.

Marginalizing the United Nations had been accomplished over many administrations and through the concerted actions of people from both parties. Even that was only one point in a larger pattern. The power of the people to control their own lives, make their own decisions, live responsibly in the personal autonomy first envisioned by the Founders, had been converted to a system where the people, land, and all resources were viewed by the State as a possession of the State not yet converted or used. That the government saw foreigners as a resource with even fewer remaining rights was no comfort to anyone.

Now the question remained. What were they going to do about it?

Lindsey returns to New York

After spending eight months in a basement in Georgia New York looked entirely different. The noise in the City was a sharp contrast to the near silence of the Brenderhoffer’s house in Georgia. The Dogwood trees had launched their flurries of butterfly-like flowers when Lindsey waved goodbye to the family. She knew she would miss Dwayne and the kids and Humpershots. In the eight months she had been there Lindsey had come to love all of the Brenderhoffers and that kind of connection never really ends; they had become family and family, real family, is always there for each other. If the attorney had not told them that depositions were due to start Lindsey would have stayed in Georgia.

Returning, Lindsey believed, would allow her the justice she deserved. Instead, the summer back in New York delivered one shock after another. Her attorney, Hiram Cod, Esq., ignored her questions. Her calls to his office went unanswered. The depositions she had come back to have were never set. He had said April but August rolled around and she had not heard from him in four months.

She started to feel that terrible sense of panic that had hounded her when she had first gone to the authorities to report the abuse. Now, looking back on it she realized that Dicks had played the system like a violin and he had had lots of help. He had persuaded the District Attorney’s office to treat her like a felon. He had gotten her former stepfather and a former boy friend to write perjurous declarations. Vlad and her stepfather had each received ‘considerations’ of great value to them. The former boy friend was now writing for the online adjunct of the Canal Street Journal. The former stepfather had gotten to rub shoulders with people who otherwise would never have given him the time of day. For some people, that would not be enough to motivate them to do something so ugly, but for Cliff Ironworker any opportunity to rub body parts with people of influence was more than enough motivation.

Cliff had tried to get into bed with Lindsey while he was divorcing Linden. Lindsey had ordered him out of the room. Later Linden used a private detective to look into his personal behavior and had learned he was a sexual pervert who had probably married her because of her nubile daughters.

Lindsey had been forced to sit through six hours of interrogations by the ADA assigned to her case. Her attorney had not been present. She had not been asked a single question about the abuse. Instead she was forced to answer questions about her sex life and having been sexually abused by her uncle as a child. Evidently being a victim cancelled your rights in American law, at least when you were fighting the wrong people.

Life could be so ugly. Neither of them deserved what was happening.

Lindsey was not seeing most of her old friends. It had become clear that Tom Dicks was more politically useful both to the movement and to the NeoCons. If even her godfather had turned his back on her for reasons of political expedience then it was hopeless to expect anyone else would help. It had been the experience with Dave that had forced Lindsey to look elsewhere for friendship and support. His hurtful words, his disbelief, had felt like a knife twisted in her heart. Dave had been her friend, someone she could talk to who would just listen, who had no agenda, someone who she could trust. She missed that.

She had seen him turning the corner towards his apartment near the Starbucks where they had met for coffee so often but she had hung back and let him walk ahead of her.

The months had held other kinds of hurts and shocks coming at her like the blows of a pile driver.

Lindsey sat staring at her phone. She had called her attorney fifteen times in the last two weeks and he still had not returned a single call. The attorney had demanded she be back in New York for depositions that were to have started a week ago. Lindsey had already sent him a full chronology of events, documentation of the frauds with letters from the bank, documentation of phone calls she had made, visits to the banks, and other proofs. He also had copies of taped conversations and articles about the events. Along with that Lindsey had sent a list for discovery that needed to be submitted to the court for subpoenas. It had not been submitted.

Now, this morning, Lindsey had gotten a call from Ray Rayford Stiller telling her to pick up Our Country, a leftist journal that went out nationally. It is there had been an article by Felix Eunuchman, a slightly slimy journalist who it was generally known was negligent about doing his due diligence. Lindsey had had some contact with him the year before when he had written an article mentioning her without using her name.

Reading the article, seeing her name, made Lindsey want to curl up and die. For the three years of the relationship she had held on to the hope that they would marry and replace the baby she had aborted. She had told her self that over and over again. She had had the abortion to protect the man she loved and also the movement that she passionately believed was protecting the cause of liberty.

How could they do this to her? How could they accuse her of being a liberal spy? Their friends knew better and were silent.

Ray offered to write a rebuttal. Lindsey, nearly in tears, told him she would be very grateful if he would. When she finally put down the phone after telling her mother she was shaking. This followed on the heels of another attack on her good name and the credibility of her mother. Linden had been active in the Forum for Republican Women for many years. Earlier in the spring the President of the Forum for California had invited Dicks to speak at their quarterly conference. Shocked, Linden had protested to be ordered to be silent by their state president. Did this mean, Linden had asked, that the Republican Party and the Forum endorsed abuse?

It was obvious that Dicks was doing everything possible to discredit both of them. It was exactly the same behavior, transferred to his personal life that he had used against Jeb Franks during the Quince Administration. He told completely unsubstantiated lies and asked they be accepted because he used ‘confidential sources.’ In their case he also, Lindsey had discovered, ‘confided’ in people over the hideousness of the trauma he had undergone. Over the past months Lindsey had discovered, with disgust, how he painted himself. Of course the stories he told were complete fabrications but no one, not one person, ever checked or even called them to ask. People generally fell into two categories in this regard. Either Dicks was useful to them politically and they wanted to stay on his good side or they were intimidated and afraid to say anything.

Lindsey well knew that she and her mother were far less useful than Dicks to those eager to advance themselves in politics. She simply had not thought then that so many people could be so corrupt or so afraid. But of course they were. That was a fact she had now accepted and learned to live with. What she would not do was give up.

The Democrats had surprised her. That Mervin had passed up the chance to get back at Dicks by helping had been astonishing. Briefly, Lindsey wondered why then dismissed the thought. Thinking about all that she and her mother were risking to defend themselves made her sick. The internal bleeding that Dicks’ abuse had caused had slowly stopped. She hardly ever vomited blood any more. But the three years she had endured, the lies the manipulation, and the abuse, that had changed her. At one time the ideas of liberty had been something in the past, something she accepted as already won. Now she knew that this was a battle still to be fought. And no matter what that battle was going to happen.

Looking across the room Lindsey saw the picture of George Washington. Very few people seemed to know that the winter in Valley Forge had actually been a training session for the desperately ill prepared army that Washington had led from one disastrous lost battle to another. Washington had had to confront the fact he was a general in name only in the months leading up to the winter encampment at Valley Forge.

Washington’s military experience had been too limited. He had realized that only after the war was in process. But no colonial officer was better qualified, either. If Washington had asked to be relieved it would have been devastating to the Revolution so instead he had taken the money provided by Congress and found a Prussian, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Stuebe, a major skilled in the arts of warfare who styled himself a Baron, to train him and his army. It had worked and the campaign that began in June of 1778 made the winning of the war a reality.

Lindsey wondered how it had felt for Washington to decide at such a time that you needed to go back to school to do the job you were already trying to do. It took a real courage to do that, a courage that went beyond the physical and into the spirit. Real courage always involves confronting your own fears and limitations.

Looking at the picture Lindsey imagined how he had felt. He must have confronted his pride, his honor, and his sense of self in those days and hours when he realized he was failing.

Well, what Washington had done changed the course of the Revolution. This small cousin would do no less. It is a false pride that refuses to see the truth. What had happened to her was not just about domestic violence, though that was important. It had become an issue of power and how power in the hands of the unethical could be manipulated and abused. No one was going to help. Therefore they, she and her mother, needed to learn how to help themselves. She needed to know more and there was no time like the present to begin.

Charlotte, North Carolina

It had seemed so close. They had come so close to getting the Mitchell children returned to John and Helen. Coop hated to think about it. When he looked into their faces he felt like he was burning with shame. Even though they had told him it was not his fault, and it wasn’t, at least all of it, Coop still knew that it had been the unwarranted trust he had given all too freely that had allowed this to happen. It embarrassed him that his trust had been invested not only in strangers but in people who should have known he should question more closely.

The woman had seemed so credible. Initially, she had gotten in touch with Dirk Smithers. Coop had met Dirk while he was helping Dirk out with Dirk’s own case. Dirk was bright and eager to get involved in the organization Coop was building. Soon, Coop had appointed him his second in command and let him do fundraising in the name of the nonprofit they had founded. Dirk became the out front guy, talking to the public and the media. Coop was glad to let him do it; he preferred training people to do the work in court. That was the way they had organized it and it seemed to be working well until Frederica La Fond arrived.

Coop had found himself somehow obligated to pay for her ticket for her first trip into Charlotte from their organization’s account. He had not liked that. Initially, Frederica had told them she would be flying in on the corporate jet but then it had become inconveniently unavailable. Frederica had her own organization that sold short flyers giving advice on how to handle pro se law suits and how to deal with the DSS when they began their machinations. Later, Coop discovered that all of these well written pieces had been lifted whole from the excellent book by the woman who had helped Frederica out when she had gotten into trouble with the DSS herself. No credit was given to the author who had done the work.

Frederica had come into Charlotte, creating tremendous excitement and making enormous claims. But she immediately begun criticizing the work Coop had done to reunite the Mitchell kids with their parents. This had been bad enough but it got worse.

Frederica had shared her own tragic story. According to Frederica she had been in hiding from an abusive husband for years. He was in jail serving time for raping a 14 year old girl. The outpouring of compassion and awe that she had been able to survive in the face of this kind of pain brought her into town on a wave of enthusiasm. The first trip had been filled with excitement. Coop had immediately been concerned because her stories did not seem to make sense to him, but he deferred to the others he had been working with. If they wanted her he would try to see the good in it.

But when she came back the holes in her story had turned into chasms deep enough to hold a regiment. Instead of a jet her second arrival was in the driver’s seat of a U-haul with her ten children occupying the back illegally and without being allowed bathroom breaks. Coop learned from the people at the commune where she had been living for the last year and a half that there had been serious problems - and she had left the commune with a big slice of their property in the back of her U-haul. Even at that they did not want her back. They were just glad to get rid of her. Frederica’s children, ages a year and a half to ten, often urinated on the floor according to the people at the commune. This observation was confirmed by those she stayed with in North Carolina. The kids were filthy, unhappy and badly raised.

Coop was appalled. While he had not reported them to the authorities himself, when asked had been truthful as to what he and others had observed. It had been the problems with Frederica that had caused the DSS to withstand their attempts to reunite the Mitchells with their children. Frederica’s attack on his credibility had been bad enough but what followed was worse.

The event and the aftermath had taught him not to trust without checking. That aftermath had abruptly altered the make up of his then growing nonprofit foundation. He had lost the case and he had lost someone he thought of as a friend.

Coop had found out that Dirk was sleeping with the daughter of a family they had been helping. Coop had gotten the call from one of the other litigants he had trained on his cell phone while he was doing a brake job for the old man who lived two lots down in his mobile home park. The old man could not afford to pay for having it done. Coop wanted to make sure he had a car that would get him where he needed to go and home safe. Decent people help each other, that was how he had been raised and what he believed.

Sighing, Coop looked over the records he had finally extracted from Dirk. The man had been falsifying tax donation records to benefit the girl’s family. Cleaning up the mess would be no small matter. But it must be handled, and honestly.

Coop ejected Dirk from his position. The man’s charm had only been exceeded by his greed and bad judgment. The aftermath had been nasty but that must be shouldered. Coop never had a problem shouldering his load. That is what a man did and he would never be anything less than a man.

A Military Family

Nora had just picked the kids up from school when the doorbell rang. As with all military wives whose husbands are serving overseas she felt a stab of fear; the doorbell could announce a chaplain with a long face and bad news. This was bad news, but bad news of another kind.

The woman from the DSS asked a lot of nosy questions about how she was educating their children. She demanded to see their medical records, looked around the house and told her there was a lot that needed to be changed. Looking around her neat but too small house after the woman left Nora wondered what she could have done differently. And she was afraid. Another family had lost their children the week before after a similar visit. They seemed to be targeting the families of military probably because the obedience demanded by the military made them easy marks.

But Nora was not going to wait. The family who had lost their children had joined an organization that was led by a woman who was getting results. Nora found their number and called. Karen answered the phone. Her calm voice made Nora feel less frightened. This could be handled. Nora straightened up, calming herself. If her husband could risk his life to keep them free she could make sure their kids were here when he returned from doing his duty.

Segment with Tough Talk

The commentators and pundits begin talking about the present need for a draft. No one objects.

Oil prices are rising. Trains carrying troops for Homeland security begin traveling through the night to various locations.

Chapter Thirteen

“I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

                                                                                                            Professor Bernardo de la Paz in
                                                                                                            The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

The Freedom Movement

The terrace was iced with snow now, and Bernard and Dave watched the Empire State Building from behind the glass of the French windows. Fuzz Ball spent a significant amount of time leaping at birds that huddled there close to the glass, frustrated by the surface but unwilling to stop trying. Dave smiled, trying not to laugh. The Fuzz would look so offended if he did. Bernard, not normally a cat person, had accepted the huge old feline as the personality he was. Certainly Fuzz Ball had accepted him after a period of watching cautiously from under the coffee table and from the bookcases. The negotiations had lasted about a month. Now Bernard knew just where to scratch. Fuzz Ball would roll over so that Bernard could stroke his belly, too, purring deep grumbly purrs that vibrated his entire body.

Fuzz Ball was splayed out on his back on the carpet, inviting a good rub. He slowly swiveled his head and looked at Bernard, sitting on the couch, hands behind his head. Dave noticed and laughed, reaching down and giving the cat a rub that set the motor going.

The ice made fragile patterns on the surface of the window. They were always changing as the light glazed the surface, transforming as the minutes ticked past. Dave and Bernard had stopped paying attention to Fuzz Ball, much to the cat’s annoyance. They were talking about the frustrations of the present tense of their research.

They had reached a tipping point. They now could see the past with its ever growing centralization of control through government and the increasing hunger for power this had bred. The greeds of the least ethical had changed the world for the worse. Dave had read their books, filled with self-congratulation and justifications. The NeoCons were just the most recent generation of thugs, perhaps the most successful in history but no different from countless legions of takers now dead and dust. Even if it were possible to take them out, they would have warped government still further, removing it from the control of the people. America had arrived at where she was today in just such increments; a combination of good intentions misused and the naked greed of those who bent and rewrote every rule to their own purposes.

How far did it go now? Good people like Fredrick Barry were working with this administration; bad apples were there, but to what extent were they really in control? Sitting down and working together, Bernard and Dave came up with a scant list of names of public figures that might be trust worthy and a longer list about which one of the other of them had questions. There were both Republicans and Democrats on the list.

America needed a revival of understanding and faith in itself and its institutions; a return to the clarity of a previous time. How could they help this happen?

What would not work was clear.

Dave had taken Bernard to several of the Fabituso Society Meetings, but the familiars there had just amused or annoyed him, and they both agreed that Bernard was not good at pretense. The people from Fabituso were mostly NeoCons or followers; those that were neither were very much in the box and did not see the problem. Dave had started enlarging his circle of acquaintance and found that most people either could not see out of the box or did not want to. They had the inside decorated to their taste and change caused clashes in their emotional or intellectual decorating scheme.

Civil, social and specific interest groups were pretty much the same about the inside of the box syndrome as were most professors, even those who prided themselves on being professional intellectuals did not see.

The questions took Dave and Bernard back to source material and to the realization that again they still did not know enough. This was coupled with a growing sense of impending doom. They needed to know; slowly they were beginning to realize they also needed allies.

These recent months had focused them on events now unfolding; the L.O.Y.A. L.T.Y. Act had shocked both of them down past their shoes. Not even hard line liberals like Jimmy McGee, the Senator from Massachusetts and the brother of assassinated president Jerry McGee, had raised a voice in objection. Bernard had had lunch with Jimmy in the airport in Boston while he was waiting for a plane while he, Bernard, was still working for Peace for the Planet. He had been impressed with the man’s approachability. They had really talked, Bernard said. Dave was skeptical. As a Republican he had grown up viewing all of the McGees as bad guys.

No, Bernard said, he is a good guy. He went on to explain why he thought so.

They had seen him sit down at a table in front of the MacDonald’s in the Airport after getting himself a quarter pounder with coffee and fries. He placed the suit bag he was carrying on the seat opposite him and was preparing to dig into the French fries when Bernard and his boss, Jess Stone, approached him, asking if he had a moment to speak with them.

McGee told them to have a seat, recognized Jesse from past meetings and told them he was happy to have the chance to help if he could. Bernard was impressed by his firm handshake and lack of ceremony. Dave was impressed that the senior senator from Massachusetts carried his own bag but still skeptical. That did not explain away his many years of womanizing or the death of a young pregnant campaign worker he had caused. Dave did not need to elaborate. The whole country had watched the unfolding of those events. But, Bernard said, can’t someone be good in one part of his life and bad in another?

Dave frowned, seemingly lost in thought.

Bernard went on. He and his boss had explained the problem they were facing. It had to do with the fisherpeople; the Congress had again changed the rules on them, substituting very different criteria for determining if the cod off New England were endangered. By the previous standards, literally the standards that were in place the day before, the population of cod was 75% of the way towards completely replenished. Today because of the new standards, standards the committee openly admitted were speculative; they were back to 25%. This meant more cutting of days to local fishermen who were even now marginalized for making their traditional living from the sea. Senator McGee was extremely sympathetic, promised letters of support and aid and then later followed through and delivered.

As they said goodbye he had nodded, smiled, and told both of them to keep in touch.

The recounted conversation surprised Dave, who had a very different conception of just who McGee was. It did not include carrying his own bags and eating at MacDonald’s and being nice to activists who accosted him there and even following through with the promised assistance. It was a sharp contrast in a lot of different ways. Dave would have to think about that. But McGee had voted for the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act, Dave pointed out. Bernard had no explanation for that sad fact. Nearly the entire Republican contingent in Congress had voted for it, too. Dave glanced down at his lap top. Three Republicans had voted against the Act, as had one Independent from Vermont. The most vocal Republican exception had been the cantankerous Don Allen, a congressman from Texas who had been the Libertarian candidate for President in 1988. Dave noted his name as someone they might be able to trust. Pausing, he looked up at Bernard.

“Are we going to have age limitations?” Bernard looked at him, puzzled.

“What is rolling around in your head? Help from some of Gramp’s friends?”

“No. The other end of the scale.” Dave smiled. Christopher Mershon would be just the kind of person he could trust.

The next night Christopher joined their briefing session, taking on the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act as his special project. He told Dave he expected extra credit, grinning. This was work he could really enjoy. He had immediately begun tracking enforcement where he could find cases, and projecting activities most Americans considered legal that could now get them arrested.

That list made Bernard’s eyes bug out slightly.

For instance, a small group of Muslims in Maryland, who had been getting together for dinner and paintball games for a while, were visited by the FBI and Homeland Security. They were then charged with seditious activity under the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act. For the year past they have been getting together on the weekends to play paint balls, having a great time whacking each other out in the brush at a local paint ball retreat. After 9/11, one of them had posed the question if what they were doing would attract attention. Most of them, local businessmen and loyal Americans, thought that was funny until the knock at the door. Now they were facing hard time in the Federal prison.

After talking about it, the three agreed they should follow the case to see how it played out.

Other cases were even stranger. Elderly women getting on planes were sexually harassed. Children are searched. Traveling was becoming a very hostile and frightening experience. The fear and insecurity was moving closer to home every moment. Many thought it was worth putting up with if it only kept them safe. But did it? Reviewing the material they had on terrorism had driven Dave and Bernard to the conclusion that it did not make Americans safe; it just made them less free.

After poring over the reams of documentation, Dave remembered one of Gramps sayings, “If the clerk makes mistakes that are always in his favor, it is not a mistake.” If the anti-terrorism measures were failing, they were never meant to work; another agenda was in motion and the point was not terrorism. But if not, what was it?

Christopher had actually graduated from high school now but was taking some time for extended studies before heading off to college in California. He had been admitted for the next year, when he turned 17, to Stanford. He had won a full scholarship and Dave was sure he had earned it several times over.

As soon as he had walked into the apartment, he had found lots to do. Looking over the website and database, he had immediately had some suggestions for reorganizing. But beyond that, he also had been studying what was going on from his own point of view and had focused on what was, to both Dave and Bernard, the younger and much younger generation.

Bernard had down loaded all 653 pages of the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act and they had begun an in-depth analysis of what it actually said and how it could be applied. Christopher had read parts of it already and had noticed a parallel with the passage of the Enabling Act in Nazi Germany. Having called this to their attention, Bernard and Dave were struck with the similarity.

That insight had caused sleepless nights, made terrible for Dave with nightmares. Suddenly events like Waco and Ruby Ridge were creeping closer to the mainstream. The momentum of shift towards a totalitarian state was accelerating.

It was one morning after yet another such sleepless night when Bernard walked in from his apartment, still looking like he needed eight hours of down time, when they finally came up with, if not a plan, at least another direction. When Christopher arrived a few minutes later, the three sat down for what they later called the Square One Meeting.

Bernard had shaken his head over the invasion of Afghanistan; they had nightmares over the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y Act; both of them had come to doubt everything they heard from official sources. Coming in the wake of 9/11, with its heightened sense of national unity, these frightening outrages were bitter to swallow.

They knew enough to know they and their country was in serious trouble.

It was time to begin identifying who might be allies. Dave and Bernard, looking at each other, realized that this could be risky with the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act in place. There was a lot to do and it had to be done carefully.

The days were full. The winter months passed in a blur, each day filled with overwhelming details, names, dates, financial relationships and the steadily growing vision of a corporate world that had become secured by interests of all kinds to government.

Between the three of them, the list of things to do, people to contact and research to do stopped growing and started holding steady at too much but not impossible. Nights were quiet. Fuzz Ball had discovered that under the covers was preferable to on top of Dave’s chest and, after a brief flurry of hostilities, Dave gave in and let him have his way. Otherwise he occupied the bed alone. He had stopped calling Lindsey; it hurt too much and his growing sense of anger was hard to hide. He had run into Tom Dicks at a conference given by the New York Institute, and the two had had a long talk. Dave was unsure afterwards how the subject had come around to Lindsey, but so it had. From Dicks, Dave heard that while the two had had a brief affair it had been over for a long time. Dicks told him he knew it had been a mistake from the beginning but was afraid to entirely end it. What he told Dave next shocked him.

Dicks confessed to having had a one-night stand with Lindsey’s mother many years before. Now, he was afraid that Lindsey would blackmail him, ruining his career.

Puzzled, Dave asked, “But the relationship is up on the web. How can anything else she could say hurt you?”

Dicks leaned towards him, his face lined and troubled. “Can I trust you to keep this confidential?” Slowly, Dave had nodded. He was not sure he wanted to hear this, but he couldn’t not hear it, either.

Dicks’ confession had been harrowing. He had been immediately attracted to Lindsey but knew that, given his past relationship with the mother, having a relationship with Lindsey was impossible. The mother, he said, had pursued him for years after their brief fling. He had decided she was strange. But Lindsey had asked him up to her hotel room and he had gone. It was a lapse in judgment. But his own guilt over the relationship with Linden, who had actually sent Lindsey to New York to seduce him, he said. Their machinations had put him in their control for the last three years. Dicks looked close to tears.

He went on to talk about how charming they both seemed to be. But if you examined their personal lives, it was a very different story. They wanted money for their silence, and only large amounts would satisfy them.

Disgusted, Dave assured Dicks he believed him.

Dicks thanked him profusely for his understanding, wiping his eyes. Dave felt yet again as if someone had dug his heart out with a spoon. How could he be so wrong about someone he thought he knew?

Shaking his hand as they said goodbye, Dicks offered to put him in touch with people who could give him a great job. Dave smiled wanly, hardly thinking about what Dicks was saying. He would need to think about this. It was time he confronted Lindsey about a lot of things.

Dave remembered just as Bernard walked in to the apartment the next day that he had promised to make dinner tonight. The two, now the three of them, usually ate together if something else was not going on. The grocery list was still sitting by the phone; Dave often had the staples delivered. Bernard laughed. Dave did not have to tell him he had forgotten. Dave was no poker player.

So instead of braving Dave’s cooking they braved the weather, which was as ugly as only days in New York can be. They decided that ugly weather demanded food that reminded them that hot was possible and headed out for a Mexican meal at the El Parador Café down on 34th Street. The tortilla chips were to die for and the salsa had some character and bite. Christopher inhaled the guacamole. They had rooted him out of the spare bedroom Dave and he had transformed into a second office for his use.

Dave, still depressed about Lindsey, decided to drown himself in carbohydrates and Margaritas. He had not mentioned the meeting with Dicks, although they generally logged every contact and observation. This was one contact with Dicks he did not want to share with Bernard and Christopher.

Over the savory chips and an appetizer of guacamole and Chicken and Goat Cheese Quesadillas, redolent with cilantro and shaved onion, they had mapped out a plan for gathering on the spot information on the list of possibilities for alliance they had found from various sources, mostly the Internet.

There were caucuses and organizations working for change from every possible angle. Surely some of them would have some people who could be trusted or have identified some approaches that could be applied elsewhere. Remembering his meetings with Darrin Youngblood and the Cal Techies in Northern California, Dave wondered just how useful they could be politically.

“I told you about that friend of mine, Darrin? The one who is now at Cal Tech?” Dave’s brow furrowed a little. “They seem to have rejected the classical idea of government.”

“Well, I would not go that far, but they have refined the underlying ideas on which government is based. And with reason. What we have now is not working as intended.” Bernard sipped on his Margarita, enjoying the salt on the lip of the glass. “I don’t think I got over the idea that a bunch of Libertarian types would be approaching the environmental issues at all.” He grinned. The two had clashed primarily on issues of the environment when they were first talking.

Dave smiled. “Yeah, I know, you think we want to pave Earth First and the other planets later, right?” Bernard laughed.

Christopher injected, “Tell me some more about the techies from Cal Tech.”

Dave found that he could stop thinking about Lindsey if he focused on what was right in front of him. His mind kept looking for evidence he had overlooked. How could he be so entirely attracted to someone who was a crazy user? The past eight months had been so full of trauma for the entire nation that this small injury, discovering that a beautiful face could hide an ugly person, should not hurt so much. But it did.

“Dave? What are you thinking about? Did you hear what I asked?” Bernard was looking at him, inquiry written on his face and obviously waiting for his question to be answered. Looking at him Dave wondered why it was that every other guy in the world seemed to have no trouble finding a decent woman. Bernard had been married to a pretty woman and he was short and very engineer like. Christopher had to beat women off with stick; his cool blond good looks were a real magnet. What was wrong with him?

“My mind wandered off into the weeds. Must have been the guacamole. Sorry, what was the question?”

“Census time. We need to make some in-person contact with those groups and individuals who may be useful.” This had been the first step they laid out in their Square One meeting. They had agreed that they would split up the work, making it look natural, and an extension of their other professional and personal activities.

Dave remembered. At the time he had hoped that Lindsey would be traveling with him. He grimaced.

“Hey, it won’t be that bad. Who knows, maybe you will find your Dagny Taggart along the way.” Bernard and Christopher had each actually read the book and so laughed, looking at each other. Dagny Taggart was the impossibly perfect heroine who every male hero in the book, Atlas Shrugged, lusted to possess.

Lindsey was the only part of his life Dave had never mentioned to either of them. Was she a hero? Dave had thought so at one point.

Matching Dave up with various possible ladies had become a subject of mild diversion, neither imagining that Dave was already in love.

Research in this case required a certain amount of travel. All of the organizations earmarked for inquiry had conferences, sometimes several times a year, sometimes once. For the Conservative and Libertarian Orgs, Chris and Dave divided them as was appropriate. Bernard took the liberal and actually nonpartisan conferences. This, and some discreet contacts in advance, should give them what they needed.

The fact was that the conferences put on by think tanks were a form of fundraising in thin disguise; so paying attendees were welcomed with open arms. Dave winced as a memory floated into his mind. He had learned something about the history of Cicero Institute from Lindsey’s mother and the story had shocked him. Dave had also learned that organizations, like families, develop a culture that expresses in action their values and he had to wonder what kind of values were expressed by selecting interns and students for positions on the basis of their gender, female preferred, and attractiveness. Linden’s stories about Morton B. Casterol, Jr., the president and founder of Cicero, were bizarre. At first he had assumed she was exaggerating to make the story better, but inquiries had revealed she had been unaware of many of the more lurid details.

Today Cicero had a practice of keeping attractive young women in the front office. Mort was very aware of the power attractive, sexually available women have on donors, and most of the donors to Cicero were wealthy men.

Mort himself had finally married the mother of his three children after they were mostly in grade school. She had been the wife of his best friend when he seduced her. The best friend had left town although he had waited, hoping she would return to him until the first baby was born. Mort had refused to marry her, telling her and others he would do so when she could arrange the wedding in Red China. The wedding actually took place in on the Great Wall of China when she was finally able to do just that. No one pretended that Mort was faithful to his wife. That had not been the deal and Mort’s sexual adventures were the stuff of legend. It had been said he had laid every woman in the Libertarian Party and made a large dent in the Conservative Movement. Back when he had served the Libertarian Party as its Southern Vice Chairman, he had organized volunteers so that women came in and worked for half an hour and serviced him sexually for a half hour to then be replaced by the next shift.

Dave was amazed that so few people knew the stories, given how volatile they were.

So Dave had arranged to attend both a conference and the Cicero Dinner in Washington D.C. The luncheon took place six days before the Dinner, which was scheduled for May 9th. The subject of the talk at the luncheon was wasteful spending. Before the speaker got started, the monotonic Master of Ceremonies, who was not Mort, droned on about the briefings and luncheons and other events scheduled for the near future. Dave’s mind drifted. He was seated near the front of the room; the hefty donation he had made to Cicero brought with it privileges, and sure enough a young and attractive woman had chatted him up as he was registering. Dave found he was absolutely not attracted to her. He had found no one attractive since he last saw Lindsey. Sometimes he wanted to bash his head against a wall.

Most of those attending were the cadre of ‘professionals’ meaning they worked for Congressmen, were at a local college or university, worked at some other think tank or were donors. As he had chatted before the event began, he had found the requisite sprinkling of others, many out of work and looking.

The Libertarian Party, itself spawned by the Goldwater Movement and the work of such writers as Ayn Rand, had spun off a whole series of think tanks. Although Cicero now used the term privatization as if it had invented the word, the word had actually been coined by Richard Creek, the founder of Rationality Foundation. Rationality was based in Los Angeles now, having begun its curious existence in Boston as a magazine. Creek had purchased the for profit magazine that never managed to do more than dig holes in its owners’ bank accounts in 1969, and moved it to Santa Barbara where it had continued to dig holes in the bank accounts of Creek and his two partners, Benny Kraust, an attorney practicing in Los Angeles, and Fidor Mortan, a philosopher.

The early history of Rationality lacked the excitement given to Cicero by Mort but they had their moments, according to old timers Dave had gotten to know. Linden had pointed him to some of her old friends.

In preparation for his trip to D.C., Christopher had compiled for him the analysis of the areas where Cicero produced policy, what actually was ‘placed’ with legislatures and what mostly went in puff pieces to donors to encourage them to keep giving. The money that flowed into Cicero was not very different than that flowing into the coffers of any other Conservative think tank. There were some significant large donors who had no ax to grind. And then there were the large corporations, many petroleum companies among them, who were definitely in ax sharpening mode.

As the speaker droned on and Dave consumed the elegant lunch, he wondered at the blindness of those assembled. How could they fail to see what was actually happening here? The only more horrible thought was that they did know and were actually helping.

The think tanks, viewed as the success story of the Freedom Movement, were actually helping the NeoCons in some places while they were mostly a layer of lard on the steadily growing body of the bureaucratic monolith America had whelped.

Getting on the train back to New York, Dave’s mind was taken up with what he had learned. The Cicero Dinner had been extravagant. The central focus of the event was the award of a prize for advancing the cause of freedom. The award was named for the still living Nobel Laureate, Melvin Freeport; the members serving on the selection committee had been impressive and included the former British Prime Minister who had worked so closely with President William Wallace.

Dave had been surprised at how many people he saw from the Fabituso Society Meeting. Also, the whole cadre of prominent pundits had been present and seated in a huddle near the front. The program included a seating card so you could find the seat assigned to each attendee. Dave made sure he put it away for Christopher. He would apply the analytical tools they had assembled as indicators of status and standing within the affinity group that Cicero represented. Dave knew what it was going to show. The NeoCons owned Cicero. Some bottom lines were too obvious to be ignored.

The phone was ringing when Dave walked into the apartment. Normally he glanced at the CID but the handle to his carry on bag had gotten tangled with the keys so he just grabbed.

“Hello?”

“Hi there stranger.” Dave heard Lindsey’s voice, sounding sort of tired and quieter than usual.

“Oh. Hello. Just got in from…” “Washington? Where you were attending the Cicero Dinner, right?”

Dave sat down. “Yes. I was down there for some business, too.

“Did you see Mom? She was there.” Thinking about it, Dave thought he actually might have seen Linden but they had not talked.

“No, don’t think I did. There were nearly 3,000 people there, you know.” Searching for something to say he grasped at one conversation that stuck with him.

“I saw Tom Dicks.” Having said it, he wondered why. He had talked briefly with Dicks, but mentioning the fact was at best unkind. The fact that Lindsey had charged Dicks with domestic violence was a very public scandal.

The reaction in Lindsey’s voice was palpable. “Oh did you? And was he well?” The anger in her voice came through like crystals of frost on a windshield.

“No, he actually looked pretty tired and upset.” Dave was starting to get angry. Dicks had taken the opportunity to again thank him for his understanding and ask him to reserve judgment until the courts had a chance to sort things out.

“Why don’t you call me anymore? I thought we were friends.” Dave could hear the reproach in Lindsey’s voice.

“You know, Lindsey, I really liked you, but this thing with Dicks….why couldn’t you just leave him alone?”

There was a long pause. “Leave him alone? What are you talking about? That bastard tried to kill me and you, my friend, are defending him?”

“Tried to kill you? Come on Lindsey, don’t you think you are being over dramatic? All lovers have their little spats.” Dicks had told him about the screaming conflicts that took place every night. Dicks had told him their sexual relationship had ended, but Dave did not believe that. What normal man would live with Lindsey and not make love to her? The sarcasm dripped off his voice.

“A little spat? So you were there, I suppose? You…do you know how it feels to have no one believe you? You…..I can’t believe you are saying this. God, oh God. I wish I was dead.” Dave could hear her crying as the phone was slammed down.

Washington D.C.

Humstead looked at his fingernails. It was time to get back in for a manicure. He tried to have his fingernails done at least once a week. It gave him a thrill to sit there being waited on by a woman who was usually pretty attractive. Hair too, of course. It made him feel more confident if his hair was perfectly cut. His hair was so thin and sparse, along with being a washed out blond, that he looked bald in some of the pictures they took of him.

He liked it when the President called him into the Oval Office for meetings. When he was there he not only felt like he had arrived, he could remember that if not for him, really, truly him, the President would never even have been elected governor of Texas. He had made this man.

Looking down at the agenda on his desk he realized that the NCMA material was not yet in evidence. He had asked for it two days ago. Most men who were as important as he was would have been happy just to have the synopsis drawn from the work, but if you did not get down into all of the details you missed things. His preliminary reading of the document had convinced him that this twenty-year-old bureaucracy was not being used as it could be. Now, two and a half years out from Election Day ‘04 he had begun to assemble the contingency plans, seven deep that would ensure a second term for the man in the Oval Office. The voting machine plan was working its way through channels. That was good, but he had always thought it was really problematical. Too many people would question the lack of paper ballots to rely on being able to swing votes as needed.

He looked up as his executive assistant walked in. The NCMA papers had arrived in their unabridged form. NCMA would be rolled over into Our Land Safe. That would create possibilities absent in either of the originals.

Humstead decided that his fingernails really should be done twice a week. His wife would never notice, but his girl friend would appreciate the thoughtful gesture.