CHAPTER TEN

"I can say it no better than the bumper stickers on thousands of
cars across this great country of ours.
‘America: Love it or leave it.'"
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Ground Zero

"Free speech guarantees the right of each and every one of us
to say what he thinks and feels. Its flip-side carries an obligation
to listen when someone else is talking."
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

After he'd hung up the phone, Hal fell back into his overstuffed leather chair. He examined the small tears in its arm, twirling the loose stitching around his index finger. How could those people cheer so hard for that poppycock? We've faced harder economic times before. Course, we didn't go into them having so much or being so spoiled. Trouble abroad? When wasn't there? The heady days of America's post-World War II power had to end sooner or later. Britain was eclipsed, but it survived. France has been eclipsed; well, it is France—they still think they’re a world superpower, but hey, they’ve survived. He couldn't seem to focus his thoughts on anything in particular. He wanted to just sit in the dark and take in the silence around him. Parsons was still talking but the drivel was winding up. Down to the “I need your support to make it happen” part. He turned off the television and sat back down.

But he'd have to go to Susan's. The need to make another excuse about work awaiting him at the office. He was startled by a sudden noise coming from his back yard. The trash can? He walked to the back wall and flipped the light switch. He pushed the slats of the blinds apart slightly and looked toward the alley. His garbage can was on its side, white plastic bags lying on the ground around it. It looked like a couple of the bags were torn open; blasted neighborhood dogs probably smelled some food. The city had ordinances to keep this from happening. Oh well, fodder for another editorial. He'd straighten out the mess in the morning.

He turned off the light, checked the lock on the back door, picked up his slippers and walked toward his bedroom. Ruthie was propped up on a couple of pillows reading Parsons' book. She opened her mouth to make a comment on the passage she had just read, but something in his expression stopped her. She had heard Parsons’ speech through the open door of the study. She heard Hal's groans and snorts. How could he live here so long and not be more in tune with things?

He saw what she was reading and stopped himself from rolling his eyes. She asked what he thought of the speech and he gave her his opinion: he rolled his eyes. He asked how the book was going; he could tell by her tone she was genuinely impressed with what she was reading though it dawned on him after she had answered that he had not heard a word she said. It could have been her face in the audience, cheering and jumping up and down. No, her knees wouldn't allow that. Oh well.

"Not any later than it is, guess I'll go over to the office, start the editorial for tomorrow's edition." Did she really believe these stories? She never asked why he couldn't work on the computer in his study. "Shouldn't be too late. Just want to get the words on paper while they’re still on my mind." Why couldn't she see through Parsons' promises? "Just a few words on how we're willing to throw democracy away. The rantings of a would-be dictator. Nothing major."
Ruthie managed a smile. Hal walked over to the bed, bent over and kissed her on the forehead. "Don't read that stuff all night. I won't be long."

He put on his shoes and grabbed his jacket. He clicked the remote and the garage door squeaked as the chain pulled it upward. The garage was behind the house; it was his habit not to turn on his headlights until he got to the street. It dawned on him that this gave him the opportunity to see people in front of his house before they could see him at the very same time he saw a strange car parked on the opposite side of the street. Was it the same car he had seen in front of his office the night of his brother's phone call? He turned on his headlights and hit the high beam. Was that someone in the front seat that quickly ducked? He stared but saw no one. He sat there for a few minutes, the car directly in front of him illuminated by his halogen headlamps. No movement inside. Maybe it was his imagination. The car looked to be a dark blue 2014 or 2015 Chevy. Guess the neighbor finally got his kid the car he was angling for. He clicked off the high beam and turned his car onto the street and toward Susan's.

He drove south, passing the turn to his office. He always drove more carefully when he would visit Susan; no reason to tempt the fates with a ticket he got at the wrong time and in the wrong place. But he drove even more slowly than usual tonight. There were only a few cars on the road; Carlsbad seemed smaller, older, unconnected to the place in which he had grown up. He remembered the unrecognized car on his street and glanced at his rearview mirror. No, no one following. Would a Parsons victory really be that bad? Would he really destroy democracy to save it? He remembered hearing someone talking about an acquaintance who told his wife he wanted a divorce to save his marriage. Are we collectively divorcing ourselves from democracy to save it? Can we be millions of crazies like that guy? No, surely not. After all, Congress and the courts would stand in Parsons’ way. Wouldn’t they?

He directed his car up the narrow gravel road and into Susan’s driveway. As usual, the porch light was off. The key to Susan’s front door was on his keychain. After fumbling a moment to find it, and before he could extend it forward completely into the lock, Susan opened the door. Her front room was well lit, completely unlike the blocks of homes and stores he had passed getting there. She closed and locked the door behind him. He studied her before they embraced. She looked tired, or maybe it was confused. A quick buss on her forehead. She looked up at him, pulled away, reached for his hand and led him into her living room. Uh-oh.

They sat together on the sofa with the southwest fabric; she sat on brown desert sand while he sat on a green prickly pear. Susan spoke first, asking him what he thought of Parsons’ speech.
“I hate to say it, but it sure seemed effective. He’s going to piss a lot of people off, but he definitely appeals to too many others out there. I’m not sure how he can be so anti- so many people and religions and all, but he has a commanding lead in the polls. It’s just strange.” He kept his eyes on her as he spoke. He knew he wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.

“He’ll tear the country apart, you know.” Her words seemed measured; she spoke slowly, looking at him but perhaps seeing something more distant. “You know he’ll have a huge majority in both houses. He’ll find a way to make himself dictator.” She sighed heavily.

“You’re overstating. All he’ll do is pass a couple of laws that allow him to check your email, see what you’re reading, take Howard Stern off the radio. They’ll use the IRS to hound a few people, but you’re worried over nothing. We have a 200 year history of democracy. Not even the militia zanies want to trash that.” Well, maybe not. “You’re too worried. Dictator? Won’t happen here.”

“No, Hal, it can happen here. I’m afraid it really will happen here.”

There was silence as she stared at her feet. She slowly wiggled her toes and sighed, turned to him, began to stand up, and then fell back onto the sofa, slouched in a most unladylike posture. “I’ve decided to go away for a year or two.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“General LaMonde is, in my mind, the greatest military mind in our country
today. He is a worthy successor to the legends of so many earlier
great men, men like George Patton and Douglas MacArthur.”
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Zero Hour

“I have seen the future, and it is filled with people making the
mistakes of the past.”
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

Lyceum lectures were usually held at the middle school auditorium, a structure more than large enough to house the audiences that would attend the high falootin’ speakers the group would generally bring to town. The large demand for tickets to the LaMonde talk required it be moved to the Desert Fiesta, a large pre-fab structure built on the outskirts of town on the highway to El Paso. The building had been intended to do for Carlsbad what Palo Duro Canyon had done for Canyon, Texas—provide a venue for a song and dance production (in Canyon’s case, a play appropriately entitled Texas) that would keep tourists and their dollars in town for an extra night. It proved to be a popular idea with everyone but the tourists, and the venture closed its doors its first summer in production, leaving a building which had eventually housed city storage, an occasional “Up With People” production, and most recently, a bedrock Christian church. It was the largest meeting place in Carlsbad, and tonight it was standing room only.
Hal had seen no reason to arrive too early, knowing he held reserved seats in the front row. But he did not anticipate the draw that General LaMonde would have, and after circling the parking lot twice in a futile effort to find a parking place, drove his Camaro back down the road a half mile before pulling in between two white pick-ups. He locked the car doors and held Ruth’s hand as they began walking toward the lecture hall.
Hal’s thoughts wandered as they ambled toward the building’s front entrance. Were gun racks de rigueur for pick-up trucks with Texas license plates? Who owned the single Prius he saw on the road dominated by trucks and SUV’s? As he neared the front entrance, he wondered where the long black Hummer limousine had been driven in from. When Ruth misstepped and almost fell in the gravel near the entrance, he wondered who had invented high heeled shoes and why. And more importantly, how had they been so successfully marketed? They certainly didn’t look too comfortable. Then he thought about his tie and loosened it a bit more.
He shook a few hands and nodded acknowledgement a number of times as he and Ruth navigated the crowded aisle toward the front of the auditorium. All seats were filled. There was a sea of t-shirts and cowboy hats. There was a long haired character in sunglasses, his motorcycle mama standing closely next to him, each missing a front tooth, each holding a beer in a plastic cup, each with the stars and bars brightly emblazoned on the backs of their vests. He had written “LUV IT OR LEVE IT” in chalk under his flag; were the misspellings intentional? A little kid dressed up in an army camouflage suit, perched on his father’s shoulders, waving an American flag. Three “Fuck Obama” t-shirts, another with “What Should Obama And Lincoln Have In Common?” Hal was certain that Presidential libraries in Illinois were not the shirt’s intent.
Toward the front, the crowd seemed more subdued. The first ties, a number of suits. A magistrate judge, the chief of police, a half-dozen lawyers, three doctors and most of the Lyceum members. Hal saw Pete Price, a distant cousin of the country and western singer Ray Price, slouching in the second row, resplendent in his white shirt and red, white and blue bow tie. Hal called him “Goober,” his nickname for everyone that reminded him of Andy Griffith and Mayberry RFD.
Five minutes after the scheduled beginning of the speech, Gayle Jerrells, the Lyceum’s president since its inception, approached the podium. A tall, thin, somewhat stately woman with dark grey hair, Gayle rarely agreed with Hal’s politics but each shared a mutual respect for the other’s ideas and ideals. Hal had once wanted to ask her if she had ever owned a pair of pants; neither he nor anyone else in Carlsbad had ever seen Gayle in a pair of slacks. Actually, he remembered, he did ask her once. He wondered whether she just hadn’t heard the question or thought it too silly to bother answering. Either way, Hal mused, she did have great legs for a woman her age. Course, shouldn’t a woman her age wear skirts that extend over her knees rather than to them? As if on cue, his answer came when he heard whistles and cat calls from the back of the auditorium.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a very special program brought to you by the Carlsbad Lyceum.” Then the predictable acknowledgements and thank-yous, the recognition of the area dignitaries, the voices of the disinterested in the audience. It dawned on Hal only now that he had seen only a couple of Hispanic faces in the crowd. There were no blacks. Like a Jimmy Buffett concert, he thought, only way scarier.
“Our very special speaker tonight is known to all of you. General Kurt LaMonde is a true American hero who has seen fighting on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and behind the desks in Washington, D.C.” Applause and snickers from the audience. “I need not give you a long resumé of his accomplishments for they’ve long been reported in national media and our own Current Argus. So without further ado, our man of the hour, Marine General Kurt LaMonde!” Loud applause. Cheers. Syncopated foot stomping. I’m getting a headache, Hal thought. He looked left at Ruth, who was smiling broadly and, he thought, clapping too vigorously. He felt his necktie tightening.
LaMonde walked onto the stage from behind the worn purple velour curtain to Gayle’s left. He strode toward the podium forcefully, back erect, in long steps, seemingly oblivious to the applause that greeted him. He did not smile until he took Gayle’s hand and shook it; she seemed to grimace slightly, Hal thought. Maybe the General was using a real Marine’s let’s-show-you-early-who’s-boss handshake. LaMonde weighed more than Hal thought he would. Maybe that D.C. infighting allows long lunch hours. Still the man looked—what would the word be? Dangerous.
It wasn’t until Gayle moved away from the podium that LaMonde turned to face the audience. He didn’t seem to focus on anyone, but he seemed to see everyone all at once. A bit unnerving. He made no attempt to quiet the crowd. Shit-eating grin. He had no notes. He simply stood at the podium, taking it all in. Reconnoitering.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for that welcome. And thank you, members and of the Carlsbad Lyceum, for this opportunity to speak to all of you today about the dangerous set of affairs now facing our country.
“Those of you who know of me know that I place the honor of my country above all other things. Of course, to serve that country and help preserve its honor, I must admit that I have bent the rules a time or two.” Chuckling from the back rows.
“I had a horrible family life growing up in southern Missouri. My father was abusive and would often take his shortcomings out on my mother and me. When I was fifteen, I knew I could take it no more. I could have moved out, gone to Hollywood and a few years later written some tell-all book in which I blamed my parents for all my problems. Or I could take my life and my future into my own hands. I did that. I obtained a fake driver’s license showing me to be three years older than I actually was and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.” Hoots and hollers from across the hall.
“In the Corps, I discovered the importance of camaraderie of those with a common goal. Our goal was to protect America.” Loud applause. LaMonde looked like he was irritated by the interruption. “To protect America against all costs. Even if that cost was laying down our lives. We found no sacrifice to be too great to be offered up to this noble land of ours.
“Without belaboring my history in the Corps too much, I can tell you that I was an apt student of its procedures, values, and judgments, and over the years, as you all know, rose to the rank of general.” The syncopated foot stomping again. Loud applause and cheers.
“This country now faces threats as serious as any ever confronted before in our two-hundred and forty year history. We are at war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. But, my friends, make no mistake about it: we are involved in a World War.” Silence.
“We have the resolve, we have the resources to win this war. We can beat those who want to see this country brought to its knees just as we defeated the Axis powers in the last World War and the Central powers in the World War before that one.” Loud applause. Chants of “Kurt, Kurt, Kurt” from the back rows.
LaMonde held up his arms to silence the crowd. He slowly surveyed his audience, passing his gaze from left to right. Reconnoitering. “No one recognizes this ability better than Samuel Parsons, the great senator from your neighboring state of Texas. Senator Parsons, as you all know, is currently seeking the Republican nomination to run as that party’s candidate in November, and he has amply demonstrated in his many speeches, his support of various bills in Congress, and in his private conversations with me, his total commitment to the future of American interests, both at home and abroad.” Loud applause again. LaMonde sipped from a glass of water and cleared his throat.
“It has been well reported in the media that I advocated the limited use of nuclear weapons in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We can win our war against the Taliban and Muslim extremists. We can bring to an end the number of brave young Americans giving their lives to achieve this victory. Harry Truman was not afraid to use the full power of our military strength against the Japanese.” A formulaic pause. “Neither will Samuel Parsons hesitate to use that power against our enemies around the globe.”
People jumped to their feet. Even the lawyer to Hal’s right, usually so dour and devoid of emotion, shot up and applauded vigorously. The cry, “Parsons, Parsons, Parsons” was almost deafening. Hal loosened his necktie again. Was he sweating? The second coming couldn’t elicit this type of enthusiasm. What the hell are they thinking?
The rest of LaMonde’s speech was predictable enough. Obama was timid, Parsons would be brave; Obama was weak, Parsons will be strong. Yada, yada, yada. Vote for a great American. Vote for Samuel Parsons in November.
Gayle returned to the podium, grinning broadly. Now she took LaMonde’s hand and shook it forcefully. The predictable questions: Will Samuel Parsons stand up to China? Will Parsons reinstate the draft and make out military great once again? Will Parsons tap Sarah Palin as his running mate? The predictable answers: Yes, Yes, and No.
A few words from the president of the Carlsbad Young Republicans, Reggie Campbell, decked out in a shiny black leather jacket. Good God, he looks like the Reggie in the Archie comics, Hal told himself. Then Campbell, LaMonde, and a couple of other teenagers also in black leather jackets left the stage together.
Huh, Hal thought. Weren’t black leather jackets mentioned in news feeds over the last few months? Small bands of young people in black leather jackets had been seen running away after a synagogue was firebombed in Atlanta, mosques were destroyed in fires in Detroit and Los Angeles, and a Chinese man was attacked and killed in the Chicago subway. Odd.

CHAPTER THREE

“It might sound odd, but as a kid, I was fascinated with ants. I would watch
them for hours. It was amazing what they could accomplish working
together the way they did—under all those anthills were huge cities with
endless tunnels going in all directions. They could accomplish this with
brains no larger than the head of a pin. But I think what I really admired
was their marching. They’d crawl in single file lines, one after the
other, half way across the yard, all following a leader to some place
he alone knew existed”.
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At The Zero Hour

“We live life as if were a carnival. We give our attention not to he who
has something to say, but to he who yells the loudest.
We listen not to those who can speak with authority,
but to those who tell us what we want to hear. We elect
not those most qualified to serve, but those who are most popular.”
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

The 2012 presidential election was pretty much typical in every way. The Republicans condemned the Democrats, with a great deal of truth, as the party of the tax and spend. Democrats, as is their knee jerk reaction, condemned the Republican Party as the mouthpiece of the rich and famous. Republicans reminded the populace over and over that “liberal” was a word that meant intellectual (not like you and me) agent of (malignant) change; below the Mason-Dixon line, it was synonymous with an odd-sounding New Yorker-type who doesn’t know shit about what life is really all about. Democrats called for an election of inclusion, one in which all people of all parties could come together, all the while casting the Republicans as those cold uncaring in-laws who could tell you everything you were doing wrong yet somehow could never stop to help you make things right.
Both parties played the old time-tested charges and arguments. But Samuel Parsons played the game on a level that made Richard Nixon and Karl Rove seem like touchy-feely California new agers sitting down to a spot of organic tea.
While many thought Parsons was an unthinking loose cannon, to Hal Simpson, it appeared that he had willfully taken a page from Spiro Agnew’s 1972 game book. Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism” became Parsons’ “palpable pulse of piss-poor political palaver.” Just as Agnew was happiest serving as Nixon’s attack dog, Parsons found he relished his role as his party’s hit man—his shoot from the hip, take no prisoners attitude fit him like a glove. There were recurring rumors Romney and his staff were disenchanted with the name calling, the quoting of statistics that could not be found, and the presentation of truths that were, at best, deliberate fabrications, but no one would say so on the record. After all, it wasn’t like he was waving a paper in front of the cameras with the names of hundreds of subversives in the State Department.
But did the voters know that Obama had promised the ayatollahs in Iran enough uranium for six nuclear weapons so they could destroy Israel, thus drawing America into a war in order that Nancy Pelosi could be installed as the American Governor in Tehran? That Obama had secretly colluded with Yemeni pirates to board only vessels of companies that had refused to pay tribute to the Democratic National Committee? That the liberal media that had so punished Tiger Woods with stories of his indiscretions with white women refused to do the same to Barack Obama, even though the two of them had spent a weekend in Chicago with three of Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriends?
That the Democrats had included a secret provision in their Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 to create death panels in which doctors could decide who would live and who would die, even if you were sick with no more than a common cold? That if the Health Act were overturned, the government would be able to give $75,000 to every man, woman and child in the country between the ages of nine and ninety?
Or that the CIA had photographs of Obama’s mother in bed with Leonid Brezhnev? (Stories about Ann Dunham being in bed with the pope that first showed up on Facebook and then spread around the internet were apparently posted by a minor Republican office holder in North Carolina when he “sort of” got his facts wrong in his post.) That Mexican drug cartel thugs had crucified three Border Patrol agents when they attempted to arrest a drug runner from Juarez?
These and other such rantings were carried in daily news reports, were replayed dozens of times every day in paid political ads on televisions and radios, and were related and repeated thousands of times in internet blogs and postings. At first, the Obama campaign, against the advice of Secretary of State Kerry, ignored these ridiculous charges, discovering only too late one of the unalterable laws in the age of mass communication and questionable media coverage: many will think that if it’s in the paper and on TV, it must be true. Others might be dubious, but just as they are accustomed to think where there is smoke, there must be fire, so will many voters feel that behind each overstatement, there must be some element of truth. After all, if Obama and Bill Clinton smoked cigars in the Oval Office as they watched secret tapes of a tryst between Nancy Pelosi and Hillary, then something must have happened, right? By the time the Democrats began denying the silliness threatening their campaign, their denials were seen as admissions of guilt. After all, if nothing had happened (and by now many voters were convinced something had), why were they denying it?
In the end, as in so many recent elections, the victor came out on top by the narrowest of margins, a winner in name only. In the weeks following the election, many feared the real winner was Samuel Parsons. Though Obama had been re-elected President, the media credited Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate to Parsons’ coat tail. While exit polls showed he was shunned in the election by the better educated, by the more affluent, and by minorities across the nation, early December post-election polls revealed an astonishing level of support for him to be the Republican nominee for President in 2016.