“Clarion Call” is an American business dedicated to nothing more than making money. Through marvelous use of technology, mass communication and an interconnected society , “CC”, as it became known, unwittingly stepped up to podium when the government of the United States totally collapsed, all under its own bureaucratic weight.
Solidly set and running smoothly with an economic and intellectual infrastructure that included millions of American citizens, talents ready, workers inside of the government institutions, an ant hill existed below the fruited plains that arose to save the most powerful country in the world.
All this without a single bureaucrat lifting a finger, without a solitary politician casting a vote.
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Chapter 5-The Blackout
The scene in my neighborhood was very similar to scenes across the fruited plains that cold January day of the annual SOTU speech. Folks walked around in a daze, battery-powered radios blared the story of the nationwide power outage. Somebody got out some charcoal, somebody else began a fire. Steaks were found from defrosting freezers and warmth was provided by barbecue grills as steaks were seared and grilled and discussions raged.
Local yokel radio stations across the fruited plains turned on their backup generators and got out the word. Local TV stations too sent out word but so many folks have cable nowadays that the few with rabbit ears to catch the signal were few and far between.
“Electricity is out nationwide,” our local guy shouted. “So far no one knows why, or no one knows why for sure. Word now is that the Chinese sent a major virus to an enormous computer system used by the power companies that somehow stopped all electricity-making processes. This is why there is no power even in areas supplied by nuclear power. Unless the computer indicates to keep on going the reactor shuts down.”
That crazy story about a Chinese virus was just one of many hundreds spread about before all TV and radio signals got hijacked by the crazy national emergency broadcast system. For several hours it was believed that a freak fire in a mid-country power plant melted a major hub in the electrical distribution circuit, a statement that pretty much meant nothing to most ordinary Americans. I didn’t understand a word of it.
What we did know was that the entire country was without power, indeed we knew this. We weren’t happy about it but in due course word spread across the neighborhood, around the country, over the fruited plains, across stormy lakes, that President Obama was going to talk to the nation about the nationwide electrical outage via the country’s fancy new emergency public broadcasting system.
Around 8pm that night battery powered radios and rabbit-eared televisions played on porches and decks and community common areas across the fruited plains. Thousands of Americans squatted on front stoops, huddled in outdoor tents, crammed cold living rooms across the country. No matter what any of us thought about President Obama he was our president and truthfully, most of us were glad someone was still in charge, surely it would be fixed soon, we’ll talk about what happened later.
I cannot imagine the nationwide shock when the television and radio stations still with working generators announced the President would soon come to the podium, although no podium could be seen. The TV stations could not broadcast video at the time, I don’t know why. It was weird as all get out though to be told the President is approaching the podium when all you could see was blackness.
My jaw has never fully recovered from its drop to the floor when a strange male voice could be heard. Soon another male voice joined in and in due course all of us cats realized that we were hearing a conversation we weren’t supposed to hear. President Obama’s voice was nowhere on the audio.
I am certainly not going to excerpt the entire audio of the exchange between Representative Rick Morrow and Obama Chief-of-staff Mickey Major –the Rick and Mick Show-as some smart alecs came to call it. The audio is linked on the official Country Class party web site and will for sure be part of the new historic national archives currently being established by the temporary government.
There were, of course, certain parts of the exchange that are more germane to my story than others. Morrow and Major discussed several procedural issues that took up almost 15 minutes of that audio, boring stuff. The juicy stuff lasted about eight minutes and if you don’t think eight minutes is a lifetime try being a citizen of a country and hearing the following:
(I begin my quotation somewhere five minutes into the audio, right after a discussion by the two men of possible new filibuster rules)
“Come on, Mickey, I’ve got people screaming at me about the restrictions of this new Affordable Care Act even though you didn’t implement but about 25% of it. Now they’re upset about this immigration bill, dear Lord the immigrants don’t have to get health care but natural born American citizens do? The caucus sent me in to try and plead with you and the President. We’re afraid of fomenting a revolution, I’m serious Micky.”
We didn’t have the advantage of seeing the gestures and facial expressions of the speakers during this verbal exchange but at this point there is a long silence. I don’t know if the Chief-of-Staff was glaring at this interloper in anger or perhaps one of the men was busy with something else.
Soon the silence was met with a derisive snort.
“Rick, you go back and tell your caucus to stuff it,” Mickey shouted. I could only imagine him poking a stiff angry finger in Representative Morrow’s chest.
“Mickey, you don’t work with us on this, we’re going public.”
“YOU’RE GOING PUBLIC ARE YOU?”
(I type the above in all caps as this is a Blogger story and Bloggers type in caps to indicate loud talk/emphasis.)
“Mickey there have been civilian actions over the last couple of months that surely even you and Barack can see are escalating. This country is turning into Egypt, Mick. America’s getting a bad reputation and even the media can’t help you out of this, Mick.”
More silence as if the responder was in thought, deep labored breathing.
“Egypt? America is nowhere near Egypt, Rick. You know what Egyptians make a day, Rick? The average Egyptian makes .98 a day. Americans are spoiled all to hell,Rick. You can argue that Egyptians had a right to revolt but Americans are too busy working for unbelievable amounts of money so they can go home to their air-conditioned homes, watch cable-tv reality shows and plan their four weeks of vacation. Americans are the luckiest people in the world, so you got a few hard-edge Teabagger types always complaining about something. They’re no threat. Go back and tell your caucus that Obama will not back off from the mass amnesty due to be granted in a few months, Affordable Care is here to stay, tell your caucus the spoiled morons of this country will soon enough back down for another dollar an hour.”
“We don’t believe that Mickey,” Rick Morrow said after a breath-wind of exasperation. “Colorado’s hardly any kind of tea-bagger state and I’ve got talk about mass work stoppages. And Mickey, put down the vodka for a minute, will ya?”
With this we heard a slam of what sounded like-since we knew it was vodka- a glass being slammed down on some table. Then a demented laugh.
Yeah, demented, no other word to describe it.
“The caucus told you to mention the vodka did they?”
“Yes. Yes they did.”
At this point there was a stretch of silence almost a minute long. At this point all of us listening began to look at each other, wondering what on earth we were hearing, could this really be? I never heard of Rick Morrow but then there are almost 500 elected Representatives in America’s House and Colorado is nowhere near me. I vaguely heard of then Chief-of-Staff Mickey Major, mostly because of the alliteration of his name and the jokes about it that wrote themselves. Mickey Major is a gay man, a fact widely known and quite frankly, not of much import to most Americans.
By this time in the national drama Rep. Morrow was right, the Country Class was getting to revolt. It was but a few months before this that I’d signed up with Clarion Call to be a Blogger. Not that Clarion Call used Bloggers all that much but they did direct local advertisers to local Blog sites. Getting registered as a Blogger with Clarion Call was a big deal. Clarion Call did not have any kind of major interview mechanism beyond an on-the-job training system. So if one signs up to be a wedding planner, say, Clarion Call asks for a link to the applicant’s web page and that’s pretty much it. If the applicant knows nothing about weddings this will soon come out and Clarion Call will be notified and the applicant will be removed from Clarion Call’s referral list.
All applicants were expected to have a web site, indeed, if they were applying for a business of some kind. This was yet another attempt by Clarion Call to adhere closely to IRS rules. Not that the IRS was going around inspecting the web sites of Clarion Call contractors-though one never knows, does one?-if a Clarion Call contractor suddenly was in business making millions, that individual could be contacted-or maybe “monitored” is a better word- by anybody in America, including the IRS.
I’m sure many Clarion Call contractors work “under the table” but as much as possible Clarion Call does not want to be in the business of tax collector so it insures that the tax collectors can find out phone numbers/addresses/emails of contractors receiving money from Clarion Call and at that time there’d never been an attachment of contractor payments for federal taxes.
Bloggers are unique in that, well they are expected to be reasonably able to write. If Clarion Call referred a client to my Blog site for sidebar advertisement they want to make sure I am worth it and will not embarrass the company. So I had to pick a Blogging area of expertise and for Clarion Call I billed myself as both a political writer as well as a culinary expert.
I only said I was a culinary expert because I’d been chosen by Taste of Home magazine to be one of their field cooks. I did work with Ellen often with her catering effort so I wanted advertisements on my sidebar for the locals to contact me. Every once in a while I’d put up a post about a recipe I tried.
At any rate, since I was supposedly a political writer, it became time for me to learn about politics. It was a perfect time to dip my toes in the political waters. This, plus the fact that my beloved husband finally gave up his struggle to live with failing lungs. I had a lot of time on my hands.
All my life I’d been a Democrat and as I stated upthread, I voted for President Obama the first time.
I soon learned that it wasn’t about Democrat or Republican. It was about Codevilla’s infamous ruling class.
After that minute of silence that seemed like an hour, we heard some shuffling around, the sound of a glass sliding across a wooden table. Suddenly there was the sound of a large clang of broken glass. Many of us jumped out of our chairs in surprise at this sound with no video. In our electric-less world we were confused by sounds with no sight.
“You tell your stuffy caucus that they can shove their worries where the sun don’t shine,” a very slurred voice said. By following the flow of conversation we deduced that Mickey Major was drunk and on a verbal roll.
“We got Affordable Care passed even though your pantywaist Republican colleagues tried their best to stop it. You guys love to make fun of the homosexuals with your limp-wrist imitations but the whole bunch of you got more air between your legs than a team of gay guys. We got the amnesty bill passed because we didn’t back down like the biggest wimp of all, your hero George W. Bush. HE’s the one that chickened out, not us fairy fellows.”
I was in my living room at the time with my family. We listened to this exchange and at the part of about the homosexuals we looked at each other with puzzlement. What on earth did any of this have to do with the country having no electricity and why were we hearing this thing broadcast across the Emergency Broadcast System?
“Here’s what you go tell your silly caucus, Rick. You tell them the American people have spoken. They re-elected Barack Obama despite the Affordable Care you guys claim to be so hated. We passed the amnesty act and sure a lot of Americans are upset about it but they’ll get over it. And here’s what else you tell your caucus, Rick…” At this we could hear the sound of unknown movements and then a long human gulp as if swallowing a large amount of liquid.
“Maybe I should come back when you’re not glugging down all that vodka, Micky.”
“NO. You stay right here and let me tell you what I’ve been determined to tell those nasty Jesus-loving co-legislators. You tell them that given time we will have control of every aspect of this country. Hispanics will be in the majority and with amnesty so denied them they will move on to take over the courts, the legislators, even the citizenry. We will soon all have health care and we will not have to pay for the cheap skates who get their health care on the public dime.”
Another long period of non-talk though heavy breathing could be heard.
“When we’re done, Rick, young men who fall in love with older male mentors will finally be able to live with and share their love. The wages in this country will drop because lazy Americans done priced themselves out of business in the wage market. Hispanics will do the work. Anyone who needs health care will get it and we won’t be wasting money on doing heart bypasses for 85 year old criminals. This country needs some common sense regarding health care and it’s time for people to just die when it’s their time. The only “white” Americans left will be those who willingly accept the government dole, who want their food stamps and shut up with the complaining. We’re making this country better, Rick….go tell your caucus that.”
At that point the infamous sound of furniture falling, shouts of pain and then….complete silence.
It was a tape that changed the country. Along with the national blackout, of course. It was played over and over for the next several days and by the time the country got back up and running all Americans knew of the tape and all Americans were quite unhappy with this Ruling Classes’ plan for us.
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