Barry Eisler's Blog: The Heart of the Matter, page 3
June 4, 2025
THE SYSTEM Chapter 4
Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.
Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out Friday, June 6th!
Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
* * * * *
Chapter 4
If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?
—Edward Bernays, Propaganda
Montgomery Cranston walked into the Department of the Interior conference room expecting the customary confusion. Instead, he found chaos.
A dozen officials were milling around the room’s long, rectangular table, all talking over one another, the resulting bedlam causing everyone to shout to try to be heard. He caught fragments of multiple conversations twisting together and then unraveling in a cacophony of controlled panic: Emergency disconnect system . . . blowout preventer . . . backup shutdown failure . . .
Some of the faces he recognized—officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and of course various bureaus of the Interior Department itself. But he didn’t see who he was looking for.
“Who is OEPC here?” he called out. But no one heard him, it was too loud and they were all too focused on themselves trying to be heard. Even in the best of times, humans liked talking more than listening. More than they wanted to understand, they needed to feel understood.
“Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance,” he called out, louder this time. “Who represents the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance?”
The cacophony abated a little, as he had hoped. A petite woman with a strained expression walked toward him. “I’m the OEPC representative,” she said. “Julia Hoang.”
The woman’s nervousness agitated him, and he could feel his body wanting to rock back and forth. But he didn’t let it. His parents had taught him that repetitive behaviors like rocking made humans uncomfortable.
“What happened to Menders?” he said.
“He’s with BSEE now.”
“Isn’t BSEE here, too?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Cranston blew out a breath. If no one had thought to include an official from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, they were really in disarray. Well, at least someone had thought to call him.
He turned back to the assemblage. “Who here knows that questions have a pitch different from those of assertions?” he called out.
The yammering flickered more. Then, as people realized that others had stopped talking, it guttered entirely.
“That’s why you heard me,” he went on, no longer needing to shout. “It wasn’t my volume so much that reached you as it was the tone of a question. On top of which, questions tend to engage people. Either they know the answer and want to share it, or they wonder if they know, which gets them to pause and think. Regardless, paradoxically a question can be a good way to get someone to stop talking, if only for a moment.”
They were silent now, staring at him as though he had suddenly sprouted antennae. It was okay. People had been looking at him that way for as long as he could remember.
“My name is Montgomery Cranston, and I’m here on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior, who has asked for my assistance in coordinating our response. If you’ve seen with your own eyes what we’re dealing with, please speak up.”
A bearded man in oil-stained coveralls said, “I seen it. And then some.”
Cranston would have made the man as a roughneck even without the coveralls. It was his size, his solidity. And the indentation around his hairline, left by a hard hat he must have worn almost constantly and probably felt half naked without.
“What’s your name?”
“Grove. Mark Grove. Toolpusher on the rig.”
“May I call you Mark?”
“Sure.”
“It’s good that you gave your name, Mark. It’ll make you feel more responsible for the accuracy of what you report. And my calling you by your first name will help make you comfortable talking to me.”
Grove frowned. “What?”
“I’ve been informed there has been an incident at the Yamaloka oil-drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana. What happened?”
Grove stared at him. After a moment, he said, “We don’t know exactly. Right now, it looks worse than the Deepwater Horizon disaster—”
Cranston shook his head. “Not disaster. Everyone knows what the Deepwater Horizon was. No need to embellish or otherwise characterize.”
“Whatever. All the redundancies we put in place following Deepwater Horizon seem to have failed. There was an explosion, we think of a methane bubble, and the rig sank. We lost six men and personally I think we were lucky not to have lost more.”
“Don’t say that. The rig didn’t explode and sink. That’s not helpful.”
“You got mud in your ears? I just told you—”
“It collapsed. You say the rig collapsed. If you say it blew up, you create scary images—bombs, terrorists, Nine-Eleven. By contrast, small things collapse, and when they do, it’s discrete. For example, ‘Grandma passed out and collapsed.’ There isn’t any fire or smoke. Better imagery for us.”
Grove looked left and right as though seeking reassurance. But everyone in the room was as nonplussed as he was.
“Fine,” Grove said after a moment. “The rig collapsed. And somehow this collapse tore a huge fucking gash in the seabed, and—”
“Please don’t swear. Swearing is unprofessional, and public confidence depends to a significant extent on our appearance of professionalism. This is why Transportation Safety Administration personnel wear their distinctive blue uniforms.”
Grove stared. “Are you kidding me?”
“No. People have tried to teach me, but I don’t know how.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not a joker.”
“I don’t know how to joke, either. Do you see that as I describe how to proceed, I’ve been using the plural pronouns we and us? In other contexts, this could be called forced teaming, which is bad, but here it fosters cooperation and a sense of common purpose.”
Grove scrunched up his face and slowly shook his head. Cranston recognized the meaning: What the fuck? Still, that Grove hadn’t voiced the sentiment was evidence of progress. The man was struggling to keep up overall, but at least the admonition against profanity was sinking in.
“In addition to not swearing,” he went on, “we need to steer clear of words like gash, which has connotations of violence and blood. Also we need to be careful of adjectives like huge. In fact, I don’t want us using adjectives at all. They make it sound like we’re trying too hard. We’ll manage this story with two well-chosen words: leak and spill.Now, Mark, can you tell me how much oil is leaking?”
Grove stared at him for a moment, then said, “Have you seen the underwater imagery? It looks like Mount Vesuvius erupting oil out of the seabed. Our best guess at this point is at least 60,000 barrels a day.”
Cranston wanted to explain to Grove that words like erupt and imagery like Mount Vesuvius would be perfect if they were trying to cause damage rather than perform damage control. But he suppressed the urge. Humans learned in different ways and at different rates, and sometimes correcting a person too much too quickly could be counterproductive.
“That’s not good,” Cranston said. “We can’t say that, at least not right away.”
“Well, it is what it is.”
“We don’t know what it is. You just said yourself that you’re guessing. We’ll start with a low number—let’s make it a thousand barrels a day.”
“Look, you can’t just say it and make it so. There’s—”
“Isn’t it true that the leak includes a thousand barrels a day?”
Grove snorted. “Yeah, and another 59,000 barrels on top of that.”
“We don’t have to mention the second part. Not yet. In fact, doing so would be irresponsible because as you just pointed out, we don’t really know. We’re guessing. So I want us to guess lower.”
“Guess lower?”
“We’ll start with the lower number to ease the incident into the public’s consciousness. Once they realize there’s a spill, we can gradually walk up the number without unduly upsetting people. We’ll be sure to use the word estimate in connection with all numbers. That way, we’ll have the necessary flexibility to increase the numbers as we gain more information.”
“I don’t understand what difference any of this makes,” Hoang said. “We’re not the ones who are going to control the words used to describe this . . . incident. The media will call it whatever they want.”
Cranston looked at her. OEPC would be spearheading media outreach. He wasn’t completely surprised that someone this inept had been put in charge—it was hardly the first time. Well, hopefully she wasn’t ineducable.
“Why do you think that?” he said.
“Well, I mean, it’s not like we can control the media . . .”
“Control isn’t a good word. It sounds totalitarian. Persuade is better.”
Hoang shook her head. “Come on, whatever you call it . . .”
“I called it persuasion when I got the media to refer to the people we were holding at Guantanamo as detainees rather than prisoners. Detainee is much better, wouldn’t you agree? Students get detained for failing to turn in their homework. Nothing to get excited about.”
The room had gone silent, and he went on. “And have you noticed that the media has dropped assassinations and now uses the soothingly dry phrase targeted killings, instead?”
More silence. “The Rules-Based International Order,” he said. “Useful when actual international laws are inconvenient because who could be against order and rules? But really it means the U.S. government makes the rules and gives the orders.”
They were staring at him again, but in a different way now. Their silence no longer felt skeptical, or even quizzical. More like a door that had opened.
“Nor is it a coincidence that America doesn’t do invasions, only interventions. Which don’t inflict casualties but only produce collateral damage. Also not a coincidence that if you’re against interventions, you must be an isolationist. And no one wants to be an isolationist. Because generally humans fear being alone.”
He realized he’d slipped saying humans instead of people. His parents had taught him not to refer to the humans that way because it made them uncomfortable. But this time, no one seemed to notice. A few people chuckled, even though he’d already told them he didn’t know how to joke.
There were so many more fascinating examples he might have shared. But he sensed they already understood about as much as they would be able to.
“All right,” Hoang said. “But how do we stop it?”
They all looked at him expectantly, even Grove.
“I’m sure there’s a way,” Cranston said. “Remember, it’s just a leak.
* * * * *
Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.
Endnotes to each chapter are here.
Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out Friday, June 6th!
And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s this coming Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!
Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
June 3, 2025
THE SYSTEM Chapter 3
Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.
Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!
Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
* * * * *
Chapter 3
Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.
—Frank Zappa
Valeria was flopped on her back on the living room couch, so exhausted she was almost paralyzed. Preston lay parallel on the floor, holding her hand. It was two in the morning and the party had still been going strong when they’d left. Valeria didn’t want to seem ungrateful by heading home early, but at some point she realized no one was going anywhere before she did.
“Oh my God,” she managed to say.
Preston chuckled. “Shit got real.”
“A little too real. Pentagon pricks couldn’t give us one night to celebrate?”
“Look at it this way. If they weren’t lashing out, it would mean they’re not afraid of you. If they weren’t afraid of you, it would mean we’re doing something wrong.”
She supposed that was true. It was a high-profile upset—certainly the biggest in this election, maybe among the biggest ever. The press was going nuts over it. And she’d received so many congratulatory texts she’d given up on even trying to skim through them, let alone responding. She had managed to talk briefly with her mother and brother. Both had been effusive. But as was often the case, Josie’s glee at Valeria’s successes didn’t feel only like vicarious pride, but also like some instrument of proxy revenge against Héctor’s ghost. And Mateo was also true to form. He’d made some of his usual cracks, the humor of which was never enough to completely conceal an underlying tinge of envy or resentment.
Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, she thought. But she pushed the family shit away. Tonight was hers and Preston’s.
“Pres,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “When you convinced me to do this . . . did you really believe we could win?”
“One hundred percent. Didn’t I say so?”
“Well, you said, but . . .”
“What about you?”
“Maybe . . . one percent.”
He laughed. “If you’d really thought only one percent, we never would have made it. I think you believe in yourself more than you realize, Val.”
She squeezed his hand. “You make me believe.”
She remembered how he’d first suggested it, at Gamble in Santa Monica, Dennis’s first restaurant. Their romance had kindled over a common passion for politics, but their activism was limited to volunteering for a few local candidates and a single fizzled presidential campaign. Dennis wanted to open a new restaurant in Antelope Valley, where real estate was cheap and the local food scene less competitive. One night, unwinding over a drink at the bar after closing time, Preston told Valeria they should move to Lancaster and she should run for Fillian Dunne’s seat.
She’d laughed at the absurdity. Everyone knew Fillian Dunne was unbeatable. In the last three elections, he’d been returned to office with something like eighty percent of the vote. He had a campaign budget bigger than the GDP of small nations, and ruled California’s 27th District like a king from an impregnable castle.
“That’s exactly what makes him vulnerable,” Preston had said. “It’s not just everyone else who thinks he’s unbeatable. He thinks so, too. He’s like a champion who hasn’t been challenged, hasn’t had a real fight, in years. He’s complacent. Out of shape.”
She’d laughed again, but he wouldn’t let it go. “He won’t take you seriously,” he said. “He’ll look at you and see a nobody from Pacoima, barely dry behind the ears. A bartender, for God’s sake. Yeah, he’s got a war chest, but he won’t touch it. He won’t think he needs to, and besides he wants to save it, because if he becomes Speaker of the House as everyone expects, he’ll need the money to run for president against Whetter. Conventional armies have lost to guerillas plenty of times, Val. You could beat him.”
Like Dunne, Ben Whetter was another ten-term corporatist, and as devoted a servant of the Pentagon as could be found in Congress. Widely considered to be another possibility for Speaker, he was also expected to be one of Dunne’s primary opponents in the next presidential election.
She thought he must be drunk. “Why don’t you run?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I don’t have star power.”
“Please. Like I do.”
“Don’t say that. That’s the only thing holding you back. You don’t see the way customers look at you. And it’s not just because you’re beautiful—”
“You don’t have to butter me up, Pres. You know when we get home I’m going to do you anyway.”
He laughed. “I’m not trying to butter you up. You don’t get the way people respond to you. You’re smart and passionate and fast on your feet. People are going to see you, and they’ll be attracted to you because you’re a beautiful woman but also a beautiful person. And they’ll want to be in your orbit, and they’ll want to follow you. And when they respond to you that way, it’ll increase your confidence, and . . . you’ll grow into what they see. And they’ll love you more and you’ll become more worthy of their love. It’ll be a virtuous cycle.”
For whatever reason, the flattery—or whatever it was—had made her nervous. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “I’m definitely not letting you drive home in this condition.”
“I’m totally serious, Val. I don’t have your charisma. Even you don’t have it, not yet, not all of it. But I see things you don’t. About you. About Dunne. I’d be a good advisor. And campaign manager. We’d be such a good team.”
“Why not just stay here in Santa Monica and run against Luiz? It would still be hard, but not as impossible as against Dunne.”
“No, that’s the whole point. Hard is impossible. Impossible is opportunity.”
She laughed. “My campaign manager, Yoda.”
“Luiz doesn’t think he’s invulnerable. He’s wary. He thinks like a junkyard dog guarding his territory. Dunne thinks like a king. His eye is on other realms, not his own provinces.”
“Well, you come at the king, you best not miss.”
During the campaign, it had become a refrain for the two of them. Will this approach work? How devastating will it be? Could it backfire? Because if you come at the king, you best not miss.
Well, they hadn’t missed. But the Pentagon seemed intent on making her wish they had.
* * * * *
Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.
Endnotes to each chapter are here.
Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!
And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!
Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
June 1, 2025
THE SYSTEM Chapter 2
Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.
Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!
Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
* * * * *
Chapter 2
Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what’s actually going on.
—Julian Assange
Tara was peeking through the venetian blinds again and Thaddeus was getting pissed. “Do you have any idea what that looks like from outside?” he said.
She glanced at him and tilted her head as though he was being ridiculous. “No one’s out there, Lance.”
“Then why are you looking?”
“Because this room is boring.”
It was always like this right before a big upload. She’d pretend to be tired of the whole thing, dance right up to the edge of his security precautions and sometimes even past them, and then they’d finish the upload and be so turned on by the risks they’d just taken and the rush of completion and the friction of all the half-fake, half-real animosity that had been building up between them that they’d fuck like wild animals. And it was hard to say which was more of a turn-on, what they’d just done or the possibility that the FBI might kick down the door in the midst of the proceedings.
“It’ll be a lot less boring if we’re getting arrested in it,” he said.
“At this point, I think I’d take it. Can you even remember where we are?”
“Kentucky. Lexington.”
“What motel?”
That one took him a second longer. The muted sounds of nearby Interstate 75 helped—he remembered seeing the sign from the highway the night before.
“Comfort Inn,” he said. “And before that, the Holiday Inn Express in Indianapolis. And before that, the SpringHill Suites in Schaumburg. I told you, it has to be this way for a while.”
The heat kicked on with a clang and they both jumped. She shook her head. “It’s always going to be this way.”
“Only until this batch of burners and laptops is spent. Then we can go anywhere you like. Someplace warm. San Diego. Honolulu. Okay?”
She turned back to the window.
He let a second go by, then a few more, trying to stay calm. Finally, he said, “Surveillance could see a venetian blind being parted from anywhere in that parking lot. You’re making it easier for them to see us than it is for us to see them.”
“I told you, no one’s out there. And if I’m wrong, I’ll spot them, too.”
“How does a fucking tie work for us?”
She flicked the blinds hard. The plastic rattled. “You’re an asshole.”
He shut the laptop. “Are you trying to distract me?”
She turned toward him, crossing her arms and deepening the cleavage already showing in the V-neck of her tee shirt. “Yeah, everything is about you.”
He knew she was baiting him, which on the one hand was irritating, but on the other hand God he loved it. She was only twenty-two, but so fucking smart. And passionate. And stubborn. Everything between them was a battle. Covering up her tats when they were out, because they were too noticeable and memorable. Ditto losing the electric-pink dyed hair and the clothes that revealed too much of her insanely voluptuous body. It wasn’t just him she liked to provoke, either; it was everybody, though the good news he supposed was that when she couldn’t provoke anyone else, she directed all that energy to him, and the only thing she seemed to enjoy more than bucking his authority was giving in to him once he’d made it plain that he knew better. Maybe one day she’d feel confident enough to dump him and go off on her own, find another revolution to join, another guy closer to her age. He was almost thirty, and though the gap would matter less with the passage of time, he gave himself only a four percent chance of making it to forty. Neither of his parents had made it that far, but he doubted it would be genetics that did him in. The opposition he’d stirred up was far more dangerous than biology.
“You want to do something by that window?” he said. “Help me set up the satellite router. Then come over here and let’s upload the latest batch. And then watch the reactions.”
Her arms were still crossed. She was doing it on purpose—she knew her rack was spectacular. “Oh, you know what I want, do you?”
He felt himself getting hard. “If it’s the same thing I want.”
She made him wait so long he almost thought she was going to say no. But then she gave him a sexy smirk and started pulling the equipment out of her backpack.
* * * * *
Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.
Endnotes to each chapter are here.
Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!
And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!
Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
May 29, 2025
THE SYSTEM Chapter 1
Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.
Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!
* * * * *
Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
It’s a big club—and you ain’t in it.
—George Carlin
Chapter 1
The object of power is power.
—George Orwell
The restaurant was small, and the packed crowd was cheering with such abandon that Valeria couldn’t hear the reporter’s question—even though the woman had yelled it only inches from her ear.
“I’m sorry?” Valeria shouted, her own words barely audible over the din.
The reporter leaned closer, taking care to keep her microphone between them. “How does it feel?” she hollered, louder this time. “Can you describe what you’re feeling right now?”
The cheering cohered into a chant—the campaign slogan, magnified by hundreds. Let’s do this! Let’s do this! Let’s do this!
Valeria glanced at the television monitor set up on the bar. The CNN chyron read, Valeria Velez Stuns Fillian Dunne, Will Represent California’s 27th District as Youngest Woman in Congress.
The networks were calling the election.
It shouldn’t have been a complete shock—Preston had been saying for a week that it wasn’t even close anymore, but that if cable news acknowledged it was already over, their viewers would drift away like fans before the fourth quarter of a lopsided football game.
Still, it didn’t seem real.
The crowd was stomping now in time with the chant. The floor shook. LET’S DO THIS! LET’S DO THIS! LET’S DO THIS!
“I’m just—” Valeria started to say, but it was no good, her people were too loud, and besides, she didn’t know what she was feeling right then, let alone how to describe it.
And suddenly the stomping and chanting were dying down. Valeria looked over and saw why: Preston, ever sensitive to an opportunity to cultivate the press, had jumped on a chair and was lowering his extended arms like a conductor signaling the orchestra to ease off the fortissimo. He grinned at Valeria and shook his head: Can you believe this?
No, she thought. I can’t.
But his smile gave her confidence, the way it always did.
“I’m sorry,” Valeria said. “Can you tell me your name again? So much going on.”
“Jocelyn. Jocelyn Slater. Gamut News.”
“Jocelyn,” Valeria said, leaning closer to the woman’s microphone. “Right. Well, I feel encouraged. Because if a little campaign like mine can do this, then America can do anything.”
Don’t let them make it about us, Preston liked to remind her. It’s always about your constituents. The people. The country. They want to talk personalities. We talk principles.
“Even overcome racism and misogyny?” Slater said.
From the beginning, the press had tried to frame the contest as young Latina versus old white guy. Valeria wasn’t going to take the bait.
“I based my campaign on economic policies,” Valeria said. “Class policies. I promised voters I would fight for those policies, and now that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Slater gave an almost imperceptible worth a try shrug, then turned to her cameraman and pulled the microphone close to her own mouth. “And there you have it. Valeria Velez, the unknown thirty-year-old bartender from Pacoima, defeats Fillian Dunne, ten-term incumbent, favorite of Santa Clarita business interests, and until tonight the likely next Speaker of the House. A David and Goliath story if ever there was one. Valeria—or should I call you Congresswoman—what kind of stones were you throwing from your sling?”
Valeria almost offered up the rote campaign answer—the determination to be a voice for the voiceless; to make the American Dream available for everyone; to take back government of, by, and for the people. All of which was true, of course, but suddenly she felt inspired by something different.
“You really want to know?” she said, stealing a quick look at the camera lens, giving herself an extra moment to consider.
Slater leaned closer as though they were sharing a secret. “If you’re willing to tell.”
“It’s this: Today is a good day to die.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s a saying,” Valeria went on, feeling a little rush at the risk of improvising, at knowing there was no taking it back now. “Attributed to Oglala Lakota leader Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was talking about war. But we’re in a battle, too, and what the expression means here is that I’m not afraid to lose. For me politics is nothing more than a means of improving the lives of millions of ordinary Americans. Power is only potential. It’s what you do with it that counts.”
“You’re saying politics isn’t worthwhile?”
Never just bob and weave, Preston always told her. No matter what you say, staying on defense makes you look weak. Be a counterpuncher. Hit ’em back. He knew she liked boxing references. Her father, Héctor, had been a California Golden Gloves state champion and had coached Valeria and her brother Mateo when they were teenagers trying to follow in his footsteps.
“Of course it’s worthwhile—for the few, who use politics to profit at the expense of the many. For the rich and powerful of this country, politics is a fantastic racket. The question is whether we can change this country’s politics, to provide a decent life for the many rather than further fattening the very few.”
Preston was a terrific tactician. But the alliteration was all hers—and always had been, starting with the name her parents had given her.
“Many people believe your signature policy proposal—the universal basic income—is a utopian fantasy.”
Valeria leaned closer to the mic. “They said the same about abolishing slavery. About women’s suffrage, too. You don’t think those are utopian fantasies, Jocelyn, do you?”
Some in the crowd who were close enough to hear laughed.
Slater shook her head quickly, maybe at the discomfort of having the Q&A script flipped. “But do you really expect to be able to follow through on a UBI now that you’ve won the election?”
“Look, artificial intelligence isn’t just the future anymore. It’s here now and getting more powerful every day, and its impact is only beginning to be felt. In long-haul trucking alone, we’re talking over two million Americans, ninety percent of whom are men with a median age of forty-six, all of whom are going to be instantly out of work the moment AI starts driving trucks for no salary and without ever needing to sleep. That’s a literal army of unemployed. So what’s utopian—discarding two million men and hoping for the best, or making sure they have something to fall back on as our entire society adjusts to the massive technological shift of AI?”
“So you’re in the camp that views AI as an existential threat?”
“It doesn’t matter how I view it. What matters is its impact. The collision we’re about to have with AI is going to be like nothing society has experienced since the Industrial Revolution. We need a UBI airbag to cushion the crash.”
“Any comments on the rumors about you and your campaign manager, Preston Jante?”
Valeria wasn’t surprised—she was used to reporters fleeing from substance in favor of gossip. And she understood that anytime two attractive people worked closely together, rumors were inevitable. Of course, in this case the rumors were true.
“I’ve addressed those stories more times than I can—”
“But now you’re a congresswoman. Don’t you owe the people an answer?”
And then Preston appeared next to them, as though he’d sensed the question and levitated over to interrupt it.
“It’s Dunne,” he said, holding out a cellphone. “He wants to talk to you.”
Valeria looked at the phone. For a surreal instant, she was a kid again, back on the Viper roller coaster at Magic Mountain, where Héctor had taken her for the first time when she was eight. The clack clack clack of the gears as the train car climbed the mechanical lift, the split second of stillness at the top . . . and then the whoosh of air in her face and the sickening clench in her belly as gravity disappeared and the car plunged from two hundred feet in the air.
“He’s . . . conceding?”
Preston shook his head as though in wonder or disbelief. “All he said was, ‘I’d like to speak with Valeria.’”
She smiled, feeling a little nauseous, and took the phone.
“This is Valeria.”
“Congratulations, Congresswoman Velez. I hope I’m the first person to call you that, because it would be an honor.”
For a second, she wanted to apologize for every charge she’d ever leveled at him—corporatist, militarist, bought-and-paid-for. Yes, it was all true, and yes, he’d thrown plenty of shade, too, but he was beaten now. And being so gracious in defeat.
“A reporter just called me Congresswoman. But . . . not Congresswoman Velez.”
Dunne laughed. “I guess it’s a night of second places for me. But I’m glad the fight is over. Maybe now we can be friends.”
“I’d like that,” she heard herself say. Did she mean it? She thought she did, but maybe that was just some kind of victor’s guilt.
“I need to address the troops,” he said. “They already know from the networks, but they won’t accept it until they hear from me.”
“I know how they feel, Congressman.”
He laughed again. “I won’t be a congressman for much longer. And my friends call me Fillian.”
For a second, she was actually touched. Without thinking, she said, “My friends call me Valeria.”
“Well . . . maybe when it’s just us talking. But when people are around, I’ll use the title. You earned it. Cheers, Valeria.”
He clicked off before she could even say goodbye. She looked at Preston, shaking her head wordlessly, and handed him back the phone.
Everyone had gone quiet. They were all watching her.
“Well?” Slater said.
Valeria cleared her throat. “Someone bring me a chair.”
Instantly the whole room was in motion. Within seconds, a half dozen chairs had been laid out before her. She stepped onto one in the center and Preston handed her a microphone.
She started to smile and was surprised to feel her free hand rising toward her mouth. Her childhood teeth had been crooked, and as a teen, concealing them had been a habit. But she’d earned enough bartending in college to afford braces, which had given her a beautiful smile and ended the self-conscious reflex—or at least suppressed it. She managed to grab the mic with both hands, hoping the gesture would look natural and not like something redirected, and unleashed a huge, unabashed grin. A few campaign workers clutched each other’s shoulders, probably afraid to believe this could be real.
“That was Congressman Dunne,” she said. “Calling to concede—”
Everyone went wild, whooping, applauding, stomping. Valeria waited until the commotion began to drop off.
“—to concede the election. And to congratulate everyone in this room on our against-all-odds victory!”
The room erupted again, and again Valeria waited.
“I have so many of you to thank,” she went on. “For now, I’m going to mention only two, or I’ll go on all night.”
She cleared her throat once more. “First, Preston Jante, the best campaign manager in the history of campaigns—”
The applause amped up again, and again she waited until it died down.
“Preston was the one who suggested I do this crazy thing—not just run for Congress, but against Fillian Dunne, who was considered by anyone not certifiably mad to be unbeatable!”
Laughter. Applause. Scattered cries of We’re all mad here! and They sure got that wrong!
“It’s good Preston and I both tend bar at Dennis’s restaurants,” Valeria said. “Because if it hadn’t been after hours and if I hadn’t been drinking, I probably wouldn’t have listened to him.”
More laughter. She gestured to Dennis, who was hanging back, smiling.
“Which brings me to the other person I want to thank. Dennis Kelly, the force behind Protégé, Lancaster’s first Michelin-starred restaurant. Dennis gave me a job when I needed one, a campaign headquarters when I didn’t have one, and a place for this party better than anything we could have bought even with all the money in the world!”
Which we don’t have! someone called out, to ripples of laughter and a response of, Who needs money, we’ve got the love!
“Every one of us worked so hard on this,” Valeria said when the laughter and cheers had died down. “And tonight, every one of us has so many reasons to be joyous and proud. But tomorrow the hard part begins. The part where we stop stuffing the maw of the military machine, where we take those wasted trillions and make them part of a universal basic income, where we build a society that runs on hope rather than fear and that works not just for the richest one percent, but for all Americans, not just for the few of them but for all of us!”
The crowd went berserk at the last three words, which were another campaign slogan, turning them into a deafening chant. All of us! All of us! All of us!
It went on for a long time. When it finally began to ebb, Valeria said, “But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, let’s party!”
That detonated a fresh outpouring of laughter and applause. She looked at Preston, wanting to share the moment with him, but he was focused on his phone, frowning.
She stepped off the chair and walked over, pausing to accept handshakes and hugs from delirious members of the campaign. Preston, ordinarily attuned to her movements and needs, kept staring at his phone. He didn’t even notice when she reached him.
She touched his shoulder. “What is it?”
He looked up. “They’re moving the NGAD fighter.”
“What? From Palmdale?”
He nodded. “Air Force Plant 4. Nancy Byer. Texas’s 12th District.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? It’s a message. ‘You want to stop stuffing the military maw, Congresswoman? Fine. We’ll move the Next Generation Air Dominance contract out of your district and have Lockheed Martin build billions of dollars’ worth of next-generation fighter jets in Fort Worth, instead. Where we have a representative who knows her place.’”
She was suddenly scared. “That’s five thousand jobs.”
“Yeah, that’s clearly their point.”
She didn’t answer. Two minutes of joy, and then this.
Come on, Valeria. Did you think this was going to be easy? That they weren’t going to hit back?
Preston’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it. “It’s Dunne again.”
She felt an irrational pang of fear. “What, is he taking back his concession?”
He shook his head, obviously as perplexed as she was. “I don’t know.”
She pushed away the feeling that everything was already crumbling—that somehow her victory, which she hadn’t yet even fully accepted as real, was about to be snatched away—and took the phone.
“Fillian,” she said, projecting much more calm than she felt. “It’s been too long.”
“I assume you saw the news?”
“What news?”
“Hah, playing dumb. You’re getting the hang of it already. Listen, I know you just got handed your first major dilemma. Maybe I can help.”
All the warm feelings his graciousness had prompted earlier were suddenly gone, replaced by suspicion.
“Why would you want to help me?”
“The people who work at Plant 42 have been my constituents for twenty years, Valeria. The workers and their families. I know we have different priorities. But if there’s a way to save those jobs, shouldn’t you and I try to find it?”
How could anyone argue with that? But the question made her wary. It reminded her of her mother, Josie, who had always asked similarly irrefutable questions: Don’t you want the teacher to know how smart you are? Don’t you want to get asked to the dance? Don’t you want to know why your father really left us?
“What do you have in mind?”
“I have a few ideas. But to start with, there’s a guy you should know. He’s a bit . . . different. But you’ll appreciate how his messaging acumen can help you spin the tires when you think you’re stuck.”
“What do you mean, ‘different’?”
“His name is Montgomery Cranston. He’s helped me wriggle through plenty of tight spots. If he likes you, he might help you, too. You interested?”
Was the Pentagon moving NGAD out of Palmdale a tight spot? It actually felt much worse than that. Worse than her misgivings about Dunne.
She glanced at Preston and nodded. “I’m interested,” she said.
* * * * *
Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.
Endnotes to each chapter are here.
Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!
And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!
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May 9, 2025
Andrew Bacevich's The Age of Illusions
I’ve been a fan of Andrew Bacevich’s books for a long time—Breach of Trust and America’s War for the Greater Middle East, to name just two—but somehow I missed the publication of The Age of Illusions until recently. Well, oversight corrected, and this latest entry is as insightful, thought-provoking, and even gripping as the others, while also in some places being a bit more personal in ways that enhanced everything else that’s great about the book.
Bacevich begins with a quote from John Updike’s Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom books: “Without the Cold War, what’s the point of being an American?” It’s a question that animates the rest of the book, which in addition to being a solid critique of our rulers’ addiction to war, is also a meditation on what it means to be American.
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Of all the book’s insights, the one I found most resonant were its depictions of Trump’s ascendency as a manifestation of far more significant, longstanding, and consequential aspects of post World War 2 and post Cold War America itself. I tend to agree with this framework, and maybe some of that agreement is behind my praise for the insights. All I can say is that Bacevich himself strikes me as a non-tribal observer of events, motivated by a desire to illuminate the foundation of events rather than by the urge to score points.
It’s been my observation that when humans find a favored approach is no longer working as it once did, their first and sometimes continuing impulse is to do the favored thing longer, louder, harder. This might work for a while but is almost always counterproductive in the long term. In this regard it’s interesting—and disturbing—to consider what America’s post Cold War cultural defaults have become: domination and endless war. Yet the world is becoming increasingly multipolar regardless. If our rulers are true to my views of human nature, we are in for a long period of more of the same, but worse. At some point the never-ending wars and lust for dominance will become unsustainable, but there will be terrible suffering in the meantime, and perhaps worse.
On a brighter note, insights like Bacevich’s could help us change course now instead of drifting until it’s too late. Here’s hoping.
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April 13, 2025
Kevin Gosztola’s excellent Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange:
Guilty of Journalism is a terrific read and a critically important book. I think it can be read three ways.
First, it's the definitive account of the US government's chilling, vindictive persecution of journalist Julian Assange over the course of (depending on how you count) over 15 years. If you needed any further proof of the proposition that the most powerful people are also the most fragile and petty, this book provides it.
Second, it details the lengths to which the government will go to control the free flow of information. Some gambits are obvious—threatening journalists with life in prison for their journalism, for one. Some are less obvious, but more pernicious—such as conflating journalism with hacking, conflating journalism with espionage, and creating an exception-that-swallows-the-rule 1st Amendment carve-out for for journalism the government deems "irresponsible."
(As one of innumerable examples, consider the "But classified information didn't just land in Assange's lap; he solicited it!" Now try to turn that into a workable principle. It can't be done. Real journalism inherently involves publishing information the government wants to conceal. At the barest minimum, just calling yourself "journalist" inherently involves at least an implicit solicitation for classified information. And what if someone calls you essentially at random and says, "I have something sensitive I want to share with you." If you respond, "Don't say anything more; use Signal, it's more secure," have you just solicited the classified information? Conspired to receive it? Aided and abetted? Etc? There is simply no workable principle here other than turning over to the government the power to outlaw journalism it doesn't like—which is to say, to outlaw the only journalism that matters.)
And third, it's a cautionary tale.
The caution is this. Anytime the government claims OF COURSE to be adhering the 1st Amendment, BUT—
Citizens should keep in mind three axioms.
1. Real protection of free speech and the free flow of information is improbable and fragile—almost a miracle and an extraordinary civilizational achievement all Americans should proudly treat as a core part of our heritage.
2. Power hates free speech and the free flow of information and is constantly looking for ways to undermine both—meaning the government not only can't be relied upon to protect the 1st Amendment but must be understood as an ever-present threat to the 1st Amendment.
3. A good defense is always layered because you never want to protect something important with only one layer that, if breached, means the important thing is lost.
Simply put, citizens should never cut the government any slack on anything that even arguably infringes on 1st Amendment protections for anyone. Free speech infringements for the government are like a taste of heroin to an addict, like water looking for a crack to get into a basement. If ever the expression "Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile" applies, it applies to governments and free speech.
So the default position of citizens should never be "Protect me by curtailing some aspect of speech!" Rather it should be "Not one fucking inch you would-be despots."
I hope Guilty of Journalism will be widely read, and deeply appreciated. It deserves both.
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March 28, 2025
The Three Axioms of Free Speech
With regard to free speech and the free flow of information, I think there are three axioms people often lose sight of:
1. Real protection of free speech and the free flow of information is improbable and fragile—almost a miracle and an extraordinary civilizational achievement all Americans should proudly treat as a core part of our heritage.
2. Power hates free speech and the free flow of information and is constantly looking for ways to undermine both—meaning the government not only can't be relied upon to protect the 1st Amendment but must be understood as an ever-present threat to the 1st Amendment.
3. A good defense is always layered because you never want to protect something important with only one layer that, if breached, means the important thing is lost.
With these axioms as my basis, I'm disinclined to cut the government any slack on anything that even arguably infringes on 1st Amendment protections for anyone. Free speech infringements for the government are like a taste of heroin to an addict, like water looking for a crack to get into a basement. If ever the expression "Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile" applies, it applies to governments and free speech.
So the default position of citizens should never be "Protect me by curtailing some aspect of speech!" Rather it should be "Not one fucking inch you would-be despots."
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March 6, 2025
American Exception
Wow.
As Blade said in the eponymous movie, “The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping. There is another world beneath it—the real world.”
American Exception is about the real world.
It is deeply researched, coherently presented, cogently argued. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll wonder how you ever could have believed that things are what they seem or are how the powers that be present them.
Stay-behind operations in Europe. The Kennedy and MLK assassinations. CIA heroin smuggling. Nixon and the CIA having the goods on each other re JFK’s murder and Nixon’s interference in Johnson’s peace talks with North Vietnam. It’s all in here, and much more, all of it run by a tripartite structure, as Good describes it, consisting of the public state (politicians, bureaucrats, the sugar-coated topping); the security state (CIA, FBI, Pentagon, etc); and the deep state (Wall Street, think tanks, establishment media, and the unaccountable factions that exercise power alongside and beyond visible power).
Considering the amount of money and power at stake, it would be borderline delusional to believe that the powerful play by any set of rules other than “How much can I get away with?” I think what causes people to resist this obvious dark truth is emotional discomfort. We ordinary people are powerless, and it’s painful to acknowledge not only that mommy and daddy don’t love us, but that they look at us as something akin to food. It hurts to realize, as George Carlin said of our “owners,” that “They don’t care about you. They don’t care about you. At all. At all. At all.”
But there is some inherent satisfaction in clarity. And hope, too. Because if you can correctly understand the nature of things, your chances of improving them are dramatically better.
For that reason alone, I hope American Exception will be widely read. It deserves to be, and then some.
January 13, 2014
Graveyard of Memories Giveaway
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September 19, 2011
THE DETACHMENT #7 in Kindle Store!
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