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Ellen Adams was in a position to no longer just talk about change, but to bring it about. To turn enemies into friends and keep chaos and terror at bay.
19/0717, 38/1536, 119/1848
Factum fieri infectum non potest.
if you weren’t at the table, you were on the menu.
As she hung up, Gil’s mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then Secretary Adams opened her eyes and looked at her smiling aides.
“Ellen, if you want to have a friend, you need to be a friend.”
I suspect he was a decent person once. Most people are.
Like most women, unlike the myth, she was good in a crisis.
“Don’t believe everything you think.”
“Havercrafte man pore mārmāhi ast.”
‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’
The powerful admitted a mistake, thereby robbing it of its hold on them.
For Christmas that year, Betsy had given her a copy of the latest work by her favorite poet, Ruth Zardo. The slim volume was called I’m F.I.N.E. It stood for “Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical.”
Noli timere, Armand thought as he hit send. Be not afraid.
They’ll destroy their own freedoms. Accept, even applaud, the suspension of rights. Internment camps. Torture. Expulsions. The liberal agenda, women’s equality, gay marriage, immigrants, will be blamed for the death of the real America. But thanks to the bold action of a patriotic few, the white Anglo-Saxon Christian, God-fearing America of their grandparents will be restored. And if they have to slaughter a few thousand to achieve it, well, it is war, after all. The beacon that was America will die, by suicide. Frankly it was coughing up blood anyway.”
“While you were looking outward, scanning the horizon for threats,” he continued, “you missed what was happening in your own backyard. What was taking root right here, on American soil. In your towns, your shops, in your heartland. Among your friends, in your families. The sensible conservatives moving to the right. The right moving far right. The far right becoming alt-right. Becoming, in their rage and frustration, radicalized thanks to an internet filled with crazy theories, false ‘facts,’ and smug politicians allowed to spew lies.
Time and patience, time and patience. Tolstoy said those are the strongest of warriors, and he was right.
“We can handle truth. It’s the lies that do damage.”
