State of Terror

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

inadequate. A hollow man, an upper-class twit, with any guts he might have had replaced by entitlement and random Latin phrases.

Competence was replaced by blind loyalty as the determining factor for employment by an increasingly deranged administration.

At that level of politics, Ellen Adams was appreciating, if you weren’t at the table, you were on the menu.

Accomplished middle-aged women were often diminished by small men.

What it in fact created wasn’t a balance of terror, but a perpetual state of terror.

with the direction the country is moving in. They’re using him. They see Dunn as the only chance to stop the erosion of the American way. Not because he has a vision, but because he can be manipulated. First, though, they need to get him back into power.”

trump analogue - accurate!

“Their Trojan horse,” said Betsy. Whitehead smiled. “A good analogy. Hollow. An empty vessel into which these men and women have poured their ambitions, their outrages, their hatreds and insecurities.”

than two decades of fighting, the Taliban is back in control of Afghanistan?” “It will be. And it will bring with it not just Al-Qaeda, but the Pathan. Do you know them?” “They’re the ones who kidnapped Gil.” “Secretary Adams’s son, yes. They’re an extended family of extremists, with claws in every organization, legitimate and otherwise, in the region. The current so-called democratic government of Afghanistan was propped up by us. Remove us, without a plan . . .” He opened his hands. “All the rats come streaming back. All the ground lost. All the rights withdrawn.” “The women, the girls . . .” “Who believed they were safe to get an education and a job?” said Whitehead. “Will be punished. But there’s more.”

actually prescient

Buddhist monk Thubten Chodron’s advice: “Don’t believe everything you think.”

‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’

He was experienced enough to know that the weak blustered, denied, lied, and struck out wildly. The powerful admitted a mistake, thereby robbing it of its hold on them. Only the truly formidable could afford to show contrition. Far from displaying weakness, the American Secretary of State had demonstrated immense strength and resolve.

Einstein had said: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

She’d found him amusing, charming even. Though uninterested in others and easily bored when the spotlight shifted to anyone else.

Her mother had often said that anyone can ask the first question. It was the second, the third that counted.

Watching what was happening here in the States. Watching you make a balls-up of democracy. Very entertaining. Best reality show ever, though it’s not actually reality, is it? Most of politics, of so-called democracy, is an illusion, staged for the great unwashed.”

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.

…and all of it on Twitter

Finally, this is a work of fiction but the story it tells is all too timely. It’s up to us to make sure its plot stays fictional.