The Fantasy Years

WITH FOX NEWS ON THE AIR, all the bombast and intellect of people associated with Rush moved on to the television screen. Now people were no longer restricted to hearing the outrage in the voices of the hosts; now they could see the foreheads crinkle in expressions of dismay; they could see the eyes squint in daggers of accusation towards the liberals, the elites, the wishy-washy secular relativists, for any pencil-necked geek who found themselves under the hot glare of the studio lights.

The outrage was visible.

The spasms of outrage, vexing, refreshing, gripped Rush listeners, who spoiled for a fight, who spoiled for an opportunity to win.

“America was better in the 1940s!” a voice in Nevada claimed.
“Right, except not to the liberals with their relativist history,” agreed another.
“What could liberals hate about us beating the Nazis?
“You’re forgetting the Japanese.”
“We kicked their asses too!”
“No, the Japanese that were put in camps in America.”
“Oh, of course. How could I forget?”
“Right. And that makes America a bad country to liberals.”
“As if liberals back then cared about the Japanese in camps.”
“As if anyone in wartime can care about foreigners put in camps.”
“As if that’s a normal way of thinking.”
“I guess for the liberals it is.”

The liberals contorted in anguish hearing these arguments. They were driven wild by what they heard. But that was simply more proof to the Dittoheads everything they were saying was true. The rise of the conservatives was so consistent, across so many lines – on the radio, online, in ideas formulated and circulated, on Fox news – that the goalposts of reality themselves had shifted. Together the rhetoric and the rightwing media ratcheted the country rightward.

The liberals retreated from the debates, more sure now than ever, that like silly rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and the stars of Fox News could be dismissed. Liberals dismissed the right wing views, under pinned by reams of junk scholarship from right wing think tanks, as symptoms of the Dittoheads bad taste. After all, poor right wingers shopped at Wal-Mart. They were inclined to wear a shirt incorporating stars and stripes. They might put a flag sticker on their bumper, alongside a sticker showing Calvin pissing on a Ford or a Chevy. And the bumper might belong to a car parked at a wrestling match.

Anything of these things were symptoms. Symptoms of that part of American society that needn’t really ever be taken seriously. They were unserious people, living uninformed lives, consuming tasteless items. And so they weren’t to be dignified with a response to their endless accusations.

When that wasn’t enough, liberals could contend that politics didn’t matter anymore. As the liberals retreated and vacated the perennial arguments that make up the American political scene, the Dittoheads advanced.

Besides, the spectacle of TV and its explosion of cable choice made it easier for liberals to tune out all the right wing unpleasantness. The explosion in media had crowded out the space allotted in many Americans’ attention for real politics.
Of course, politics were there if you really wanted them. You could watch almost all of it happening on C-Span. Gavel-to-gavel congressional coverage, speeches, rallies, readings, symposia at think tanks. Everything that made up a political discourse.
But visually, men talking about policy could not compare with car chases and fiery explosions on TV. Men talking about policy could not compare with how the stars were dressing for Oscars Night. People talking about policy couldn’t even compare to the graphic-rich news.

Beside, Americans in 1996 were getting caught up in the possibilities of the economy just emerging then as a topic in and of itself. Jenny, Mike, Dennis, Brandon, Don and most everyone else could taste it. They knew wealth was just around the corner even if it wasn’t within their reach. The economy was heating up. The Internet would create a whole new industry of jobs.

That’s why Ben moved to New York, where he was having a bracer with his co-worker Walt. The economy sure was working for Ben. He’d just been granted 2,000 shares of stock at below market prices from the Internet start up he worked at. After a couple panicky, exhilarating weeks of job searching, New York had been a continual whirlwind party for Ben since he arrived in New York.
Tonight was no different.

He picked up the habit of calling drinks ‘bracers’ from Walt. And a bracer was a good swaggering word that matched Ben’s swaggering tone as he bragged to Walt about how in his last job back in Cleveland, he had given advice to the principal of the investment firm. He helped Mr. Towers understand part of prospectus on a dotcom. He left out the fact that after he told Mr. Towers the sentence made no sense, Mr. Towers invested in the company anyway. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the look of Ben talking confidently in a bar for the chicks to see.
Ben was on his second Glenmorangie and had hit the sublime point in the mind of 25-year old man in New York with his life ahead of him when the whole city, and within the whole city, the whole world felt possible.

The scotch was served in large, polished, bottom-heavy rocks glasses. The glasses rested on a scrubbed copper bar top. He and Walt had come to this place, the Gotham Lounge, after a small Friday afternoon party at Apexonline.com, where they both worked. Apexonline had celebrated it’s 5,000th registered customer, which meant the company was on track for 27 percent growth year over year, which meant…big things. It meant they were on the ground floor of something potentially massive.
Walt had worked at Apex for only a few months longer than Ben but he was from Connecticut so he knew the lay of the land. He knew New York, if for no other reason than his Christmas trips to the city as a child. Walt also knew which bars catered to the “bridges and tunnels” crowd and which didn’t. He was also taller.
These factors together impressed Ben and Ben was grateful to have a mentor with whom he could pursue the eternal quest: meeting chicks.

Ben had wanted to go to another bar tonight – McChesney’s – but Walt had assured him that the kind of people who went to McChesney thought Killians Red was a good beer. “The hicks!” Walt exclaimed. Instead, they came here, which boasted a fine selection of single malts.

And Walt was right. After his second Glenmorangie, Ben felt closer to where he wanted to be in life, in work, everything, although he couldn’t say exactly where he wanted to be. He was just closer. That’s all. If nothing else, he was no longer shut up in a room with a jerk of a co-worker in Cleveland. Now, he had a cool co-worker to hang out with in a cool city, where they went to cool bars. And not the bars where people drank Killian’s Red. This was closer to where Ben wanted to be. This was moving in the right direction.

And there were plenty of chicks at this bar too. Healthy, young, freshly graduated chicks, coming down from Bard, from BU, from Vassar, and all these other colleges that elicited in Ben images of impossibly East Coast, impossibly cardigan-clad and busty.
Another girl sat down next to Walt with her cluster of girlfriends.
“Watch this,” Walt said, positively reeking of confidence.

A girl brought a cigarette to her lips. Walt lit it. She glanced at him with irritation, puffed and said thanks. Then she turned back to her friends. Ben suppressed a laugh. Walt was obviously hoping for a warmed response.

“You get points for trying,” Ben said.
Walt laughed a blustery laugh. “Ah, look at her, ordering a margarita.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What is this? Some kind of South Florida, Jimmy Buffett, college house?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“People are what they consume. And that’s why I go for what’s best for me,” Walt explained. Walt was always explaining something to Ben. “Take this glass of Glenmorangie. The way the Scotch is served says a lot about the kind of place you’re in. And it says a lot about us that we chose to be here.”
“Indubitably,” Ben replied. “It says we like our Scotch served in a good solid highball glass.”
“And that’s the way it’s best enjoyed.”
“I say its best enjoyed in the company of a 3rd year student at Vassar.” Ben asked.
“Better a senior at Smith.”

“Of course, a Baruch graduate goes best with a single malt. Maybe a 12 year Balblair.”
“A Balblair. Of course,” Walt conceded, smiling at Ben’s ironic chitchat. And no men talking about policy anywhere in the world could compare to this entertainment, so pleasing to the senses, so full of possibilities. Walt returned to his faux world-weary talk about how you need to reinvent yourself constantly on the job “Because the online business is constantly reinventing itself.”

“I’m already on my second job there and it’s only been months since I was hired.”

“That’s good. Then they like you. If they didn’t like you, they wouldn’t let you innovate.”
“Glad they like me.”
“’Cause you gotta figure, none of us know where we’ll be in a few years time. Not even Jerry.” Jerry was the start up’s CEO.

A gorgeous young woman, tanned and voluptuous, with hair like combed gold, passed by, “I’d have her with Glenturret,” Walt said. “On the rocks, of course.”

Ben felt a bump on his side. He turned and saw the girl who had stepped up to the bar, facing stock forward. She was about his height. She blinked as Ben glanced at her.

Ben glanced back at Walt made a frantic ‘have at her’ gesture. Ben turned to her and said.

“So my friend and I were saying that every woman corresponds to a kind of single malt scotch. What do you think?”
She turned to him and smiled. “What?”

Tony Bennett’s brassy voice blasted from the sound system.

“My friend and I…Oh, never mind. What do you do?”
Her face lit up with her lipstick smile. The bartender took her order. And she asked again, amid the barking happy hour clamor, “I didn’t hear you. Can you say it again?”
“What do you do?”
“Student.”
“From here?”
“Boston.”
“Oh, yeah. Go to college there?”
“Sarah Lawrence.”
“Nice to meet you, Sarah.”
She burst out laughing. “I go to Sarah Lawrence College. My name is Megan.” And she looked as Irish-blooded, tan and as all-American and as healthy as they came.
“Sorry, it so loud in here.”
She peeled a ten out of her little wallet when the bartender put her gimlet down before her. Ben raised a hand to the bartender, pointing to her drink, “On my tab, please.”
Ben loved saying those words.
“Thanks,” she said, turning to Ben and raising the glass to her mouth to suck through the stirrer. “What’s your name?”

WITH FREEDOM UNLEASHED, the Dittoheads could read whatever news source they liked and take every breathless word of it as gospel, whether it had anything to do with reality or not. They could take everything they were told at face value as long as they knew it wasn’t liberal. And they could dismiss every bit of news from the liberal media because it wasn’t told to them by Rush Limbaugh. And if the facts conflicted with their worldview, well, there was a term for that, too. The facts were “political correct.” And the Dittoheads weren’t buying them. Any of them:

“Rush is right about one thing: liberals get furious if you don’t agree with them” said a voice in Dallas.

“You should have seen my wife’s friend when I told her feminism was just a plot to allow ugly women access to mainstream society,” said another.

“You should have seen my nephew in college when I told him that Clinton killed someone.”

“Or my wife’s feminist friend when I told her abortion should be outlawed!”
“Or that Hillary is a dyke.”
“And that abortion should be illegal especially in cases of rape and incest!”
“And that Chelsea is ugly!” said a voice in Colorado.
“And Janet Reno is another lesbo!” from a voice in Maine.
“And Vince Foster did not die by his own hand!” a voice in Virginia exclaimed.
“But Clinton uses Secret Service agents like roadies!” said a voice in Georgia.
“And yet those liberals get mad when you tell them!”
“They can’t bear the truth!”

This was proof! The liberals’ response to these ideas was proof the liberals were wrong. And what did Rush fans get out of the liberals being wrong? What did they get out of digesting and regurgitating Rush’s all over anyone willing to listen? Fun.

They got to have fun because it was fun having opinions. It was fun for people to be experts about politics from information they got on the radio. It was particularly fun to know something, to believe something in a life that had gone pointless, in a wide open country that had grown fat and directionless, a country that had become unmoored and enemy-less.

“Welfare pays people to stay poor.”

“No it doesn’t!” the liberal voice in upstate, New York said.

“Welfare pays people to say poor. If it doesn’t then why are there still poor people?”

“What?”

“If liberals created welfare to supposedly help poor people because liberals are all-so-morally superior how come the poor never got richer?”

The liberal was stumped – silent with vexation — and the Dittohead smiled triumphantly. The fact that they had no comeback was proof that he was wrong.

So was the conversation in Center City, Philadelphia,
“Hate to break it to you, Clinton has no moral authority.”
“Not to you.”
“Here’s a man who had state troopers round up women he wanted to have sex with.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s in the press. Everyone knows it. But that’s how it is with your liberals: Everything is permissible.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is. Liberals don’t believe in the rule of law.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Not these days. Not according to my sources. Liberals want to do whatever feels good. Hate to break it to you, that’s how liberals are.”

And the liberal, steaming with anger could only deny it. And denying it only proved to the Dittohead that what he believed of liberals was true because if it weren’t true, why would the liberal be so upset?

Liberals tore their hair out after these conversations. They beat their fists into their hands as they walked away. They gritted their teeth.

They shook their heads in vigorous disapproval but when they did, they were only talking to themselves because liberals had no mass form of entertainment to unify them with the same message. So their retorts came as dismissive waves and bitter hisses between individuals, in their own words, in the privacy of small groups.

Liking Rush Limbaugh was some kind of social disorder, they’d conclude, like people who wore camouflage in their daily life, or domestic abuse, or how hate crimes surged in times of high unemployment.

Like that Because beyond disparaging the Dittoheads in their totality, it was no fun for liberals to dwell on how the Dittoheads always had a readymade comeback for anything a liberal could say.

“People who listen to Rush Limbaugh don’t know what they’re saying… They’re angry, ill informed people…”

“You can’t have a serious political discussion with them,” and so they didn’t have to be taken seriously. Because they weren’t well enough informed to know what they were talking about. And so they weren’t to be dignified by being taken seriously.

Liberals, however, failed to note one detail of the Dittoheads in their hurry to dismiss them: Dittoheads voted. In high numbers.

Don certainly didn’t trust white liberals. He didn’t trust white moderates, either. He didn’t trust white moderate presidents, either. Oh, no. He didn’t trust the white senators or the white congressmen.

He didn’t trust the white Supreme Court judges or Clarence Thomas either. But then again, Don didn’t trust white bailiffs and white law school deans. He certainly didn’t trust policemen whether they were white or black. He didn’t trust the way they looked at him. He didn’t even trust the way they dressed these days.

Cops had always been threatening but they used to dress like they belonged on city streets, in parks, in the civilian world.

Don noticed that more and more cops dressed for combat. If cops were going to dress for confrontation, their most likely victims of excessive force, police brutality, wrongful arrest and misidentification should dress for the confrontation too.

Like the Black Panthers did.

Don’s Uncle Ken had been in the Black Panthers. He had a picture of his Uncle Ken when he was a Panther. That’s how the family story went. Uncle Ken had been a Black Panther back in the Sixties out in California, where he lived.

Don had seen the picture. Just the way they dressed struck fear into the hearts of white people. Stuck fear, like how those cops dressed for combat did today.

And what did white people fear in the Black Panthers? Probably that they wanted just what anyone else wanted in this racist society. They wanted to live. And they wanted their own dignity.

ANOTHER IDEA PROMOTED, ALTHOUGH NOT CREATED, by think tanks and talk radio bullies was that everything ever reported by the media was slanted. It was liberal. It was suspect. And tainted. And if the so-called news was only the opinion of a bunch of East Coast elites, then everything in the news was just their damn opinion, anyway. And if it’s just a matter of opinion, then Rush’s opinion, and people who liked Rush’s opinion, had just as good opinions as anyone in the liberal news.

With factual history broken down into a contest of who could yell the loudest, anything was rhetorically possible. Now, any fact could point to any conclusion. Republicans could believe the sky was green and no one could stop them. And once the foundations of a shared reality were swept away, those with the loudest voices got to have their way with history, too.

And a voice in Wisconsin, echoed the indignation: “Just like a liberal to complain about the fifties.”
“Oh, but those liberals sure loved the Sixties, didn’t they?”
“Everyone knows that the Sixties are when the company – I mean country — went bad.”
“Everyone but the liberals.”
“In their post-modernist, PC world, the Sixties are when things turned good.”
“For them, race riots are a positive thing.”
“For liberals, hippies swarming the Pentagon were good for America.”
“For liberals, children conceived in the mud of Woodstock are the ultimate concert souvenir.”
“Yes, to liberals, tripping your balls off on tabs of brown acid while sliding naked down mud paths in the rain is what we should do every weekend.”

THE VOICES RAGED! Egged on by the shrill boom of Rush Limbaugh’s righteousness, he and his imitators dominated the AM radio dial. His listeners, filled with his words, with his arguments, spoiled for a fight. And Maria, whose family had owned the local pizza for years, said to Ben: “Clinton goes around the country demanding blow-jobs from unsuspecting women.”

“Oh, come on!” Ben said, clutching his pizza box. He was no Clinton-defender. He wasn’t even “into” politics. But the idea Clinton went around the country demanding blowjobs was ridiculous.

“That’s what I heard,” Maria said. “Clinton goes around demanding blow jobs from women. He uses the Secret Service like a bunch of bouncers at a heavy metal concert.”

“Where did you hear this?”
“I have my sources.”
“Rush Limbaugh, huh?”
“Listen to how condescending you are.”
“Right wing radio hosts make stuff up, Maria.”

“So does the liberal media!” she said, vengeance blazing in her eyes. “The only difference is people like Rush and me don’t have fancy Ivy League degrees.”

“I don’t either.”
“So you’ll just have to forgive us regular people for not having the elite education.”

“I don’t have an Ivy League background, either.”
“You went to college.”
“Yeah but I—“

“Even if I don’t have a fancy college degree like you, I still have the right to free speech.”

“I’m not saying you don’t.”

“Oh, I hear you loud and clear. You’re saying toe the liberal media’s line or keep my mouth shut.”

“No, I’m not.” Ben said. Or am I? He wondered, stumbling slightly as he stepped out of the pizzashop’s door.

Sure, Ben reasoned, he’d been a liberal in college. Oh sure, Ben supposed in his heart of hearts he believed in what liberals supposedly believed in.

Justice, equality, freedom and all that stuff. But he’d just wanted to purchase his pizza in peace without being accused of being an elitist, especially because he’d just spent 8 hours in the company of the real elitists.

He turned the corner and headed back up to his apartment.

“Context”, Dennis decided. That was the word. “Context.” Dennis mumbled it and liked the impression it made on his ears. It made him sound, well, as if his readings in American military made him more intellectual. As if they weren’t just rehashings of Khe Sahn, and the Tet Offensive and Operation Linebacker II.

So it was context: that was what was missing between him and Huong. Context could bridge the impossible divide between his 290 lbs of angst and the mystery in Huong’s smile and her rich almond eyes.

People had nothing in common anymore.

They used to.

There was a time in America when a youngish man and a youngish woman would have been able to come together effortlessly at a dance. A time when a guy courted a girl and the conventions were understood. A time when a guy could show a girl his interest through manners.

Through chivalry. There were would have been a functioning society between them. Diverse and wholesome activities to engage in rather than going to country and western pick up bars, or worse, karaoke.

There would have been dances sponsored by clubs and churches. There would be county fairs. Many, many places to encounter each other. Naturally. Without strain. There was context; something we could agree on. Something we could all participate in. There would have been courting.

Whatever happened to an America where regular Americans like Dennis belonged? An America where if a guy liked a girl, he had a place and way to show her without making a fool of himself? It was the Sixties, he decided.

That’s when being cool became the decisive factor. There were cool types. And there were uncool types like himself. And who can you thank for the Sixties? Dennis thought.

The hippies. The fucking hippies and their shiftless offspring: the liberals. Those people broke American culture. There was a time when the country fit together like a big jigsaw puzzle. When everything made a kind of sense.

Now, nothing made a sense. And there wasn’t even one American culture anymore. Just a bunch of multi-cultural PC liberals and everyone else who’d been alienated by them. The PC liberals didn’t break the country into two. They broke it into a hundred different pieces.

Dennis had no idea what kind of life Huong lived. He couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t offend her with his assumptions. And if he couldn’t even take that chance what chance did he have with her?

Huong probably had a boyfriend already, anyway.

Yes, this country was really falling apart.

When a regular good-hearted guy like Dennis doesn’t approach a perfectly attractive and approachable girl like Huong for fear of being alienated for not being culturally PC, then the country really was on the skids, he decided.

Even if Dennis was fat, he meant well and would treat Huong like the princess she was. He knew he would. But he and she were locked in a world where they’d never get the chance for this to happen. They were locked in a PC, multi-cultural world where they never shared enough in common for their relationship to happen.

Thanks a lot liberals, Dennis thought. Thanks a lot, hippies for creating a world where people today can’t even relate to each other.

THE VOICES CATERWAULED AND WAILED across the American night because their listeners knew they were right. They knew they were right and winning was fun. And with a whoosht! Dennis said to Will:

“As if a white liberal should feel guilty about enjoying the Fifties!”
“Just because the South was segregated!” Will said.
“But liberals make a big show of their guilt!”
“They do it for effect!”
“They do it for votes!”
“They do it because it wouldn’t be PC not to!”
“They do it but it’s fake!”
“Because what kind of white people really feel guilty about how things were in the good old days?”

And up high, in a small room on the 16th floor of a high-rise over Cleveland the cheery, outraged voice boomed in miniature from Randy’s small radio. Ben recognized Rush’s voice. How could he not? That bright bluster of incredulity. He’d recognize the voice anywhere.

“What’s an investment firm, anyway?” Ben asked aloud.
“Huh?” Randy said.
“What’s an investment firm? I’ve worked here for months and I don’t even know what an investment firm actually does.”
“It’s a big pile of money,” Randy said, shrugging.
“A big pile of money.”
“Yeah, a big pile of money that people invest in. Mr. Towers and his partners take that money and invest it in companies.”
“Why don’t investors just invest in the companies themselves?”
“I dunno. Because they don’t know what Mr. Towers knows. He’s about to launch a venture capital fund.”
“Really?” Ben didn’t know what a capital venture fund was either.
“Mr. Towers and his partners must be doing something right. This is one of the best investment firms in the country.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“One of the top five.”
“So is this something I can put a couple hundred dollars in?”
Randy smiled. “This isn’t for a couple hundred dollars.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s for a couple millions dollars. Tower Investments owns whole companies.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. This isn’t a small time operation.”
“I guess not.”
“Look at an annual report.”

Ben stood up and lifted up his monitor, while Randy pulled one of the annual reports off the stack elevating Ben’s monitor. “Here.”

Ben took it and sat back down. As Rush ranted and railed through the Thursday afternoon, Ben inspected Tower Investment Partners LLP’s 1995 annual report.

He learned Mr. Towers and two other board members had gone to Yale. He learned the firm had invested over three million dollars in website companies alone, taking positions in what they envisioned to be “cornerstone players” in industries. There was the insurance company in Illinois. Regent Insurance. There was the 64 percent of a semiconductor chip company in Thailand.

After a few minutes of careful study, Ben learned he really didn’t care for this kind of thing.

“You see what kind of operation this is,” said Randy. “Mr. Towers even knows Warren Buffett.”

“Who’s that?”
“Only one of the richest men in the world.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So you can see why when they call they expect you to come running?”

“I guess so.” Ben flipped the pages. Randy was right about it not being a small time operation. $7.2 million for a company. $21.0 million for another. The firm was worth $6 billion in total? The numbers didn’t even seem real. Especially not compared to the $590 he paid in rent every month.

And because the numbers seemed unreal, they somehow didn’t impress him. The amounts belonged to another world. Ben couldn’t imagine what these guys talked about every day sitting on their pile of money.

He supposed they decided what to buy and what to sell and the rest of the day was just reading reports and watching interest add up. It was as if there was Tower Investments; the people who cared about what Tower Investments did; and then there was Ben.

Not only did Ben not care for the firm’s work, he didn’t even care for people who cared for it.

Everything was so battened down and hush-hushed and done behind closed doors, there was nothing to look at. Nothing to see.

“So you see how big these guys are?” Randy asked.

Ben nodded, feigning reverence. Really, he’d just concluded there was nothing for him at Tower Investments in the long run. Ben knew that his job here could never be anything more than the absence of unemployment to him. Randy watched Ben, apparently waiting for his exclamation of wonder.

Then the phone chirped.

Ben looked: it was Mr. Towers.

“I.T.” Ben said, “I.T!” once he’d gotten the phone to his mouth.
“Can you come over here right way, please?”
“Right away, Mr. Towers.”
Ben turned to leave.
“Take a mint,” Randy said.
“Why?”
“Mr. Towers hates to smell anyone’s breath.”

Don wasn’t sure who was worse: Rush Limbaugh or his callers. They were the same people who thought blacks should have stayed in their place. That’s what those callers had in common. He didn’t trust the white businesses that advertised on his program. They enabled guys like Limbaugh; they condoned him.

The owners of Gold Bond Medicated Itch Cream could forget ever winning Don Attwood’s business.

FANS OF RUSH LIMBAUGH knew their world. They knew what was going on. They had only to remind themselves how much better grounded they were, how much more realistic their understanding of things were. From the gritty details of a debate; to its lofty, abstract heights of principle:

“Oh, you haven’t heard about postmodernism?” asked a voice. “It’s what the liberals are teaching our kids today at college. Postmodernism is like relativism.”
“And relativism says there are no absolutes.”
“Postmodernism says meanings change depending on how you look at things,” came a voice in Nevada.
“It’s like political correctness on crack.”
“Except instead of renaming things they’re re-interpreting things.”
“And instead of re-interpreting, they’re reinventing.”
“And instead of reinventing, they use it to justify anything.”

And on the radio, the voices commiserated in bombastic exaggeration:

“And now these liberals want to rewrite American history and say the fifties weren’t happy days just because of segregation.”
“What is it with these revisionists? The fifties were happy days even if there was segregation.”
“The fifties were the Good Old Days!” said a voice in New Jersey.
“If you ask anyone who lived then, they’ll tell you the fifties were the Good Old Days,” said another voice Arkansas.
“But not Hilary,” said another.
“Oh, no. Not the liberals.”
“Of course not. Hilary said the Fifties weren’t the good old days in her book.”
“Even if she did enjoy them!”
“Of course she enjoyed the Fifties! She just can’t admit it.”
“As if any of the white liberals didn’t enjoy the Fifties,” said a voice in Kansas.
“They all did. But white liberals can’t admit it. It wouldn’t be PC,” said another.
“They want us all to feel bad.”
“Because America went to sock hops!”
“And America had just saved the free world!”
“And drive-ins were popular!”
“And Elvis was big!”
“But to the liberals, this was somehow bad.”

Don knew all about the fifties. He knew all about how things used to be by law for people his skin color. And it amazed him how quickly white people went from lynching black people to appropriating their style. Starting with Elvis. No, starting with Chet Baker. No starting with all white jazz players in the 1930s…down to today. So Don didn’t trust white rappers. Don didn’t trust white actors. Don didn’t trust white women who liked to be seen with black men when it suited their public image. He didn’t even particularly like a lot of the white movie stars. Except Kim Basinger. He liked Kim Basinger okay, whatever happened to her.

The thoughts and suspicions uncoiled through Don’s mind as he drove along a highway, heading west out of Missouri, staring out over his steering wheel at the dark promise of the American night.
Don’s job delivering and installing parts for washing and dry-cleaning machines took him further and further from St. Louis. Not just to Illinois but also to Kentucky and Arkansas. He had the parts and toolbox in the back of his car. Like everything else in his life, it just kind of evolved this way.

One day he was running an errand for the owners of Stern Laundry Parts. Months later, he was making appointments with dry cleaning shops to come and fix their equipment.

At least, he got to drive a company car. A Taurus. And he got plenty of time on his own, which he liked. And he made decent money and didn’t have to worry about anything much, expect for possibly being pulled over.

Of course, being a young black man, the cops would probably be extra chickenshit with him. It made Don wonder briefly if he needed a license to cross a state line to do business. Didn’t intrastate commerce fall under the Federal Trade Commission?

Mike sneezed, sniffed, then wiped his nose with a handkerchief, and caught a glance of himself in the glass door before pulling it open handily. Not bad, he thought, then took the first step into the office building that could be the first step to his new life.

His yellow shirt was obviously starched and pressed. His jeans were clean. He wore polished boots and a Parker pen in his breast pocket- not a Bic like the chumps used at work. He glanced at the legend on the wall, with office locations. Pro-Work Solutions Suite 1-120. Mike ambled down the hall until he found the door.

Inside, after introducing himself to the college girl at the front desk, she asked him to fill out the form on the clipboard which she handed to him and to attach his resume to it.

“I don’t have a resume,” he said, fudging.
“That’s okay. Just fill out the forms. And we’ll need to see your driver’s license and your social security card.”

Mike took the clipboard and took a seat among the row of chairs surrounding the empty waiting area. One other person was waiting. A young girl. Pretty too. But she looked like she’d been captured and shoved into a business casual suit. A shame, thought Mike, flashing her the sheepish smile all job-seekers everywhere have.

She smiled and went back to shuffling the resumes in her binder.
Mike was taking the plunge. If he was going to get out of delivery driving all together, he’d have to get his foot in the door somewhere. His father-in-law suggested a temp-to-perm place. Twenty minutes later, after Mike filled out the forms and turned in his ID cards, the door opened and a young woman called for him.

“Hi Mike. I’m Vicky.”

As they passed in to the back of the office, she asked, “Oh, is there a resume with this?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t bring one,” he said and for the next ten minutes as he explained every class of truck he had ever driven all he could think were variations of the thought: resume? oh how could I have forgotten, I can’t believe I forgot one but I never knew to bring one until the interview ended and the woman, Vicky, said she’d keep an eye out for jobs for him and he knew that was a damn lie.

Vicky walked with him to the front office and handed his file back to the receptionist. There was a different receptionist now. More people waited for interviews now. And there was another person behind the receptionists’ desk. A young man. Mike instinctively pitied the guy. He had big, white teeth, red hair and a gawky expression to him. No doubt from college too.

“Can you file Mr. Hurtfield’s application?” Vicky asked the young man.

“Sure,” he said.

Vicky shook hands firmly with Mike, giving him a smile. Then she turned back to go inside. Mike headed toward the door.

“Oh, sir.” The young man said.

Mike stopped and turned around.

“I don’t see your resume here.”

THE FREEDOM WAS ALSO FOR MONEY. Because in the reengineered language of the 1990s, the point of “freedom” was “wealth.” And if money wanted to drift upward into the hands and pockets and wallets and accounts of those who had it already, well then, who were the American people to stand in its way?

If money wanted to amass itself in enormous piles held by powerful individuals while other Americans went deep into debt paying for college or healthcare, well there was a term for this too: “personal responsibility.”

It was the personal responsibility of those going into debt to pay for life’s necessities to earn more. After all, the rich managed their finances successfully. What was wrong with everyone else?

“What’s wrong with me?” Dennis asked himself, surveying his cluttered apartment; -thought Jenny, putting the family’s groceries on the credit card, -thought Brandon, trying to estimate the cost of diapers, wipes and baby food on his budget and Mike and even Don, as they tried to make sense of their finances.

People everywhere were going broke, just living their normal lives. But the liberals, using the language engineered by right-wing think tanks, didn’t have the words to describe the reality. They didn’t talk about dollar and sense issues. No, the liberals were occupied answering the charges of their accusers. The liberals, facing a wall of accusation followed by a wave of wagging indignation, could only offer up meek, evasive quips.

“Yeah,” the liberals would concede, talking about economics “government bureaucracy is less efficient than business…”

And the Dittohead would strike, “More like government is always less efficient than business.”

“Well, you have a point but not everything is black and white,” the liberal would offer with a shrug.

“Principles matter,” the conservative would say, his jaw tight with exasperation for all that liberals didn’t understand. About principle.
“Yeah, but…”

And the mere concession of the “yeah, but” was an invitation for more accusation from the conservative accuser. After all, if the accuser was partly right, then the liberal was being a relativist. If the liberal was a relativist, it just proved that the accuser was right: nothing was concrete with liberals.

Jenny, Rick and family entered the Costco for the first time. They’d driven forty miles to get here and hoped it was worth the trip. The store was enormous, the carts were super sized liked they were at the Sam’s Club. The selection was amazing. But the store was laid out differently. There was more space at the front. The first thing you saw was row after row of electronics. Stereos, TVs, Walkmans, all stacked in their packages. The boys, almost like bird dogs, ran ahead.

“No, wait. You two get back here.”

But they’d found a woman in a Costco-uniform and hairnet giving samples of chicken and cheese-stuffed sausage. They stood bashfully before her.

“Look at them,” Jenny said to Rick.

They laughed watching their boys. It was obvious Jakob and Joshua wanted the free sample but were too shy to ask. “I’ll go,” said Rick.

Jenny pushed the cart through the aisle as the items turned from electronics to gifts, vases, and glassware sets. Jenny turned the corner into the snack food aisle. Bags of Doritos as big as pillows for the bed. Cheetoes. Lime-flavored nacho chips. Pretzels. Hot-flavored chips.

The boys pointed, Jenny relented, and they put some bags in the cart.

Around another corner came sodas, Coke, Pepsi, ginger ale, Sprite. In every sizeable denomination you could find. Stacked clear up to the sky.

Rick pulled down cases of Diet Coke.

Then came the prepackaged foods. The flavored rice packets, the stove top pasta packets, sold in lots of twenty. The frozen foods next. Boxes of 25 frozen burritos. Boxes of fifty frozen egg rolls. Bags of frozen chicken filets, of wings, of breasts.

Frozen shrimp. Frozen seafood.

The possibilities were endless.

Jenny knew it would probably go over budget but they could put it on plastic. Even if she was putting too much on plastic, the rationalization went like this: I’m buying groceries for my family. If I can’t afford what I need at the grocery store on the money we make then—then, she got distracted by the angus ground beef burgers. 40 for $30. The boys saw another free sample station and ran ahead. It looked to Jenny and Rick like grilled chicken.

“Well?” Rick asked, a smile on his face. “Should I run after them?”
“I think they’ve got the hang of it.”

Jenny and Rick walked together down the packed aisle and for some reason, she wasn’t sure why, she leaned up and kissed him. He smiled. And they strolled together arm in arm.

Rush fans knew liberals. Rush fans could identify liberals. They knew liberals better than liberals knew themselves. A voice in San Diego: “Liberals have no sense of humor.”
“The liberals are whiners,” he said.
“They’re weak.”
“They’re effeminate.”
“They’re Poindexters.”
“They don’t even know how many men make up a football team.”
“Yeah, well, I’d rather have a brainy liberal in charge of this country than a senile actor or his vacuous sidekick”, a third voice added, razzing the two, then walking off.
“Listen to the hatred,” said the one.
“The bitterness, said the other.”
“Why are you liberals so angry at the world?” The first voice called out.

The accusation, the knowing disregard for liberals electrified the land.

The radio hosts rasped into their microphones and their words issued from the mouths of their listeners days later. The imaginations of millions of Americans took in the ideas and spit them back out. The American language itself slowly froze the liberals out of the vocabulary, as their ideas became discredited or redefined.

MIKE, BRANDON, JENNY AND DENNIS and millions of others believed deeply in freedom. They lived by it. The AM radio hosts extolled freedom. Heck, everyone loved it. Yet no radio hosts, nor the newsmagazines they read, nor right wing think tank’s whose works they cited ever made it clear that the much-discussed, much-vaunted freedom they heard spoken so highly of on the radio was their own version of freedom, a freedom for the benefit of high-net worth investors. It was freedom for the benefit and glory and might of companies. For the powerful. Not for low-net people struggling to pay their bills. Or for people who listened to AM radio while they worked their hourly jobs.

But the AM radio hosts were on to a good thing with this constant talk of freedom being under attack. Besides, this talk of freedom denied gave listeners plenty to be upset about. Upsetting people made for a loyal audience. Good ratings. Good ad rates. So all across America, millions of listeners’ outraged grew. Their voices hiked up into the same urgent, irritated tone.

“Homos in the military?” one voice in South Carolina asked. “Homos in the military?” He asked rhetorically of Clinton’s plans to allow gays in the military. “What next?”
“Socialized medicine,” came the response. “Like what they have in France. That’s what’s next.”
“Oh, how PC! They’ll remake this country into a socialist one if we don’t stop them.”
“Those liberals will do it without even understanding what they’re doing,” said a voice in Indiana.
“Because to them big government is always the answer.”
“Just like in Europe.”
“But government isn’t the answer,” a voice in New Mexico exclaimed.
“It’s the problem.”
“And American people want American healthcare. Not some kind of foreign healthcare.”

Voices of people like Mike who didn’t know Dennis or Dennis who didn’t know Jenny, voices of people who they’d never meet at all echoed a similar rage. All agreed with the tone, if not the particulars of the offense screamed daily through the speakers of their radios.

“So the Feds have innocent people under siege at Waco?” asked a voice in Utah.
“This government is so out of control.”
“The feds have Americans holed up under siege in Waco?” came a voice in Michigan.
“Talk about overreach!”
“This wouldn’t happen if Bush was still president.”
“This can only happen with a liberal in the White House!” said another.
“And a liberal attorney general.”
“Who’s a woman.”
“Who has to prove herself to the country.”
“—by overcompensating.”
“And look who gets hurt?”
“The people of Mt. Carmel.”

Voices of people who had nothing to do personally with Dennis and Jenny and Mike:
“This is a travesty of justice,” cried a voice in Kansas.
“This makes a mockery of common sense,” said another.
“The ATF killing—killing?—American people!”
“Talk about a government out of control,” raged a voice in Tennessee.
“Talk about a people under siege.”
“Today it’s them. Tomorrow it’s us.”
“Today it’s them and today it’s us.”

Brandon wiped down a syrup-dribbled booth at Denny’s when the voice of a customer, a serious-looking man, dressed for an office job, caught his attention. “She’s lying when she says she doesn’t want to create socialized medicine.”

His indignant tone caught Brandon’s ear. Something about his conviction, his righteousness cut through the beer-bolstered volume of the chatter in the smokey, syrup-flavored air of the vinyl-upholstered dining room.

“Socialized medicine? Oh, that’s real PC,” the man’s friend said.
“Hillary wants to give this country a socialist makeover,” said the man.
“But she just won’t call it socialism.”
“She calls it ‘universal’.”
“Which is another word for ‘collective.’”
“And ‘collective’ is another word for ‘socialized.’”
“And ‘socialized’ is another word for ‘communist.’”
“And ‘communist’ is another word for the Soviet Reds we just spent fifty years beating.”
“And the only kind of person dumb enough to fall for that immoral lure would be a kind of starry eyed liberal with a fancy liberal education full of theories and book learning that has nothing to do with the real world.” His voice was so sure, his outrage so focused, Brandon thought, lugging a tray of dirty dishes through the busy dining room.

“A kind of ditzy woman who married into power and now has a pet project she wants us ram down our throats.”
“Just like a woman.” The words were crisp. The tone was bracing. It put snap in a soft world of endless suburbs and endless nights.

Just the tone of speech, the slightly raised voice, the irritability, pointed to something real. Something at stake.
Brandon could tell by how it was delivered, it was something real and powerful. Like the feeling a freshly printed $100 bill in hand. Like that.

Mike sneezed. “Your problem is that you’re too much of a dreamer,” Kath, his wife, said. They had been talking about Mike’s idea – his latest idea – to open a catfish restaurant on a highway heading up 540, toward Fayetteville. Up toward the Ozarks.

“They say I’m a dreamer,” Mike said, lilting his voice, getting Kath to crack a smile. “I’m not the only one.” She acted like she disapproved, but he knew she loved his plans. However unrealistic. That was part of what attracted her to him. She wanted something else in life too.

“All you Hurtfields are dreamers.”
The couple was driving home from church. Their infant son Rex was strapped into his car seat in the back. Babbling and talking to himself.

“Why do you say that? Just because my dad until his dying day believed he was going to strike it rich on the property of his house?” Mike asked.

“I was thinking about your brother’s plan to become a chief buffalo meat distributor for Little Rock.”
“Buffalo meat is naturally lean.”
“But no one eats it.”
“But if they did.”
“If they did…”
“If they did my brother would be rich now.”
“Even you, Mike. What were you doing last week?”
“What?”
“What were you talking about?”
“I dunno.”
Kath said, “You were seriously talking about getting your private pilot’s license.”
“It’s the next logical step from trucks!”
“But Mike, driving a truck is one thing; flying a private jet is another.”

Mike let her speak. This was Sunday afternoon. There was a Sunday afternoon peace. This wouldn’t be a real fight, he knew, only a play fight. So he let her talk.
“They say I’m a dreamer…I know I’m not the only one.”
“That should be the Hurtfield family motto,” Kath said.
“Inscribed in our family crest. With a Lear jet in one corner.”
“And a pile of money in the other and…
“…and a sizzling hunk of buffalo in the other.” Mike laughed. “Now you’re on to something. Now you are. I can see my pot of gold now,” he said breaking into a laugh.
Kath’s smile reached up to her eyes. There would be no fight today. The moment was warm. Funny. Close.

“I don’t trust white people in any of their natural social groupings,” Don said. “I don’t trust the drunk white customers at Denny’s. I don’t trust the racist country music fans.”

“Umm-hmmm,” his friend Anthony nodded, much more absorbed in the Nintendo game of golf they played than Don’s latest ranting on the Great White Conspiracy.

“Just run your mouth, Don. I’ll beat you here on this shot.”
“Running my mouth? Shit. I don’t trust NASCAR fans. Or FFA members. Or NRA members. Or white graduates of white business schools. Or white bankers. Or white presidents of the United States.”

“All the presidents are white, Don,” Anthony said, staring at the game. The two friends sat in Don’s mom’s garage, which had been converted into a play room before it was reclaimed as a garage and now had his mothers Cadillac parked on the rust-colored linoleum, next to the couch where they sat, before the crate on which sat the TV. The Nintendo console sat on the floor below them.

“I don’t trust white Ivy League schools or Mormons or dog clubs or the cast of Friends. No sir. I don’t trust large concentrations of white people wherever I find them.”

Anthony was almost tied with Don. Just two strokes under par.
“I don’t trust Hollywood and all its stereotypes of black men. And I certainly don’t trust Rush Limbaugh and the people who listen to his show.” This tirade had begun when Don told Anthony about another racist at work.

“Umm—hmmm,” Anthony said, making a chip shot. The audience’s electronic applause roar rose and peaked quickly, as the bar landed wide of the hole.
“And as much as America is mostly run by white people, I don’t trust America.”
“But you are American,” Anthony said.
“I’m not saying I’m not. But I just don’t trust anything about the country.”
“Fair enough,” Anthony said, making a three foot put, to muted electronic applause.
The game tied.
“That’s what you get for running your mouth too much,” Anthony said.
“Oh yeah?” Don said, holding the button down, not releasing until enough swing had gathered to send the little square white speck of a golf ball soaring far, far across the green.