A politician is a fickle thing, it changes allegiances as quickly as a
wind blown $5 bill changes hands. Ownership means nothing to it. The
crime bosses liked the systems of prohibition on certain common street
drugs, it allowed their prices and profits to reach almost limitless
heights. It fed the machinery that really ruled the world. The
machinery, however, still has not found a solution to the problem it
finds most troublesome. In spite of all it's efforts it still relies on
the fickle voter to vote against their own best interest as they have
done since they where given the gift of voting. Thankfully most the time
the voter seems to have a deep-seated need to self sabotage, and only
in very rare circumstances will they vote against the machinery that
really runs the world. So it was a very rare case with the legalization
of a certain common street drug. Enough voters had grown tired of the
oppression and crime the drug's prohibition brought on the world and
voted for the legalization. In response to the change in voter sentiment
, and because a politician can change their allegiances in response to
anything, the politicians all had very important meetings and
collectively came to the conclusion it would be in everyone's best
interest, mostly their own, to not fight the law. The result was a lot
of temporarily unhappy criminals and a lot of tax revenue. The wind of
popular opinion had blown the politicians into their own dark alley and
on top of their own trash pile and they always did their best work in
these types of situations.
The tax revenue from the now legal
common street drug was, as decided by the voters, allotted to be used
for the city's underfunded schools. This, of course, did not happen. The
machinery that really ran the world hated schools. Schools teach people
to vote in their own best interest. This is something that the
machinery would never let happen. So the politicians found clever ways
to divert the money to the recently upset criminals as a way to make up
for having not prevented the voters from voting in their own best
interest and so everyone, who mattered to the machinery, was happy.
Who
wasn't happy where the future voters and current children at the local
underfunded school. One of whom was the daughter of a recently deceased
local hero that had been killed, unbeknownst to her, by a local crime
boss. The daughter didn't even know her father was a hero. To her he was
just another parent, preoccupied with the machinery that really ran the
world and not very interested in the day to day dealings of his
family's operation.
The daughter of the recently deceased local
hero did well in her underfunded school. She always tried her hardest in
everything she did. She was a good student, athlete, friend and
daughter. She ate healthy, and in contrast to the other future voters
and current children at the local underfunded school, she didn't drink
sugary soda made from the chemically processed byproducts of inedible
corn. She in every way lived up to the impeccable moral code of her
recently deceased local hero father. She worried about the environment,
and because of this she didn't use disposable water bottles. She had
written a report for a class at her underfunded school that the plastic
from the disposable water bottles would pollute the local waterways of
the city and that as an alternative everyone, like her, should carry a
reusable water bottle with them. She took her ecologically friendly
water bottle with her every where and filled it during the short period
of time between classes at the water fountains in her underfunded
school.
Unfortunately for the daughter of the recently deceased
local hero, and the city, it was too late for the local waterways. They
had all ready been polluted by the toxic and unfortunate side effect of a
local business. The CEO of the company responsible for the dumping of
the toxic and unfortunate side effect had recently been arrested and
convicted of violating EPA regulations by illegally dumping substance
and thus polluting city's local waterways. The representatives for the
machinery that really ran the world asked him nicely to step down as
CEO, pay a fine and spend 3 months in a local minimum security prison.
The minimum security prison was much nicer than the other prison in the
city that was mostly filled with the users of a formerly illegal common
street drug. Most of whom suffered from formerly treatable chemical
imbalances in their brain that had, at one time, been easily treated
with prescription medication.
Little did the daughter of the
recently deceased local hero know that her body didn't seem able to
deal with the toxic and unfortunate byproduct of a local business that
had been dumped, illegally, into the local water ways and was now
present in the drinking fountains of the underfunded school with which
she filled the ecologically friendly water bottle she always had with
her. Her young and athletic body was rapidly turning weak and frail like
that of an old woman. She now possessed the kind of body that $5 worth
of calories would make the difference between another week of living and
escaping into the dark abyss of non-existence.
When the chief of
police had told the daughter of the recently deceased local hero that
her father was missing and presumed dead the daughter cried her toxic
laden tears, fainted and crumpled out of her chair onto the floor. It
was all too much for her frail body to take. The chief didn't even have
time to give his well rehearsed speech about how they didn't have any
solid leads in the case but that he would personally see to solving the
matter and bring peace and justice to her and her family. Instead an
ambulance took the daughter to a local hospital where she was placed on
life support in a room next to a homeless man being treated for a
variety of afflictions related to his homelessness.
The homeless
man had an imbalance of brain chemicals that he self medicated with a
now legal common street drug. While it was now legal to buy and use the
common street drug it was not legal to use it in the street where the
homeless man lived. So he had been arrested by the local police. He was
being cleaned up and treated for his medical conditions, except of
course the brain chemical imbalance, and would soon be transferred to a
holding cell while he awaited conviction and sentencing to a local
prison. He had no chance of going to the prison where the former CEO was
serving his 3 month sentence for the illegally dumping of a toxic and
unfortunate side effect of his former company's business.
The
imbalanced chemicals in the homeless man's brain told him he would never
make it in prison and that he would be better off in the dark abyss of
non-existence. So when the nurse turned out the light and left him alone
in his room to sleep he used a cord from the lamp in his hospital room
to make his transition. So too did the girl in the the next room who was
the daughter of the now deceased local hero and who's frail body could
no longer stand the strains of the toxic and unfortunate substance it
had running through it. She joined the homeless man and her hero father
in the dark abyss of non-existence.
A journalist, in contrast to a
politician, doesn't simply change allegiances. They simply try to make
the best of a bad situation. They are the hapless victims of changing
times and a dying industry. The machinery that really runs the world was
working hard on solving another problem that had caused voters to vote
in their own best interest, newspapers. The machinery had invent all
sorts of new devices and systems to distract voters and keep them from
voting in their own self interest or reading pesky newspapers. In spite
of the machinery's efforts, journalists have become reasonably good at
doing their job with the bad hand the machinery ensured they where
dealt.
In this specific case and with this specific journalist, the best
that could be made of the situation was printing the story that would
make his career. It had been handed to him by a local hero who had
disappeared without a trace or police lead. The journalist knew nothing
of the hero. Just that a package that contained all the information he'd
been trying to coax out of the machinery about a local crime boss and
all the proof of the illegal activity.
The story the journalist produced
with this information could not have been better written. The case
against the local crime boss could not have been better presented. The
story however was not the most important to the editor of the newspaper
that day. The most important story was that of a beautiful and smart
young girl who had died of an unknown condition right after hearing the
news that her father was missing and presumed dead. The story of the
crime boss was pushed further back into the newspaper where no one read
it, except frail old women, heroes and villains.
After being
released from minimum security prison the former CEO was hired as a
consultant by a former crime boss who was in the process of turning his
criminal operation into a legal enterprise specializing in the sale of a
now legal and formerly common street drug. The former CEO helped the
former crime boss turn the former criminal enterprise into a highly
profitable and publicly traded company. A local stock broker made a
prudent investment in the now legal company shortly after the company's
initial public offering and made a sizeable fortune when he later sold
the stock to other representatives of the machinery that really ran the
world. The three men, all fine representatives of the machinery that
really ran the world in their own right, met regularly at a local pub a
few doors down from a successful local company, to discuss the now legal
business of selling a formerly common street drug and to eat ham
sandwiches. They really loved those ham sandwiches.
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