OK, Let me start off with a couple of notes:

(1) It doesn't look like post preview is a function of this board, so I hope that it appears half-decent, as I haven't been able to discover a way to look at it before I publish it;

(2) It also looks like most people are posting links as opposed to text, and then comments are made in text; I would prefer to post text as my primary method and embed links as needed. I hope this software will left me do that. Nor does it look like I have any bold/italics capabilities either;

(3) Most of the stuff I churn out is for the local paper here in Cheyenne, Wyoming (Wyoming Tribune Eagle), so it has a local Wyoming flavor to it. Don't let that bother you, however, as I always use local events as a starting point for wider political and philosophical conclusions. You've probably got the same kind of junk happening in your town anyway, or worse;

(4) OK, let's try it out!

The God Of The Machine

By Bradley Harrington

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on February 20, 2015, under the title of “What Happens When Rules Fail Us?”

“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.” - Claire Wolfe, “101 Things To Do ‘Til The Revolution,” 1996 -

Most of the time, in discussions of political issues, I pick up little more than the same pre-conceived platitudes one can find in any public school classroom.

Once in a great while, however, I hear something that jars me right down to the soles of my boots.

“Brad, we need to talk,” William “Ben” Bennett phoned me the other day.

Ben and his wife, Kim, own the Korean House Restaurant on the southeast corner of Snyder Avenue and Pershing Boulevard, and I’ve known and respected them for years.

So, I paid Ben a visit.

“What’s up?” I asked.

He pushed a bright orange piece of paper across the table at me.

“That came in the mail a couple of days ago,” he said.

An invoice from the Health Dept: “Routine Inspection, $90.00; Late Fee, $25.00; Total Due, $115.00.”

“Kim and I opened this store up 14 years ago,” Ben said, “and I’ve gotten dozens of those things since. I always pay them, and on time. I never got the first notice. I don’t believe I owe those people that $25.00.”

“Make sure you think it through,” I said. “Those people can make your life very difficult. I’m not saying you should pay it, I’m just pointing that out.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Ben retorted, scowling. “You think I don’t think of it every time a renewal, license or health fee shows up, while I’m asking myself: WHY is it that I have to pony up hundreds and hundreds of dollars every year for the ‘right’ to make a living?

“And what do I get in return?” Ben asked. “Those incompetent fools have screwed up Snyder Avenue with their road work for four years running now... While they’ve brainlessly cut through gas and water lines, almost blown the front door off my restaurant, tipped over a 20-ton gravel truck on the sidewalk, and shut off my water - and my business - more times than I care to count.

“I’ve repeatedly gone to the City Council, the County Commission and WyDot,” Ben fumed. “Nobody ever listens to anything I say. They just stare at me, thank me for ‘my service,’ and tell me they’ll make a note of it.

“You want to know about my ‘service’?” Ben queried me. “I spent years of my life in the Air Force and in Vietnam, supposedly fighting to keep America free. Do you know how our politicians treated us?”

Ben pulled a pencil out of a holder, snapped it in two and flung it against his front door.

“There goes the first GI,” he said. “No problem, we’ve got another one where he came from!”

Another pencil snapped and followed the first.

“We’ve got warehouses full of GI’s. They’ll obey our orders and drop into our LZ or we’ll put them in jail!

“And for what, Brad?” Ben cried, tears on his cheeks. “So Kim and I could come back to America, the ‘land of the free,’ and be ordered around and treated like criminals by a bunch of worthless bureaucrats who view us as nothing but chattel - while we pay their salaries no less?”

Ben stood still for several moments, stared at the broken pencils on the floor, then dropped back into his chair.

He whispered: “And I have no power to do anything about it. Those people can walk in here, close my doors and put us into the poor house without even so much as a court order - while I have the cleanest restaurant in this whole damn town. Justice? Where do you see it?”

Listening, I had been grasping a memory, something his words were reminding me of. Then I had it: The Battle of Athens, 1946 - when servicemen returning from World War II found it necessary, ultimately with the help of the rest of the town, to seize the operation of McCinn County, Tennessee, back from a corrupt political machine that had hijacked it years earlier while they had been fighting Hitler.

And I pondered... The problem here isn’t that Ben’s some whacked-out nut-job looking to incite a revolution. No, the problem is that Ben’s just a normal American guy who pays his taxes and follows the rules... But who has also realized that “the system” no longer pays him any attention, that the machine has become its own God.

“What happens, Brad,” Ben asked, “when the ‘rules’ have made slaves out of all of us? When the system no longer hears us and is stacked against us? When we no longer have a voice? What on Earth are we supposed to do then?”

What, indeed?

Bradley Harrington is a computer technician and a writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming; he can be reached at brad@bradandbarbie.com.