7

Wednesday, January 20, 2021, 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

At almost precisely the same moment, a few blocks away, at the Trolley Diner, three men, wearing “MK” medallions on lanyards, like everyone else in the restaurant, were seated in a large booth.

“So, even though the President fired you and said you don’t know anything, you’re happy he got re-elected and is gonna be re-naugurated?” Billy Boland asked.

“Of course I’m happy he got re-elected,” Ban Wilson said, spraying a small amount of scrambled eggs across the booth onto the jackets of the two men across from him.

Ban was a portly man of medium height, with greying black hair and a large jaw surmounting copious jowls. His tan corduroy jacket and brownish fabric tie seemed designed to absorb and camouflage scrambled eggs or any other foodstuffs that might not complete the journey into the Wilson mouth, which was fairly constantly speaking, whether he was eating or not. Billy, his interlocutor, seemed unperturbed and made no move to clean his jacket.

“His opponent was unthinkable as a leader,” Wilson continued. “His opponent would have reversed all the progress we have made over the last four years. It would have been the end of the United States as we know it. The Founders would have been rolling in their graves. It was a non-starter.”

“But what about, his, you know, getting the virus?”

“What about it?”

“Like… was that real? I heard it wasn’t real.”

Ban’s face grew even redder than normal. A vein throbbed at his temple.

“Bill, just drop it,” said Jake Nalley, who had squirted some hand sanitizer on his napkin, then used it to remove the eggs and sterilize any remaining stain.

Ban resumed his statement.

“Our ends are the destruction of the administrative state, the return of American greatness through nationalism and the rejection of the technocrat globalists, and a world movement of nationalists striding arm in arm toward the future, each of them free to pursue their unique national goals based on their pride in their own unique culture and history, preserving that culture, which they truly believe is the best culture and society possible, without any interference from globalist do-gooders telling them they can’t go to restaurants, or football games, or have their own kind of light bulbs, or cook meat in their own traditional way without someone telling them it’s unsanitary, or seek to restore their nation to the greatest point in their people’s history.”

Billy’s lower jaw had dropped somewhere close to his sternum, and his eyes squinted in incomprehension. He had been chosen for his look, his attractiveness to youth, his reputation as a shit-hot surfer, and much less for his familiarity with the political philosophy of his host. In truth, he had been chosen because he attracted attractive females to the rest of the group, females who would not have ordinarily been caught dead within the same zip code as them.

“What about the virus?” Billy asked. “You think he did a good job on the virus?”

“Yes. But that is irrelevant. Diseases, plagues, potato blights, they come and go. Each one just shoves us further toward where we need to go. We can always depend on the liberals’ Presidential Derangement Syndrome to kick in and make them overreach. They said millions would die and it would all be the President’s fault. Great! Millions failed to die, so that means the President did a great job. But the virus helped in other ways. It eliminated the weak, strengthened borders and nationalism, dispensed with phony multiculturalism and political correctness, kept the weak-minded away from the polls, and now it will allow each nation to pursue their priorities unhindered by the WHO and other globalist busybodies. They call us ‘doorknob lickers?’ Embrace the name with pride, lads. Better a world full of rude nationalists than one run by well-behaved rootless cosmopolitans, any day.”

“Uh, I was wondering about that. If all the countries are pursuing their own stuff,” Billy continued, “and being, like, rude nationalists and all, and they all say their culture and whatnot is the best, and they each deserve to win, and there are, what, like, 100 countries, and they all think the other guy’s culture and whatnot is wrong…” His arms were waving slowly in the air, and his index fingers were slowly approaching one another, as if trying to arrive at a point.

Ban cut him off. “You haven’t read the Leo Strauss I gave you, have you, Billy?”

“I started it, but he started talking about this Platto guy, and I had never read that dude, so I figured what’s the point.”

“The point is this,” Ban said. “The point is, I have a vision here, and it’s cogent and coherent, and it’s Straussian as shit, and captures the zeet-geist, and I don’t want you talking when cameras are around. I want you to keep your mouth shut if you see a camera within a quarter-mile of you. Better yet, just don’t talk for the rest of the day, because there are going to be cameras all over the place.”

“Unless, like, there are some chicks that come by,” Jake whispered to him.

Billy screwed his face up into an expression of consternation once again. Then he suddenly sneezed. The entire restaurant went silent, staring at him. Billy belatedly brought his napkin up to his face, looking around guiltily. Gradually the hum of conversation picked up again. After a minute, he looked hopefully again toward Ban.

“But you do like that he’s gonna be President again, even though he fired you?”

Ban gestured with a slice of toast he had loaded with butter and grape jelly. With each word, he thrust the toast toward Billy, and grape jelly flew across the table, causing Jake to lean far away from Billy.

“Here’s – what – you – need – to – know.”

Billy looked across the table, chastened and expectant.

“The President is not perfect. He does not understand the full ramifications of our global anti-globalist vision in which the United States can find its global greatness again by tearing down global institutions and encouraging every nation to express its own unique culture and pursue its own interests as far as they want, while we do the same thing, without interference from our neighbors or global busybodies, the way God intended, thereby guaranteeing global security.”

“But then won’t they –”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

“The POINT,” Ban said, holding his toast out in one hand and his knife in the other, like some knight holding out shield and sword, “is that this President may not be perfect, but he is a blunt instrument for our vision. Now shut up and eat. You’ll need the calories. There could be mass violence from Antifa.”

Billy stared across the table. “Auntie who?”

 

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian