46
Sunday, February 14, 2021, 4PM Eastern Standard Time
My, he is unexpectedly handsome, thought Kathleen Kiersay. Strong, clean-cut military type. I wish he was in a uniform.
“So, there’s no truth to the rumors about you being a warlord?” she asked her interviewee.
Maxfield King simply laughed.
“’Warlord’ is one of those words people use to scare you,” he said. “It’s true, I provide services to the military that they have adjudged fill their needs more cheaply and effectively than they could do on their own. And that makes sense, because the people who work for me came from the military, and were the best of the best.”
“What about your services for other nations? What about the Chinese?”
“What about them? I’m building military bases.”
“Some say you’re building concentration camps for the minority Muslim Chinese Uighurs,” Kathleen said.
“‘Some say,’” Max replied. “That’s a phrase people use when they are unwilling to speak on the record. I’m speaking on the record, and I’m telling you we’re building military bases.”
“Even if they are military bases, aren’t you helping the Chinese government to suppress their people?”
“Their military is different from ours. They don’t have the same kind of police forces we have. They have never been an internationally expansionist power.”
“That would come as news to Vietnam. And the Tibetans.”
“You know your history,” Max said. “Still, the farthest the Chinese have sought to grab land has been essentially right next door. And Tibet’s claim to be an independent country is really questionable. It gets romanticized, but it was never anything but an autocracy. A theocracy, in fact. I find it hilarious that all these liberals are so passionate about restoring this religious dictatorship. They would never tolerate it in the United States. We went through our own phase of having forts in the far-flung unpopulated areas of our own West. Hell, half the towns west of the Mississippi started as army outposts. Fort Laramie, Fort Kearney, Fort Worth, Fort Omaha, Fort Collins, Fort Walla Walla. We can hardly lecture these guys about trying to gain control of their own west. I’m just doing what William Worth and George Mercer Brooke did for the U.S.”
“But you’re doing it for another country.”
Max shrugged.
“It’s legal and above board. I would never do it if it wasn’t.”
“What about privatization more generally?”
“What about it?”
“There are those who say that it’s dangerous, that it is a corrupting influence. That contracts get steered to people with political connections who want to take things that are rightly the province of government, and strip them away to make money off of them. They say it results in inequity, that things are run not for the sake of justice or the common good, but to maximize private profit.”
“As long as the incentives are correctly designed, the metrics are right, then the interests can be aligned. Government is slow and bureaucratic by nature. It can’t keep up with modernity. You have to inject the profit motive into it to get it off its ass. Otherwise America falls behind.”
“But aren’t we falling behind anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“China is beating us in economic growth, and they had far fewer deaths and cases of the virus. We don’t seem to dictate the world’s trade regimes or military alliances anymore. I guess our hip-hop is still number one.”
“But we never should have been the world’s policeman, right? When we try to tell everyone how to run their lives, then sooner or later someone from the UN gets to tell us how to run ours. I think we now have an opportunity to make a transition to something better, newer. And by the way, though I would like this to be off the record…” He waited for a nod from Kathleen that finally came. “…you can’t trust the Chinese numbers. They tend to overstate growth and to minimize their problems.”
“That brings me to another issue. I understand that the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture was moved in 2017 to Kansas.”
“Why should the Department of Agriculture be in Washington, DC? It should be out where the farmers are.”
“Well, be that as it may, the ERS, which began in the 1860s, was uprooted from Washington, and just one third of its employees decided to make the move.”
“I’m sure it got rid of a lot of dead wood.”
“Well, there are those –”
“Who remain nameless –”
“Who are afraid to come out and say the truth in public, who say that the mission of the agency was deliberately sabotaged –”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because the donors who support the Republican party want to destroy the Food Stamp program, among other things, and if the agency that collects the data that supports the provision of benefits can’t do that job, then it will be a lot harder to justify its continuance in Congress.”
Max simply shook his head.
“That’s the Swamp talking. Trying to preserve its privileges.”
“And there are a number of other statistical agencies that appear to be in line to get the same treatment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is one. Even though the numbers have steadily gotten better month by month by month beginning in mid- 2020. Has there been an attempt on the part of the administration to alter the employment statistics?”
“Nonsense.”
“Then there are the virus numbers compiled by HHS on the virus.”
“What about them?”
“I notice that they have been very upbeat since before the election. A steady decrease. Very reassuring.”
“Yes. The result of our administration’s spectacular efforts to deal with that crisis.”
“But we’ve done some digging, and we have found that those numbers appear to have been consistently smoothed to make them appear in a good light.”
Max looked annoyed.
“I’m not a statistician. I can’t answer for something I have no expertise in. But I think I can say categorically that there has been no effort to distort anything.”
“Is that on the record?”
“Absolutely.”
“And the National Weather Service?”
“What about it?”
“Is it true that it is being privatized, and sold to a friend of the President, and that from now on the only people who can get tornado warnings and the like will be those who pay a subscription fee?”
“I don’t know anything about that. But I can’t imagine that such a thing would be allowed. More scaremongering.”
Kathleen inhaled, then decided to go for broke.
“Is it true that the President did not, in fact, have the virus at all? That he merely announced it to create sympathy for himself when he was far behind in the polls?”
Max simply grinned.
“Nice try,” he said.
“Can I ask you about your time in the service?”
“I don’t talk about that, as a rule.”
“Can you change your rule?”
“If you have dinner with me. I have to eat anyway, and I have to get back to my ranch tomorrow.”
“You don’t have a date for tonight?”
“A date?”
“It’s Valentine’s Day.”
“Recently divorced.”
“Huh.”
“You?”
“Me what?”
“You don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day?”
“Also divorced. Not as recently.”
“Well, then, this could work out,” Max said. “Plus, I’m hungry.”
“As long as it’s clear that this is strictly business.”
“Absolutely.”
Well, I’ve had worse Valentine’s Days, Kathleen said to herself.
“Okay then,” she said.
Max got up. He picked up her coat and held it out.
“I guess they teach manners in the military,” she said, smiling.
She got into her coat with Max’s help. Max opened the door to his hotel room and held it open for her. She walked into the hallway. He joined her, and they walked toward the elevator.
Whatever you do, Kathleen said to herself, you are not going back into that hotel room.
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian