There was a man up at the podium. He was yelling about something. I didn't understand what. It's not that he was speaking some other language, not that at all. I just couldn't relate.
"Strength through unity!" he was screaming into the microphone. "Unity through faith!"
These concepts were alien to me. I had never really had faith in anything. At least not in anything that I couldn't see and prove for myself. That left me kind of screwed from the start of the loud man's logic.
What all that really translates to is that I only trusted myself. My eyes and hands. My idea of the world consisted of where my feet had been set.
People were an enigma. Each and every one of them pretending to have their own ideas, but really they were just spouting the same Leftist dogma they had been fed since kindergarten. How was it possible that they didn't realize that they were being controlled and lied to? How could they live as slaves? The really sick part is that the slaves truly believed they were free.
I hadn't come to see the yelling man, nor did I care what he was yelling about. I'd heard it all before. Other rallies. On the TV and in the newspapers. I wasn't entirely sure why I was there to begin with. I think somebody somewhere told me once that there were chicks at rallies. They were right too, but you could tell they'd all been paid to rile up the crowd. Big plastic smiles and even bigger plastic tits, as fake as the man at the podium.
~
Later, maybe a few weeks later, I was watching another man yell. This time it was through a diner window and over a cup of coffee. This was a wholly more enjoyable experience. This yelling man was roaring out against the Leftist regime of terror and oppression. He shone the light of truth, his truth at any rate, on their dirty lies. He was screaming approximately what I was thinking. It sounded better coming out of his mouth than it ever could have coming from mine.
And people were listening! Not many, but enough to be called a small crowd. Maybe 30 people all told. Most of them were cheering. Every last one of them believed what was being said. Nobody had been paid.
I finished my coffee and left the diner to join the still growing crowd. Minutes later I was cheering. Hours later, I asked him if he wanted a cup.
~
Turns out the yelling man's name was Mike or Mark or something. Mark was just a regular guy. He worked as a server at Chiles. He even still lived with his parents. He'd just gotten fed up with the situation faster than anybody else.
Despite Mark's seeming lack of life experience, he had met people. Useful people. In some cases, dangerous people. Many of them he had met at demonstrations. Some had heard about him by word of mouth and wanted to see if he was the real deal. The really scary ones were his friends. You could tell who they were by how they treated Mark. They were like a family. Every one of them joked at each other's expense. They all hit each other and laughed about it. They lived for each other. They would die for each other. They would die for him.
~
This next time I helped set up the podium. I set up banners and handed out fliers. We had congregated under cover of darkness to impress out point upon those who had so harshly tried to impress theirs upon us. We were 1000 strong and we were going to have our voice heard. We weren't going to take shit from anybody anymore. Not now, not ever.
By dawn there were a few cops. By 9am there were more. Noon brought riot control. We had gotten a little noisy. Mike had been hollering the entire time. He shouted about throwing off shackles. Tearing down walls. Taking our rightful place as masters of our own destiny. He'd been riling up the crowd for better than 6 hours with righteous indignation.
He was inciting a riot.
The fires and looting and screaming and war didn't stop for 11 days. The smile didn't leave Mike's face the entire time.
~
Moe didn't smile much anymore. It had been two years since our first spark of rebellion. The initial explosion hadn't broken the Leftists like it was supposed to. It had become a long war. A war of hit and run. Big booms for high profile targets; barely a sound for informants and moles.
Friends had died. Some had gone out in blazes of glory. One had managed to get a senator. Most were just torn from their beds and shot in the street.
This wasn't a war of ideals anymore. We'd lost that one a while ago. This was a war of revenge. An eye for an eye and to hell with the blind. That was why we were in that basement making bombs. Slurry was carefully being poured into pipes and the pipes placed in wooden boxes. There was a box for each member of the President's staff. Each box had been lovingly and painstakingly carved and customized for its' intended recipient. We'd lost too many people not to take our time. We couldn't afford to lose any more.
~
The news took us all by surprise. Matt was in custody. He'd always been meticulous about covering his tracks. He never stayed anywhere for more than a few days. Never left a trail. Never anything to go on. His friends, those that were left, didn't even know where he was day to day, let alone hour to hour. The only conclusion that we could come to was that he had turned himself in. We just couldn't figure out why.
There was bold talk of rescue. Lots of posturing and frustration, but that's all it was. Posturing. We all knew he had wanted to get caught, there was no other way they could have done it. We all knew he had a plan.
They hung him at dawn. Crazy bastards broadcast it live. They put pictures in newspapers and magazines. Stories and propaganda were played on the radio 24/7. The Lefties even made t-shirts emblazoned with his corpse. Matt had had a plan. We had a martyr.
Now the real revolution can begin.
