Sweet Land of Liberty: Chapter 2, "All Part of the Plan"
(Author’s note: This Thomas Baker series novel is based on the ‘Sunset Playland’ character as seen in the “Activity” section on this LinkedIn web page. This is a work of fiction, but contains opinion commentary. The use of past and present tense falls in line with the third person narrative, the reassembled chronology, and with opinion on current events)
Thomas Baker was an educated man with primitive instincts. Both served him well. Both served his country well ...the United States of America.
Baker was a patriot but he wasn’t happy with the way things were shaping up in America. He was a writer by trade, mostly mystery-thriller novels, both fiction and non-fiction, and sometimes op-ed’s and short stories. He was opinionated but soft-spoken in his mannerisms. In his younger years he worked as a geologist and oceanographer after receiving his degrees in both. Later on, he worked in the advertising business as a copywriter and broadcast producer. Somewhere along the line, and he seldom talked about it, he became involved in government work of which he was the most proud and from which he derived the most satisfaction. Because he was a patriot. It was the kind of covert work that he couldn’t talk about. The kind of covert, Machiavellian work that placed him in danger from both sides. But his education and primitive instincts served him, and his America, well. He was a patriot.
Now in his latter years, Thomas Baker’s opinions and services were in higher demand more than ever before. He was frequently called upon by government and military leaders to exercise his instincts, wisdom, and sense of justice, his contacts ...and his stealth.
Baker was no prima donna. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He didn’t come from money. Both his grandfathers were immigrant coal miners. His father was a WWII Marine hero in the South Pacific. Baker believed that many of his fellow Americans were taking their hard-fought for but unearned freedoms for granted. They were becoming lazy and undisciplined. Arrogant and foolish. His writing career was a surreptitious way of expressing both his thoughts and his sense patriotism. He was an introverted man, but he wasn’t afraid to “call ‘em like he sees ‘em.” He’d seen and experienced a lot and had a lot to offer in the way of direction.
That’s why he was asked to look into the coronavirus pandemic that seemed to have metastasized in the United States more than any other country. Questions were being asked at the highest levels as suspicions were becoming widespread, above and beyond mere conspiracy theories, that America had been “targeted”.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in some deep dark-state clandestine basement level six laboratory, Dr. Fong understood his directive. He knew what he had to do although there were no written documents detailing the plan. His Russian counterpart was just as committed and informed. They both agreed ..."嘿，如果你想做一个煎蛋卷，你必须抢几个鸡蛋！ ...?Эй, если вы хотите сделать омлет, вы должны вскарабкаться несколько яиц!? ...or in English, “Hey, if you want to make an omelet, you have to scramble a few eggs!”
The plan was simple in its inception and design, diabolical in its creation, and beautifully efficient in its execution. Create a pandemic. Make it look like an accident. Wipe out America. Wipe out democracy and collect the spoils. Why? Why not? That’s the way we roll. After all, we did it to the Indians. Utopia is for fairytales and storybooks. The great American experiment of democracy worked for a while. But that was then and this was now. It couldn’t work any longer, there were too many people now, over 330 million and all left to their own devices and interpretations of freedom.
It was the way of the world. And as the world watched in envy and jealousy, and disgust, as America continued to grow and prosper in freedom and lethargy, it began to implode on its own democracy. While “We the People” (“They” the People) weren’t watching and paying attention, America’s lawn sign politicians, its easy money heros and elected leaders became ineffective, then corrupt, then criminal. A natural progression, the way of the world. Power corrupts, it’s the way we roll.
Many Americans would die, but they were counting on the fact that the American government would become the ‘Keystone Cops’ in dealing with the disease as it manifested itself in the United States, while other countries would follow the prescribed guidelines to keep the human death toll and collateral damages down to a minimum.
Yikes! This was a genocide on Americans!
Baker didn’t have an action plan to solve the problem, but this is what he found out because this is what he suspected. All signs pointed to a diabolical conspiracy. This was his instinct. He was a writer, a doctor of imagination. This wasn’t a new scenario in American culture or in popular media. Books like ‘1984’ and ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’, and films like ‘Outbreak’, ‘Contagion‘, ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, ‘Independence Day’, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, ‘Dr. Strangelove’, ‘Soylent Green’, ‘Network’ ...‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ ...all told stories of America’s demise whether by space aliens, pandemics, the media, pollution, climate change, nuclear holocaust, Hollywood movies about laboratory manufactured monsters ...or politically from within by greed and arrogance as Abraham Lincoln had predicted.
Thomas Baker wasn’t asked to look into this by the president, or anyone at the White House. Just as the order and mandate to wipe out America was intuitively understood by the players on the other side, Baker’s contacts were deeply embedded in America’s truest best interests and instinct for survival. Covert doesn’t even begin to explain it. Agencies and organizations are nothing but leak factories. No, Baker worked with a few like-minded close friends and associates with whom he had worked before. Some go back as far as the Vietnam War, of which Baker played an unlikely but significant part. Some, were of the “greatest generation”, but they were dying off and handing over the mantle to people like Baker, who was not far from handing it over himself ...but to whom?
The orchestrated “pandemic” plan was based on the fact that the American president, a diva, who was specifically chosen, promoted and virtually elected through the efforts of alien forces, would react accordingly and exacerbate the situation and confusion as his megalomaniac personality indicated it would. Either unwittingly or by design this president served only to further divide a nation already divided by race, economics, politics, education, ethnicity, guilt, and morality. He weakened the fibers holding the country together exposing America’s vulnerabilities, and that is exactly what Russia and other “evil axis” countries wanted, and for which they were committed and worked so hard.
America was fast becoming a third world country, ironically the “s**t hole country” the president called other third world countries that can’t get their act together. The joke now being that the president’s infamous southern border wall was no longer in place to keep Mexicans out, but to keep COVID-19 infected Americans in.
The rest of the world contained and minimized the deadly effects of the coronavirus simply by following the direction of medical leaders and the scientific community and wearing face masks, keeping social distancing, avoiding crowds, and practicing a little self-discipline. Businesses and schools were shut down to help prevent the contagion. But self-discipline was not the new American way, and the president played right into the arrogance and ignorance by promoting everything opposite like a defiant teenager or child being told by his parents to do his homework or to eat his peas.
He insisted the country “open up” before it was safe, to get the economy moving which was his only claim to fame, false as it was. He ordered schools to open up again in the fall after being shut down since the spring claiming the kids would fall behind in their studies. Ironic that he was concerned with this as the U.S. was already at the bottom of the worldwide list, scholastically. How much farther could they possibly fall behind? The president misspoke, lied, and gaffed at every turn. He was no longer marketable, trusted, or relevant. He was an island. America and the world were just waiting for the news that he had contracted the virus himself, as many in his inner circle had.
The American media, another bastion of incongruity, continued to throw gasoline on the fire by challenging this despot president on one hand, and patronizing him on the other. Their only objective was their self-serving ratings and advertising dollars. The opinion and commentary of their star news hosts and hostesses were merely heartened show biz pulp.
The 2020 election was just months away and this president, although down in the polls, was facing another second term, which, in the opinion of many, would be the final nail in America’s coffin and the end of the great American experiment of democracy. The American people just could not be trusted anymore to choose a competent leader. However, many were still optimistically hopeful that it would be the great start of a new beginning. But the democratic candidate was as weak as the last one in the previous 2016 election, and American’s could certainly be counted on to make the wrong choice again. The lesser of two evils is really no choice at all, is it? ...which contradicts the entire concept of a democratic voting system. Add voter fraud to this and there you have it ...the death of a nation in sharp contrast to the birth of a nation and the dream of democracy 245 years ago.
Thomas Baker’s job was not to stop this freight train of sorrow and treachery, he just needed to verify the clear and present danger regarding the pandemic. What to do about it was of a deeper and more difficult nature and task. Possibly an impossible dream. And at this point you’d have to ask yourself the question ...could America be saved? Was America, the now America, even worth saving? We’ve gone wrong, rotten like fruit on the vine. Like sheep in the meadow with the wolves watching from the tree-line.
America was a nation divided among itself again, but this time in many different, violent ways. Another Civil War was looming. It was also a nation divided among other nations, divided and separated by this presidents “America First” nationalistic doctrine. America had divided itself from the world. Was America even a nation at all any more? We were losing our national identity and world identity both at the same time.
But right now, people were dying in America. Lots of people. Over 200,000 predicted by fall. Innocent, good, well-meaning people. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. Kids. The coronavirus was still a medical mystery, the effects and long-term ramifications of which were not yet known and feared to be debilitatingly significant regarding cognitive and physical damage. America was in very serious trouble. It was being attacked on all sides. It was like the Alamo against the same odds of survival.
This simply could not be allowed to continue.
To be continued ...
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah
https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
Some past articles and op-eds