Claire and John followed her to the table, which was already being cleaned by a man wearing the same drab as Barbara. After Claire pulled her chair in, she eyed her companion curiously. "What exactly did you do?
He shrugged and opened his menu. "Exercising my first amendment right, as far as I can tell. They got bent out of shape over a series of blog entries I wrote about why Bush Junior got us so deeply in debt. Seems the truth's a state secret or something.
"The truth?
"Yeah. Since you work with the courts, you probably have an idea of how much of the population are dangerously in debt. Some of the lucky ones, like Barbara up there, come through the other side, by filing for bankruptcy, and get their lives back. But most of them might as well be in what this place plays at being, for all the freedom they've lost. Do you realize how easily people can be controlled when they live in fear like that?
"I do, Claire said, scanning the appetizers. "That's why so many of them do foolish things and end up in front of a judge. But what does President Bush have to do with that?
"You know about the businesses he's had, right?
"Sure. Arbusto Oil and the rest. What about them?
"He ran them all into the ground " put them deep in the red, but his daddy made sure he was always bailed out. He's a lousy businessman. Thing is, he never had to suffer the consequences of running up that debt. For him, it was just some rich-kid game. And I wrote that this was exactly why he was installed in the White House by the banking interests that run the world.
"Hold on. Back up. The banking interests?
A sunny yellow waitress came to take their order before he could reply, which gave Claire a chance to sample the discussions flaring at nearby tables. One group was having a heated debate over the impossibility of the official explanation for what happened to the World Trade Center. Another was discussing why the TSA has been stopping travelers in hallways for twenty minutes at a time with no explanation. And a third was hashing out the problems of media consolidation. Free speech was certainly rampant here, she mused, but then these were private chats, and blogs were public rants.
When they were finished ordering, John laid both hands on the table and looked squarely at Claire. "Yes, the banking interests, he said somberly. "The same ones behind the WTO's scheme to trick debtor nations into turning over their natural resources in exchange for a bit of debt relief. They've fished out all the small countries, and now they've got their sights set on hauling in the one that thought it was king of the hill " the good old U.S of A. But to do that, they needed a way to put it so far in debt that there was no possible way for it to climb out of the pit, by installing the sadistic son of one of the ringleaders as the so-called ˜unitary executive'. And he's done a helluva job of it, too.
The room was strangely silent. Claire glanced around at the other customers, most of whom had suspended their own discussions and had turned their attention to John. He hadn't been speaking loudly, or even especially forcefully, but something about him sucked the air right out of the room.
"So... someone from a nearby table said into the awkward pause, "do you mean to say that this entire war on terror" the false flag attack on 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the desecration of the Bill of Rights... all of that was done in order to scare us into letting some cabal push this country into insolvency?
Several people had gotten to their feet, and were drawing closer. Claire had a momentary flash of an angry group of customers and jump-suited restaurant workers suddenly beset by a squad of riot police, with her in the center, along with the instigator, and shuddered. This wasn't the kind of an evening she'd anticipated. If this got out of hand, word of her involvement could derail the nascent movement to quell corporate greed. Breathing sharply, she rose half out of her seat. "Please, she said unsteadily, "let's not get too worked up over this. It's a possibility, only a possibility. There's no proof.
"Proof? a woman to Claire's right shouted. "What do you mean, ˜there's no proof'? There's plenty of it. It's just that the corporate media kept us from seeing it, from thinking clearly about what was happening to us.
"Yeah, a man across the room concurred. "And the worst of it went down along with the World Trade towers. Steel frame buildings don't just disappear into a cloud of smoke like that. They had help, and it wasn't from some hijacked airliner. Look, even if there had been jets involved, they can't fly that low at 500 miles an hour without breaking up.
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