“In our lifetimes — indeed, in the remainder of the century — oil and natural gas, like coal, will never be scarce; these commodities will become progressively cheaper, like computing power. And as they become cheaper, the economic and technical hurdles for renewable energy, such as solar and wind, become higher and higher with every passing day. In this brave new world we live in, once you get behind the technological curve, you can never catch up. Never, because the state of the art is progressing at an exponential pace! That’s a corollary of Moore’s Law.”
“All this will drive the leftists bonkers,” Grafton said.
“Indeed,” Molina agreed. “And they fund the Democratic Party.”
Yocke jumped in again. “So you are saying that Soetoro understands all this and has bet everything on his ability to turn the country into a socialist dictatorship?”
Molina frowned. “I don’t know that he understands what is happening. He is not a brilliant man. Average intelligence, perhaps. But he understands the political pressures he is getting from unions, from big-city Democrats, from environmentalists, and he can read polls. He hears from OPEC nations worried that their domination of the world oil industry is coming to an end, and with it their prosperity, of which, by the way, only a little trickled down. Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise, and as prosperity in the Arab world drops, it will become more virulent. Barry Soetoro understands that!
“The future of socialism is on display in Venezuela, which will collapse one of these days, done to death by cheap oil. Socialism depends on a huge percentage of the population being unable to survive in a changing world without government help. Entrepreneurship and technical progress promise a world with abundant cheap energy that will raise prosperity for everyone who has the education to participate. Two centuries of cheap energy have made America the most prosperous nation on earth.
“At heart Barry Soetoro is a socialist, and he loves power. Soetoro understands that in this evolving world of cheap energy, the Democratic Party as it exists will become an anachronism. So he is trying to change the game and come out on top. He and his allies are screaming about climate change and proposing regulations and taxes on energy as a way to increase the cost of energy. Regulations and taxes have devastating consequences on the poor because all those costs must be passed on. In effect, the climate changers have declared war on the poor people of the earth, and they blame the carnage on evil capitalists, banks, hedge funds, and the like: those rich bastards are the enemy.”
“All this was discussed in your presence at the White House?” Jack Yocke asked.
“In and out of my presence.”
“And you fought Soetoro’s political vision?”
“Why do you think he threw me in a concentration camp?”
“So why did Texas secede, or declare independence, whatever you want to call it?”
“Texas is going to do well in the cheap-energy future,” Sal Molina said. “The people there understand that. The legislature didn’t vote for poverty. They voted for a new, better, more prosperous future for everyone in Texas that felt threatened by Barry Soetoro’s vision of a socialist utopia, with himself at the helm. Socialism drives taxes up — to fund social justice, the socialists say — and that makes everyone poor. That is socialism’s fatal flaw. It has others, but that one always destroys socialism eventually.”
“You are implying everyone is an economist,” Yocke scoffed. “They aren’t.”
Molina made a gesture of impatience. “Politics is about macro forces. Texas and the plains states are responding to macro forces that people feel. All thinking people do that, even the uninformed. When you fill up your car, you don’t need a PhD in economics to understand that something profound is happening to the price of gasoline, and that something has huge, sublime implications.
“And you don’t have to be a computer scientist to see and understand how computer technology has changed the lives of everyone on earth, except perhaps some pygmies in darkest Africa or headhunters in the Amazon. Cell phones are bringing the internet to places without electricity or running water. People in central Asia are selling goods worldwide on eBay. Computers are revolutionizing life on earth, and that revolution has just begun. Changes are going to happen faster and faster — that’s Moore’s Law — and change threatens politicians who are invested in the status quo.”
“So Texas’ actions after the declaration of martial law was the monkey wrench in Soetoro’s plan,” Jake Grafton said thoughtfully. “That they didn’t expect.”
“They didn’t,” Molina acknowledged. “They also thought the paramilitary police they installed in every federal bureaucracy would be able to control the population. And they thought the military would be loyal; they have been purging independent thinkers from the top ranks for years, people in whom they had political doubts.”
“Civil war,” Jack Yocke mused.
“Like Crackerjacks,” Jake Grafton said. “Remember those, with a surprise in every box?”
TWENTY-THREE
After dinner Travis Clay and Willis Coffee went down to the guard cabin and in a little bit Willie Varner and Armanti Hall walked into the house. They were full of radio news, which they passed to Grafton, Yocke, and Molina.
We settled in for another night. Before we did, I took off Grafton’s tape and bandages and rewrapped them. His bruises were turning yellow and green. That was good, I thought. There were no hematomas that I could see, and no bulges from busted ribs pushing against his skin. He really needed to be in a hospital, but he would never agree to that, even if there were a hospital we could get him into, which there wasn’t.
“Thanks for getting me out of that camp,” he said. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead by now.”
“Forget it,” I replied. “But I must say, you have a real talent for getting yourself in messes.”
He just grunted. I figured he must be doing some serious thinking about where we were going to go and how we were going to survive the next few days, or weeks, or years, when Yocke and Molina weren’t bending his ear.
“We only have so much gasoline for the generators,” I told him, “and we need to save what we have for the one in the guard shack so we can monitor the security cameras. I’m going to turn off the one here in the house. There are candles and some kerosene, and we’ll cook on the outdoor fireplace. Pour water from the creek into the commodes.”
“Oh boy,” Jake Grafton said.
“If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” Tomorrow, I decided, I’d dream up something to keep Yocke and Molina busy. I told him that.
“Good,” he said. “Neither of them can handle being alone with their thoughts for very long. They’ve had no practice.”
“I’ll probably shoot a deer and let them butcher it. Fresh meat would be a treat.”
Then, out of nowhere, Grafton said, “Molina is a cynical bastard. He’s an economist, so maybe it’s his training. He thinks all political behavior, or most of it, can be predicted based upon where the money is going. He’s right to some extent, but life is a lot more complicated than that. He’s sat over at the White House for years preaching that welfare, Social Security, disability, food stamps, and cell phones would win the hearts and minds of the low-skilled and unemployed. He knows that poor people are easily bought. It’s everyone else he doesn’t understand.”