<p>This was a few years ago, when I thought I could write a novel.</p>
<p>Attention, my fellow Americans. This is your leader speaking. This morning I would like to discuss an event that many of you have attached preemptive and imprudent significance to the rise of Oliver Underwood as a supposedly prophetic revolutionary in the eyes of the masses. I believe that the reason for your delusions that Mr. Underwood will be, in fact, your savior, is that you yourselves are not satisfied with your current style of life. You believe that you are slaves to highly structured and preprepared lives, bred to shamble through life as just one of the obedient, destitute masses. You believe that you have had no unique experiences, no exciting involvements, and no worthwhile relationships. You believe that you are not, as Mr. Underwood and his peons so like to announce, a complete individual. </p>
<p>But I would like to ask you, my fellow Americans: what does Mr. Underwood mean by ‘complete individual’? He means someone who answers to no one, someone who acts independently of the pressures placed on him by society and government, someone who cares for no one but himself. Mr. Underwood’s ‘complete individual’ is a rogue, a villain, a pot-banging, juvenile anarchist. The ‘complete individual’ is a spoiled brat of a child, one who has not yet accepted the fact that he is merely another link in the great chain of society. He is an outcast of the modern world, a decrepit and lonely wanderer.</p>
<p>You see, my fellow Americans, this society is not one based on the accomplishments and failures of individuals! We are all inextricably bound together a great chain of citizens holding up the modern world through productivity. Yes, most links of the chain are similar you and your neighbor in the office may very well be almost identical in terms of habit and schedule. But if you think beyond yourself, and look at the great chain from far away, as the American people almost always did before Mr. Underwood began implanting destructive visions of individual grandeur into their minds, you see a grand, unique structure, without which the entire world would fall apart.</p>
<p>I ask you, what is so terrible about your lives that prompts you to accept radical revolutionary ideals? You have a home, I have made sure of that. You have food, I have made sure of that. You have inexpensive and accessible entertainment, I have made sure of that. You once had utter and complete patriotism for your country and your leader, the great country that gives you everything that allows you to live a safe, healthy, and enjoyable life. Why do you wish to abandon all of this? I assure you, Mr. Underwood’s world promises nothing of the sort. In his convoluted vision of the future, there will be no aid or instruction from a government. You will all be left on your own, obligated to fulfill newer and much harsher expectations. You will no longer have a job, as the provider of most jobs, the United States government, will no longer exist. You will no longer have security, as there will be no government police force watching the streets at night. You will no longer have guaranteed food, medical care, or entertainment. Mr. Underwood desires to turn America into a wasteland.</p>
<p>Now, Mr. Underwood, I would like to address you directly. </p>
<p>Why do you continue to fight for an ideal that you do not believe in yourself? Before you started waving that gun of yours in the United States government’s face, you were a reasonable, normal man. You had a job, a house, security, along with a host of other benefits guaranteed by the government. But then, you threw it all away.</p>
<p>Who was it that convinced you to do so? Was it your dear Miss Fairweather, our little rebel? Mr. Bishop, was it? Or, rather, his addiction to misery? Or was it the whore? Not that it truly matters.</p>
<p>Mr. Underwood, you are a tragic man. In your transition from a child to an adult, the phase where you are meant to be forged into one of the links of the great chain, you allow yourself to be forged by the miscreants and outcasts you decided to associate with. You, Mr. Underwood, are not even the ‘complete individual’ you fight to protect you are a drone of your higher-ups, even in your little ‘revolution.’ You think that you are fighting to bring about an age where each individual is his own master, but you are merely a tool of the continuum of power. Governments will rise, from each revolution, that mirror exactly those that existed beforehand. There will never be any government that, in your torturous mind, will respect the idea that you should be the exclusive controller of your own life. That idea, as you know, deep in your own soul, is outdated and broken. Look at the societies that have allowed that none of them have ever amounted to anything. Do you know why? Because they have no chain, no collective mass. Each individual is their own link their metal is twisted, they are bent out of shape, they are discolored, rusted, or dented. They will never fit together to become a functional society. You are fighting, Mr. Underwood, for the destruction of civilization.</p>
<p>I hope, my fellow Americans, that this has been a productive conversation. I leave it in your hands to decide the future of the world.</p>
<p>The Root was a dismal bar on the intersection of 14th and Valley. It was an old brick building wearing a conservative gown of graffiti, with outdated signs and advertisements covering all available window space. It was situated on the first floor an old, closed down motel aptly named 14th Street Motel. The 14th Street Motel was where the kindly bartender took up residence, when he was sober enough to leave the bar without knocking himself out with a wall. He knew his limitations, and this was one of them.</p>
<p>The bartender was a bedraggled young man of about twenty-two who had just recently graduated from the nearby university with degrees in ichthyology and philosophy. In the job placement session that occurred a week after graduation, he was matched with bar tending, and an old friend of his offered him a job at the Root. So he moved from his apartment into the bar, noting that the only real benefit of the job was that he didn’t have to pay rent.</p>
<p>He stood about six-two, with long and tangled leather-colored hair, pale skin, and rather large round glasses. His face was somewhat thin and mousy, though mostly hidden by the collar of his coat and the scattered curls of his hair. He would, in the eyes of many women, be considered handsome if he washed and cut his hair, wore normal clothing, and stopped exuding melancholy and depression through all his pores. His name was Oliver Underwood.</p>