Our Divided States: Division #1 -- Business vs. Government

The one overarching concept of this year's presidential election can be summed up in one word: division. It's becoming more and more clear that America is splitting itself along a bunch of different axes. And while everyone seems to be looking at the firmly established dichotomies that the rest of the world deals with as well -- rich vs. poor, left vs. right, white vs. apparently every other race -- there are a couple that I don't think we should ignore. At least to me, they seem to drive right to the heart of what makes America unique, and in unique peril. I can think of three of these off the top of my head, each worthy of contemplation and frank discussion, and here's the first of them...

Over the years, I've developed my own personal theory about how America works, and if anything, Trump's less blatantly-offensive actions as he prepares to take the country's highest office are bearing it out. So let me share this theory with you, although I can almost guarantee that regardless of your political bent, you're not going to like it...

In short, America is based on an uneasy alliance between capitalism and socialism. These are directly opposing ideologies of how a human society should work, but every part of the continual back-and-forth of American politics and American business directly derives from their ongoing collision.

Now, since both of the terms I use here have taken on negative connotations -- mostly by the concerted efforts of supporters of the other -- let me define what I mean by them. By "capitalism", I mean an economy based on the process of gathering resources, using them to produce something that people want or need, and then selling it to them for the lowest possible price, thereby raising their quality of life. And by "socialism", I mean it in its original, intended form, which is an economy based on giving people an equal share of wealth and resources, and using their combined mental and physical efforts to provide everyone with what they need to be safe, healthy, and comfortable.

If you look at the way America currently works, it's a constant battle between these polarizing tides. American business seeks to expand its revenue and reduce its costs, but when it does, it always comes at the expense of someone. And the government looks to counter this -- to keep workers from being exploited and unfair business practices being enacted. Conversely, when the federal and state governments take control of rights that should be in the hands of the individual, big business uses its leverage to keep freedoms intact. That's the main idea, anyway.

Let's use the example of a big, hypothetical corporation to illustrate: A big company necessarily operates on the money and credit it garners from appearing continually profitable. It has to, in order to maintain itself. In order to do this, it needs to sell more product. So it looks for cheaper resources, cheaper workforces, cheaper whatever. It looks to pay workers less or even outsource its production work to other countries. So the American federal or state governments aid unions to make sure that workers have bargaining power and can be assured to make a continued decent living from their job.

It works the other way, too. Look at our country's welfare program, which doles out taxpayers' money to people who either cannot work or are currently unable to find or are untrained for work. The capitalist part of society sees this as the antithesis of what it stands for, and lobbies to get welfare programs reduced or cut, claiming that programs like this indoctrinate people into dependence on the government, undercutting their motivation to work, innovate, and in general progress as a society.

This directly puts capitalism and socialism in conflict. The capitalistic side of the equation feels they're being hindered from continuing their necessary growth by having to pay American wages and American resources, and the socialistic side strives to keep people from being exploited or having their jobs taken away. In my opinion, it would be much easier if we dropped our pretense of political parties and defined ourselves as advocates for either Capitalism or Communism. Of course, due to the stigma those words have garnered over the years, it's not going to happen, but we're basically working under these veiled labels already. Rename either ideology and it seems to work well...

Republican/Capitalist: "Economic growth is how society and individuals progress. Wealth can be made most efficiently by large companies who then pass it on to the people. There is plenty of opportunity for people who want to put forth the effort, and teaching people to be dependent on their government opens up a short path to oppression and the rule of an elite political class."

Democrat/Socialist: "All people need to share in progress. Business expansions must be regulated to protect people and the planet alike, and there has to be a safety net for common citizens when bad things happen. When money is concentrated in one place, what happens is that a class system is established, those who have the money and those who have to work to gain it. Unless measures are put in place, business will look out for its own interests, without caring about what happens to people who work for their living."

Writing it out, I can see one striking similarity between the two ideologies: both believe they are in the business of keeping the other side from creating stratums of society, something that America was founded by being fundamentally opposed to. Everyone seems to agree that having upper classes and lower classes, with people born into one or the other by chance rather than their individual merit, but their approaches to keeping this from happening take wildly divergent paths.

You can probably tell where I fall on this issue from what I've written so far. But it's still true that I've experienced both sides of this: I worked for a large corporation for many years, and then had to fall back on the government for a few years after the recession swept it away.

Personally, I believe that the corporate goal of unending growth is impossible, resulting in bubble after bubble that artificially inflates wealth and then snatches it away, with the middle and lower classes bearing the brunt of every financial upheaval. I also believe that when bad things happen, a government has a responsibility to be there to keep an average person's life from falling into ruin. The only people who truly benefit from the current state of play are the ones who 1) know when to bail from the next bubble that is about to burst, and 2) stay illness-free. And there are precious few human beings who can reliably fall into both those categories.

So here comes the bad news: we are about to enter into an era where the people in charge believe that a country can be run like a business, when in fact government and industry were maintaining a balance -- Not well, admittedly, but they were mostly maintaining it. As you can see, the incoming President's cabinet is being filled with multimillionaires who are going to try to apply their "successful" business principles onto a "workforce" of 370 million people. They've also been put in charge of the federal entity that, in the past, has regulated them.

The biggest issue I have here is one of allegiance. Big business is beholden to no one, and no particular place. It will go where it needs to in order to be competitive and survive, and treat people in whatever way benefits them the most. On the flip side, federal and state governments exist -- at least in theory -- to be the advocate for the people, to be their voice, to protect them against tides of misfortune, engineered or otherwise.

So here's a parting thought: The earliest set of laws we have from human civilizations past is the Code of Hammurabi. You'll learn about in any social studies and law classes you make take, but one thing I never knew until recently is that the Code explicitly states its purpose, which is to prevent the weak from being mistreated by the strong. So what do we do when the proverbial strong are the ones who are deciding these protective laws? Do we really think they're going to act with all peoples' best in mind?

Whitelodge 13.1

-13.1-

Sheryl was perched between two strong emotions, not knowing which way she was going to tip. On one hand, she was back inside the Lodge, out of the elements and inside an environment that was bounded and she at least could pretend she understood. Not only that, but she surrounded by people she trusted, and who she felt deeply bonded to, now that they had gone through Glenda's tragic end together. Laid across this layer of comfort, though, was the fact that Kerren was still hurt and needed more care than getting carried around wrapped in a rug, not to mention that they had just re-entered the lair of some bizarre creature whose abilities and intentions weren't even clear yet.

She decided to put off her decision on how to feel until later. Right now, there was someone new in their midst, a man wearing what looked like an apron that seemed to have an inordinate amount of blood on it. She and the others had finished carrying Kerren down the stairs from the roof, and she kept moving, forcing them to keep following her. She walked until she was standing next to Dale, who was just standing there in silence, with Glenda still draped across his arms.

"Who are you?" Sheryl said to the bloodied man. As soon as she had spoken, she knew the words sounded harsher than she intended.

The man's eyebrows raised, clearly assuming he'd be welcomed more readily. "I'm Carlos," he answered. "I was working in the kitchen with Benny when the avalanche hit. Does she need--"

Sheryl didn't let him get distracted with questions about Glenda, who the man had clearly been looking at. "No. We need to know what's going on out there. You've seen that thing with the horns?"

Carlos focused back on her, nodding. "Like I said, it chased me in here. Benny's hurt, though. I told him I'd try to find a way to lure it away, so maybe we could get him some help..."

"Well," Sheryl said, nodding in various directions, "we've got people hurt too." She glanced over his shoulder and into the room beyond. "What's in there?"

"Just more storage," Carlos said, but his eyes kept drifting over to Glenda. This time, he spoke to Dale. "Is she going to be--"

Dale shook his head ruefully, and looked down at the woman in his arms. The snow that had accumulated in her lashes and on her cheeks had melted in the Lodge's relative warmth, the sheen making her look decidedly more alive than she had been outside.

Carlos breathed out an "Oh," and then stood with the group as silence gathered around them. A moment passed, and then Sheryl spoke again, as matter-of-factly as she could. "My wife's legs are broken. Is there someplace we can take her?"

Carlos eventually turned his attention back to her. "Well, it looks like any closed room would okay. Whatever that thing is, it can't pass through anything solid. I hit it with a -- a vase, I think -- and that almost brought it to a total stop. Like it had some kind of force field around it. Or maybe it *is* the force field. I don't know. What were you doing on the roof?"

"Trying to leave," Sheryl said. "But we just ended up right back here, where we started. There's no way to get off the mountain. So it sounds like we're stuck in here with it."

"Well, I came out here to see if I could find anyone else," Carlos continued, "so now that I helped that author guy, and found you all, I want to get back--"

The tension in the room started to ratchet back up. Manoj spoke up from the back of the transom that carried the blonde woman. "You saw Bruce Casey? Where is he?" The edge of rage in his voice was unmistakable.

Sheryl saw the look in Carlos's eyes get suddenly cagey, as if he was aware that what he was about to say was the vocal equivalent of walking through a minefield. "That thing was going to get him... So I grabbed it, and he got away."

"Where?" Sheryl asked insistently. "Where did he go?"

Carlos chest puffed out a little. "Sorry, but I was wrestling with what might be a literal demon at the time, I didn't get a chance to see. He was down by the other end of the hallway, where the whole thing collapsed. It was almost right above the kitchen where I was. But I left Benny down in Harmon's room, so now I'm going to--" He was starting to turn and leave.

"Wait. Please," Dale's voice filled the room, his throat strained. He nodded to Glenda, where she lay across his arms. "Let me go with you. I want to get her somewhere... safe." The regret in his voice was painfully clear. "Harmon's room would be good. Quiet. Can we take her there?"

Carlos looked at the big man, as if surprised by his sudden vulnerability. "Sure, Dale. We can get her there. It'll be a little crowded; Benny's not doing so well himself."

Sheryl jumped back in. "But it's a safe place? Can we take Kerren there too?"

As if given a cue, Kerren began twisting her head from one side to the other, letting out little, troubled hisses. Sheryl, concerned that she would hurt herself, said "Down! Put her down," to the couple holding the far end of the rug, and together they lowered the troubled woman to the floor. Sheryl ran and knelt next to her head as soon as she could. "Honey?" she soothed against Kerren's continued twisting inside her confines. "What's wrong? It's okay, we're going to get you someplace--"

She paused, listening. It was strange, but she thought she had heard something articulate in Kerren's breaths. She bent close, and there it was again. She was saying two tiny phrases: "In here" and "Again".

"What's happening to her?" Manoj asked in an anxious whisper. For some reason, it didn't sound like he was asking because he didn't know.

Kerren's hisses started to sound a little more like "heart". Sheryl leaned closer, trying to soothe her. "It's okay, honey, you'll be comfortable soon..." Her voice drifted off as she drew more disturbed by what her wife was doing. The urgency was starting to drift out of Kerren's repeated utterings of "heart", and her eyes were starting to take on a faraway look, as if there were something high overhead that was distracting her from where she was and what she was doing. Sheryl almost felt her old feelings of panic settling in, almost convincing her that the shock of Kerren's injuries had finally kicked in and she was fading away like Glenda had... but she managed to keep them at bay, at least for a few moments.

"What's that, Kerren?" Sheryl asked her, leaning closer, trying to divine her fading words.

"Sarah," Kerren said clearly. "It's all about Sarah. They all know her."

"Sarah?" Sheryl asked, confused. "What about her?... Honey, What does this have to do with your mother?"

The Cult of Amurrica

I've been watching Leah Remini's documentary series about Scientology for the past few weeks. Her mission, plainly and boldly stated, is to expose this self-described "Church" as nothing more than a cult and amoral money-making machine disguised as a humanistic organization. I've always found Scientology kind of fascinating, not only because one of the first sci-fi writers I read with any regularity was the Church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, but merely because the movement itself is from the outside so obviously batshit-crazy that it throws into relief how many of our other institutions -- religious, academic, and social -- are, at their roots, cult-like as well, only have been more normalized over time.

The more episodes of the show I watch, the more I start to think that our divided country has a large faction of it that operates much like a cult.

Let's compare: Scientology started with a forward-thinking leader (Mr. Hubbard) who looked at all the wonders of the Space Race/Atom Age and wondered whether any of it could help solve the dilemmas of the human psyche. The purity of the cycle of the scientific method (hypothesize, experiment, observe, analyze, theorize, refine) which had brought us amazing technological wonders, put us on the moon and cured polio, seemed like it might also be applied to solving our mental neuroses and cycles of abuse, if applied with the same rigor and objectivity. So it at least pretended to have a noble start. But from that logically sound beginning, things quickly started to go off the rails.

As time went on, both Hubbard's paranoia and grip on reality loosened. He first took to basing his organization on boats in international waters to evade various countries' laws. Then he coordinated the largest espionage attack on America ever perpetrated (Operation Snow White, a fascinating and frightening research topic). As time went on and he realized he had to follow through with completion of his bogus religious mythology, he created the increasingly expensive and ludicrous "revelations" one learns as they climb the Scientology bridge... this is where the great galactic lord Xenu comes into play, as well as the ever-more Earthly insanities laid bare in Ms. Remini's riveting series.

My point is this: even if Scientology may have started off with a noble premise, it was eventually led astray by its own fear, self-delusion and insularity. And when I look at what America is today, I can see much of the same thing happening. What Trump tapped into on that fateful day in November is often referred to as "Amurrica" by the rest of the population, and is the shadow-self of our nation. The utter poetry of the way it stands in direct contrast to what it thinks it stands for is pretty amazing, and I think a pretty good analog of what happened with the Church of Scientology.

Sit any elementary school student down and ask them what America is, what it *means*, what it stands for. What do we collectively tell ourselves makes America different from just about every other country? Well, the standard answer is it's our inclusiveness. Anyone from anywhere in the world can come here and make a better life for themselves. You can practice any religion you want in the manner you see fit, and everyone has an equal chance to work hard, study hard, and make the best use of their mind and body they can, all to build a stronger, unified country.

At least, that was the ideal set down on paper at the beginning. And there are still a lot of us (if you believe the numbers, a little over half) that still aspire to it. But we've recently heard loud and clear that there is a large faction of us that have turned the idea of "America" into a sort of cult, where nearly every single one of the Founding Fathers' original thoughts have been completely subverted and re-packaged as truth.

It's this new idea that's what "Amurrica" lives by. It's a place where "freedom" and "patriotism" means protecting ourselves against the constant threat of outsiders, people of different colors and religions, creeping in on all sides, threatening to change established modes of society that have been in place for as long as anyone cares to remember. The federal government is part of this too, a cabal of elites who live far away and know nothing of the reality of life, but wish to impose their will on common, salt-of-the-earth people, leaving "us" defenseless and dependent.

This is cult mentality writ large, indoctrinating a population that pays lip service to democracy and multi-culturalism, when what they secretly want is the exact opposite. They want to perpetuate the monoculture they've been born into, and which they can easily understand. They want one Voice of Authority, which can provide them with all the answers they desire. There's no room for dissent, no place for the Outsider except as an example to demonstrate our magnanimity and charity. But then the Outsider always has to go back outside.

"Amurrica" is a worldview that's filtered through an increasingly smaller number of legitimate-sounding news sources, and politicians who would rather voice their policies via Twitter than actual press conferences, where they could face follow-up questions and be asked to provide facts to back up their assertions.

The repetition of untrue doctrine until it becomes ingrained as fact, the intimidation and bullying tactics to keep the indoctrinated in line, the innate infallibility of leadership... these are things that all cults do well. They remove other options, instill fear, monopolize attention, and magnify the natural uncertainties of life. Then they offer an ironclad solution that you can attain, and all you have to do is follow without question. It's these tactics that both L. Ron Hubbard and our President-Elect have used to "help" people retreat from the new, connected, real world of the twenty-first century, all the while claiming to be reinforcing the very ideals they're undermining.

Oh, and there's one more crucial way these two men are similar: They've taken a great deal of money from hard-working people doing what they do.

Whitelodge 12.5 & 12.6

-12.5-

They were going to have to get out of the room, which at the moment seemed like a pretty tall order. They were two old men, broken in different ways, and it was unclear just how far from this rickety old cot they could manage to get. But they had the fire of knowledge, and they would just have to hope that was enough.

Harmon withdrew from Benny's fractured brain slowly, carefully, not wanting to cause any more damage than had already been done to it. He wasn't even sure he had such power, but he didn't want to risk it. He opened his eyes and he was back, Benny sitting next to him slumped back against the wooden wall of Harmon's small understairs room. Looking at the broken man, he marveled at how incredibly complex and beautiful the human mind was, even in such a compromised state. It was a depressing shock, going from such a sense of limitless potential and space, to being trapped inside a tiny box of bone. It was no wonder that people expected so little of themselves, and each other.

As disappointing as the physical world was compared to that of the mental, he had to fully return. Things needed to be done. The look in Benny's eyes when Harmon spoke to him meant that the kitchen worker knew this grim fact too, but with nearly infinite regret he knew he wasn't going to be much help.

"No worries," Harmon said to him, cautiously patting him on the knee. "We'll figure this out. I guess I can walk a little more, since I've made it this far. Maybe I can lure the thing out from wherever it is, get it to come to us..." The fear in Benny's eyes was growing more intense, so Harmon stopped his vocal spitballing. It was belatedly starting to dawn on him that if the two of them were going to defeat the Qoloni, they'd need more than one working body between the two of them.

It was his longing for the sense of weightlessness that came from being inside another's mind that made him think of Kerren again. Even while he admitted that the feeling could possibly be addictive and he should be careful, he knew that it was their only means of getting additional help. Out on the snow, he thought he had heard the distant sound of one of the lodge's snowmobiles heading down toward the village, and if that were true, the blonde woman (who looked so much like Sarah) was most likely one of the passengers. If they had made it all the way down, they might be able to send assistance. Of course, how he could possibly explain what the Qoloni was, and how it would have to be fought, was something he would have to work out later.

Turning to Benny again (and feeling a flare in the broken ankle he had almost forgotten about in his inner travels), Harmon said, "I'm going to try to reach Kerren. Maybe she can send help to us." He didn't feel like explaining that Kerren was dealing with some mental and physical trauma of her own, because Benny seemed to be in a particularly emotionally vulnerable state. "Hold on," he said, "I'm going to see where she is, and get a message to her if I can."

Surprisingly, as he closed his eyes and prepared to reach out -- a process that seemed to get a little easier each time he did it -- Harmon felt a shaky, hesitant hand slip into his own. It was Benny, trying to hold onto him, as he would a lifeline. "Don't worry," Harmon said without trying to shake off the hand, "I'll be right back. And right here." It was true; where he was going next, his body would necessarily stay behind.

He felt that unique sense of dislocation again as he expanded his thoughts to outside his own body, pushing into the feeling of anti-world that he now understood existed everywhere, between all spaces and times. Almost immediately, he was distracted by something else, something fascinating: the presence of Kerren, less than a hundred feet away. She was high above him, much higher than he thought she should be, and far enough away that he had to wonder whether she was still in the Lodge or not. So she hadn't been on the snowmobile after all...

Harmon drew his disembodied presence back, trying to get a better overall look at the surroundings. He backed through the lobby, trying not to look at the disturbing, fading traces of life in the blood stains across the floor and up the stairs. He tried to keep his attention high, but he kept having to raise it, up above the Deertail's second floor, up above the thin attic space that lay on top of it...

He actually heard himself say aloud, "The roof, goddamnit. She's on the roof," and dimly felt Benny's hand clench a little too hard against his, back in his tiny room under the stairs.

They were *all* up there, in fact. Well, five of them were... no, six, but one of them... dear God, one of them felt vacant, a complete shell, nothing left... what had happened? As if he had willed it -- and maybe he had -- Harmon felt his consciousness slip inside that silent, still mind, and then just as quickly retreat. One phrase was all he could sum up about that vast, unlit space -- *There was nothing left.* They were the only possible words to describe what he had seen and felt in that eons-long instant he had been inside Glenda's mind. Until that moment, he hadn't even realized it was her, the person he had interacted with more than anyone else at the Lodge, because she was so unrecognizable in that form. He didn't feel the tears that spontaneously ran down his corporeal cheeks.

The only thing that gave him solace was Kerren. She was right there, next to the darkened form, so luminous she almost blinded his vision, forming a perfect counterpoint. How could one person be so incredibly *alive* while another, less than two feet away, was utterly, irrevocably absent?

He forced himself to turn away from this unsolvable dilemma, to turn to more pressing matters. How had they gotten up on the roof? A quick survey of the area seemed to answer this: the avalanche had piled snow up to and over the roof line at the back of the Lodge, so they must have driven right up onto it. But why?

Now he became aware of movement elsewhere on the roof. Dale (he had come to recognize the man's particularly warm energy signature, but now it seemed strangely ragged and dim, and Harmon thought he could understand why) came over and knelt down next to Glenda's former self. Harmon watched as the security guard gingerly picked her up and turned to walk away. Harmon followed, watching as he carried her into one of the little cupolas, which he always assumed were merely ornamental, at the front corners of the Lodge. Now, he could see that there was a hatch there that led down into the attic space. A young couple had just finished prying it up, and now leaned it against the inner wall of the cupola, standing back as far as they could to make room when they finished.

Dale moved slowly, reverently, as if enacting a ritual, and the others patiently waited while he descended into the Lodge with infinite care. Once he was out of sight, Manoj and Kelly moved out of the cupola, coming over to help Sheryl and Kerren -- it surprised him only a little that he knew all their names, having picked them up tangentially through his previous time in Kerren's mind. They seemed to know exactly what to do without speaking, and picked up the injured woman, who had been wrapped in a rug around a thick piece of board that acted as a sort of stretcher. They moved without outward or inward communication, following Dale's pilgrimage into the cupola.

Harmon prepared himself, whispered an apology for intruding again, and dipped into Kerren's blazing mind for a second time.

-12.6-

The door slammed shut, and immediately warped as the dark thing impacted it from the other side. Carlos watched, fascinated, as it twisted and struggled, bending the door, its jamb, and the surrounding walls in ways that shouldn't have been possible. Before, when he had been down in Benny's room, he had been too terrified that the thing was going to break through to appreciate the phenomenon, but now that he was reasonably sure it couldn't, his feet became rooted to the spot where he stood, and he just observed it happening.

The blank face of the creature, until now, had lent it a kind of detachment. At least, that's how Carlos had thought about it; when your pursuer didn't have an expression to be read, you could never be sure of its motives. Was it angry at Carlos? Was it hungry? Was it insane? He would have been able to tell if it had a mouth, or eyes to look at. But its mere approximation of a human face made it hard to read. Carlos guessed from the way it was contorting its body, its hands blindly grasping in his direction through the membrane its strange physics made of the door, that at least two of his guesses were true.

Now that he was out of immediate danger, Carlos was able to inspect his shoulder, which had taken so much force when he slammed into the door that he feared it might be broken, or at least dislocated. He touched it gingerly with his free hand, then rubbed it. It would be quite bruised, but it seemed intact. He was able to rotate it most of the way around in its socket, with nothing stronger than the expected ache. He had lucked out on that count.

He watched the ripples and thrashes from the other side of the door until they started to subside. There was one final flurry of slashing activity from the other side, and then the thing retreated slowly, stealthily. The tips of the antlers were the last thing to disappear, the hard points receding high up on the wall above the door. It wasn't until it had entirely withdrawn that a long, deep shiver passed up the full length of Carlos's spine. He tried not to think too hard about what he had just escaped from. The most unnerving thing, he realized, was that it was so silent. Not even the twisting of reality itself as the walls and vases and doors wrapped around the thing's lean, horrible shape had made any sound. The ambience it left in its absence was almost as frightening as when it was snapping at his heels, which just lent even more surreality to the experience.

It was in this silence, however, that Carlos was able to discern a totally new sound. It was nearby, but muffled, a kind of hollow stepping and scraping, as if several people were walking slowly, methodically, in another room, over resonant wooden boards. For some reason, he was almost as afraid of this sound as he had been of the silence of the dark thing that, for all he knew, could still be waiting just outside the door. There was something ominous in its order. All that was missing was the deep tones of a dirge being played underneath them.

Carlos's eyes drifted to the back corner of the room, where he saw a door he hadn't noticed before. It was unusually wide. He'd never been in this part of the Lodge before, but he assumed what lay beyond was more storage. Maybe some of the larger maintenance equipment? He stepped lightly over to it, listened to the steps as they continued their heavy treads. Some of them seemed weirdly synchronized, as if there were some kind of marching maneuver taking place inside. He tested the doorknob, found that it turned silently. He returned the knob to its resting position and backed away, not knowing whether he should risk going back into the hall, or seeing if the procession would try to gain access to his new hiding place.

All of a sudden, Carlos found himself filled with anger, which he hadn't been able to bring himself to feel against the dark creature he had been grappling with. Maybe it was the residual adrenaline from that encounter, but he found that he didn't want to spend the rest of his time in the Lodge running and hiding. He reached for the knob again, decisively turned it and threw the door open.

On the other side was another, longer storage room, lined with plastic storage racks, all of which were filled with every manner of things needed for the upkeep of a large, wooden building: cans of paint, stains, and varnish; boxes of nails, assorted woodworking supplies and equipment. But in the center of it, a long, shallow-grade staircase with open slats descended from a large rectangular gap in the ceiling, which let the moonlight hinted at through the window in the outer room shine down directly.

Next to this stairway -- which started almost over Carlos's head and descended to the far side of the room -- stood Dale, the Lodge's head of security, with a limp female form draped across his arms. He turned to look at Carlos as the door opened, and the expression on his face was confusing. It took a little longer for Carlos to realize what was coming down the stairs: three people together, one in front and two in back of a long, cylindrical shape as they stepped down the stairs as a unit. Carlos could only see the backs of their legs through the thick slats of the stairs, so he couldn't determine any more facts than that.

"What... what's happening?" Carlos's excitement about finding other able-bodied people in the Lodge was tempered by his uncertainty about what they were doing. "Is she all right?" He was speaking to Dale now, nodding his head at the woman in his arms. As soon as he had said the words, he realized that it was Glenda, the desk clerk who always had a warm smile for him -- and, he assumed, for everybody -- whenever he would venture out from his work in the kitchen. Dale only shook his head gravely.

Now the group was hitting the bottom of the stairs, and turning in his direction. Once all three of the group carrying the long shape had pivoted around his way, everyone stopped and looked at each other. It became clear to Carlos that what they were holding between them was a woman, wrapped in a rug. She surprised him by tilting her head his way, her bright eyes regarding him coolly. This made him assume that Glenda, despite the knife stuck high in her chest, was merely injured as well.

He broke the silence by saying, "It's outside the door. It chased me in here. But it can't go through solid objects. So we're safe for now."

The best feeling Carlos had that night, aside from when he realized that Benny was still alive, was the collective shudder of relative relief that went through the group when he spoke those words.

The America That Could Have Been

I couldn't care less about what kind of demographics America ends up having, racially or otherwise. In fact, I'll go one step beyond that -- I don't think America will be able to reach its full potential as long as any one race has a de facto headlock on determining the direction of its politics or its culture. To further clarify and de-mince my words: once White America is no longer in power by default, the country's going to be much better off.

Sound radical? Actually, what I think is radical is the backward-bending that white people have gone to in order to make sure they retain enough of the majority to stay in power, and even further to rationalize those actions. From the gerrymandering of Congressional districts to the flat-out racist tactics of the recent Presidential election, there is a large faction of this country that is deathly afraid of having to share the country's steering wheel with hands that have even the slightest tint of brown in them.

Full disclosure: I say this as someone who identifies as a white man. Of course, as with anyone, there's some uncertainty and wiggle room in my real genetic racial profile, but for the record, this much I can verify. I'm most definitely half eastern European (my maternal grandparents were WWII refugees from Latvia), one quarter Scotch/Irish... and through a quirk of family history, one quarter that I'm not at all sure about. But regardless of origin, I do know that my non-Latvian ancestors were middle-America, blue-collar white folks. I specify this just so you don't think I have something to personally gain from the rise of minorities (and I'm glad to say that it sounds increasingly stupid to my ears to use that term for the entire non-white population).

One of the many rallying cries we've heard this past year, both here and across the pond during the whole Brexit mess, is that we have to take steps to "preserve our way of life". As if the continuity of culture is automatically something that people should strive to keep, as their birthright. So let's unpack what this one little phrase means... It means that the way we've been doing things has value, simply because it's the way we've been doing things. I can't say I agree. The America of the past -- the one that supposedly was so great that it needs to be made that way again -- was one of redlining ... burning rivers... 16-hour workdays... "the love that dare not speak its name"... "a woman’s place"... children being "seen, not heard"... Manifest Destiny... Jim Crow. One thing all those abominations of thought from the past have in common is that they're the sorts of things that taking steps to preserve "your way of life" really means.

What I see in America today is the impending endgame of this national attitude. Everyone wishes for things to be better for their children, correct? So what do you do when your continued way of living -- for example, a coal-burning, climate-change denying, waste-driven society -- is in direct opposition to those improvements happening? Do you hold back your children -- and their grandchildren -- by beholding them to the same traditions and norms that you grew up with? Do you not see how contradictory that is? When you think about it, it's no different from bullying, which is something I'm already thinking I'm going to have to address in my next entry. But the underlying question -- the neverending whine of the bully -- is the same: Why should you have it better than I did?

Until about 8pm on this past Election Day, I could see the future of America clearly. At least, I was clear on the way I wanted it to go, and HRC seemed to be on the right track. I could see America founding a new future on alternative energy, inventing and manufacturing all kinds of new technologies to bring clean water to dry lands, and non-emission power to wildernesses. We would be a center for not only manufacturing the necessary instruments to make these things reality, but to export the very process itself to other countries. This wouldn't take the form of an invasive process that would usurp the power of heritage and culture from other countries... it would merely make it so that people living there wouldn't have to spend most of their time not dying from hunger, poverty, or thirst. Any social adjustments that would be made out of that change would be honestly earned.

Look, America. We have the capability to not only set the standard for the wired, clean country of the future, but we could change our main industries to exporting that knowledge and tech to other countries. We could fuel our economy by shoring up our infrastructure, and then showing the rest of the world how to do it right. Smart power grids, ecologically sound roads and bridges, refined wireless communication and power transmission... we could be at the vanguard of it all. But what did we vote for instead? A President who won the election on promises of re-opening coal mines, expanding oil fields and pipelines, and fracking the hell out of everything. Basically, running the country like a business, the inevitable outcome of capitalism run amok.

Why did people fall for this world-ruining, backward-facing tactic? One of the many answers, I fear, is because of the phrase "it's what our family's done for generations". I'm sure that idea has nostalgic value, but the world is different now. We have to worry about everyone, not just ourselves. Just as every other country should be doing. We should be acting as one world. What we need now is a sustainable path toward the future, and even though it may contain more change than most people are comfortable with accepting, we were heading that direction with the Obama administration.

That was the first in a series of steps that would lead us toward what I see as the future: a world where, in terms of genetics, love has won. People no longer have children with people they're assigned to by class, or because of mere proximity and race, but because they love them. This will inevitably result there being no one majority race; everyone will have a varied and rich multitude of heritages, the world unified by an adaptable infrastructure that will last for generations. We'll work with nature instead of in defiance of it, powering our lives and innovations with light from the sun, the wind, and the earth itself, and take our water for drinking and agriculture right out of the air.

Make no mistake, that's where we're going. We'll get there eventually, if for no other reason that the isolationist, head-in-the-sand climate denial track we're backtracking down just isn't sustainable. At some point, we're going to have to start acting like the caretakers of the Earth, which is the mantle we have taken upon ourselves by our past actions. The only question is whether we're going to continue to put that delicate future in the hands of morons who will continue to look to the past (and their own personal interests) and hold us there as long as we can, perhaps until the climate itself makes it harder for us to survive, or whether we're going to trust in our collective intellect, pivot our way of life and ensure that "the way we've always done things" becomes "the way we're doing things from now on".

Whitelodge 12.3 & 12.4

-12.3-

Kelly knew what was happening. She had been watching for the warning signs for a while, ever since she had seen Dale not quite let his emotions flood through him when he realized that Glenda had died. It was his sense of duty that had gotten him back on the snowmobile after they had made the terrible discovery. She hadn't known the man long, but enough to know that this was his primary driving force. He had told everyone that he would get them down the mountain, and that was what he had focused on, not allowing his mind to fully accept what he had just lost.

Being around athletes as much as she had been in her life, she had seen the scenario played out many times, in many permutations. Everyone went through the traditional five stages -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance -- but she also knew that for each individual there were little epicycles of emotion contained within them. In the sports world it paid to know the various ways these could play out. Loss was utterly visceral out on the field, often accompanied by physical jolts of one kind or another, and there was often little time to react before you had to go back out and deliver a better performance. The paths through grief were varied and rapid. And right now, with her arms looped around Dale, she imagined she could feel everything he was going through. And the outlook wasn't good.

After the strange white-out and the realization that he might not be able to fulfill his primary directive of saving them all, she had felt the change in the muscles of his midriff. When he saw the Deertail Lodge come back into view after thinking they had finally left it behind, he had tensed in panic, but then relaxed. This humiliation, piled on top of loss -- and yes, she could tell that the security guard was taking his inability to deliver them all to safety as humiliation -- dealt him a second blow that closely matched the pain of the first. It was like a ball player who breaks their leg near the tail end of a clearly losing match... It seemed unnecessary and vindictive, even if there was no source to point blame toward.

Kelly hadn't started to get scared until she felt resolve flooding back into Dale's muscles. This kind of tension felt different from effort, and she recognized it quickly. It was the kind a batter who's been brushed back too many times and is about to storm the pitcher's mound gets, or the footballer who is about to double down on the behavior that has gotten her a yellow card *because* she has gotten a yellow card. With a sudden pickup in the snowmobile's speed, and the failure to change direction, she still didn't know exactly what Dale was intending, but she knew that any decision he made at that point would likely be impulsive and self-destructive.

Pain of this sort, more specifically internalized pain, was the only thing that would make a man like Dale forget about the others his decisions were going to affect. And so, with the treads of the snowmobile churning up the roof tiles, the whole vehicle feeling like it was going to shake itself to pieces, and the leading edge of the hotel roof approaching, she did the only thing she could. Kelly's arms, already wrapped around Dale a few inches above his utility belt, lifted. She turned her head, laying her ear and cheek flat against the broad expanse of his back.

Her left hand slid up his chest, to just over the place his heart must be, and lightly pressed there. Then she clenched her thighs around the seat of the snowmobile and forced herself to be conscious of Manoj's arms, which were in turn wrapped around her, savoring the warmth and reassurance of them. She hoped that Dale could feel that warmth as well, the warmth of all of them, passing through her and into his broken heart.

She waited. Seconds streamed past like the wind, and since she had no idea how much runway they had before the roof ended in empty air, there was nothing else for her to do but wait, and hope that it was enough. Please, Dale, she thought, hoping that he could somehow feel her thoughts, think of us. We all have homes to return to, like Glenda. We she have wanted her death to be the thing that doomed us all?

For a long moment, Dale's body did not change, as if he had turned into stone, bent on taking all six of them to oblivion. Then, beneath the palm of the hand she had placed on Dale's heart, Kelly felt him exhale, in one long, shuddering sigh of resignation, defeat and acceptance. Then she felt herself being pressed closer against his back, just as much because his muscles were loosening as that the snowmobile was beginning to slow.

Kelly heard a distant yelp from Sheryl, guessing that the sudden pressure she was feeling on her legs was unexpected. It didn't matter, because it wasn't until the combination vehicle had almost come to a stop that the sledge it was towing began to slew a little to the side. Then they were no longer moving.

The engine cut out, and a stunning silence descended. Kelly remained where she was, her hand over Dale's heart, her other arm around his waist, feeling the coiled tension in his muscles. She waited patiently, and the ultimate release finally came. She felt the big man start to curl around her palm, closing in himself like a flower being crushed. He hunched down over the handlebars, and Kelly continued to hold on. She knew the second part of what was coming. She had seen a smaller version of it so many times, in locker rooms and the quiet spaces of empty stadiums after everyone had left, the inevitable result that comes with the knowledge that a possible future, one that could have been so beautiful and triumphant, is now closed off forever.

She remained pressed close to Dale's back as his spine arched, his head tipped back, and he released a cry of anguish so visceral that tears squeezed out of the corners of Kelly's eyes. She could actually feel his release of energy, the way his very frame shook with his explosion of grief and regret. His voice tapered off into a long, pained whimper, and although she expected it to devolve into sobbing, it didn't. By the end, it seemed like he had nothing else to let loose. His body, deflated, lowered down over the handlebars again. She kept her hand pressed against his chest the whole time, wondering if maybe it was the pressure of her arms around him that had kept him from literally flying apart with sorrow.

Dale drew in a long, deep breath, replacing all that he had lost in his protracted cry. The rise-and-fall flow of it returned, and it wasn't until she felt it that Kelly was reassured that they were all not about to go over the edge. The man had given voice to his hurt, and now he could move forward. She opened her eyes, lifted her head, and took a look around.

They had come closer to the forward edge of the roof than she felt comfortable admitting; only about four feet of shingles remained in front of them before the drop-off. They were close to one of the front corners of the Lodge, marked by a small cupola, about the size of a large tool shed, a smaller version of the lobby facade that reared higher into the black sky a good two hundred feet away. They had come down the avalanche slope right onto the roof of the half-enveloped lodge, which must have looked to the bereaved driver of the snowmobile like a custom-made ski jump to nowhere.

She still didn't move, because Dale didn't either. She would stay there as long as he wanted her to, but so far there was no resistance, no subtle shrug that told her he didn't need her anymore. For a long time they just sat there, waiting for the last of it to pass.

-12.4-

He really would have done it. The solution was right in front of him, as clearly as if the avalanche had laid out a destined path, one that he only had to follow. And Dale had had every intention of doing just that, until he had been stopped by a hand.

On a very conscious level, he knew that the palm that had laid itself so gently across his aching heart was Kelly's. With that knowledge alone, it wouldn't have been enough to put the brakes on. With the wind increasing in his face, with the edge of the world coming on ever faster, his mind chose to conjure something decidedly unreal, but sharper and more real than anything else he had experienced that interminable, horrible night.

What if, his thoughts unspooled, that hand were Glenda's? He imagined that if she had ever placed her hand directly in the center of his chest, that's exactly what it would have felt like. He knew it wasn't hers, and understood that on every level, but his mind wouldn't quit imagining it as something else. It was some extension of her, telling him not to give up, to keep fighting even though she was no longer there to help and inspire him. It was this thought -- which he heard clearly in her voice, even though he knew it was really his own mind -- that convinced him to bring the snowmobile under control, and to finally let it stop.

Even then, it wasn't over. He still felt the urge to punch the throttle, to finish the job. It seemed preferable to a life of years stretching out before him without Glenda in them. All that time, every morning waking up and remembering what had happened. Could he really face that? This is what prompted his howl, all the rage of a beautiful life destroyed being thrown up into the indifferent sky.

And all the while, that pressure remained on his sternum, never changing. When he finally slumped forward, every last ounce of energy seemingly expended, it stayed there, a gentle reminder of how he was not alone. Not on this snow-covered roof, or in this crazy looping nighttime world. There were still others.

For the moment, at least, that was enough.

He straightened, pulled back his shoulders to their natural position. He felt his chest expand, cool air flow back into his depleted lungs. And still the hand remained. He took his hand -- the one formerly poised over the throttle -- and covered the hand with his own. He knew it wasn't Glenda's, and he knew that it wasn't going to be there forever, an eternal reminder of her, but for that moment, he allowed himself to believe that both those things were true. For the first time, he felt a twinge of relief that he had not sent them all plunging over the edge of the roof, to slam into the snow-covered garden that ran the length of the front of the lodge, far below.

He took another deep breath, patted Kelly's hand twice, and pulled it away from his chest. He focused on keeping the feeling of its pressure in place, though. He hoped it would last. "Thank you," he whispered, not knowing if Kelly heard him. She gave no overt sign that she had, but he did feel her arm on his waist squeezing him slightly before releasing its hold.

He heard Manoj's voice, unsteady. "How do we get down from here?"

Finally, a question Dale knew the answer to. Moving slowly enough to make sure that Kelly wasn't going to get kicked, Dale lifted himself up off the snowmobile and dismounted. "Over here," he said, and walked toward the cupola at the corner of the building. He stepped up the side of it that faced the rear of the building, and threw open a latch that was all but hidden in the multiple layers of woodwork that gave the structure an ornamental feel. The entire back wall of the cupola swung out, revealing it to be entirely hollow inside.

Kelly and Manoj followed, fascinated by the revelation. "What is this?" Manoj asked.

"Roof access. For repairs," Dale said, his throat scratched by the first words he had spoken since his desperate cry. "It was part of the original design, but it's been modified since then. We should be able to get everyone back down this way."

The young man continued, "And we... want to go back down?"

Dale paused from his survey of the cupola's interior. His back still turned to the couple, he muttered, "What other choice is there?"

He heard a sound that might have been Kelly swatting her boyfriend's sleeve, silently imploring him not to answer that question. It was okay; he knew enough about Manoj now to take his concern at face value. Of course he was going to look for alternatives; it was in his nature.

Dale continued to survey the inside of the small shed. It was still as he remembered from three years ago, when he had accompanied the maintenance crew in the pre-season inspection, just to see the mountain from a new vantage point. The long trapdoor in the floor seemed untwisted, just as the cupola's exterior was... the avalanche's damage didn't seem to have affected this forward corner of the building as much as elsewhere. He took just a moment to look out of the downslope window, silently cursing the devious mirage of the town that still hung there, glowing warmly far below. They had been so close to escaping...

He turned, walked right past the young couple hovering at the doorway and headed for the sledge. He threw a "Would you mind opening the trap, please?" over his shoulder to them as he steeled his nerves for picking Glenda's body up off the spot where she still lay reclined against the storage bags. Four expectant eyes -- Kerren and Sheryl -- looked up at him from their places next to her.

"We can get back inside through the trapdoor in there," he said simply.

Sheryl had sat up, no longer bracing her feet against the back of the snowmobile. "A trapdoor?" she asked. "How are we going to--"

"You'll see. It won't be too hard." Dale said, his voice tired beyond measure. He was looking down at Glenda, who lay as if sleeping. The light from the blind moon overhead, shining on the bits of unmelted snow that had settled on her face, gave some semblance of life to her skin, but Dale knew it was an illusion, like so much else in this new world.

The two women watched as he bent down to the desk clerk and peeled away the bags he had laid across her, sticky and heavy with blood. Underneath, he clothes were in the same blackened condition. It physically hurt to look at her, the obscene knife handle sticking out of her chest. He wanted to wrench it out, throw it over the edge of the roof (just as he had almost thrown all these people off), but couldn't. He couldn't shake the feeling that to do so would hurt her, and he couldn't bear to take even that small a part in the terrible act that had destroyed her.

He picked her up, supporting her shoulders and knees, never taking his eyes off her face as he hoisted her tenderly. Without watching his feet at all, he carried her steadily across the slightly-angled roof to the cupola. Kelly and Manoj were just finishing his struggle with the oversized trapdoor, swinging it up to release a draft of significantly-warmer air out of the five-by-ten gap they had just created in the cupola's floor.

Underneath, a shallow set of wooden stairs led down into darkness, and alongside it was an equally shallow-graded ramp, really just an extra-wide, flat rail, built of apparently the same wood as everything else. It had been designed for equipment to be slid up or down as maintenance workers went up and down the stairs. Dale walked around to the far side of the trapdoor, past Manoj and Kelly where they stood solemnly, and reached the top of the stairs. He only looked away from Glenda's cool, relaxed face long enough to watch his foot take the first step, and then he began to descend, carrying her as, in a different universe, he might have carried her over a threshold, making sure that her head and feet cleared the sides of the roof. They disappeared together down into the dark.