Inside Outt

the oligarchy works.”
    “But it doesn’t have, I don’t know, rules?”
    “There are a few unwritten ones. Number one, above a certain pay grade, a politician can never be prosecuted or imprisoned.”
    “What about Nixon?”
    “Nixon would never have been prosecuted. He was told that if he resigned, he would be pardoned. And that if he didn’t, he would be assassinated.”
    Ben shook his head. It seemed too outlandish to be true. “What about Clinton? He was impeached.”
    “Sex is the exception. Because it doesn’t offer a patriotism defense.”
    “What about the Caspers? Ecologia? People wouldn’t go to prison for that?”
    “Some would have. After all, we know from Abu Ghraib that it’s all about the pictures. No pictures, no proof. No proof, no scandal. No scandal, no convictions. But even with video proof of the Caspers and what was done to them, the real architects would never have suffered. The oligarchy wouldn’t be able to whitewash it the way they did Abu Ghraib, but they’d just scapegoat a slightly higher-level target. The midlevel bureaucrats, the Ulrichs of the world, would be the sacrificial lambs. You see, when the oligarchy looks in the mirror and says, ‘The State is me,’ it’s not inaccurate. It’s not hubris. They’re just describing reality. They’ve made it so.”
    “Hort… I don’t understand. You just accept this?”
    “I’m a realist, son.”
    “You don’t want to fight it?”
    “Maybe I would have if I’d been born fifty or seventy years earlier. But the establishment is bigger now, more entrenched. The Roosevelt and Truman expansions were ratified by Eisenhower. Kennedy’s and Johnson’s abuses were ratified by Nixon. Bush Jr.’s extraconstitutional moves have all been ratified by Obama. It’s a ratchet effect. There hasn’t been a federal law in the last sixty years that’s done other than increase the government’s power and influence, and the power and influence of the corporations that manage the government by extension. The leviathan only grows.”
    “You’re saying it can’t be beaten?”
    Hort laughed. “You can’t beat the oligarchy. You can’t beat it because the oligarchy has already won. The establishment is like a virus that’s taken over the organs of the host. Now it acts as a kind of life support system, and if you remove it, the patient it battens on will die. Remember the scene in that movie
Alien
? Where the creature attaches itself to John Hurt’s face, runs a tentacle down his throat, and puts him in a coma, but if they cut it off, it’ll kill him? That’s the oligarchy. The establishment is a creature whose first priority is ensuring that if you try to remove it, you’ll wind up killing the host.”
    “So there’s nothing that can be done.”
    “No, there is, and that’s where you come in. The only possible solution is to manage this fucked-up system from the inside. That’s why I wanted the diamonds. And the tapes, if Larison comes around. They give us leverage. Then, if someone within the oligarchy is abusing his position so much that it’s creating a problem for national security, we can quietly remove him, one way or the other.”
    “You mean Ulrich.”
    “For example.”
    “Sounds like the mafia. With me as an enforcer.”
    “You can call it that. I prefer to think of it as good management. Would you rather have to clean up another mess like the Caspers, a mess caused by a bunch of fools? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being the cleanup crew. I’m tired of the board of directors being composed of dimwits and ideologues. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the
Federalist Papers
… that’s all just window dressing now, the artifacts of an ancient mythology, the vestments of a dead religion. We need something different now, something suited for the modern world. We need realists, men like us. We are the change we’ve been waiting for.”
    He took another mouthful of steak and chewed, nodding appreciatively.
    “I don’t buy it,” Ben said. “You could blow it up if you wanted to.”
    Hort swallowed. “Suppose I could. Then what? You want a revolution? Chaos? Russia in 1917, China in 1949? Who knows what we’d wind up with in the aftermath? At least now we have order.”
    “Maybe order’s overrated.”
    “Tell that to the folks in Somalia. You of all people ought to know about that. And besides, our oligarchy has a few things to recommend it. It’s open, for one.