Authors: Ruth Francisco
“You have no idea where he might be?”
“He wouldn’t go to contacts he made while at Canterbury.
He’d know the FBI was on to them.
Maybe to some contact he made at
Guantánamo
.”
“Do you know of any groups in Canada?”
“For chrissake, Ann, don’t go hunting him down.
That would be the worst thing.
For you.
For him.
Forget it.
Promise me you won’t.”
He had my hand and was crunching my fingers together until they hurt.
“Okay, okay.
I promise.”
#
I wasn’t much good at keeping promises either.
You can add that to my list of faults.
I had to let Peter know I still cared about him.
I wracked my brains.
If I used the computers at Santa Monica Library, the FBI could trace it there,
then
match the signup list to the computer.
If I swapped computers, they still could find my name on the signup list.
Maybe I could sneak on when the computers weren’t busy.
Or maybe I could try an internet café.
No.
The FBI could show my picture to a clerk, who might remember me.
Even if I found a way to post a message to him, I’d have to access an anonymous computer a second time to see if he answered, which would take checking the website over a period of days, increasing my chances of leaving a trail each time.
Was I being paranoid?
I didn’t know enough to be sure.
But if the FBI did discover Peter was the Stinking Rose, they might be able to find him.
If Peter had done nothing wrong, why was I worried the FBI might find him?
I then realized I no longer believed he was entirely innocent.
I also realized it was vanity that made me want to contact him.
I didn’t want to be forgotten.
Did I imagine he’d respond and tell me where he was so I could join him in the woods with his merry band of
jihadists
?
Was I an idiot?
I endangered him by trying to contact him.
I had to leave it.
Still I could not give up the hope that somehow he’d find a way to get a message to me, when I least expected it, a note passed anonymously to me as I walked down the Santa Monica Promenade, or a secret message on a call-in radio show.
Any day now he would let me know he was all right.
That he loved me, too.
That soon we would be together again.
#
The presidential campaign continued.
All anyone talked about was whether or not the U.S. was going to war.
On July 23, 2012 the Republican National Convention began in Chicago.
The 2,509 delegates were nearly evenly divided between the warmonger Texas Senator Bob McMillan, and the ultraconservative isolationist Congressman Thomas Tannin from Colorado, with several hundred delegates committed to minor candidates.
Massive marches preceded the convention.
Over fifteen hundred people were arrested, mostly Muslim.
The theme of the convention was “Securing a Peaceful World for Our Children,” yet it looked like the members of the platform committee would kill each other before crafting an official party platform.
For the first time in years, it included nothing about abortion or gay marriage.
I had never watched a convention on television before, Republican or Democratic—a form of torture I considered worse than watching football—but this was different. For the first time in decades there was actually a question as to who would win the nomination.
And whoever won could very possibly decide the fate of the world.
A great fissure erupted between Republicans who criticized President
Gladwell
as weak on defense, and those who recalled the Republican loss in 2008, attributed mostly to Bush’s war in Iraq.
Senator Bob McMillan called for the immediate deployment of troops to Europe and the Middle East.
“Winning the war against Islamic aggression must be our government’s first priority,” McMillan roared.
“For years Republicans were mocked for claiming an ‘Axis of Evil’ threatened the world.
Well, it turns out we were right.
How do we fight evil?
How did we win World War II?
We used everything we had.
We asked our young men to become soldiers.
We used our factories to make ships and airplanes.
Our women worked in munitions factories.
We developed the most powerful weapon the world had ever seen...and we used it.
Our enemies express hatred for all that is good in the world, for all that is good in humanity.
Freedom and justice are invincible.
We are Americans.
We will never be defeated.”
The delegates applauded tentatively.
McMillan’s rival, Congressman Thomas Tannin, led the isolationists.
“A small but vocal minority in this country would like us to sacrifice our economic and national security to participate in the many civil wars Europe has brought on itself.
They would have us return to the Middle East.
Why should we be in a part of the world where we clearly are not wanted?”
After various notable Republicans spoke—including former President George W. Bush, Rudolf Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Governor of California—Florida Congressman Warren Mullet took the floor.
Mullet was a large man, six-foot five, thick through the shoulders and chest, with a haystack of white hair, a round boyish face, and a Southern drawl straight out of the cypress swamps of Wakulla County.
For twenty years he had hosted the most popular radio talk show in the nation out of Tallahassee—a conservative and reliably offensive program—then ran for Representative in 2006 and won.
He had something the Republicans hadn’t seen in a candidate since Ronald Reagan—charisma.
“I didn’t go into politics because I like to make speeches,” he began in his soothing Southern lilt as the clapping eased.
“I went into politics because I saw that our way of life on the Gulf Coast of Florida was being threatened by reckless urban sprawl, turning our fertile ocean waters into a wasteland.
Now I see our way of life in America is likewise in jeopardy.
The Republican Party must take a stand.
“The United States was clearly founded on Christian principals and values.
I’m tired of this government worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture.
Yes, we are a multi-cultural nation, but together we have ONE culture, ONE language, ONE society that has been developed over four centuries.
We speak ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, or any other language.
If you wish to be part of our nation, learn the language!
Most Americans believe in God.
If our God offends you, then I suggest you consider moving to another part of the planet.
This is OUR country, OUR land, OUR culture.
Immigrants, not U.S. citizens, must adapt.
We didn’t force you to come here.
You asked to be here.
If you aren’t happy with our Christian values, if you want a country which has
Sharia
law, then the United States is not for you.
Clear off!”
Mullet’s message whipped up the delegates into a patriotic roar—they clapped and stomped their feet and screamed at the top of their voices, “U.S.A., U.S.A.”
It was a little scary.
I didn’t watch all four days of the convention, of course, but I caught sound bites as I made my way through the city, in line at the bank, at the DMV, at the convenience store, at the Rose Café while I drank my daily cappuccino and ogled the bodybuilders from Gold’s Gym.
Thursday morning was the last day of the convention.
After three ballots it didn’t look like any of the current candidates would break the deadlock.
Copying Senator Edward Kennedy’s ploy from the 1980 Democratic National Convention, Senator Bob McMillan proposed that delegates be released from their voting commitments, based on “the clear and present danger” confronting the United States from the ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.
In a surprise move, party leaders presented his proposal to the delegates, who voted to open the nomination process to an open ballot vote on the floor.
What suspense!
What drama!
The assembly hall looked like a beehive, candidates and their staff crawling all over each other, buzzing from delegate to delegate, weariness, caffeine, and desperation sending them into
a frenzy
.
The network newscasters were beside themselves—this was history in the making.
Warren Mullet could be seen working the floor hard; his physical presence—his engulfing hugs, his warm handshakes—began to make an impression.
Here was a man of moral integrity who would do what had to be done to make America strong again. The mood of the delegates was becoming more and more anti-Muslim.
Then Sarah
Palin
stepped to the podium and nominated Warren P. Mullet as Republican candidate for the United States.
As the nomination was seconded, a ground swell of chanting spread across the convention floor—“Mullet for President!
Mullet for President!”—croaking in a chorus like a swamp of frogs.
Could this really be happening?
Would the Republican Party actually elect a man who had not even run in the national primaries?
An isolationist who seemed to be advocating expelling American Muslims?
The delegates were delirious with excitement.
Yet before a tally of votes could be counted, the cheering suddenly stopped.
Richard
Perle
, the conservative pundit who was a chief architect of George W. Bush’s war to oust Saddam Hussein, took the podium and announced to the delegates that Lebanon’s terrorist organization
Fatah
al-Islam had just bombed Jerusalem, killing thousands of women and children.
The delegates were horrified, and suddenly the thought of electing a rightwing isolationist seemed downright unpatriotic.
“There is only one candidate who can lead this country to victory against its enemies—” roared Arnold Schwarzenegger “—and that one man is Senator Bob McMillan.”
McMillan, a man known for his aggressive pro-military foreign policy, a man who promised to lead the United States into war, won a nearly unanimous victory.
The Republican Party was signing on for war.
#
Every day I didn’t hear from Peter made me feel more stressed, more depressed, more useless.
My anger and frustration wound tighter and tighter in me.
At night, my legs kicked and itched.
I couldn’t relax.
Sometimes my heart started racing and I could hear it squeezing blood through the valves.
Some nights I lay awake all night.
I bought dark curtains to block out even the slightest shaft of light from streetlamps, a passing car, or the moon.
Even in total darkness, I couldn’t fall asleep.
As soon as I drifted into unconsciousness, the slightest noise made my eyes pop open.
I thought of Anne Frank lying awake, listening to planes overhead from England, air raid sirens, machine guns in the street, bombs that shook their narrow wooden house, long blitzes followed by silence, which only made her anxious about the next wave of bombings.
I too heard sounds I didn’t want to hear—neighbors’ television sets, helicopters, screeching tires, car stereos thumping as they passed, electrical hums, cats meowing, and in the predawn hours, Cynthia mumbling Islamic prayers in her room.
I dreaded the nighttime.
I dreaded the responsibility of being awake while everyone else slept.
Sleep was a luxury I didn’t feel I deserved.
My bedroom was on the ground floor.
One night I heard someone stumbling around at about two o’clock in the morning.
It didn’t sound like anyone going to the bathroom or raiding the refrigerator.
It sounded like someone was drunk.
A loud grunt was followed by things clattering out of the medicine cabinet into the bathroom sink.
I slipped on a pair of shorts and opened my door.