They Did What !

(Chapter One: see August 16 entry)

After the people of the kingdom called Land of Liberty reached the bottom of the evil smelling mound and found that the root of all that evil was money they decided things had to change.

They worked hard; talked to everyone they met along the way, wrote articles and blogs and soon many citizens came to see the truth. And so when the day to choose came around, many who had believed in their conservative “protectors” had begun to doubt and decided to give the other party a chance. And so with high sounding promises and much fanfare the liberals claimed many more seats in the palace chambers.

The people were very excited and expected great things from their new representatives. Alas, it wasn’t long before they could see there were some problems with the new arrangement. The king, who contributed much to the evil smelling mound, was still in power. He didn’t like the new order of things and had no intention of working with these new people. He was petulant and stubborn and told everyone he was the “decider” and by golly he would make the decisions no matter what “they” said. He announced that he would just crash his scepter on their heads if they tried to do something he didn’t like.

The liberals knew once the scepter came down, they would need more than their own members to lift it off. So they began to court some of the good conservatives who seemed to want to separate themselves from the evil around them. It was a hard battle; the forces of the dark side fought very hard, the lure of power and money was strong, the intimidation mighty, and the habit of thinking the liberals could do no good was exceedingly ingrained.

But lo and behold, as the battle raged, the liberals slowly started to gain some ground. Here and there, character overcame coercion and greed and a few good men joined the liberals in trying to do what was best for the kingdom. Others, who could no longer justify adding to the smelly mound but lacked the courage to stand up and be counted, announced they were going to let their time run out, then quit and go home. Despite the gains the liberals made, it was not enough to lift the scepter and so the battle continued.

The people of the Land of Liberty realized that they would have to go back to work to change the balance of power even more. The king would go at the next time of choice but that might not be soon enough. Every time they checked the mound, it had grown larger and they saw that the evil smelling stuff was beginning to slide into other kingdoms and the people in those places were getting very angry and they blamed all in the Land of Liberty and not just the evil doers.

And so the people began to gather in groups large and small, in meeting halls, and on-line, to talk about what they could do to stop what was happening and how the king and the vice-king could be called to account. And slowly but surely a wind arose, soft at first, then growing in force as it swept across the land. And if you listened very closely you could hear the wind whisper… impeach them, impeach them.