Glenn Beck: The Overton Window

And this wasn’t a prison, not at all, the welcoming committee had gone on to emphasize. This complex and its surrounding buildings might have been originally constructed as a prison, but funding cuts and changes in policy had orphaned the place in recent years. Local officials in the small Montana town nearby had been delighted to learn that their costly investment might finally be put to profitable use, providing local employment and helping the country deal with its recently declared emergency.

The old man had arranged his son’s reservation here, and his job. As soon as he’d healed, Noah was to become a key asset in the all-important public-relations push behind the nation’s unfolding, brave new direction. He wouldn’t return to New York right away-he’d be a sort of field correspondent, helping to manage the flow of information from the ongoing fight against the dangerous homegrown forces who’d recently declared open war on American progress.

Noah’s original accommodations had actually been much nicer; a private suite on one of the upper floors-but his unsatisfactory performance in his first real work assignment had resulted in his lodgings being downgraded a notch.

This failed assignment had been pretty straightforward: He was to write up an in-depth piece for the news, outlining the inner workings of the recent homegrown conspiracy that had nearly led to the destruction of Las Vegas and San Francisco. The story was to be told from his own point of view as a courageous hostage and unwilling insider.

His first draft was rejected immediately; there’d been a consistent undertone in the text that seemed to paint the ringleaders, the Founders’ Keepers, in a subtly but unacceptably positive light. His second try wasn’t an improvement, it was even worse. The strange thing was, if only out of self-preservation, Noah had been trying hard to write what they wanted, but the stubborn truths just kept elbowing their way in.

After an informal inquiry, this first glitch was chalked up to the lingering effects of the Stockholm syndrome, that passing mental condition through which hostages sometimes develop an odd sympathy for the cause of their captors. For the time being it was determined that, until he was better, Noah would be given less-demanding duties and an additional editor to watch over his work.

There was no shortage of things to do, large and small. A lot of PR spin needed to be applied to the changes that were already well under way across the country. Noah was given a stack of small writing tasks, mostly one-liners and fillers that required far less of a commitment to the web of new truths being woven for consumption by the press and the public. For one of these jobs, he was to simply come up with a suitably harmless-sounding name for a new Treasury bureau that would be put in charge of the next wave of government bailouts for various failing corporations and industries.

This was the work of only a few seconds; Noah called it the Federal Resource Allocation & Underwriting Division. Nearly a truckload of boxes of letterhead and business cards had been printed before someone in production noticed the problem: The five-letter acronym for this new government bureau would be FRAUD.

They’d said they believed him when he told them it was an accident, but they’d also moved Noah to this more secure, probationary floor of the residence building just as a temporary precaution.

Once you know the truth, Molly had said, then you’ve got to live it. What she’d apparently neglected to add was that you’ll also tend to randomly tell it, whether it gets you into trouble or not.

Noah rearranged his pillows and lay down on his cot, not with an intention to sleep, but just to rest his eyes for a while and try to clear his head.

A thousand things were flying through his mind. It was a condition that his father referred to as a topical storm, a state in which so many conflicting thoughts are doing battle in your brain that you lose your ability to discern and to act on any of them. This state was regularly induced by PR experts to cloud and control issues in the public discourse, to keep thinking people depressed and apathetic on election days, and to discourage those who might be tempted to actually take a stand on a complex issue.

They’d given Noah a radio and a small TV, but he knew those wouldn’t help to clarify anything for him. On the contrary; the Emergency Alert System had kicked in shortly after the thwarted attack, and though some individual stations and networks were active again, the news still had the distinctive sameness of single-source coverage. While no real disaster had actually happened, the selected newspeople were breathlessly working 24/7 to puff up the disasters that might have happened, and what might still be looming ahead tomorrow. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt-the three most effective weapons in the arsenal of Arthur Gardner-were keeping the country in an uneasy state of tension and helplessness, much like his own.

“What can one person do?” That was the passive, rhetorical question that kept people silent and powerless in the face of things that seem too large and frightening to overcome. It was the question in Noah’s mind, as well. Now I see the truth, and yes, I want to live it, but what can I do?

He decided to sleep on that, because so far he’d been unable to come up with a good answer.

Noah brushed his teeth and washed as soon as the bathroom was free, left the sink and the shower and the commode a lot cleaner than he’d found them, dressed for bed, and turned in. He rolled over onto his side and saw his first filled calendar grid, with the second empty one beside it on the wall.

Where would he be a month from now?

That answer seemed depressingly certain. But then, where might Molly be? Asking that question had become a nightly ritual at the end of these dreary days, and it was still on his mind as he fell asleep a while later on.

There was no hard transition between consciousness and the beginning of his now-familiar dream.

Noah opened his eyes and looked around. He was in the small, warm family room of a rustic little cabin. Surrounding him were simple furnishings, hand-made quilts, and corner shelves of keepsakes and photographs. Unlike the mass-produced, impersonal flash of the world he’d left behind, the things here had been built and woven and carved and finished by skilled, loving hands, things made or given by friends and family, made to mean something, to be passed on, and to last through generations.

Snow fluttered down outside the wide windows, big flakes sticking and blowing past the frosted panes, an idyllic woodland scene framed in pleated curtains and knotty pine. He was sitting in front of a stone hearth. A pair of boots were drying there, with space for another, smaller pair beside. A fire was burning low, a black dutch oven suspended above the coals, the smell of some wonderful meal cooking inside. Two plates and silver settings were arranged on a nearby dining table.

A simple evening lay ahead. Though it might seem nearly identical to a hundred other nights he’d spent with her, he also knew it would be unlike any other, before or after. It always was; being with Molly, talking with her, listening to her, enjoying the quiet with her, feeling her close to him, thinking of the future with her. Every night was like a perfect first date, and every morning like the first exciting day of a whole new life together.

Like Molly had said, such a simple existence certainly wasn’t for everyone. But the freedom to choose one’s own pursuit of happiness- that’s what her country was founded on, and that’s what she was fighting for.

Noah heard a sound at the entrance, and he turned to welcome her home again.

But when he looked, it was a different room he saw around him. He blinked repeatedly, but the reality he’d woken up to wouldn’t disappear so easily. The man from the hall was looking through the window in the frame, beckoning Noah to the door.