Glenn Beck - The Eye of Moloch

Tyler didn’t respond until his mom gave a mild thump to the back of his head, and then he said, “Okay.”

Hollis stood and walked over to them. “I regret I’ll have to say good night to you both now. Ma’am, I hope you have a pleasant rest, and I thank you again for your kindness today. And Tyler, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

When they’d gone he closed the door and returned his attention to the scrolling computer screen. Though the massive influx of messages was far from complete he began to scan the subject lines and summaries to gauge their general tone.

From the old public boxes it was all-caps hate mail mostly, rife with the sort of empty threats, vulgar slurs, and general ugliness that anonymity promotes in the lowest class of mind. Already it was obvious that only a tiny fraction of what came in here would prove worthy to be passed along to the group for reading and response.

Next he opened a Web browser and clicked to one major news site after another to check the headlines.

He couldn’t say what he’d expected to see being reported about Molly and her righteous struggle of good versus evil, but he had to sit for a while to fully comprehend what he actually found there.

Not a solitary word.

After these many grueling months and the sweat and toil they’d spent at the front lines of a battle for the very future of their country, according to the obedient, complicit mainstream media it had all apparently happened only in their fevered minds.

Instead the top-line “news” was filled with the vain antics of celebrities, breathless details of the scandal of the week, sports highlights, puff pieces, PR plants, and the opulent wedding plans of some royal offspring overseas. The rest was rounded out by name-calling and grandstanding from politicians and pundits embroiled in the upcoming national elections.

When any hint of the looming worldwide meltdown got a mention at all, it was there only to be spun toward someone’s cynical agenda: the Fed chairman declaring that his next money-printing spree was all that could save us from ruin, the DHS head fear-mongering in her pitch for even more draconian search-and-seizure tactics to be aimed at ordinary Americans, and the incumbent President leading by deflection, still spouting vague and empty campaign promises while laying all blame at every doorstep but his own.

But the free press was still alive out there. Despite all attempts to tame the fourth estate, the Internet had spawned a million independent sources of real news, from amateurs and professionals alike. The best of them owed no allegiance to anything but the truth. They were doing their job as reporters, in other words. And as one might expect, their work was either being ridiculed by the old guard, attacked with blunt force, or marginalized, buried several levels deep under a never-ending flood of manufactured propaganda and infotainment.

As he gradually found and read these reliable sources he saw a chilling picture emerging—and it was all unfolding just as Molly’s mother had predicted years before.

The lit fuse on $1.5 quadrillion in bogus financial derivatives had now burned down to within a hair’s-breadth of the powder. Spain and Portugal were at the brink of fiscal and social catastrophe. Greece was already on fire, its economy destroyed and teetering like the first domino in a fragile line poised to tear across Europe and then on around the globe. And sure enough, sponsored revolutions igniting from North Africa to western Asia were revealing themselves to be only a foot in the door for the region-spanning rise of a virulent hard-line radical theocracy.

Domestically the stage was set for a plunge into total economic destruction with nobody’s hands on the wheel. The price of oil was skyrocketing again. True inflation was well into double digits, dragging the middle class toward poverty and the poor into violence and desperation. True unemployment would soon blow through 25 percent, and all those Made-in-the-USA jobs weren’t just temporarily lost, they were gone from these shores forever. Almost fifty million Americans, one in seven, were now hand-to-mouth dependent on monthly aid from their bloated and bankrupt federal government, with almost twelve thousand more joining them every day.

The United States had soldiers deployed to seven active fronts overseas, and inside sources revealed many more covert ops under way in hot zones from the Middle East to central and southern Asia and Africa. Old enemies were rising again; an axis of dark alliances seemed to be forming, testing their limits and preparing to surge forth and seize power amid the spreading global unrest. Meanwhile, the undeclared and unspoken war along our own southern border was advancing steadily northward, having already claimed almost fifty thousand lives in just a few short years.

There was more. While on the road he’d heard rumblings of this next bold stroke of fascistic audacity, but he hadn’t really believed it. The latest National Defense Authorization Act had passed both the House and Senate before arriving at the Oval Office on New Year’s Eve. This legislation finally made it official: anyone, anywhere, citizen or not, was now subject to arrest without charges and imprisonment without trial—and according to some, even outright assassination—based solely on being named as a suspect by the Chief Executive.

With typical bald-faced duplicity the President had protested the clause that applied to Americans at home, even as he’d signed this abomination into law. Assuming his objections were honest, of course, they were also meaningless. In recent years Americans had seen this very pattern play out with the Espionage Act, the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Enemy Belligerent Act, and other such open-ended assaults. Once the NDAA was on the books neither his own nor any future administration would be bound by their election-year pledges of restraint.

The writ of habeas corpus had once ensured a fundamental civil right even older than the Magna Carta. Now it was reduced to a king’s option, to be selectively granted or revoked as an increasingly grandiose and militarized bureaucracy saw fit.

A quiet rap on the door behind him nearly startled Hollis out of his chair.

“Come on in,” he said, after he’d taken a long breath to reset his composure.

As the door creaked open the dog poked his head in first to get the lay of the land before leading Molly inside.

“Are you decent?” she asked.

“I’m fully clothed, if that passes.”

Cody brought her over to a chair near the desk, and she sat.

“You left dinner early,” Molly said.

“Yeah, about dinner. You know the old lady at the table?”

“Did you see her then? She came by and read me a Bible verse earlier, kind of as a gift. She said she had something for all of us, including you.”

“I did see her, and she saw me, too. Mercy, she’s got a scowl that would stop a Swiss watch. I haven’t gotten such an evil eye since I backed over my aunt Ruby’s coon hound.”

“What does she look like?”

“With all candor, she looks like Death eatin’ a Ritz cracker.”

“Hollis.”

“Well, you asked me and I told you. Not that it matters much, but you wouldn’t have any idea what a person like that might have to hold against me, would you?”

“No, I said nothing but good things. And she hasn’t come by to give you anything yet?”

“Nope.”

“She’s already visited everyone else.”

“Well, if I’m to judge by her demeanor tonight the only gift she’s cookin’ up for me is a butcher’s knife between the shoulder blades.” The dog had jumped onto Hollis’s bed, and after some pawing and a few rotations he settled down into a nest among the pillows. “Tell him not to get too comfortable, would you? I don’t want to seem unwelcoming, but I’m in the middle of some business here.”