The Rubicon Memo

He stared directly into their eyes.  They stared back.  Some wore uniforms covered with ribbons whose meaning he neither fathomed nor cared about.  Others wore dark thousand dollar suits and perfectly matched blue shirts.  They too stared back.  The ten men sat around a table deep within the bowels of the Pentagon.  Between them they represented the pinnacles of American military and petroleum power commanding legions of men and billions if not trillions in assets.  But on this day they were scared.

A near civil war that had ranged from California to New York ?  So many deaths, so much money, and such huge stakes hanging in the balance.  Oil prices were at record highs, the economy was slowly grinding down, and the public was very mad - mad enough to take action and revoke the depletion allowances, the subsidies, and remove the military umbrella from its shadowy foreign wars.  They were about to lose it all and the only thing standing between them and their professional apocalypse was the youngish looking man at the end of the table who returned their gaze without flinching or showing the remotest sign of fear.  To the contrary, for all the power they held at their finger tips, they knew that this man held the key to their salvation.

On this particular Monday morning, Thurogood Smith stared back at their faces.  He saw their fear and their helplessness but felt none of it.  They were Giants fans who saw the New England Patriots as unbeatable and he was Eli Manning.  It was the fourth quarter and the clock showed less than three minutes.  Eli had not doubted himself and neither did Thurogood.  He knew the way down field and he would show them the path.

It had taken a long to time to get this far.  Having worked diligently to light up the White House situation room like a Christmas tree, Thurogood felt himself cast upon a journey to the pinnacles of power - not the trendy power of CEOs, not the transient elixir of political dominion, nor the dusty accolades of academics.  Unlike so many in this modern age, he knew power better than anyone.  Modern empire was controlled by ideas, notions and the prevailing winds of fear and opinion.  Control over all these was nearly within his grasp, wafting like tendrils on an ocean sea weed waiting to be touched and if needed crushed to make room for the new king of the undersea rock.  Power in this modern age was difficult to find.  Diffused by the internet, deluged under avalanche of images, few people knew who controlled what or who made real decisions.  The understandable confusion left the solitary individual alone at day’s end with the illusory control of a video game, a predictable weekend movie thriller, or a glass of scotch.  The ‘powers that be’ looked feeble against the backdrop of events.

Everyone everywhere was overwhelmed.  No one was watching but everyone was watching.  You were free to come and go so long as you showed up at nine AM at the workplace and kept your mouth shut.  Politics and religion were subjects people traditionally kept to themselves because it was impolite to get involved in what good manners deemed to be personal matters.  No more.  Politics and religion were public affairs and anyone who spoke a word against the ruling dogma of God and Country risked everything.  One snide remark about the Bible, the government’s attitude police, or the military’s overreach could mean loss of privilege and sometimes prison.  Even if you avoided jail time, you were no longer trusted and could not work in a regular job.   Shunted away from the channels of normal commerce, you spent your life in a netherworld of morally suspect institutional expatriates eking a living in the shadows.