A New Brand of Patriotism

by Ehrlich, Paul

• ISBN13: 9781466950078
• ISBN10: 1466950072
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-09-10
• Publisher: Trafford on Demand Pub

Summary

Five former Air Force combat pilots are meeting every week to discus what they can do about the downward trend of America in the last twenty or thirty years. They feel that this is no longer the country that they loved and fought for. "The American Dream, says one, "has turned into a nightmare for millions of Americans who are now forced to live on the street in poverty, their homes and family possessions gone and no jobs to be had." Only the very rich are doing very well while paying tiny amounts of taxes and doing little to help the poor. These five flyers have decided to do something about this situation, something drastic.

Excerpts

On the island of Remedia four natives gathered to welcome a Gulfstream 81 that was landing on a huge field of grass. The door opened and four people went out onto the staircase that had been wheeled up to the door. The door closed and the jet plane quickly gathered speed and took off. The father of the new family looked around and said, "Hey, what is this?" The leader of the four natives took a step forward, bowed with a big smile, opened his arms and said, "Welcome to Remedia, Mister Goldbrash. We were expecting you. You have to leave all your cell phones and iPods and any other electronic devices that you are carrying. Put them all in this basket. It is for your safety. They will automatically explode if you try to bring them. They will all be returned to you when you leave." After all the electronic devices were collected the four natives started walking toward some low-built houses on the side of the grassy field, some distance away. The father looked around again and repeated, with a small change, "Hey, what the hell is this?" There was no answer. Nobody spoke. Nobody was there. "Dad," said the little boy, age about seven, "I'm thirsty. Can I have a Coke?" "Me too," said the little boy's sister, about nine years old. "Can I have some vanilla ice cream with mine?" "WHERE THE HELL AM I GOING TO GET A COKE AND ICE CREAM?" shouted the man. "Now, dear," said the woman, "You know you mustn't talk that way to the children. They'll pick up bad manners." "They'll probably pick up more than that before we get out of here. Do you realize where we probably are?" "No. Where are we? We're supposed to be on our way to Acapulco. What are we doing here?" The father arranged the two children on one of the steps of the staircase that had been wheeled up. The adults stood on a step two steps lower. "I think I've figured out what's going on," said the man. "I think this has something to do with all the people who have disappeared. We've been talking about it for more than a month. Everybody's been talking and wondering if they'd been kidnapped and taken somewhere. Well, I think that's what's happened to us. I think we've been kidnapped and brought to this place. So far nobody's ever come back. We've got to find a way to get back, otherwise we'll stay here till we die, with no Cokes and no ice cream." The woman and the two children were crying loudly. The man walked away a small distance and waited for the crying to stop. When it didn't stop he walked back to the staircase and climbed up to the children's level. He picked up the boy and told him "OK. You've had your cry. Now you can do one of two things. You can stop crying and go with me to those little buildings over there, on the side of the grass, or you can start howling again and I'll leave you here." He picked up the little girl and told her the same thing. The children stopped crying as if by magic. Then he tried it on his wife, but she only began to howl and shriek louder. "Too bad," he said, "but I have to be a man of my word." So he handed the children down to the grass and started walking with them toward the low buildings on the side. After a while he heard her calling, "Wait for me, wait for me," but he kept going and she hurried to catch up. "You're really nasty, aren't you," she said but he smiled and kept on walking. When they got to the low buildings they were very disappointed. It was hard to call them buildings, they were so primitive. There were three of them, the walls made of tree branches, the roofs just leafy branches with extra leaves added. The floors were just a mixture of dirt and sand. The first "building" was empty, but they could hear some sounds from the next one—the sounds of a guitar and singing, and people softly talking and laughing. When the father pulled open the "door"—just a leafy tree branch—all the sounds stopped and the family saw that there were ten or eleven people in there, mostly sitting on the "floor" and looking at them. The four that had welcomed them were there, and the leader made a tiny bow but said nothing. Nobody said anything, not even the native children sitting there. The silence was immense.