Chapter 415: Chapter 192: Pittsburgh’s Answer (Part 2)
"Our cities are bleeding."
"And what’s the most absurd part?"
Sanders swung his arm forcefully.
"The most absurd part is that our farms are rotting! Strawberries in California are left unpicked, cows in Wisconsin are left unmilked, and construction sites in Texas have ground to a halt because they can’t find workers!"
"We are facing a severe labor shortage. Agriculture, domestic services, construction—these industries are suffocating for lack of people."
"And on the other hand, millions of young, able-bodied immigrants are sitting in shelters, collecting welfare, and staring into space. Because of this damned bureaucracy, they have to wait one, even two years for a legal work permit."
"On one side, we have a desperate need for workers. On the other, we prohibit them from working."
"This idiotic bureaucracy is breeding hatred."
"The local poor look at the immigrants on food stamps and they get angry. They feel like their benefits are being stolen, that their communities are being invaded."
"This is the United States today—a self-contradictory madhouse."
The reporters below scribbled furiously.
Sanders’s words were heavy, tearing away the fig leaf Washington has been trying to hide behind.
"Second, housing."
Sanders continued his indictment.
"If you’re a young person living today, or a father in a middle-class family, what is your greatest anxiety?"
"It’s housing."
"The Federal Reserve tried cutting interest rates, but for home prices that are already sky-high, it was a drop in the bucket."
"The supply of existing homes has vanished. No one wants to sell, because they’re all locked into low-interest mortgages from a few years ago. Market liquidity has dried up, and prices are frozen at their peak."
"So, people have started to flee."
"They’re fleeing New York, fleeing San Francisco, fleeing the big cities they can no longer afford. They’re flocking to Charlotte, to Indianapolis."
"But what’s the result?"
"The result is that housing prices in these second-tier cities are also starting to skyrocket, and the locals who once lived there comfortably are finding they can’t afford a home either."
"This has led to the emergence of an entirely new class: the working homeless."
Sanders’s voice trembled.
"Go look at the parking lots in Seattle, the underpasses in Los Angeles. They are filled with people."
"They aren’t addicts or slackers. They have full-time jobs. Every morning, they wash their faces and brush their teeth in a McDonald’s restroom before putting on their uniforms and going to work."
"They work hard, yet they can’t afford a room with a roof over their head."
"Is this the Independence Day we’re supposed to be celebrating?"
The room was deathly silent.
Sanders didn’t give the crowd a chance to breathe.
"Third, drugs."
"The supply chains have become more covert, more complex. That deadly powder infiltrates every community through delivery services, through the internet."
"Look at our downtowns."
"San Francisco, Portland, even Philadelphia."
"They’ve become zombie lands, where thousands of people wander the streets, their bodies contorted, their minds gone."
"What follows is the complete collapse of public order."
"Retail theft has become the norm, all for a few dozen US Dollars to buy drugs. CVS has closed its doors, Target has pulled out, and Walmart has locked up all its shelves."
"Our city centers are becoming retail deserts."
"What’s more terrifying are the children."
"Tens of thousands of opioid orphans are flooding the foster care system. Their parents are either in prison or dead from an overdose."
"This generation was destroyed before it was even born."
Sanders took a deep breath, his gaze becoming incredibly sharp.
"Finally, and most fatally."
"The collapse of trust."
"Republican Party voters live in one world, and Democratic Party voters live in another."
"We no longer share the same reality."
"No one trusts the Supreme Court anymore. No one trusts the FBI. No one trusts the Department of Justice."
"In the public’s eye, these once-sacred, neutral institutions are now just tools of partisan warfare, weapons to be used against political enemies."
"The cities despise the countryside, and the countryside hates the cities."
"The Federation’s decrees become worthless scraps of paper by the time they reach the local level. Governors are setting up barbed wire at the border in defiance of the President’s orders."
"This is a quasi-civil war."
"This is the United States today."
Sanders stopped.
He braced his hands on the lectern, his chest heaving.
This speech was his verdict on the era.
He had ripped open all of the United States’ scars, displaying them, bloody and raw, for the American people to see.
Despair.
It was the only feeling in the room.
"But."
Sanders’s tone shifted. He turned, extended his hand, and pointed to the young man who had been standing in the shadows.
"In this dark night, in this country filled with despair..."
"In Pittsburgh, I saw a ray of light."
Every camera immediately swiveled to focus on Leo Wallace.
Leo stepped out from the shadows.
He wore a dark blue suit with no tie, the collar of his shirt slightly open.
His expression was calm, his gaze cold.
"Leo." Sanders yielded the center of the lectern. "Tell them."
"Tell all of the United States what Pittsburgh did."
"Tell them that, on top of these ruins, we have another choice."
Leo walked to the lectern.
He gripped the microphone, the cool of the metal spreading through his palm.
He looked at the reporters below, at the cameras, and at the hundreds of millions of anxious Americans behind them.
"The Senator described a scene from hell."
Leo spoke. "Unfortunately, that is the reality."
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