Chapter 432: Chapter 201: Preparation
A suite in the Willard InterContinental Hotel, Washington D.C.
Outside the window, Pennsylvania Avenue glistened with a cold, oily sheen in the night rain.
Leo Wallace sat in the living room of the suite.
Documents were spread everywhere—on the coffee table, the sofa, the carpet.
They were the preparatory Q&A notes for the hearing on the "National Strategic Supply Chain Resilience and Regional Industrial Upgrade Act."
At ten o’clock tomorrow morning, he was scheduled to appear as a key witness before a special hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Pen in hand, Leo was marking up the two-hundred-page "List of Potential Questions."
BZZZT—
His phone, buried in a pile of documents, began to vibrate.
Leo glanced at the screen.
Frank Kovalsky.
It was two in the morning.
At this hour, Frank should have been asleep with his wife or, at the very least, dreaming about directing dockworkers to unload cargo.
Leo put down his pen and answered the call.
"Leo."
Frank’s voice came through the receiver, the background noise extremely loud.
It was the idle roar of a diesel engine, mixed with the piercing static characteristic of a car radio.
"Are you driving?" Leo asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "What’s wrong?"
"Big trouble."
Frank’s voice sounded agitated, tinged with a helplessness Leo had never heard from him before.
"You need to hear this."
Without explaining, Frank held his phone up to the radio’s speaker.
A highly inflammatory baritone voice, accompanied by the kind of low, ominous background music specifically chosen to create tension, came through the phone.
Leo recognized the voice.
Sonny Cunningham.
The most popular right-wing talk show host in America, the mouthpiece of the conservatives, the "Voice of the Blue-Collar Worker" with thirty million loyal listeners.
His show’s ratings in the Rust Belt were terrifyingly high. For many truck drivers and unemployed workers, Cunningham’s words were more effective than the Bible.
"...Friends, let’s talk about Pittsburgh."
Cunningham’s voice was filled with his signature mix of mockery and feigned anguish.
"That young Mayor, Leo Wallace. He’s being hailed as a saint in Washington. The liberal media says he’s brought hope, that he’s brought revival."
"But let’s take a look at what he’s *really* brought."
The sound of rustling paper came from the radio.
"He brought in a bunch of complicated machines we can’t even name, and a pile of jargon that even a Harvard professor would need a dictionary to understand."
"And then, he walked into the factories, into the communities."
"He looked at the men who’d worked that land for thirty years, men whose fathers and grandfathers were steelworkers, and said: Hey, fellas, you’re obsolete."
Cunningham deliberately adopted an arrogant, shrill tone dripping with elitist superiority.
"Your skills are garbage. Your experience is worthless. Those calloused hands of yours aren’t fit to touch my delicate machines."
"You have to go to my training classes."
"You have to sit in a classroom like schoolboys and listen to some fresh-out-of-college kid teach you how to turn a screw and read a dashboard."
"Only after you pass the test, only after you become as clean and smart as we want you to be, will you be worthy of a meal in my new world."
In an instant, Leo understood Cunningham’s game.
He had promoted the human capital upgrade plan and established worker training centers with a single goal in mind: to help workers learn new skills, adapt to the coming wave of automation, and thereby earn higher wages and more stable jobs.
But in Cunningham’s mouth, it had been twisted into a form of humiliation.
"This isn’t just about unemployment, friends."
Cunningham lowered his voice.
"This is about dignity."
"That Mayor, and the Washington bureaucrats behind him, they look down on you. In their eyes, you’re a bunch of crude, stupid burdens who can’t keep up with the times."
"What does he want to turn Pittsburgh into?"
"One giant re-education camp."
"He’s telling you: you’re not good enough. The way you are now, you don’t deserve to live in his new world."
"He wants to reform you, to brainwash you, to turn you into one of those latte-sipping, electric-car-driving, politically correct good little boys."
"And if you refuse to change, if you still want to hold on to a shred of your pride as a worker..."
"...then you’re eliminated."
The background music suddenly swelled, turning into a rousing battle drum.
"Tell me, my brothers in the Rust Belt, will you stand for that?"
"Are you willing to throw your dignity on the ground to be trampled by some little brat, all for a few handouts?"
CHKK—
Frank turned off the radio.
"Did you hear that, Leo?"
Frank’s voice was hoarse.
"That show has been playing on a loop on every FM station since last night. And it’s not just Cunningham. A few other big-name pundits are all saying the same thing."
"These bastards are fighting dirty."
"They’re stabbing the guys right where it hurts most."
Frank slammed his hand on the steering wheel.
"Do you know what the consequences are?"
"This morning, a hundred workers were supposed to sign up for the heavy machinery operation training class. Less than fifty showed up."
"What about the rest?" Leo asked.
"They’re at the Union hall, cursing their heads off."
"They’re saying, ’I’ve been driving a forklift my whole damn life. Why the hell should I let some kid who hasn’t even grown a full beard teach me anything?’"
"They’re saying you’re playing them for fools."
"Some have even started tearing up the training center flyers, calling them slave contracts."
"Leo, the workers now think your skills-enhancement plan is meant to humiliate them."
Leo stood in his luxurious Washington suite, phone in hand.
He stared out at the rain.
The Republican Party had precisely targeted the most sensitive nerve in the blue-collar psyche: pride.
For these men, who had little left but the last vestiges of their professional pride, admitting they were "obsolete" and "needed re-education" was worse than death.
The Republican Party didn’t need to prove Leo’s policies were wrong; they only needed to prove that his attitude was arrogant.
Once they established this narrative pitting elite against blue-collar, arrogance against dignity, all of Leo’s previous efforts would be reinterpreted as condescending charity and forced reform.
’Mr. President,’ Leo thought, ’that was a vicious move.’
’They’ve turned my good intentions into poison.’
"This is the power of a culture war, Leo."
Roosevelt’s voice rang in his head.
"They’ve sidestepped the economic issues and gone straight for the psychological defenses."
"For many people, poverty is tolerable, but being looked down upon is not."
"The people in the Republican Party know this very well. They are twisting your image from the workers’ protector into the workers’ reformer."
"Once that image is set, you’ll be standing in opposition to the very people you’re trying to help."
Leo wanted to argue.
He wanted to storm into that radio station, grab the microphone, and tell everyone: ’That’s not what I meant! I’m doing this for your own good! If you don’t learn these new skills, that damn automated port *will* make you obsolete! I’m trying to give you armor!’
But he couldn’t.
He was in Washington. His voice couldn’t reach the cabins of those pickup trucks or the smoke-filled kitchens back home.
Besides, the hearing was tomorrow morning.
That two-billion-US-Dollar bill was lying on the chopping block.
If he left Washington now to run back to Pittsburgh and put out the fire, all his previous efforts would be for nothing.
Without money, all this talk of dignity was just empty air.
"Frank."
Leo said into the phone, his tone firm.
"You have to hold the line."
"Tell the workers to ignore the bullshit on that damned radio."
"Tell them they’re not learning these skills for me, they’re doing it to earn more money for themselves!"
"But..." Frank hesitated. "Everyone’s riled up right now. What Cunningham said was too inflammatory. The guys feel like he’s venting their anger for them..."
"Then let them vent!"
Leo cut Frank off.
"Let them curse me, let them tear up the flyers. I don’t care."
"But, Frank, you have to hold the bottom line."
"The training center cannot close. The classes cannot stop."
"Even if only one person shows up, I want it to stay open."
"You tell those who are still hesitating: whoever gets the certificate first gets to operate the new crane first, and their salary will double."
"Let the money do the talking."
"Don’t talk to them about dignity. Talk about tangible benefits."
Leo’s gaze turned cold.
"Also, this isn’t that simple."
"This is clearly an organized media assault."
"I can’t go back right now. The hearing is tomorrow, and I can’t get distracted at this critical juncture."
"I have to leave the backyard in Pittsburgh to you guys."
"Go find Ethan."
Leo issued the order.
"Ethan is still at City Hall. He’s the policy guy."
"Send him that recording."
"Tell him this is the enemy’s first wave of attack."
"Have him solve this problem."
"Tell him to figure out a way to get this ’elitist arrogance’ label off me."
"If he can’t handle it, when I get back, I’ll have him driving a forklift."
Frank took a ragged breath on the other end of the line.
"Alright, Leo. You be careful in Washington."
"If these sons of bitches are willing to start fires in Pittsburgh, they’ll definitely have traps waiting for you at the hearing."
"I know."
Leo hung up the phone.
The Republican Party’s offensive had fully begun.
They were attacking his character in Pittsburgh and his bill in Washington.
It was a three-dimensional pincer attack.
He sat back down on the sofa and picked up his pen again.
He had to focus.
The fire in Pittsburgh was for Ethan and Frank to put out.
His battlefield now was at that long hearing table.
He had to face the old men who held the nation’s purse strings and, at the same time, the butcher’s knife.
Leo turned to the next page of the document, his gaze like a torch.
Tomorrow.
The showdown in Washington.
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