Found a most excellent read

  Fascism: A Very Short Introduction by Kevin Passmore (Oxford University Press, 2002).

  Right away fascinating starting out in France and Italy and Romania--in lands carved from the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires.

"Not a grudge,"

  a man called out as several entered the administrative building, he quickly handcuffed a neighbor but let the neighbor's coat sleeves fall over the cuffs, and said, also loud but not threateningly, "But we voted and we'll be damned if we're going to let your fat pensioned asses clog up the legal system from working anymore." Several Church ladies who'd been paid the cost of bread and milk so could skip the errand to get there earlier bowed their heads as their own teenagers were brought into the building with each a hand handcuffed to a clothesline connecting them all.

 The tables had turned.

Newspapering and that stuff

 Typically editors decide what to print of crimebusting.  Most grown up people I know want social media not to be used as a weapon.  It's more than pot shots wirh a beebee gun at people when operatives use technology to interfere.

Like other times

 at the moment.  People who live poor working class are holding off on eating frozen Easter and Thanksgiving food even as the realities of another Democratic administration show in health as lacking nutrition and moods of just getting through the winter.

  Lackluster.

  Not great.

  We grind on surviving, the nation.  There are a lot of people nursing what's been wounded.  I'm sure we'll pull it off as just another day, again and again.  Even if we do have a world war, there's enough humanity that wants humanity to survive and the indecent, inhumane are really only a small percent of everyone.

Learning is a curious thing.

  It's the conclusion that always comes up even when "the best in the world" put their minds and hearts to something.

  Way back people finding out about fire felt the same.

  When our team USA came up against a wall of impossibility hypothetically in the middle of the country as the coasts cleaned up and re-ordered people and place because of warring there were relatively few people with full faith and confidence in the notion of In God We Trust.

  The phrase on the dollar bill--as a first in a shoebox to help veterans--stood in stark contrast to the barely breathing, soiled uniform'd, extremely skinny men who'd been found near a clothing donation center.  Some young people propped them up leaning against each other and as the mist started to lift and the day's traffic sounded like a regular workday, a woman borrowed a camera from a nightstand.  The whole camera had to be brought to D.C. said a Peace Officer from a Recruitment Room in an otherwise unoccupied office building.

  Some college students smoking and shivering nearby looked at each other and sized up the challenge.

  As young adults in the late 1980's and early 1990's we had inklings of who we wanted to learn from.  The what-to-learns kept expanding lists and honing ambition.  Whether it was well-known or not, almost every person who was professional had "mentors" and traditions to contend with.  And there were often group monitors who could be definitive when they needed to be.  

  One day we were sitting in the diner and in came a stocky person with a large pair of scissors.  A few people held up paper aprons and the apron-strings were cut off.  Kind of an unrecorded ceremony they agreed to, was explained.  The person with the scissors left but in came another person with scissors.  He looked all around the room.  Hardly no one noticed a person point someone out.  The person with the second pair of scissors asked a person who looked like a punk to stand.  The person with the scissors cut a string on the sporty winter coat over his leather jacket.  The punk's hand went to his heart and tears burst out of eyes, all over face.  "Why?" A person with the punk asked.  The person with the scissors put those in a back pants pocket and told, " The person you were tethered with is in a truck outside with no pants on and feet are freezing."

  We approached the vehicle carefully.  The person was eating a can of tuna wipung the darker bits onto a cocktail napkin with the table knife utensil.  "Are you okay madamoīselle?"

  Clearly a lot of things could've been said.  The woman closed her eyes for a long few seconds then opened them towards the sun and said, "I will need something to wear on my bottom." Someone nearby whispered to an older lady being seated in a car.  Then brought over a shawl which was pitched onto the dashboard of the truck.

  Outside in a two-hour sun is warm window the parking lot filled with working poor.  "Come to greet the Alpspeople have you?"  Smiles broke across wizened faces.  "But where is the cat?  Some people have new allergies?"

  A couple people made an effort to look high and low.  A dramatic man spoke in Italian to a sweater-and-suspenders assistant, then said loudly, "I dun't beweave, there"s aways a cat with that one."

  A tall man bent head nearly into the truck cab, didn't seize the small travel alarm clock, and ignored the wiggling kitten in the woman's dress shirt.  Before he finished checking, she sent for the damaged winter coat.  Me pissing myself shouldn't count as him not minding an elder.  

  Racey four wheel drives and sedans started to leave the parking lot with perfectly paced movements and a car and a half's space between them.

  Back over at Cosby in where it's backpack in only a couple friends had been scavaging.

  "Listen Muscle," she sighed and spoke to the outside of a tent, "I find that dance move flattering and all, but you might want to come out now and see what kind of equipment has you doing that on TV." There was a swishy-sounding rustle of sleeping bag and sheets inside the tent and the Muscle unzipped the door and knelt crooked-hatted half in and half out of the tent.  "What did you girls find this time, my love?"

  She showed him a smushed screen in a white plastic frame.  "And I was making the moves on there?"

  No one said anything.  Then he pulled down his hat even above his eyebrows.  "Well, I do have some moves, so I'm sure I didn't disappoint." The other girl blushed and sort of giggle-muffled, "Not anyone."

  "Lemme see it again."

  "It didn't record it."

  "Lemme see it anyway."

  "No."

  "Yes."

  "Nah uh."

  "Please."

  "THERE HE IS," the woman's voice was a loud bark to the nursery of love.  One of the girls slunk backwards and some sort of soldiers each put an arm under the Muscle's armpits.  They lifted him still kneeling.  "Should I beat on somebody's chest?" The girl with the worst crush on him asked.

  The captainesque woman who'd commanded the lift plucked the medical device from her hands.

  I was just pretending the girl with the crush said to no one in particular as everyone moved in silence in the direction of the parking lot.  The tent in tow.  "Me too!" The Muscle winced and added, "Is that what the troubles is?"

  "No talking."

  Some people in hunting gear crossed the footpath before us.  The soldier-types set the Muscle down and swung guns hanging on their belts up but did not point them.  Women in wool capes and sandals and boots crossed behind the hunters.  Then a tall red-headed lady in a shirt, sweater, and dress slacks with a scarf bunned near her throat saw us and stepped towards us.  "Is anyone of you hurt?"

  The soldier-types looked at the captain woman.  "We don't need your help," she said.

  "I might," the Muscle braved.

  The woman put her hands behind her back like a contemplating person then asked, "whaHow so?"

  "Is my fly down?"

  She looked sort of over the soldier-types and down at the man's pants.  "Who is in charge here?" She asked.  The captainesque woman answered, "My husband who is

  "And did you

  "Who is helping reload the Field Hospital Ma'am."

  "And did you find this man in his parachute?"

  "Do you mean this?"  She fell "out of line" and walked backwards putting a foot on the tent.

  "Let's call and find out." The tall St. Marie motioned for a radioman to kneel in front of her.

  It was a few days later certain people found themselves at a different campground.  "Just for processing," the Muscle kept reminding his grandmother.  "Nothing dishonorable," she'd stroke his ego.  "You heard that right?!" He demanded of everyone sitting at a picnic table when she said it one time.  He made the motions of shoving away from a table and smacking both hands on his chest. 

  "What's his problem?" An out-of-work actor asked out loud.

  The grandmother spooned more not pasta pasta onto a kid's plate.  "Young men sitting with women and children," she shook her head softly, her inside-eyes sifting through years and years of memories, and said, "It's      petaine."

  "I wish I knew what half these people were talking about," an older man said into a handheld recorder.  

  At a crowding up train depot train after train pulled in and didn't totally stop as all manner of characters disembarked.  Very neat uniformed ticket-takers asked questions like, And how was your vacation?  To which people replied stuff like, no comment and got a lot of sun about the bundled up people in their company.

  "Your shoe madame," white gloves held up the broken heel.

  "Gimme that," a London punk woman snatched the shoe and wagged it heel-floppy in front of the man's face.  "Don't call me that or I'll bop yoo."

  "Anyways," another woman with her picked up the story she'd been telling.

  A unicyclist juggled bowling pins.  

  "I see that performer everywhere," the punk said.

  "Cha."

  People flocked to a row of phone booths lining a wall.

  "Come on," the punk woman pulled on the shoulder of the other woman"s white winter coat.  "Let's see what's outside.  I could stand some fresh air." She took a wad of chewing gum out of her mouth and stuck it behind her ear.

T'aint even da nort

   That's what one of them said, "T'ain't even da nort."

  "So?" The older girl was forever flexing and squirming her leg muscles to be a showgirl someday.  She took two ladle-fulls of popcorn and squirm flexed over to the sofa.

  "So." A glance at mama.

  "Yeah, go ahead.  Catch us up."

  As the world turns.

  "So where the assholes put weights in that guy's boots so he'd land that way

  "Tell the story but don't swear

  "Okay but ALL the grownups swear and cuss.

  "You're father and I do not."

  "Okay.  That guy had a heart attack on account of freezing you know.  That's why he didn't move that time."

  "Who said?"

  "I can't tell names."

  "Then how am I supposed to check for fact?"

  "Maybe you're not duppised to since we're in a different phase now.". Some popcorn missed her mouth and stuck to her inside out sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off where there'd been a worn-hole.

  "I'll check with Ed about that."

  "Pain in the arse.". Everyone stood up and workers-for-free-but-not-slaves started to gaggle into the kitchen area.

  Our spot commander came out of the stove area in a frilly mama apron and bellowed, Welcome in Auckie-men, but before anyone could accept the invitation a closet door opened and a blur bull's eyed.  Body slammed a foreigner into the loveseat where I'd resat.  The loveseat moved to the middle of the room and me and the foreigner had had our teeth knocked together.  He'd put his arms above his head as the sofa came to rest and our spit hung between our mouths in a spider web string. Someone hollered, SNAP THE PITCHER.

  "I'd say you people need to settle down," the Commander said, " But until I know what the hell just happened here...." His voice trailed off as he hung his head and asked for God's help.  "I'll say it for you Reverend," Sherry put her arm on his forearm, pulled the hairbrush out of his shirt pocket, wagged it at everyone, and asked, "What the hell is going on around here?"

  People sat people around on the furniture and straightened up each others' hats and socks tucking work pants into wrecks of boots and sneakers.  Straighten up and fly right? Someone asked in a badly disguised Spanish accent.  "And you're all wanna be actors?" The Commander was asking a really short fresh-faced boyman.  Mama tossed the hairbrush onto the loveseat.  "Do your littlest sister in pigtails please."

  The landline phone finally rang.  Nobody got up.  The spot commander said, "Speaking of wearing many different hats.  Excuse me." He blushed deeply because Sherry had explained about accepting talents as from God and showed him right where it says that about gifts and discernment in the Bible.

  People were sort of dozing sitting up and a few were holding hot hands and twisting each others' clothing.  The girlwoman who'd been eating the popcorn was reading the one paperback we'd found in the place.  Mama gave me the stern eye, don't forget.  I was to tell Daddy she couldn't help that one.  And when I did Daddy lifted my chin and looked deep onto my tablet eyes and made sure I wouldn't forget to tell her, mama, that she'd never, ever, ever?ever, have to feel jealous or worry about him.

  Must've been a half hour later after a lot of aha's and yessirs on the phone some cars pulled into a sandy part of the "yard".  "Get your shoes on everybody," mama ordered.  Come hell or highwater us creatives were going to work again.

  Before daybreak we were deposited into the next safespaces in broad daylight.  Tending To Do lists mostly.  And staying alive.

  In those days greedy bad guys were stealing each others' treasure hunts, "family" was seeing where they might plant their asses on properties, and a few brave and decent citizens more referee'd than got killed by taking everyone to Court.  It really was a mad, mad, mad world.

  And then world events would cause changes in situation and conditions.  We'd all be dreaming up movie scenes and scores until airports couldn't land planes and more travelers would joun the ranks of people playing with surplus.

  Course, airpirts don't just turn away take offs and landings without it indicating disaster and crime, so the people on leave and not with a service day job were often put on the spot....get the convoy through; meet up with the eastern flank.  Flank?

  "Take the train through it." A general type ordered.  A man held his tongue in talking back.  It was almost an afterthought, the order to also haul the dynomite.  The man started to tick off inventory on a slipshod list.  Just staring at the clipboard for a couple minutes before he said to himself, I draw the line at dynomite.  He looked at the back of the general-type walking back to a jeep of others dressed like him.  "I draw the line at dynamite," he said allowed but not too loud.  Then he tucked the pen and chain into the clipboard and the whole clipboard into his waist behind his belt.

  "Whadya say chief?" A curly-haired man asked as he came up from under an engine.  "I draw the line at dynamite, but," he put his hand on the mechanic's forearm, "I don't need to tell them that." The curly-hair man's eyebrows went up and he removed the hand from his arm.

  So as not to bother anyone with the light when they were trying to sleep, Sherry would sit in a boxcar and sew on the parachute.

  Jealousy had been the death of more than one civilization we'd decided after a bizarre chain of events had ensued for the American team getting ready for the Olympics at that time.  Like some "new age" couples' therapy having mom and dad in their bathing suits duct taped to a water pump on a train deck.  Which the rumor of sent people from "village" and "camp" to see.

  By the time Dad was missing children from the station wagon leg of the road trip he didn't think much of it.  Some of the kids he did have with him weren't even his.  Yet, he got everybody over the age of six Kentucky Fried Chicken and walked over to some Golden Arches to get a couple hamburgers.

  Inside the stewardess front counter workers were asking if any of the names on telegrams were yours.

  In response to a dangerous world being a threat to the Republic, great threads and chains of citizens were helping the effort.  "It's not just about being numero uno Sister," a parent had explained to a Catholic school teacher about missing an awful lot of school.  "Plus, Father Patrick misses every one of them when they go on these trips." It was the Monsignor who prepared and blessed rolls of Communion which mama stashed in a Ritz cracker box.  It seemed like we were inch by inching our way in the station wagon towards some giant rainbow in the middle of the country somewhere.  Even Daddy let himself what better days were going to look like.

  I imagined a Scottish-accented handsome boy saying of our family, "Off on an adventure." And the class taking good notes so I could get caught up if we had a home to come back too.  There were and weren't real invaders.  Sometimes we'd catch a glimpse of their feet under curtains at airports and in curtained cubicles at hospital or plasticed off zones in office buildings.  Sherry would catch us noticing and ask a detective to confirm the criminal is captured.  The barrier between normal day and different would part and handcuffed wrists would be observed.

  It wasn't about looking for trouble or staying out of "it" but more like decency reaching a saturation point of an area of the country where the criminals just bubbled to the top of the barrel like corks.  Duty just came along with being involved with American society.

  "What was it like?" Our mother asked a brother through the little metal speaker reaching through thick plate glass.

  "Gross."

  Sherry scribbled a note forbidding her children to be returned to the field trip area.

  A suited woman shuffle-clicked her heels and stood before the window.  "They'll need all our clothing."

  Sherry shook her head no, super modest, "Not unless they give me a bathrobe or," she looked at some men walking by in athletic association jackets, "Or one of those." The other woman asked the gentlemen if they could borrow the jackets.

  A very studious bunch got back from the field.  Even the older man explained, He'd seen some things in his time, but his words got lost in a slow shaking of his head and tears welling in his soft eyes.

  Tendons as strapping to tap out false morse code from behind a little wall...the lists of "evidence" were macabre, dark moods hovered around the people charged with taking some guesses.  Big war crime words like torture and could be the connection were bean bagged on top of a blank legal pad on the side that wasn't serial killer.  Late, late at night someone asked, "What if it's both?" Around the table people had fallen asleep.  A man had white rice stuck to his cheek.

  It had to be west of the Cumberland Gap.  The train did not have to be stolen.

  A Marshall had unzipped a golf club duffel bag and seen for himself --inside was a very tiny woman.  His head sort of slumped toward her but his shoulders didn't waiver.  "Is she alive?" A white-haired man asked not loud as men stretched their legs and let numb feet ride up and down with the rumble over track.  The man with the sandy-colored mustache asked in return, "Is this train stolen?" He had a wild in his eyes.  The darker moustached man in a safari shirt and dark olive pants uncaught a gold bracelet from his arm hair.  "Did he show you the petrified one or a dolly?" He asked quickly on a lurch.

  "This one's still breathing," and the moustached men led and followed each others' eyes in the direction of a train car filled with people in instrument cases and trophy animals.

  Mama's lips were actually snoring as her head rested on an elbow holding down the crossword puzzle.  A "mini-maid" approached and my father's eyes droopily opened.  "Wake her up and I will shoot you," he said.  And smiled lazily like his tan arms.  He lifted the rifle with stuffed animals ribbon'd to it.  The bicycle horn end produced a goose honk when he squeezed the trigger.  Our mother had arranged him.  Yet, the mini-maid was a personal friend and used a butter knife to pry up Sherry's saggy-skin elbow and put the note there.

  Dad reached out of his trenchcoat, so it was obvious he had three arms and gently play handcuffed the dolly on the forearm.  "I'll take an OJ and she'll have toast with apple butter when she wakes up on her own." The mini-maid slid the handcuffs up and up under Swiss Miss cottony short sleeves before turning head to go.  Dad pushed his glasses up on the ridge of his nose and asked, "What does it say?" The mini-maid looked split-second scared under her thick mascara.  Dad said, "It's okay.  I'm sure you had to read it." Her one nod affirmative was pert.  "It's poetry from her Mister," was all she said and started to go before she stopped and said, "We've only pineapple left.  That okay?"

  "Actually, that gives me canker sores.  I'll take a Sprite if you can find one of those."

  The motley gang of people that had turned up on the highway had been rejected for work on both coasts and could not seem to outrun their petty crimes.  Even the stunts department of a non-Hollywood film crew had weeded them from the ranks of indies and as yet totally authenticated passports.  That's a shame, two muscle-builders were paid to say as people spit and pissed on one side of an open-air train car.  It had been screechily put in place at a non-fenced area of the area.  The place only had a few abandoned buildings that were cinderblock on the inside, painted a yellow-tinted ivory color.  Outside the bricks and green-tinted glass blended together as shadow even in the full sun.

  "How long?" An eager boy scout type law enorcement guy asked of suits and shade-hatted officers.

  One finally said, "Maybe a couple hours."

  "And we just guard that train car?" 

  "YOU guard the train car.  These Federal Reserve guys have to save their patience for the load of plates the Marshal's team had to reroute." 

  "Plates Sir?"

  "Go."

  People crowded the back door window of the train car to see "the contraption".  It wasn't really all that much to see, but there on the platform car was a catapult riveted to the old train deck and a biker riding stationary in front of it.  A brother called it "the flinger".  And there was Sherry in white baker's outfit pedaling and pedaling.  About every seven minutes the flinger flung little hobo bags of chalky powder to different sides of the tracks.  Whap, another brother ran to a window and confirmed we were leaving a trail.  A hand below the glass-windowed car but not totally on the platform car pitched another bag of color onto the catapult.  Sherry's shoulders and hair were getting sprinkled colorful but she would look up and smile, give the okay sign, and keep pedaling.

  Inside the third and only other car attached to the small engine, the good guys poured over old-timey maps looking for the connector tracks we'd been deposited on days and nights before.

  It was all done in the sense of preserving the American spirit, a different political transition.  Even as those who'd taken oaths of office, but lost the votes, and who were experiencing "the office" changing all around them, heard us young people out.  Many still smelled of D.C. as they returned to hometowns and gathering places of non-office holding Americans.

  People overall were fighting that feeling of devastation to spirit.  An older young man with ice patches on his wool city long coat looked around the diner from somewhere very far in himself.  His face had grown older looking as if he were an oil lantern at a train depot where many changes had taken place in the decades' milestones.  "New trains, same tracks," his mouth relayed observations.  Some people just hugged him as he stood almost like a wax figure, still representing.

  He got a thumb's up from another wool coat.  "Good thing you went up." The other man's eyes looked out the parking lot.  There were about seven moving trucks.  "What are those?" A staying-on assistant asked him.  "Work." Was the short answer but as breakfast unfolded into brunch and lunch and other moving-on group and organization people called in touching base, the enormity of what was being taken care of (short of records) became clearer.  As did exhaustion.

  The afternoon brought well-wishers, and no shortage of advice like Get rest.  And assurances of We get you now.

  People were almost routinely breaking down into those last moments of letting go because it's okay now.

  Like a still-standing pinwheel when the sun comes after a hurricane WNC put even the smallest seeds of hope onto pieces of shared sponge.  Writers flitted from person to person jotting down important and maybe relevant information to nursing story line.  The smells of toast and pasta mixed into the steams of breath and engines that will work again.

  Experts held sway in the guts of churning transition.  Looking at maps, directories, mission statements, and uncrumpling "speeches" they made a point of not winking and/or sending doubt in messaging.  Periodically, someone would approach that booth and swap sheets of paper.

  "Interested?" The overlap topics touched medical community in particular since the concepts of "spectrum" and "palette" had turned from buzz concepts into keynotes.  A newspaper editor was loud but not rude in commenting on our progression of ideas.  His eyes welled with tears though at the word--coalitions.

  "What's his problem?" A gruff man wagged his head at him.

  A person walked over.  "Okay?" 

  He summoned to people willing to be pointed at.

  "What is it?"

  "I'd prefer that no one use words that are confusing to working people."

  "What word is troubling you?"

  "Coalitions sort of hintimates communism somehow."

  "Okay."

  A soft-talking conversation at another booth.  Someone got up and stretched a cyclist's back and walked around accumulating sticky notes on his arms.  He said out loud things.  Chief among concerns in a transition of power is not to be perceived as a challenger, especially as citizens.

  It was an in-between shifts time and several people gathered their things and made for the exit.  No one opinionated in phrases like lousy tipper or have a nice day.  A foodserver remarked I've seldom seen a more quiet and respectful crowd.

  A potential national censor-person and an airport worker approached the newspaper editor.  "Got your note about the word coalition.  We'll do some legal-reading and be in touch.  Okay?"

  "Thank you," he said as he kept reading in the piling stack of newsprint being donated to his table.

  There were people who sat in place at the diner all day reminding such essentially critical stuff like, it is not the military person's fault that an administration was/is a political party.  Some had come from all over the world where they'd been posted to observe and learn.  Religious people, too, drifted in and out, extending vigils and noting observances.

  All over our nation a flurry of calls, faxes, and telegrams were questioning and confirming resumè data points.  And people were being informed to prepare prospectus.  Academia was a mix of hesitant to register and pool of equally-weighted talent.  Many were relieved in preparing for interviews to be asked to think of a few things that make you unique.

  Tradespeople sighed.  "Bridge-workers" helping people "frame" themselves tweaked the unique feature into interview questions that allowed for personal story to ground technical skills in real life.  And all the while road crews came in for meals and warming breaks.  Sparsed foremen went through proper channels to talk about stress points and aftermaths.  One smiled at me resting reading eyes.  "Did you know that Explosives has its own vocabulary?" I glanced at my writing mentor to see if I could respond.  A nod.  "All over the world?" He looked at his.  A headshake no.

  When information travels through the universe it never "dies", sometimes "rests", and always has "hidden potential".  That is part of why censure is absolutely necessary in times when "confidential" is inevitably compromised by change and transition.

  The kitchen needed two people to strain a cooking pot of spahetti.  Getting ready for dinner.