Photo: Jacob Jaconovich on a small Gerry 
​Betrayal
 
“I still remember the day after the emperor set fire to my portion of the city as if it were yesterday” – Philippe Rouseff on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday.
 
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I took my wife to Mass more to please her than from any desire of my own. I watched as the priest lifted the loaf and intoned the words, “On the night in which he was betrayed…” Bile rose up in my throat at the words.  I knew betrayal.
 
The Emperor, one of my closest associates--a cousin even, had struck at the heart my railroad operation in an effort to destroy my family business. I pressed my lips together to stifle the urge to cry out in anger as the priest held up the cup. When Christ was betrayed, only one man died. I wondered how many thousands burned when I was betrayed. 
 
As the faithful shuffled forward to take their bread and sip from the cup, I shifted in my seat and pondered why that bastard crime boss, Wu, a better man than my cousin, had sent his wife to my offices to warn one of the bookkeepers about the impending purge. As the bookkeeper raced from the building, she screamed, “Fire! The army is coming! Fire! Flee!” Who else had been warned that the emperor’s army marched against the city? Who had time to flee? 
 
I had no desire to spend a Sunday afternoon working, but at three in the afternoon, I met with two railroad supervisors to survey the damage to almost a square kilometer of the city. I expected to find tall burned skeletons of tenement buildings. Nothing remained but stone foundations and ash. The emperor had been thorough.
 
We drove up to the deserted M’TK station. Blowing ash shifted and settled after the passage of my car. My stomach churned wondering how many of my employees’ ashes mixed and blew among the debris of burned buildings.
 
The brick and slate train station still huddled beside the tracks the lone survivor in a wasteland. Soot now stained the red bricks the same black as the rest of the borough. We stood and looked over the desolation—nothing moved, nothing lived. I wanted to hope that some of my people survived, but hope refused to kindle here among the ruins. The workers were only indigenous northerners, laborers, but they stocked my warehouses and loaded my trains.
 
The Central Region supervisor looked up. “What the hell?” 
 
I followed his eyes and soon made out a string of boxcars pulled by the station’s yard-gerry slowly rolling toward the station. Filled with the horror that lay around me, I stared transfixed at the approaching apparition. If I were a superstitious man, I’d have turned and fled in fear of death and ghosts. I refused to take my eyes off of this small sign of life.  
 
When the gerry with it’s string of boxcars towering above it, rolled to a stop at the station, the operator dressed in railroad coveralls lifted a woman down from the first boxcar.  A young boy about ten jumped to the ground. This family appeared to be like any other of the northern poor—dirty and ragged.
 
The man introduced himself as the assistant stationmaster. He unlocked the station for us and assured us that he had locked the station’s ticket money in the safe. He seemed respectful enough. He kept his eyes lowered as custom dictated for a man of his station. 
 
I heard the eagerness in my voice, “Have you seen signs that some of my people survived?”
 
“I haven’t seen anybody within a kilometer of the station. Wu warned me, so I had time to move the equipment. I suppose others had time.”
 
I shook off my melancholy for a moment.  “Listen, you saved my equipment and the money in the station. I must give you a reward.  What do you want?”
 
The man answered immediately. “The Stationmaster ran away when he heard about the army. I stayed long enough to save your equipment. Give me the stationmaster’s job, and let me live here with my family.” For the first time, the man looked me in the eye.The sharp intelligence I saw in the eyes of a northerner surprised me. The man’s humility returned when he asked for help to assist his cousin from the train. 
 
Curious about the new stationmaster, I helped lift his cousin in a wheelchair from the boxcar. I almost recoiled from the reek that still clung to the air inside the car.  I recognized the stench that is created when many unwashed bodies are packed close together. I picked up a small piece of waste paper flecked with fish scales.  The evidence before my eyes and nose told me that many people, probably northerners with their love of fish, had very recently been packed into this car.  In my mind, I saw people filling the boxcars to flee from the fire. I suspected that my new stationmaster had his own reasons for his secrecy, but the knowledge that some of my workers had survived revived a hope that settled into my heart.
 
I turned to the humble man beside me and forgot a lifetime of lessons about the indigenous people from the north. I suddenly saw not a worthless, northern laborer but a man created in the image of God. I saw the man who had saved my people, a man of honor and compassion.  I wondered if he thought of me as just an oppressive Southerner.
 
How did laborers see the elite?   Did they think all of us are as cruel and evil,  as I now saw my cousin the emperor to be? I reached out to shake the stationmaster’s hand, fearful for the first time in my life of being rejected.  –
 
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This story is told from the perspective of the young boy mentioned here in the book M’TK Sewer Rat: End of an Empire. This is the first record of Mr. Rouseff’s side of the story of the day he met his longtime friend Jacob Jaconovich then the assistant stationmaster. 
 http://www.amazon.com/MTK-Sewer-Rat-Empire-ebook/dp/B00APRA4NG 

Will Grandpapa accept the granddaughter he sent away sixteen years ago? For all of Lucy's adventures you can find the book at: https://www.amazon.com/Lucy-Goes-Home-Sewer-Book-ebook/dp/B07JYKKSF1/ref
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The sense of fantasy can be something as big as a dragon or as little as an herb garden. I looked at the charming little herb garden with the sweet little herbs growing so obediently in their little rows. This is Narnia, folks. I do grow herbs. My bay tree is ten feet tall. My rosemary is six feet tall despite the heavy pruning I give it every year. The parsley has gone dormant, but the thyme thrives. My tender herbs grow two feet tall and shade out or just overpower anything with in two feet of them. They aren’t nice. They’re thugs. They have to be in order to survive in the reality of my garden.

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Acknowledgement: tony@redwoodlandscaptingand builders.com 
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The Annual Pacific Northwest Garden Show is winding down in Seattle. I visited for two days this year. This was my thirty-first garden show. I have attended every one of them. Why do I go back? Certainly the dreams of spring and summer during the cold wet winter are a huge draw. I love seeing all the color and smelling the spring flowers. The seminars are informative. I’ve actually found new products at the show that have made life easier for me. I always buy some chocolate bars from a company in Mt. Vernon. Maybe it’s the chocolate that draws me back year after year. 

I really think it is the whole delightful combination of flowers, fragrance, lessons, light, products, music and inspiration that draws me back. I get inspired to think in new patterns. Thinking is hard. Having an event that stimulates so many areas of my brain through all my senses kick-starts my year after semi-hibernating all winter.

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I fell in love with a culvert. This puppy must be six feet tall. I assume it’s real purpose would be for storm water runoff. However, set on it’s side in the garden, it would make a lovely entrance into my enchanted forest. We are really talking about a sewer pipe here-nothing fancy, but with landscaping it could be stunning and define where the road leaves off and the garden begins. Hubby looked at my pictures and commented, “You could plant a pink clematis by it and the flowers would hag down over it making it look like it belongs in the landscape. He’s right. Clematis Montana would be the perfect planting to go with a six-foot tall gray drain pipe sitting beside the driveway. ​

When I was in the fifth grade, the teacher wrote a math problem on the board, 5+4-2= __. He then went around the room and asked each student the answer. All the students in the first row said the answer was five. He started on my row. The first two students answered five. I looked at the problem. I didn’t know how other students got their answer. I thought the answer was seven. I was puzzled but finally decided that if I didn’t tell the teacher what I saw, I’d never learn what the other students had. I hesitated, then said, “I come up with seven.” The teacher didn’t say anything to me as I sat there feeling miserable, and my faced flamed because I never answered wrong. My friend behind me said the answer was five, and the teacher continued around the room. Most students said the answer was five but a few more said seven, making me feel less stupid. 

After the last row of students gave their answers, the teacher told us the correct answer was seven and that he’d coached the first row to say five. I was somewhat relieved that I had known the right answer but still very upset over standing out of the crowd and feeling betrayed by the teacher. My friend behind me was equally upset. “I thought the answer was seven, but everybody else said five, and I didn’t want to look stupid, so I said five.”

The pull to agree with the crowd is huge. In the fifth grade, I had been careful to word my answer so that I could back down when more information became available. My friend went along with the crowd. At the time, I thought the lesson was about not doing what everybody else does—a good lesson. My mom had told me enough times that just because my older cousin did something, that didn’t mean I should. I still did things my older cousin did because she was doing them, and I wanted to play with her.

How many high school students go out drinking on Friday nights because everybody else does? Yeah, they go drinking to have friends, fit in, and be accepted. 

This drive to fit in with the crowd is the power behind what is called the bandwagon approach to propaganda. “Everybody else uses Tide, shouldn’t you be using Tide too?” We hear it all the time. “The nation’s best selling shampoo. The number one product for… More people use… than any other brand.”  Like my fifth grade classmates, people will choose a product based on it’s popularity, thinking perhaps everybody knows something they don’t. Even people who know that a certain shampoo makes their hair fall out and gives them big welts and acne, may question whether or not they should try it again. 

This pull to do the popular thing and follow the crowd is also used to manipulate us in areas other than our use of purchased products. This is where the topic can turn ugly. In the political world, we are bombarded with polls trying to tell us which candidate is the most popular. There is a reason political parties want us to believe more people choose their candidate. This is the reason a party may flood social media with bots and trolls, shouting “more people like our candidate. The other candidate is evil.” Someone like me may look at the bots and trolls and say, but I don’t see what everybody else sees. I’ll go searching for more data. Other people may be like my friend who will go along with the crowd even if what she sees doesn’t look right. 

I find bandwagon propaganda to be abusive. I don’t watch TV because of the manipulative ads. When I look at social media, I see two thirds of the posts support ideas I find morally reprehensible. I  have my own standards of right and wrong, yet I feel distressed that the vast majority of my fellow citizens have no clue. This is the impression I get from social media. I have to look past the sheer volume of posts to the number of different friends who oppose that view to see that most people really do care about loving their neighbor, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. The propaganda to the contrary is a form a gaslighting, telling me that my truth isn’t real.

How do we related to this type of propaganda? 

All my friends bought a Roomba in the past two years. They love their little robots. Do I go along with the crowd and by one? Actually, I dug deeper. 

Shalah told me hers eliminates dog hair. That’s good. I have a dog that sheds his body volume in hair every day. 

Christina told me hers travels easily from carpet to hardwood and even vacuumed the bathroom rug. Hmm, that sounds good. 

Sara said she picks hers up and moves it to the room she wants cleaned. 

Heather said the cliff sensor really works and her’s has never fallen down stairs. Heather won me over when she said, “My back feels so much better now that I don’t have to vacuum.” I bought my Roomba named Hal. 

What did I do hear other than looking at how many friends had bought the machine. First, these are people I trust to tell me the truth. They had nothing to gain by telling me how much they like their machines. They weren’t making any money off of my purchases. I have reasons to trust them. Next, they talked about concrete specific features that worked for them such as the ability to go over different surfaces, being effective on dog hair, easy to move, and the cliff sensors work. 

Next, I looked at the literature. I read reviews of the different machines on line. I looked for a Consumer Report article. I studied the features to see what I needed and didn’t need. ​

Finally, I checked our budget to see if I had enough cash to buy what I wanted and asked myself if this was really a good use for that money. Because my floors were a mess of dog hair, I’m not young and do have back trouble, and we do have allergies, I thought the robot might be a realistic use of our money. 

The problem with bandwagon propaganda is that sometimes as in the case of my Roomba, everybody is buying the product because it works and solves problems. Other times, we are just being gaslighted with numbers and words that are not tied to solid reasoning. We need to stop and think about what others have to gain by their testimony, Does this mesh with history? What are the concrete measurable facts? What does the literature have to say about this? And finally, we need to step back and ask if something makes sense. Can we see how this will work? Does it make sense?

We need to be wary of all we hear, especially when told everybody else likes this.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Some propaganda tricks seem to work over and over and over. The simple linking of two unrelated ideas in one sentence is remarkably effective. I  used this trick in my novel Lucy Goes Home. Lucy and her friends were orphans. The oligarchs in her country saw an opportunity to get free labor by convincing the population to force the orphans in government placement to work for their support. They started a propaganda campaign that linked the word criminal to orphan. Soon, every petty criminal was called an orphan, and every orphan was a criminal.

If some compassionate person pointed out that the orphans had never really commit a crime, the answer was that they were criminals because they lived at the government expense and weren’t working to pay back the money spent on their care, and that is stealing from the taxpayers. The belief became, existing without a family member to support you was somehow dirty and wrong. And, a large portion of the population fell for it. 

I could write the story I did, because I see this happening all around me. Something serious is going on through the linking of unrelated words and ideas.

We see this happening with the verbal linking between Mexican, immigrant and criminal just as I linked orphan and criminal in my book. We’ve heard the words Mexican, criminal, illegal, and immigrant linked so many times that way too many people have come to believe that any brown person coming to our southern border is illegal and a criminal just because they are standing at the border waiting to cross. Not only are people at the border illegal. Spanish speaking children in US schools are labeled illegal without any evidence of improper paperwork. I have a friend who came here from Spain. She introduces herself with, “I’m here from Madrid on a research Visa.” She’s afraid she’ll be mistaken for being of Mexican descent or undocumented because that has come to equal criminal. The words Mexican, illegal, immigrant and criminal are not the only case of destructive paring of words and ideas.

I find the linking of the words Christian with right wing to be particularly offensive. Religion at it’s base is about our spirituality. Some people need to feel connected to other people and to the cosmos in order to be at peace within themselves, to shut out all the unnecessary brain chatter and actually think. This has nothing to do with politics, or power over other people, or controlling others, despite what people of power have tried to practice for ages. All religions are basically about finding that inner peace. The media loves to use the words right wing Christians as they relate stories of horrific spiritual abuse cloaked in bibliobabble. There is nothing Christian about the content of the stories, and there is nothing validly right wing in spiritual assault. The word Christian along with the words right wing have become paired with an ugly vision of mean spirited abusive behavior. How divisive.

How many of us can hear the word Muslim without the word terrorist popping into our minds? I confess, I’ve heard the words Muslim and terrorists linked so many times that I have to mentally erase the word terrorist from my mind. Terrorists are terrorists no matter what color their skin is, or where they come from, or whatever the predominant faith of their culture is. Those who spread propaganda for personal gain and power have done an excellent job of manipulating the population into feeling afraid and trying to withdraw from interactions with others who have some really interesting perspectives, cool food, and exotic experiences.

How dismissive and divisive is the term feminist rhetoric? The problem comes in the word rhetoric-words. Some people can get really triggered by this pairing because the ladies are unjustly demanding special rights. I get pissed and have a knee-jerk reaction that makes me want to backhand the speaker for being dismissive of women for wanting equal pay for equal work, and not wanting to be assaulted or have their intelligence questioned.

One of the reasons the linking of unrelated words works so effectively is those pushing the propaganda can build stories around those words. Stories are very effective in teaching about difficult concepts. When I was working in the field of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, we used stories, hopefully humorous, to describe how specific brain damage links to specific behavior patterns. The syndrome we were talking about had been recognized over twenty years before we started our work, but the general population barely knew the problem existed before people started telling their stories. Telling stories works.

The story can be told two ways. The police pick up two men involved in a knife fight in a parking lot. My local paper might tell the story. At 11 PM Saturday night, two men were arrested behind Sporty’s bar and charged with assault. Alcohol was believed to be involved. 

​Now, the same story can be told pairing words. Carlos Cruz, under investigation for illegal immigration, and another man were arrested behind Sporty’s bar late Saturday evening. Cruz was found in possession of a knife when police arrived on the scene. 

The first telling of this story would rev up the small town gossip machine to full tilt as we wanted to know who was arrested. We would find out that Carlos is as great a guy as we always thought, but he gets belligerent if he drinks. He was, in fact, born on the ferry between here and Seatte, but the police did ask for his address and citizenship status. The attorney, who lost ten bucks betting on the fight, overheard the sheriff asking Carlos about his citizenship and filed complaints with the county. The other man was Chuck Smith. We all wonder what the community could do about Chuck, he’s dangerous. A few woman hope Carlos was able to cut Chuck in the balls. Jokes about Carlos gelding Chuck ensue. Alcohol was involved.

The word pairing telling of the story paints a very different picture, but it does something else. It gives enough facts that we don’t gossip—as much. We know that Cruz was arrested. We might wonder about Cruz’s citizenship, but because we have that name, we don’t overly embarrass his mom with a good, full-blown, small town gossip fest. We don’t get the back story or who else was involved. Also, the AP is not going to pick up a small town arrest. Someone doing internet searches for the propaganda media will pick up the story of the drunken illegal immigrant who attacked someone in a parking lot. They won’t investigate, but the story becomes part of the story-telling around illegal immigration. 

Yes, I know that occasionally an undocumented person does get drunk and get into a knife fight, the problem with how the story is told is that lots of people of all backgrounds get drunk and get into knife fights. The citizenship status is irrelevant to the story because it doesn’t drive the plot or illuminate the character. 

These pairings of words and ideas are so pervasive, we don’t really stop and think about them. I fully admit that despite my allergy to being manipulated and my attempts to be vigilant about thinking things through, these pairings of words do bring up negative images for me, and I will have a knee jerk reaction until I mentally separate the words from each other and from the stories that are told about them. I know, some people miss the oxymoron created around the paring of the words right wing and Christian and will adopt the description, thinking that means they believe in the Bible, but they miss how the right wing pairing diminishes their god to the level of a human being. When a sweet person, who genuinely cares about others, voluntarily identifies with a violent pairing of words, we can see the power of propaganda. These pairings do influence how we think, how we feel, and how we interact, as well as how others perceive us.

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