Controversy is swirling around me again, and so I must break my silence. According to a thread on a local listserv, apparently my tentacles extend into the corporate offices of WalMart. It seems, according to this breathless analysis, that I am orchestrating a plot in which I am helping to bring a Super WalMart to Moscow as part of my plot to take over downtown Moscow.
Before I outline what would be in it for me, let me first review the evidence for maintaining that I am doing anything like this.
Okay, on to the outline of what would be in it for me if I were doing it. This is a connect-the-dots kind of thing so bear with me. The first is that a Super WalMart in my hip pocket would provide employment opportunities for NSA students. I am tired of bwa ha ha, so let us go with bwe he he. This would be a conspiracy that goes back a long ways — this is what lies behind my twenty-five years of work in education reform. By laboring to increase the number of young people who can actually count and read, I am clearly in cahoots with corporate America.
But do not wave off these charges just because they have been raised on a listserv noted for wild speculations about my Activities. Sure, it is a tempest in a sludge pot, but there still might be something to it.
After all, if I whistle up a Super WalMart (imagine: excited whispers in a boardroom in Arkansas, or whereever it is they are, “It’s on! Wilson says we’re goin’ in!”) this will have the effect of emptying out our downtown. Nothing there but blowing newspapers, tumbleweed, and lots of parking for BookPeople. Nothing but empty buildings that I can run through at night, howling, like Grendel in Hereot.
There are wheels within wheels here. Say that the liberals (say, when was the last time any of them did anything liberal?) are successful in blocking the Super WalMart. Victory! Then the other Super WalMart goes in over in Pullman, and corporate WalMart closes down our current WalMart because it is on the west side and too close to the Pullman Super WalMart. Another empty building in Moscow, and lots more parking. Yay! Then the Lowes goes in right across the border on the Pullman side, and we have heaps of parking in Moscow over at TriState now. A whole shopping center is going in right across the state line. So let us throw in a Barnes and Noble or something like that so that BookPeople downtown is now in parking heaven. Everywhere you look — diagonal painted lines on the asphalt with nothing between them. Except the occasional newspaper or tumbleweed.
It is only then that the depths of my chicanery will become apparent. You see, what I did was this. I didn’t do anything — we just let the Moscow Civic Association (just like a political party, only different) mount a campaign to elect a bunch of liberals to the office of mayor and city council. Nobody from Christ Church ran. It is not too soon to start using the word perfidy to describe what we did. Do you see the depths of it? By just letting the progressives (say, when was the last time they actually progressed anywhere?) win, and take over Moscow, we made it look like we actually didn’t have a political agenda. Plausible deniability, that’s what it is. At that point it becomes apparent that we knew that the liberals would do what they always do when they are in control — i.e. wreck the place. If we gave economic liberals full control of the Pacific Ocean it would not be but ten years before we were dealing with salt water shortages. You see, we knew this already, having studied some economics in our youth. This was our nefarious trick. And amazingly, they fell for it.
Then I would be in a position to preach a hot sermon on how Moscow has fallen under the Scourge of God. And I would just point to the city council, and all the copious parking. And everybody would just say whoa. Our congregation would sit there amazed. After the benediction was over, they would file out of our new cathedral on the west side of town. We are leasing the land from WalMart for a dollar a year. After five-hundred years we will have the option to renegotiate. The city begged us to build downtown, but me and my board of elder-bots said nah. Don’t feel like it.