Chapter Four
A Tired Public
The public, for a long time, mostly let it happen.
Not because everyone was foolish.
Most people were busy. They had jobs, kids, bills, bad backs, leaky roofs, sick parents, dead batteries, and lives that did not leave much room for digging through meeting packets written in government fog.
That was what Silas counted on.
He did not need people to love him.
He needed them tired.
A tired public is easier to manage than a loyal one. Loyalty takes maintenance. Exhaustion maintains itself.
So the machine rolled on.
Budgets passed. Projects expanded. Friends prospered. Critics got labeled as negative, bitter, political, uninformed, attention-seeking, anti-progress, or “not understanding how government works.”
That last one was Silas’s favorite.
Because once a person understands how government works in a town like North Swervin’, they either start asking questions or start looking for a moving box.
