For months, I’ve been shouting into a void about the shadows moving behind the curtain of our local politics. While everyone is distracted by the loud-mouthed theater of the present, there are those playing a much quieter, much more dangerous game. They know that in this arena, it’s not about what you say—it’s about what you don’t say. It’s about the calculated silence that allows a “good ol’ boy” swamp to be drained only to be refilled with something far more toxic.
We are witnessing a parasitic strategy: the use of “useful idiots” who are paid in money, power, or information to act as public lightning rods. These people take the heat, absorb the scandal, and scream the loudest so the real architects can skate by on name recognition alone. They send out letters and postcards that hide behind missing disclaimers, breaking the very laws of transparency they preach from the mountaintops. They claim to have the “backbone” to stand up for values while they lack the basic integrity to put a “paid for by” stamp on their own campaign literature.
They play shell games with their own lives, claiming one address for the voters while hiding away in “compounds” where the neighbors only see them when it’s time to perform for the cameras. They brag about “accurate and responsible financial records” while engaging in the kind of backroom maneuvering that makes a mockery of the democratic process. It’s a tired, hollow mimicry of national figures—evoking a specific brand of “outsider” populism to mask the fact that they have never been outsiders to the corridors of power.
The psychology of it is simple: Fear and Rebranding.
They think if they change a name on a Facebook profile or hide behind a new surname, we will forget who they are and what they’ve done. They believe that if they swap a digital identity, the stain of their past actions—their enablement of addicts, their role in community tragedies, or their history of deceit—simply vanishes. But a name change isn’t a character change. You can call yourself whatever you want on social media, but we still know exactly who is pulling the strings and who is cowering behind the keyboard.
The money-men don’t need a majority of your hearts; they just need a hook on the right people and a few seats on a committee filled with those too scared of a bank account to offer any real opposition. We’ve reached a point where we respect the dollar, but not the person—and as long as that’s true, the shadow-dwellers remain harmless. But the second that money buys a seat at the table for their cronies and their payroll allies, the “emperor” isn’t just naked; he’s the one holding the keys to the city.
I’ve spent my career demanding accountability from the thieves we know. But look at who is waiting in the wings. We are being asked to choose between established corruption and the imbeciles who claim to want transparency while cowering behind religious texts like they’re riot shields. They use faith not as a guide, but as a blunt instrument to bash their enemies into submission until our town halls are covered in cameras and governed by the whims of a single man rather than the laws that have stood for millennia. We see the violations, we see the residency lies, and we watch as the people tasked with prosecuting these crimes look the other way because it’s easier to be a coward than a public servant.
They think they can use me because information is my trade. They’ve tried to buy me with “exclusives” designed to settle their personal scores, hoping I’d act as their proxy in the sewers. I’ve learned that lesson. I’ve seen how they provide a tip one day and then use their fake profiles to attack my credibility the next. They want to drag everyone down into the misery where they thrive. But here is the thing they can’t wrap their heads around: I cannot be bought. I don’t give a damn about their money or their proximity to power. There is nothing left for them to do to hurt me, and that makes them terrified.
I won’t give free advertising to men who are more interested in reigning over the ashes of this town than building anything of substance. A “Phoenix rising from the ashtray” is still just a bird covered in soot.
In less than 48 hours, you will walk into a voting booth. If you are standing there and you don’t know—and I mean truly, deeply believe—that the person on that ballot is there to work for you, then do us all a favor: Stay home. Don’t vote out of habit. Don’t vote because a postcard or a hand-delivered letter told you to. If we continue to elect addicts and thieves because they have the capital to drown out the truth with billboards and illegal mailers, that’s a tragedy. But the real failure isn’t the man on the billboard. It’s the neighbor who enables him because they were too lazy to look past the branding.
If I eventually leave this town, it won’t be because of the “bad boys” in the sewers. It will be because of the people who made it all possible by refusing to see the puppet strings.
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