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As Leo’s railroad container headed eastward, the campaign stops began to blur together. Make a speech, listen during a conference, get back on the train, report to Travis Frailey, and try to find some time to talk to Jane Early before falling asleep to the roaring railroad sounds; start again at the next stop.
There were athletes running alongside the tracks as they approached Salt Lake. For the last five miles or so, there were thousands of people running all-out, as if they were racing the train into the city. Leo then found out that the authorities there felt that physical fitness should be the main priority of the nation and the world.
In Grand Junction, there were more labor problems. It seemed that as soon as people found stable jobs, they unstabilized them again by going on strike for better treatment.
Everybody in Dodge City was wearing firearms when Leo came. Even though crime had diminished since nearly all drug addicts had left the area, they were convinced that only an armed population could protect itself. They bragged that they had very little crime, but they didn’t have any comparative statistics. Meanwhile, they reported a number of accidental shootings.
Augusta, Kansas, went way overboard with religion. They wanted a new government that put religion first. When Leo asked a few discerning questions, it became obvious that Augusta intended only their own form of Protestantism for the world. Other religions, they said, should be officially suppressed.
Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln is celebrated, seemed like the most reasonable of all the stops. They also had the biggest variety of foods. Leo made a note to investigate whether or not places with the most food were also the most cooperative with the revolution.
Frankfort extolled its culture and Charleston its diversity. As Leo’s flatcar headed for Washington DC, he was beginning to think that his tour showed a more or less bright future for the revolutionary process. Some places, to be sure, were adapting better than others. Some places, it would seem, might need at least some guidance and at most a shakeup of their militia leadership, but all in all things weren’t so bad. Or so it seemed.
Washington put a cloud over all of Leo’s sunny forecasts. They held the biggest rally of the entire tour. They filled the old National Mall and let Leo speak from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where so many historic figures had stood. But the conference afterward was contentious. Leo didn’t have a lot of trouble ducking actual commitments, but the surprising thing was that there were so many of them in DC. Many proposals and demands were contradictory, not only to reasonable thinking and to the revolutionary process as going on, but even contradictory to other proposals and demands being given at the same meeting!
With a few careful questions, Leo was able to determine that the group he was meeting with was not a stable group. Since the revolution had begun, they had gone through a whole number of individual leaders and caucus groups.
One of the speakers seemed to understand what was going on. She said: “The problem here in DC seems to be organizational. That is, it seems that we just aren’t able to take a direction and seat leadership consistent with that direction. That produces the chaos that you’re seeing here. But, when you realize that chaos isn’t just the state of things, when you realize that it’s an ongoing chaos that has been with us since the first, then you have to conclude one thing and one thing only: This isn’t just an organizational problem.
‘Almost any organizational problem is a symptom of underlying political problems. Our political problems are deep fissures between us. If we cannot resolve them, and right now it looks like we can’t, then the possibility exists that we will tend to infect other political entities. The result will be corruption that can eat away the good intentions of our revolution from the inside.
‘If one studies the revolutionary situations of the past, one can see the corruption plagued all of them. Whether people gain power through economic means or military, or even by the concentrated will of the people, the possibility of corruption is always there.”
To Leo, she made sense. He did not think he was going to be able to contribute a great deal to resolving the problems, and he wondered if he might have missed the possibility of corruption at his other stops. Things involving the organizations of human beings are never simple.
Leo gave his reply as he always did. He went over the failure of the previous economic and political system and the hopes for new processes. As usual, he concluded with a call for cooperation from those present. His assurances and pleas seemed to have no positive effect on anyone.