Once upon a time there was a little city on a big river ruled by a lord mayor who was elected for life. He was elected for life, the court jester told him, as long as the black people in the city were kept in their place.
The lord mayor was ruled by his loyal servant, a former town crier. Being a town crier, telling the other people about the big deals in the city, made the loyal servant want to be one of the people making big deals in the city. So he elected the lord mayor, with the help of the court jester, moved into the castle with the lord mayor and started trying to make big deals for the city.
Serving the lord mayor and being a part of trying to make big deals, the loyal servant learned that big deals make some people a lot of money. The lord mayor paid the loyal servant a lot of money, compared to the citizens of the city, and especially the black citizens, who had fewer jobs and made less money than the white citizens. But the loyal servant quickly saw you could make a lot more money off a big deal than what the lord mayor paid him with the people’s money, if only he could get on the other side of the big deal table.
But there was a big risk for the loyal servant. To keep his seat at the deal table while working for the lord mayor, all he had to do was help reelect the lord mayor every four years, and all that required was keeping black people in their place. There were powerful systems, long in force, that kept black people down. The loyal servant and court jester understood how to work with those systems, which was not very difficult in the little city by the big river
So every four years, the loyal servant got together with the court jester, and they reelected the mayor for life. They had a lot of help, especially from the big town crier downtown. The big town crier downtown was always telling people the lord mayor was lord mayor for life, even when he wasn’t running for mayor. If a black person looked like he or she might be a challenger to the lord mayor for life, the big town crier would come right out and say this black person was not fit to be a lord mayor.
So the loyal servant and court jester kept the lord mayor in power every four years, and that gave the loyal servant four more years at the deal table. With his seat at the deal table assured, he could be loud and act tough. If someone was loud, the loyal servant could be louder. If someone was tough, the loyal servant could act tougher. If someone was smarter, the loyal servant could tell that person to get up from the deal table and leave the castle – or could try to destroy the smarter person.
Things would not be so easy for the loyal servant, he knew, if he left the castle and stopped working for the lord mayor. If he stopped working for the lord mayor, he wouldn’t have a key to the castle or a seat at the deal table anymore.  If he stopped working for the lord mayor, sure, there were deals where he was already at the table, and when he moved to the other side of the deal table, he should be able to get paid a lot of money – a lot more than he could make working for the lord mayor. And the loyal servant was pretty sure there were enough deals like that in the works that for a number of years he could make a lot of money, maybe so much money he wouldn’t have to worry so much about making money after that.
But the loyal servant still wasn’t sure. After all, the loudest person does not always have the most to say. The man who acts toughest is seldom the toughest man. And the person who always has to be the smartest person in the room usually does not get to stay in rooms that are full of really smart people for very long.
If you work for the lord mayor, of course, smart people will put up with you. But what if he stopped working for the lord mayor and then started running off all of the people who were smarter than him? What if he – it was really difficult for the loyal servant to even consider the thought, after all his years in the castle – what if he started getting left out of the deal?
The loyal servant could not stomach the thought. So, for many years, he stayed in the castle, helped reelect the lord mayor every four years (assisted by the court jester and the big town crier downtown), and he kept his seat at the deal table. The city made some big deals. It made some bad deals. The city lost some big deals. It ran off some little deals chasing the big ones it lost. The loyal servant loved it, because at least he had a seat at every deal table, the money wasn’t bad, and the big town crier never tired of telling people how tough and smart he was.
But the loyal servant could never take his eye off the bigger piles of money on the other side of the deal table. He saw other people in the lord mayor’s court, and on the fringes of it, make off with these bigger piles of money. It bothered the loyal servant that he didn’t always even know how bigger their piles of money were. The loyal servant knew every secret in the castle, but the city made large piles of money for businesses, and he could not always see how much of that money the businesses paid to other people who were in on the deal.
Take the court jester. The court jester was always saying witty, charming things to the town criers in the city. He was always influencing what the town criers said about the people who paid him. The court jester was so clever at this he could even speak up for a garbage dump. It’s actually more impressive than that. The court jester could even speak up for a garbage dump that had been poisoned by radioactive garbage that will continue to poison the Earth as long as the Earth orbits the Sun. It’s actually even more impressive than that. The court jester could even speak up for the evil baker man from the county who abducted someone else’s child and kept the boy as his plaything.
This started to bother the loyal servant. Not speaking up for bad things, the loyal servant had no problem with that – he thought speaking up for bad things and influencing town criers to say good things about them was an exciting and important activity. What bothered the loyal servant was that he did not know how much money the court jester got paid by anyone other than the lord mayor. According to the law of the land, the people had a right to know how the lord mayor spent their money. It started to bother the loyal servant very much that the people had a right to know how much money he was being paid, because he worked in the castle for the lord mayor, but other people at the deal table, like the court jester, could make off with all the money fools or evil people would pay them and no one would ever know.
And then there was the fixer in the county seat. The loyal servant kept seeing the fixer in the county seat come to the deal table in the city and walk away with really big piles of money. The fixer had it in good with the big businesses, and with the printer of the merchant’s penny-saver, which all the businessmen read and talked about. The loyal servant was even more jealous of the county fixer than he was of the court jester, because the county fixer was getting deals done, not just talking about deals (or about radioactive garbage dumps or child kidnappers), and he was getting paid a lot of money.
Then the loyal servant  suddenly had a brilliant idea one night, while dreaming about all of the bigger piles of money on the other side of the deal table. What if he left the lord mayor’s service, so he could move to the side of the deal table with the bigger piles of gold, but kept a key to the castle?
It was a pretty crazy idea. He was sure the lord mayor would go for it – the lord mayor never wanted him to leave the castle anyway. But would the big town crier downtown put up with it ? Would the people? The loyal servant decided it was worth the risk.
So the loyal servant told the lord mayor he would be leaving the castle, but keeping his key. And after the lord mayor cried for a while, and asked him to stay, the lord mayor finally let the loyal servant leave the castle, but keep his key.
The loyal servant tucked the key to the castle in his pocket, moved in with the fixer in the county seat, and went back to the deal table on the other side.
To be continued.
