“I don't know what y'all expect me to do. I have been warning a bunch of you for decades that position, and time in it, does not correspond to immunity from the consequences of doing foolish things. But y'all kept saying that the only reason I was even in the conversation was because Aaron Slocum-Lofton had lost his head over a young Madison girl and made her his youngish widow. Now, you want my help. I am going to laugh you to scorn in Aaron's stead!”
Selene Slocum-Lofton, born Madison, was Lofton County's only female billionaire, and she had gotten there in her widow years by bold and yet well-considered financial moves – she was referred to as “Queen Selene,” and lived her tycoon status to the hilt, though more gently after becoming a Christian, reconciling with her grandson Col. H.F. Lee, and marrying near-billionaire John Worley, the kindest and most free-hearted of Lofton County's ultra-rich widowers.
But becoming a Christian did not replace a will of iron with a bleeding heart for silly people in authority who were now looking for political donations to try to stave off the towering defeat that was heading in their directions.
“You needed to be voted out thirty years ago,” she told one, “so you must be more out of touch with reality than the public thinks you are if you think I am going to invest in your political future after you have helped make Lofton County the laughingstock of the nation. The public finally figured you out. As the kids say, hold this L, go somewhere out of our eyesight, and sit down.”
Mr. Worley cracked up laughing in the background, as he generally did when his elegant old bride mixed 21st century's phrases with all her queenly style.
“You don't think with our combined $1.8 billion that we couldn't just do through the couch and contribute some couch change to help out?” he said when she had gotten off the phone.
“What we need to do is work out what the 'Purple Up, Stupidity Down' constituency needs to get a clean slate of candidates in office,” she said. “Of course, these incumbents are writing the scripts for the commercials against them daily, but the purplers need to get organized, and we can fund those who are ready.”
Mr. Worley sighed.
“And we must, because we should have dealt with our peers decades ago. Unless we put our weight down on this, the young people are going to inherit this problem we made – not necessarily me or you, but our generation – by putting these people and letting them stay in office.
“I just hate how they are absolutely hell-bent on proving that age does not correspond with wisdom,” Mrs. Slocum-Lofton said. “They are still just as self-serving and shortsighted as they were thirty years ago. No progress, no updated knowledge of how the world works, no deep thought about this new century needing new ideas and strategies. Just old, stubborn, and in the way.”
“So many of us,” Mr. Worley said. “So, we need to help move them so the next generation doesn't have to.”