America, has a Problem

America has a Problem with Fascists

The best way to think of it, it's like this: you're laying in a nest of filthy, filthy and disgusting vipers. You are sitting in the room where it all happens. Where all the fucking decisions are made. Hands are never just hands--typically, they're guns. Big fucking fat rifles, pistols, machine guns. Smiles are never smiles, but typically disguised smirks, only understood by someone on the opposite side of the room. These rooms are money pits, and you've rolled in them--your family rolls in them. But if you for some reason haven't, and you don't exist to this room, this fucking wonderful room, you want to. Everyone wants to be in this room, stuffed with golden walls and gilded cages. Everyone, wants to be someone. They're all begging to kiss at the crown.

The crown, which happens to sit on Logan Roy's head.

At this moment at least.

His four out of five children crowded around him, seated at the lesser chairs in the room--or rather, pacing around, scoffing at the lack of democracy in the room. That would be Siobhan, to be specific. Who had yet to crawl down from her stage, or stance, that their, her, father should crowd source the Dems, after years of politely (rudely) excluding and gouging their eyes out. Or, she'd run for Salgado. A lesser candidate that could at least, not cut all of her ties to the woman she'd used to be.

Connor Roy was failing to sell himself, as usual. His prospects were bleak. His policy, a joke. The only thing about him that was real--it was the money. That fucking good and real American money. Other than that, he'd had no real job, no real relationships, and no one to rally for him. Especially if his father wouldn't even crawl into his corner. He had no one buying what he was selling, no one--except maybe, a select few money bags who had also become the "let downs" or acceptable failures of their own broods. Unique millionaires. Those kinds.

And then, there was Roman Roy--positively boning for the potential of Mencken. The fascist, the Neo-Nazi in prettier clothes. The candidate who dared speak ill of their Republican bread and butter, ATN. Of course, he was subtle about it. Maybe not about the fact that it took a singular conversation to woo him, Shiv and the rest of the room could see right through that. But, Mencken wasn't a bad choice--it had been decided he could be tamed. He spoke to their audience, and would win the rest. They'd get more pile, for their pile. They'd maintain relations with the White House.

It was good. Good for the GOP. Good for business.

Maybe not the greater good, but good.

Real fucking good.

Aella Roy wasn't impartial to the matter. It was actually, the fact that she hadn't ever been much of a voter to begin with. Politics had never exactly been her thing, despite working, living, breathing and surviving off of the political landscape, she had never given much of a shit about it, until forced to remember what exactly fed her family at an event--some event where her father wanted his children turning on the hoses--turning the knobs that would send money in their direction. In fact, this wasn't her first appearance at an event like such. Just the first, the very first time, she'd been allowed into the room where every god damn decision was made.

Which made sense. Last election, she'd been overseas. She'd been working out of Germany, doing PR for foreign companies, building them a tangible and tasty American representation for their debut in the American market. She hadn't exactly been Waystar yet. She'd been a baby, following Shiv's footsteps--making tiny baby steps, to distance herself from Waystar. But she'd come back in, let the tide carry her back to New York before her sister, long before. It had always been like that. Small steps, and then let the money, or rather her father--pull her back in, wash her away.

Her siblings had always given her small tidbits of wisdom, small echoes of 'what to do'.

Plenty of it had been true, to some extent. Other bits of it had been attempts to fuck her.