You know what surprised me most about all of this? Besides those usual nattering nabobs of negativism (that’s you, Howie, if you’re reading this), few people seemed to care very much. Unfortunately, that included me. I didn’t object. I complained, I gradually got better at adding cups to my tower, but I didn’t do a damn thing. I was just another fly on the cheese of life. Other than the rating system, little that Wrightman did seemed to intrude on my everyday life. I went to work every day, I wrote my stories and worked on my next book, I fell in love, and lo and behold, I actually felt a little better about the country.

Writing that line right now—“I actually felt a little better about the country”—gave me pause. But at the time, the situation seemed to have stabilized. And that was enough. Maybe my professional self didn’t like it, but that old military me accepted the command structure working around me. And like so many other people, secretly I even liked it.

I certainly talked about it enough. Understanding, interpreting, then explaining politics basically defined my job. My mother told me I talked about politics too much, reminding me that I always was a complainer (although she still loved me!) and suggesting I take more of an interest in sports and theater. Or cooking! Why don’t you write about cooking? she asked, pointing out the popularity of the Food Network.

Most mornings I discussed it with my boys and girl of the Light Brigade. This was the close-knit group of people with whom I worked out before going to work. There were fourteen regulars in the bunch who worked in a variety of industries and professions, ranging from sugar industry lobbyist Charlie Fitzgerald to my workout partner, Hack Wilson, a computer guru who hinted he had some vague connection to some unnamed government agency (cough, NSA, cough). As a result, at least one of us could offer insight about whatever was going on in the news. Jenny and I talked politics all the time. And in every conversation, whomever I spoke with, no matter what had happened, whatever regulation Wrightman proposed, we always came to the same conclusion: It’s a lot better than Trump being president.

I’m sure you remember that for several months after the 2020 election, any version of that phrase became our national punch line. No matter what went wrong, “It’s still a lot better than Trump being president!” You got fired and your house burned down? It’s still a lot better than Trump being president. Your spouse cleaned out your life savings and ran away with their life coach? Well, it’s still a lot better than Trump being president. A building falls on you in Fallujah and you’ll never walk again. It’s a lot better than Trump being president. Okay, maybe not a lot better.

But at this point there remained one nagging question about Wrightman: What was his agenda? Exactly how far was he willing to go to “Restore Order”? That phrase had always made me nervous; coincidently it had been our announced mission during one of my tours in the sandbox. And what did he mean by that, anyway? Jeff Greenfield, the Pro’s sports editor, once referred to him as “our first fill-in-the-blank” president, pointing out how little we knew about him. Everyone seemed to have a slightly different but acceptable interpretation of his objectives. Whatever it was, we accepted, it still was better than Trump being president.