Chapter 673 - 315: Reshaping the United States
"While Johnny was waiting to die, these pharmaceutical executives were sitting in their seventy-two-degree, climate-controlled offices, drinking Evian Water and researching how to sell their next drug for a thousand US Dollars a bottle."
Tucker slammed his fist on the table.
"Why pull the plug?"
"Because there wasn’t enough power!"
"And why wasn’t there enough power?"
Tucker pointed to the red power line on the map.
"Because the power plants are run by people! The workers mining the coal, the technicians maintaining the grid—they’re people too! They live in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania! They’re sick! And they can’t get medicine!"
"No medicine, no healthy workers. No workers, no coal. No coal, no electricity!"
"It’s a simple matter of physics!"
Tucker roared at the camera.
"Are we supposed to let the elderly of Pennsylvania freeze to death in their homes just to keep the air conditioning on in some capitalist’s lab? Just so they can keep researching how to empty our pockets?"
"Must we sacrifice our survival for the sake of their Science?"
"Leo Wallace made a difficult but correct decision."
"He cut power to the greedy and saved the poor."
"That is justice."
...
「At the same time.」
This narrative spread like a virus across social media.
Sarah’s team produced hundreds of short videos.
The visuals were simple and raw.
On the left: Pittsburgh workers repairing pipes in a blizzard to keep the city’s heat on.
On the right: A K Street building in Washington, where normally high-and-mighty lobbyists were trapped in elevators, drenched in sweat.
The captions were just two lines:
"Since you cut off our medicine, we’re cutting off your air conditioning."
"That’s what we call fair."
This simple, direct logic, filled with the thrill of revenge, instantly shattered the psychological defenses of the average person.
CNN’s lofty narrative of Science-under-siege seemed pale, hypocritical, and nauseating in the face of this class warfare.
Generally speaking, people don’t engage in deep thought when confronted with the news.
Logical reasoning consumes a great deal of energy, whereas sensory perception is automatic and low-effort.
When the public is faced with a massive amount of information, they activate a filtering process.
If the news provides a high-impact label, the brain immediately adopts it to avoid the high-energy process of logical analysis.
Sarah understood this profoundly.
What she provided the public was a pre-packaged conclusion, carefully crafted and intensely emotional.
The comment sections exploded, just as she had predicted.
"Serves them right! Let them get a taste of what it’s like to have no resources!"
"Pfizer’s samples melted? Serves them right! Why weren’t they crying when my mom’s insulin supply was cut off?"
"So it’s a tragedy when the pharma companies lose their AC, but it’s not a tragedy when we can’t afford medicine?"
"This is karma! I support Leo! Let those Vampires reflect on their sins in the dark!"
This is the essence of modern information warfare: draining cognitive energy.
When the media collectively focuses on a certain issue, even an audience capable of logical thought will have their cognitive energy depleted by these high-frequency, repetitive, secondary conflicts.
Sarah didn’t need everyone to believe Leo was innocent. She just needed everyone to believe the pharmaceutical companies were evil.
By setting the agenda, she shifted public attention from the legality of the blackout to a moral judgment of who was more deserving of ruin.
Fueled by algorithms, this abandonment of thought became technologically ingrained.
The media no longer challenges its audience; it precisely force-feeds them.
Sarah stared at the data traffic monitor, which showed two unrelated spikes, both pointing to extremes.
"This is the result we wanted," Sarah said to Mike.
To the families waiting for insulin, Leo was a Saint, the only mortal brave enough to draw his sword against the giants for them.
They firmly believed it was perfectly justified to cut the power to those labs, because if my child can’t breathe, then your lab doesn’t deserve to have air conditioning.
Their perception had solidified. In their eyes, any argument about the damage to Science was just another shameless lie from the capitalists.
And on the other end of the spectrum, the beneficiaries of the current system grew even more paranoid in their anger.
Watching the melting samples and paralyzed data centers, they felt an unprecedented fear.
In their view, Leo was a tyrant, a terrorist undermining the very foundation of civilization.
They frantically shared headlines about the setbacks in drug development, convinced that this was a dark moment in the history of human Science.
This extreme opposition generated an immense centripetal force, forcibly pulling in the neutral parties who had wanted to remain silent and stay out of it.
In this fractured, aggressive, and malicious climate of public opinion, the neutral parties felt an extreme sense of agitation.
They had wanted to wait for the truth, but now, social media only offered them a side to pick.
"I don’t want to pick a side," a white-collar worker from Philadelphia wrote on Facebook.
A minute later, his comment section was swarmed by people from both sides.
"Are you cold-blooded? Can’t you see the elderly have no medicine?"
"Are you a brainless thug? Can’t you see Science is bleeding?"
This pressure to pick a side eventually became a shove.
To quell this pervasive anxiety, to escape the feeling of isolation from being scorned by both sides, the neutral parties had no choice but to close their eyes and pick the side that seemed more aligned with their basic survival instincts.
Consensus completely vanished.
The world was simplified into two sides.
And Leo Wallace now stood firmly at the forefront of one of them.
He didn’t need everyone’s love. He only needed the fanaticism of one half.
...
「Two days later.」
Harrisburg, outside the State Capitol Building.
The once-empty plaza was now filled with heavy-duty trucks from all over Pennsylvania.
Workers, farmers, and unemployed people who had rushed in from the Philadelphia Suburbs formed distinct little factions, shouting loudly at one another.
"For Leo! For survival!"
"For the law! For order!"
The arguments quickly escalated into shoving and standoffs.
The police stood in the middle, looking overwhelmed and isolated. They didn’t know who to help, nor who to stop.
This was the reality of a society torn apart.
No middle ground.
No reconciliation.
Only confrontation.
And this confrontation was Leo’s greatest moat.
Because in this extreme polarization, he was the only one who could offer direction and hope to that vast power of the underclass.
Or perhaps, this was the true essence of a certain kind of rule.
A leader doesn’t need to unify thought; a leader only needs to monopolize anger.
When you become the outlet for their anger, you become their master.
The country’s political landscape had been changed.
The rift had been created.
And it could never be stitched back together.
In this way, Leo had reshaped the United States.