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respect for Gallagher was deeper than he would ever let him know.

CHAPTER SIX
    CLIENT’S HOME, DETROIT MICHIGAN SUBURBS
    â€œG uys, I know we’ve been discussing these ideas for almost nine months now. I know you’ve done a lot of work and put a lot of time in, and I appreciate that. I’m still just not sure yet.”
    Blaze and Bernie sat at Frank Barnes’s kitchen table for what seemed like the tenth time, but was likely the third or fourth. They’d been stuck in neutral in their efforts to make Frank a client and at the onset of this meeting, their hopes had already been dealt a blow.
    Frank Barnes was a doom and gloomer talk radio junkie. His voracious appetite for news and information caused him to constantly be absorbing media—particularly talk radio. Although conservatives dominated talk radio ten years prior, the airwaves were filled equally now with the ever-increasingly dominant views of the multi-layered progressives—left and right. Frank gave thanks for all of this to the former FCC associate general council Mark Loyd. As a result of his influence, the rules of the airwaves were now governed by regulations that made the fairness doctrine actually seem more fair than fraudulent in Frank’s opinion. All the progressive voices on the airwaves gladly reiterated the severity of the financial crisis, Frank reckoned, because the fear it caused ultimately helped to advance their globalist agenda. The freedom-loving and libertarian voices on the airwaves spent hours exposing the crisis and, of course, blaming both Democrat and Republican progressives. Yet since freedom proponents had been so defeated in recent years by the machinery of soft tyranny, they had lost hope that anything would change anytime soon. This environment of perpetual financial fear made it very difficult for Blaze and Bernie to gain and retain clients.
    Frank had been wildly successful running his textile factory and had amassed quite a fortune. Always the renegade with an independent spirit, Frank managed all his wealth by himself until now. It took the unending tumult of the last nine years to finally get him to the point of consulting with financial advisors and estate planning attorneys. Blaze and Bernie’s firm was just one of many that Frank had been flirting with over the past twelve months. Blaze and Bernie had to continually go the extra persuasive mile to try to close this case.
    Frank continued, “I know I’m going to sound completely out of my skull, and this is way outside the realm of the stuff we’re here to discuss, but hear me out. After absorbing everything that has happened in the world over the past ten years, I increasingly get the sense that there’s a high possibility that the United States as we currently know it, define it, and love it could very well be on its way to ceasing to exist.” The doom boomed and the gloom glimmered. Frank was off and running with another theory of death.
    â€œWhat gives you that sense Frank?” asked Blaze, knowing full well what he was in for. This would not be the first time Frank embarked on a long political rant that was altogether tangential to everything Blaze and Bernie had met with him to discuss. Blaze didn’t mind so much, but it drove Bernie nuts.
    Frank began excitedly rubbing his chin and rocking slightly back and forth on the wobbly wooden chair. He was winding up for a verbal onslaught. “First off all, it’s no secret that I was never a fan of Obama—not that I loved Bush or wanted McCain or Romney. You guys know that. Both Bush and Obama and many of the presidents before them have long been laying the incremental groundwork for globalism that has come to supersede our collective sense of nationalism as priority. Our current president, this Fitz guy, is not subtle about it. I personally think he’s wet behind the ears. Obama was slick, but this guy? Buffoon with a capital B. He’s blatantly