electoralism

"Howdy Ya'lll I'm Sheriff Harris! If there's one thing I hate it's varmints and the worst varmints of all are anti-frackers! make me president and I'll put a bullet between the eyes of every anti-fracker in the state!" For emphasis, I bit a chunk out of a hunk of beef. They roared. The crowd loved it. A chant started: "Death to anti-frackers! Death to anti-frackers!" Then a scuffle broke out in the front row. Three men dressed in denim tackled and hogtied a small, weasely-looking fellow. They dragged him up on stage. "Ms. Harris," one man said, "this fella here is an anti-fracker. He stopped up 3 of my wells last spring. If you kill him right now, everyone in this room will vote for you. The crowd began a new chant: "Blood! Blood! Blood!" The bound man pleaded with me. "Yes, I stopped the well," he said, "but I only did it because my family was starving. Please, spare me." My life and career have been defined by hard choices. This was perhaps the hardest choice of all. My phone buzzed. A text from Robby. It read, "The Algorithm says: the anti-fracker dies." "I'm sorry," I told the man as I raised a pistol. "It's not me. It's the Algorithm." I squeezed the trigger.