pepe's playing with my lost marbles

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I'd been hooting and howling about this for a long time, and no one seemed to take notice. Back in the Clinton era there was a whole bunch of trouble brewing for pipeline dreamers in the Stans and Afghanistan was the lynchpin. They were making deals that were illegal to try to get it in place to build them, and they were going down... until a magic election saved them.

And there was the business of my accidental dinner with the road contractor here to hunt rare trillium in his effort to repastoralize from the stresses of six-month insanely profitable stints building roads in Afghanistan for HALLIBURTON, the oil services giant. I'd started to ask why he was there building roads for them instead of the United States, but answered myself, "Oh, right, can't have pipelines without roads."

He'd sort of caved in upon himself a little in confirmation, and then said, "You can't have any morals and make money. Business and morals don't mix. If you want to make lots of money, you ignore your morals at work. That is the only key to success in business. The rest of it is just filler." He spoke with a rare mixture of defiance and contrition.

I merely responded that then it would serve him right to pay for my meal.