Is Freedom Real?

July 4th, 2026, a morning ripe with fireworks and revelations

In the sun-dappled theater of Independence Day, where the air itself seemed to hum with declarations old and new, the Bard once more took up his quill, third person, ever watchful, to recount a conversation sparkling with the sort of wit that makes one clutch one’s coffee and laugh aloud at the splendid absurdity of it all.

Penelope, with the bright curiosity of a modern lady of letters: “You’ve been conducting an exhaustive study of this curious reality we inhabit here in California? Pray tell, is freedom still a living thing in these golden lands, or has it become one of those charming relics we admire in museums?”

Louis, with the grave composure of a man who has peered too long into the machinery behind the curtain: “If one examines the choices actually laid before our good citizens, the 009 RIDR research delivers its verdict with the finality of a well-bred aunt’s disapproval: we reside, dear lady, in a corporate police state. Wall Street, that most insatiable of suitors, has in effect eloped with the school system itself. There is, at present, a rather vigorous and ungentlemanly aggression being waged against the very concept of freedom in our fair California.”

Penelope, arching a metaphorical eyebrow: How, sir, do you support so bold a claim? One does like evidence with one’s breakfast.”

Louis: I undertook an exhaustive immersion into the living reality of the Los Angeles Unified School District, measuring their daily actions against the lofty policies they so elegantly display. Though LAUSD stages a most convincing performance of the republic we were supposedly born into, it may be safely concluded that the corporation has become its true spouse, and the will of its Board Members is steered by those discreet back-end incentives that whisper so persuasively in the night.

Take, for instance, the case of Kelly Gonez. Her husband enjoys a six-figure salary from an LAUSD-adjacent concern. Despite six long years of shocking, polite, persistent communication, revelations delivered to her office with the regularity of church bells, she has maintained a silence as profound as a ballroom wallflower who has decided not to notice the elephant dancing the quadrille. This, one fears, indicates that our institutions have been overtaken by a particularly clever host, rendering them as responsive as a marble statue at a garden party.”

Penelope, leaning in with delighted horror: Now that we know our sacred institutions have been quietly annexed by corporations from a certain fashionable neighborhood in Beverly Hills, whatever are we to do? One cannot simply send them a strongly worded note.

Louis, with a dry wit that could curdle cream: :LAUSD, in truth, is piloted by its legal counsel—those sleek corporate representatives who function as an army of well-tailored thugs concealed within the system’s polite architecture. One cooperates, or one is elegantly shown the door. It is far more profitable, you see, to join the merry band. A dedicated team of legal operatives, I estimate, siphons approximately seventy percent of LAUSD’s formidable twenty-billion-dollar budget. Quite the retirement plan, if one can stomach the view.

Penelope, nearly spilling her tea: How on earth do you calculate such a figure?

Louis, serenely: By observing the inflated insurance costs (bribes in evening dress), the over-inflated prices of technology (bribes with better branding), and the positively theatrical construction expenses (bribes wearing hard hats). The entire system resembles a grand cesspool of greed, merrily robbing the children of Los Angeles of their true purpose in life. Kelly Gonez holds a key to their emancipation; I have therefore taken the liberty of asking God Himself to illuminate her particular brand of greed for the public’s edification.

Penelope, with a laugh that rang like crystal: Really?

Louis, composed: She maintains spending habits she can no longer quite afford without the continued nourishment of those nonprofits feeding her household a six-figure lifeline. That, madam, is the unvarnished reality. Freedom in California has become a most endangered species; corporations have captured our key figures of government, and the only mechanism for reclamation is a long, gradual awakening, the sort that ultimately triumphs at the polls.

This is why I have begun the rather quixotic process of becoming governor: collecting data on precisely where California’s scientists, artists, and critical thinkers have made their nests. They remain the true believers in freedom. In the coming years I shall continue this documentation of reality through total immersion, recruiting a new artistic class more enchanted by ideas than by money. Of course, even visionaries must eat; that is precisely what OptomystiK is laboring to demonstrate, a system that might support such delightful impracticality.