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Ken assumed the front man position as his group maintained their media campaign, keeping the alternative media in the loop as to the maneuvering going on in the county. They provided briefings on court actions, links to primary documents, lengthy and well-annotated explanations and otherwise push towards an open engagement. This seized the initiative from the mainstream media establishment, and took away their power to shape public opinion by reclaiming control over their own narrative.

The next step, using local citizens, is that to use humor to counter the hit-pieces that came out of the same establishment media, turning the weapons of establishment media behavior against them and showing the public that The Emperor Has No Clothes. Heavy remedial media literacy formed the backbone of the pushback against the mainstream media, exposing common tricks in exhaustive detail to the people. The effects were immediate, as the state legislature soon split with a significant faction going for Ken and his friends; they began sponsoring legislation to disentangle the state from the Federal Government and restore the Constitutionally-demanded relationship between the two.

Then the assassinations began. Not in the county, not at first, but elsewhere as people who spoke out in public about the county’s position and actions being better than the alternatives got shot dead in their homes, in their offices, on the street or on the road. Their cars blew up. The attacks did not discriminate; home invasions butchered entire households in horrific massacres. Those few cops and deputies that responded in time often got killed themselves. This got blamed on Ken and his friends as the killers, where caught or clearly identified, turned out to be Angels, Zetas or Syndicate killers; the Intelligence Community pulled out the stops to demonize Ken and friends in the press.

They failed.

The Zetas, being tied to the narcotics trade, went from “…that Mexican problem…” to “Kill On Sight” across the country. The remnants of the Hell’s Angels went to ground or got wiped out by an irate public, many turning vigilante. The Syndicate, seeing that this was a lost cause, cut and ran- burning whomever was already there. Law enforcement agencies had sudden upturns in incidents where suspects from these groups “resisted arrest” and ended up dead.

The American people had finally hit their breaking point. All of the gun laws went out the window, in practice, because everyone got sick of the violence and knew whom to blame- and they no longer trusted the Feds to protect them. The law enforcement agencies turned a blind eye to people they knew not to be a problem, and focused upon the problem instead; they took the guns, gear, cash and drugs off the Zetas, Angels and Syndicate men—and anyone working with them—to keep their operations going.

Then came the whistleblowers. In a sudden deluge, whistleblowers from through the ranks of the Establishment came forth. Others leaked documents, recorded messages or other damn evidence; this lead to pressure put on Congress to act- and, for reasons fair and foul alike, they did. While the Executive tried and tried to plug the leaks and punish the whistleblowers, Congress opened inquiries into the matter- and that is when Ken and his friends made one last major intervention. Through some proxies, they submitted all of their own documentation via sworn statements and that broke open the connections between the criminal gangs and the Intelligence community.

Arrests swept up those gangsters not yet dead or imprisoned, and the government agents also on the list fled and went underground. The violence stopped, and the people now watched as Congress threw open one large and potent committee to deal with the now-exposed scandal- a scandal that blew open related criminal operations, such as the gun-running scheme by the ATF and its ties to the Sinaloa Cartel. Too big to ignore, and too loud to shout down, the mainstream media got compelled to cover the actions more or less honestly.

The surviving conspirators, backed into a corner, either fled the West entirely or decided upon a final act of spite against the unexpected agents of their destruction. The best of them got out; the rest now converged on the county, heavily armed and bent on revenge.