May 2, 2020:
Ken Croc, The Ideas Guy, sits with feet up on a café table dribbling fat-free French Vanilla cappuccino on an old-school codex he's borrowed from a comrade.
Ken's a wiry little guy, bald with hairy red ears and disinterested google eyes filmy behind the most inexpensive wire-rims he can find. Ken's all about the expense. Single at age fifty-eight he lives in a house with roommates. He doesn't buy books, he borrows them. He'll come to cafés if someone else pays.
Still, he's generous with his ideas. "We should have a theoretical journal," he'll say. "Just like the old New Left Roundup, only, you know, the way it was when it was great, not the way it is now." Or, "We should build a revolutionary party, just like the old Proletarian Struggle Caucus, only, you know, the way it was when it was great, not the way it is now." Those are his ideas, which he has, and which he generously shares.
Since The Disaster, Ken's invested his life among the fragments of bunker-left sectarian groups organized on what they believe to be Leninist principles. Except for the discipline part, Ken's the perfect bunker Leninist: always willing to contribute the right idea at exactly the right time.
"We should have some sort of literature table," he'll say, tapping thumbs and fingers of both hands together like a small nervous pyramid held before him. Then look around the room for someone other than himself to organize it.
Fidgeting, tapping his toes on the table top, he surveys the small group, saying, "Can someone get me another cappuccino? This one seems to be broken."