28.07.26: ORSON TAYLOR, governor of Illinois, presidential hopeful and the first politician in decades to capture the hearts
and minds of America's dispossessed, was assassinated today in an uncanny echo of the Martin Luther King killing 58 years
ago.
He was shot on the balcony of a motel in St Louis, hours after delivering a speech in which he launched his first attack on
America's military-industrial complex. His assassin, said to be bald and wearing a checked shirt, was seen fleeing in a car.
Taylor's tumultuous career began in 2008 when he won three Olympic medals. He became a television star but suffered a setback
when forced to undergo supervised rehabilitation following a drugs conviction. It was during this fallow period that he converted
to the 3Rs, under the mantle of the Rabb-Imam David.
His rise as a politician was meteoric. He became mayor of Chicago in 2019 and later governor of Illinois, emerging as a national
figure in the years following the collapse of America's "old-tech" industries. Taylor
was behind the Economic Disaster Area programme, in which he succeeded in galvanising communities to set up their own "social
rescue" operations, and he launched Bankability, an inner-city co-operative savings and loans network.
In the hours after his death, rioting and looting erupted in inner cities across the country. But when Taylor's wife Gaynor insisted
on "silent mourning", her call was heeded to a degree that left mainstream America amazed. In keeping with 3R practice, Taylor's
body was interred within 24 hours. Millions of the new religion's disciples, all in white, marched silently through Washington to
Capitol Hill, where they listened to tapes of Taylor's last speech and Gaynor's graveside message: "Let them hear our voices and
count our heads. Let them marvel at our straight backs and dignity. Let them not forget that slow and steady wins the race." MF
