The Ticking of a Fool’s Watch

A dystopian tale of Mr. Smith’s folly in 2050 Harrison, AR, leading a nation to ruin.

"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice"

The Buffalo River slunk through Harrison’s outskirts, its waters thick with silt, reflecting a sky bruised purple by dying holo-ads that flickered above the old train depot. Mr. Smith stood on his double-wide’s porch, boots scuffing warped boards, his fingers tracing the cracked glass of a pocket watch his daddy swore kept time even when the world didn’t. He squinted at the horizon, where drone swarms buzzed like locusts, spitting slogans into neural feeds: Keep it simple, keep it ours. Folks in town called him a prophet, a voice for the fed-up. He didn’t see the rust eating the hills, the dogwoods choking under kudzu. Just grinned, muttering, “We’re winning, ain’t we?”

Mr. Smith wasn’t born stupid. Nobody is, not even in 2050, when the United States had fractured into a patchwork of noise and blind faith. He’d been a mechanic once, fixing hover-rigs in a shop off Highway 62, his hands steady, his laugh quick. But power crept in like damp rot. It started with a viral holo-clip—Smith, red-faced at a town hall, shouting, “Facts don’t feed us!” The crowd roared. Neural feeds amplified it, algorithms feeding on his bluster. Soon, he was a face on every cracked screen from Missouri to Mississippi, his words—Simple’s better, trust your gut—etched into the minds of millions. Bonhoeffer, that old pastor, would’ve seen it clear: Smith wasn’t evil, just hollow, a man who’d traded thought for catchwords.

By spring, Smith’s rallies packed the old fairgrounds, where the smell of fried catfish lingered like a ghost. His followers—calloused farmers, laid-off coders, kids with neural implants glowing under their skin—chanted his lines without question. They didn’t notice the markets crashing or the power grid flickering. Smith didn’t either. He’d stand onstage, watch glinting, and yell, “We don’t need their numbers! We got heart!” When a professor from Fayetteville dared show data—crop failures, debt spikes—Smith just laughed. “Numbers lie,” he said, and the crowd jeered the professor into silence. Bonhoeffer’s words echoed, unwritten but heavy: Reasons fall on deaf ears. Smith wasn’t arguing; he was possessed, a mouthpiece for slogans that felt like truth.

The nation unraveled under his sway. Policies born from his rants—deregulate the drone farms, gut the schools for “practical skills”—spread like fire through dry grass. In Harrison, the library’s holo-archives went dark, replaced by Smith’s looping speeches. Across the country, bridges sagged, hospitals turned away the sick, and truth became whatever got the most likes. He didn’t plan it. Didn’t need to. His followers, drunk on his certainty, surrendered their questions. A woman in a faded Razorbacks cap told him, “You’re our voice, Mr. Smith.” He nodded, watch ticking in his pocket, blind to the weight of it. Bonhoeffer had it pegged: The stupid person is self-satisfied.

But cracks formed. In July, a rally at Bull Shoals Lake turned ugly. Smith, sweat-soaked, preached to a crowd of thousands, his voice booming through drone speakers: “No more elites, no more lies!” A kid, barely sixteen, raised a hand. “What about the floods? The data says—” Smith cut him off. “Data’s for doubters!” The crowd surged, shoving the kid into the mud. Later, whispers spread: the boy’s family lost their farm to a floodgate mis-programmed by a drone, approved by Smith’s allies. Folks started murmuring in Harrison’s diners, over coffee gone cold. Was Smith right? Or was he just loud?

His unraveling came quiet, not loud. In September, a girl named Sara, who’d grown up fishing the Buffalo with her pa, slipped into Smith’s trailer. She wasn’t a rebel, just tired—tired of empty shelves, of neighbors fighting over rumors. She held up a cracked tablet, its screen showing crop yields tanking, hospitals shuttered. “Mr. Smith,” she said, voice steady, “this ain’t winning.” He blinked, fingers on his watch, and snapped, “You’re one of them brainy types, huh?” But her eyes, clear as the river once was, held no slogans. Just facts. He shoved the tablet away, muttering, “Inconsequential.” Bonhoeffer’s ghost stirred: Facts are pushed aside as incidental.

That night, Smith dreamed of the river rising, swallowing Harrison whole. He woke, heart pounding, and stepped outside. The air smelled of ozone and rot. Across the country, his movement splintered. Some followers doubled down, chanting louder. Others drifted away, doubts gnawing. In St. Louis, a riot sparked over a misheard Smith quote. In Little Rock, a school burned, kids trapped inside. Smith saw the news on a flickering holo-screen and felt a flicker of unease—evil’s germ, Bonhoeffer might’ve called it. But he shook it off, polishing his watch, whispering, “We’re still right.”

By winter, Harrison felt hollowed out. The depot’s last holo-ad went dark. Drones fell silent, their batteries dead. Smith stood alone at the fairgrounds, his voice hoarse, shouting to a crowd that wasn’t there. Sara’s tablet haunted him—not the numbers, but her question: “What’s winning look like?” He had no answer. His followers, once a flood, trickled to a few diehards, parroting slogans even he didn’t believe anymore. The nation teetered, cities crumbling, fields barren. Stupidity, Bonhoeffer warned, was no intellectual flaw but a moral one, and Smith was its king, crowned by his own blindness.

He walked to the river’s edge, watch heavy in his hand. The Buffalo flowed on, indifferent, carrying silt and secrets toward the Mississippi. Across the Ozarks, folks whispered of starting over—small groups, no slogans, just shovels and seeds. Maybe hope, stubborn as a dogwood, could take root. Maybe not. Smith tossed his watch into the current, watched it sink, and turned away. He didn’t see Sara in the pines, sketching plans for a new school, her pencil scratching like a promise. Are we ready?

Written by The Noisy Wren, ‘25


{dropnote:”Inspiration"}This short story was inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words which remain a warning:
"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice,”
“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
And...“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”
A final question: Are we ready?