Now, I ain’t one for conjurin’ up wild-eyed conspiracy theories unless they’re funny or involve frogs that sing on cue—but when I heard tell that the United States government has supposedly shelled out twenty-one trillion–that’s trillion, with a T as in “That’s a whole heap of money!”–to dig a cozy little underworld for the gilded swells of society, I dropped my corncob pipe in the Truckee River.
According to Miss Catherine Austin Fitts, who once held a proper and polished title in the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
the folks up top have been busy digging down below. She made her bold claim while jawin’ with Mr. Tucker Carlson, a man who talks like he’s always tryin’ to sell you a rifle or a pair of boots made from moon leather.
Miss Fitts, now 74 years wise and unafraid of rattlesnakes, ridicule, or the Clintons, says our dear government’s been burnin’ through tax dollars like a Nevada brushfire—only the flames are beneath our boots. She reckons, based on research from one Professor Mark Skidmore of Michigan State–which I assume is like the University of Nevada Reno but snowier–that this $21 trillion vanished into an invisible project of diggin’, blastin’, and burrowin’—creating a whole subterranean Shangri-La fit for senators, CEOs, and folks who don’t sweat in summer. The grand mole city supposedly includes hidden bases, fast-as-lightning transportation, and enough underground concrete to build a new Rome in reverse.
Here’s the part that gave me the hiccups–she says there are over 170 of these secret lairs–some tucked under the United States, others slumbering beneath the ocean like Atlantis’s drunken cousin. There’s even talk of secret space programs—’cause having a few thousand satellites in the sky ain’t enough–we gotta launch things from under the sea now, too.
While all that’s buzzin’ in your ears, let me holler something into the national echo chamber–Virginia City, the gem of the Comstock Lode, has been sittin’ on 700 miles of mine tunnels for well over a century. That’s right—seven hundred! Hollowed out by grizzled men with picks, whiskey, and no dental plans.
You could fit ten Washington D.C.s under that town and still have room for a dance hall and a whiskey distillery. And yet not one bureaucrat, billionaire, or bright-eyed futurist has thought to turn that ready-made warren into an underground city.
Not one.
Folks, we already have the infrastructure. So, you want secret bases? Just look beneath the boardwalk of Virginia City, where you might find Mark Twain’s boot print and a ghost who knows where the real treasures are.
But no–while the government might be building palaces beneath the Pentagon and tunnelin’ from sea to shining sea, Virginia City sits up on Sun Mountain, mindin’ its business, waitin’ for someone to say, “Hey, why not build down here?”
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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