Death of a folk hero

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. I