📺 Continental Public Affairs Network (CPAN)
Title: “By Deed and Deed Alone: The Freeholder on Power, People, and the Price of Legitimacy”
Interviewer: Daniel Raynor, Senior Correspondent
Date: June 11, 2440
Location: Private home theater, Marmaduke Homestead, Missouri Freehold
RAYNOR:
Mr. Marmaduke, seven days ago, I stood in a field watching alien captains kneel to a Missouri farmer while half the world tuned in. Since then, I’ve heard you called a warlord, a landlord, and a lord in truth. So let’s begin with the question everyone’s dodging: Who gave you the right to rule?
MATT:
That’s easy. The same people who gave me the land—folks who needed stability more than they needed bureaucracy. I didn’t take this title. It was inherited and held in trust. What’s different now is who I’m holding it for.
RAYNOR:
You’re referring to the V’ren?
MATT:
And the humans already here. And the ones still coming. This isn’t about race or species. It’s about who shows up ready to work, ready to build. That’s who I lead. Not by bloodline—by contract.
RAYNOR:
Still, critics say you’ve gone from landowner to head of state without a vote or a constitution.
MATT:
That’s a fair question, but it’s the wrong frame. You’re asking how this fits into post-collapse politics. I’m asking how we survived the collapse at all. This land has had uninterrupted civic operation, infrastructure, agriculture, and rule of law for over three centuries—longer than most nations on this continent have existed in their current forms. People don’t need permission to function. They need trust, and the tools to make their work matter.
RAYNOR:
T’mari, I’ve heard you described as both consort and co-governor. You’re in a unique position. How do you define your role?
T’MARI:
I serve where I’m needed. Sometimes that’s translating V’ren social protocols into something that works in Missouri. Sometimes it’s reminding my people that safety isn’t just the absence of fear—it’s the presence of fairness. I advise, I design, and increasingly I mediate.
RAYNOR:
Let’s talk about mediation. There were over a hundred journalists at your “junket” on June 4. Some praised the hospitality. Others—Telemundo, JANES, even WaPo—questioned the careful optics. What was the point of that gathering?
MATT:
I had everyone dying to meet the V’ren, to talk to them in person. We were being accused of gatekeeping by people who don’t understand the logistics of such things. In short order, my team and I put together the biggest event we’ve ever hosted here. I don’t say this often, but I’m proud of the infrastructure I built to make it possible, and of the people who pulled it off.
In the end, 125 outlets—from science and tech to politics, fashion, and food—paid real money to be here. Wired and JANES came prepared. NHK and The Africa Report asked real questions. COSMO asked if the V’ren exfoliate. And some just drank my good whiskey and complained about the heat.
RAYNOR:
Some of those homes being built now sit on tracts you acquired during the collapse. Critics call that disaster profiteering.
MATT:
Sure did. Paid a fair price for it, too. A lot of those sellers couldn’t make it work here or were looking for escape after making a mess of their own holdings. Many took their money and ran—moved to Mexico, Central America, or some megacity.
But letting that land rot—or letting a megacorp fail at managing it—would have been worse. The proof is west of the Missouri: a hundred-mile-wide forest between Omaha and Kansas City, where cropland used to feed nations. That’s not wilderness—it’s abandonment.
RAYNOR:
The Freehold has courts. It has schools. It has hospitals, ports, and a logistics spine most nations would envy. Do you see this evolving into a model others will copy?
T’MARI:
They already are. We’ve had interest from Brazil, the Carolina Compact, NHK World Japan, Al Jazeera International, and even The Africa Report. But our model doesn’t clone well. It’s rooted in history and relationships. We don’t govern by algorithm—we govern by trust.
RAYNOR:
So you’re not exporting this?
MATT:
I can’t. This isn’t software. The V’ren Trust runs on the same framework as my family’s—centuries of stewardship. That’s not something you print and ship. It has to be lived. That’s why I don’t allow private land ownership outside of trust structures.
Land isn’t a prize—it’s a contract. You break it, you don’t just lose your profit. You get a hundred miles of silence where a country used to be. I won’t let that happen again. I offer leases—from a single year to five centuries—but I won’t allow point-source failure by ownership. Not on my watch.
RAYNOR:
What about critics who say this is all a mask—that this is step one in V’ren occupation?
T’MARI:
Then they’ve misunderstood everything—or they’ve decided to believe whatever their algorithm feeds them. We were denied the right to live on our homeworld. We were trying to build a new colony when we were attacked. We were invited to stay.
We don’t occupy through force—we survive through service. And we don’t go where we’re not welcome.
RAYNOR:
Final question. What do you want your children—yours, and the ones raised under your policies—to understand when they look back on these first few weeks?
MATT:
That peace isn’t a gift—it’s a discipline. That sovereignty means responsibility, not dominance. And that anyone selling you fear is hoping you’ll give up your future in exchange for their past.
T’MARI:
That love doesn’t disqualify you from leadership. That exile doesn’t mean the end. And that if you build a home with honor, others will help you fill it.
