Broken System
The people of Skidmore, Missouri, had learned long ago that the law didn’t work the way it was supposed to. They had seen it fail too many times, watched it bend under the weight of money and fear, watched it let a man like Ken McElroy walk free time and time again. At first, they believed justice would catch up with him. That’s how the world was supposed to work. Someone would put a stop to it, the courts would hold him accountable, and life would go back to normal. But each time he was arrested, each time someone pressed charges, they watched him walk away laughing, bailing himself out before the ink was dry on the paperwork.
It wasn’t that the town hadn’t tried. They went to the sheriff. They pressed charges. They sat in courtrooms and swore under oath what they had seen him do—steal cattle, burn barns, beat men half to death, fire a shotgun at those who crossed him. And each time, they watched as lawyers tied the cases up in endless delays, judges handed out slaps on the wrist, and jurors backed down when they saw McElroy staring at them from across the room. Witnesses recanted. Families moved away. People learned that justice wasn’t coming because justice didn’t work the way they thought it did.
And so, slowly, one by one, they stopped believing in the system. The first time it happened, it was shocking. The tenth time, it was frustrating. The twentieth time, it just felt inevitable. They learned to avoid him, to step aside when they saw his truck rolling through town. They warned newcomers not to speak up, not to press charges, not to fight back, because it wasn’t worth it. McElroy would win, just like he always did.
Until one day, they realized the only way to stop him was to stop playing by the rules.
The day they met at the Legion Hall, there wasn’t a debate. They weren’t there to argue about what to do next. They all knew. The law had failed them. The courts had failed them. The government had failed them. They were never going to get justice, not the way they had been told it was supposed to happen. And so they stopped waiting for someone else to fix it. By the time they walked out of that building, McElroy’s fate was sealed.
The investigators came. The FBI showed up. They asked questions, they pointed fingers, they threatened legal consequences. But it didn’t matter. The town had spent too many years watching the system protect the wrong people, and they weren’t about to let it win again. One by one, they looked the law straight in the eye and said, I didn’t see anything.
It’s easy to believe that the system is designed to protect you. That if you follow the rules, if you do everything right, if you wait long enough, things will work out the way they’re supposed to. But sometimes, you realize that the game isn’t designed for you to win. That the people in charge aren’t interested in fixing what’s broken. That the longer you wait for things to get better, the worse they become.
This isn’t just a story about a town that stopped believing in the legal system. It’s the same story millions of people go through when they realize the financial system wasn’t built to help them—it was built to keep them trapped.
For years, you believe that credit cards are there to help you in an emergency. That they’re a tool, a safety net, a way to get by until you have more breathing room. You make the minimum payments, trusting that as long as you do what the bank tells you, you’ll stay ahead. But then you notice something. The balance never seems to go down.
You pay and pay, and somehow, the debt barely moves. You borrow a little, and suddenly, you owe a lot. You miss a payment, and fees stack up. The interest compounds, the monthly bill balloons, and the number they promised you when you signed up doesn’t look anything like the number you see on your statement.
And then one day, you realize the truth.
The system was never designed to help you. It was designed to keep you paying forever.
Credit card companies don’t want you to pay off your balance. They want you stuck in the cycle, always paying, always owing, always one bad month away from disaster. The minimum payments are set just high enough to keep you from defaulting but low enough that you’ll be paying for decades. The banks don’t care if you struggle, as long as the interest keeps flowing.
And it’s not just credit cards. Payday loans. High-interest car loans. Adjustable-rate mortgages designed to lure you in with low payments before spiking when you least expect it. Buy now, pay later schemes that seem harmless until you realize you’ve financed your entire life one installment at a time.
They tell you these things are tools to help you. But they only help the people collecting the interest.
Just like the people of Skidmore, you start out believing the system is there to protect you. That if you do everything right, if you play by the rules, if you trust the process, you’ll be fine. But one day, you look at your bank statement, your credit card bill, the years of payments that haven’t gotten you anywhere, and you realize—this isn’t broken. It’s working exactly the way they designed it.
The people of Skidmore realized that the law wasn’t going to stop Ken McElroy. So they stopped waiting. They took control.
At some point, you have to do the same.
The longer you wait, the longer the system takes from you. The more money you lose to interest, the harder it becomes to break free. The only way to stop the cycle is to step outside of it.
That means getting aggressive. Paying off balances as fast as possible, even if it means cutting back on other expenses. Refusing to carry balances that compound into financial quicksand. Not falling for marketing traps that make borrowing seem like a solution when it’s really the problem.
No one is coming to save you from debt. The banks aren’t going to cut you a break. The credit card companies aren’t going to change their business model. If you don’t take control, you’ll be paying forever.
The people of Skidmore had a moment where they decided, enough. That moment comes for everyone stuck in the debt cycle too.