by Adam Yoshida
"Why would he do that?" asked the host rhetorically.
"Well, my friends, perhaps it's because he recognizes that the fight for freedom to the North could awaken a spirit of resistance in this country that had laid dormant for too long. Every day, right here in America, the President violates the Constitution. Everyone acknowledges this and yet nothing real happens. Sure, there are a few in the Congress – and a few broadcasters such as myself – who are willing to act. But what will impeachment amount to if the Speaker struggles to get a majority to stand up for freedom?
"No, my friends, it is a purely symbolic act. A noble gesture, to be certain. But I am equally certain that the time for gestures is long past. One by one, each individual American must make their own decision to stand up for freedom."
Sitting on his couch in an Arlington, Virginia apartment, Major Mark Varro turned off the television and got up to begin his day. The media, he had come to realize through many hours of prayerful reflection, were more responsible for the present degraded condition of the nation than anyone else. Well, the media and the education establishment. But the latter still commanded a great deal more public sympathy than the former. How were citizens to be aware of their true rights and obligations under the Constitution of the United States when they were constantly deceived by everyone around them? If votes in the Congress wouldn't, by themselves, be enough to turn the nation around then it was time for men like him – men of faith, belief, and honor – to step up and act, whatever the personal consequences would be.
He had wrestled with the idea of whether he ought to wait and see what became of the impeachment in the House of Representatives. His actions, he knew, might cause a political backlash against the right and sway some votes in favor of the President. But he was a man who could read a poll and who could read a vote count. The actions of the House Republicans might well be noble but they were already clearly futile. And, anyway, change was about more than that one man.
For his first target, Varro had selected a major print columnist whose work he found particularly arrogant and grating. The man was hardly the worst offender in the media – and far from the most powerful – but that actually, in Varro's opinion, made him a far more appealing target. After all, it would be easily possible for the police to protect the twenty or so journalists in the country who counted as being authentically high-profile, but it would be impossible for them to protect every local reporter, columnist, and blogger. That, reflected Varro, was the great virtue of terrorism and insurgency: it wasn't possible to defend everywhere whereas he could pick and choose his targets at his leisure.
Of course, Varro hoped that he wouldn't have to take the entire burden of the fight onto himself. His actions, he was sure, would inspire others. Perhaps, he quietly prayed, they would even lead to something like a general uprising.
It would have been trivially simple for Varro to acquire high-capacity gun magazines from somewhere. Though there had been some effort to restrict gun ownership in recent years, it was impossible to make a practical dent in it when there were more guns in the country than there were Americans. However, in fact, Varro hadn't even had to go as far as that: instead, he'd simply walked on down to Staples and bought a 3D Printer along with a few cases of plastic printing material and printed himself a pair of thirty-round magazines. He'd tested them enough times at DC area gun ranges to know instinctively that they worked but, nonetheless, he paused for a moment to give them a final visual inspection before placing them in his duffel bag.
For the second time in his twenty-four years in the House of Representatives, Michael Halverson prepared to vote to impeach the President of the United States.
"Resolved," read the Clerk, "that Henry Alan Warren, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate..."
"Well, you've got your way," he whispered to Terrance Rickover. He had debated actually presiding over the House on this occasion, but had instead elected to hand over the gavel that his vote might be recorded.
"We had to do something, or we might as well simply have made it official and re-designated ourselves as the House of Eunuchs," replied the Majority Leader.
"Nevertheless, this has been a lot of work to accomplish so very little in the end," replied the Speaker.
"We've put the President on the defensive and, in the end, who knows how the trial in the Senate will shake out."
"I've seen this game before," said the Speaker grumpily.
"Wherefore, Henry Alan Warren, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States," concluded the Clerk.
The votes were called for and began to be electronically registered. Ten minutes leader, the Presiding Officer made it official: for the third time in the history of the United States a President had been impeached by the House of Representatives.
Daniel Hampton had the vote playing on the television of his office, but with the sound muted. He hadn't had much time to watch television of any kind lately. Nor had he had found time to devote to his mistress. Wall Street was, as he had bluntly informed the President during a conference call the previous day, "an absolute fucking mess."
The platinum coin gambit had worked well enough: at first. The Coins had been paid to the Federal Reserve in exchange for $2 trillion worth of bonds held by the Fed which had, in turn, been redeemed by the Treasury. With a world in economic crisis, there had initially only been a slight premium on the new bonds issued by the Treasury under the new debt limit.
Then the lawsuits had begun. And the House of Representatives moved to impeach the President. No one seriously thought that the Senate would vote to convict and remove the President from office – Democrats were already working themselves up into a good and righteous fury about the supposed wrongfulness of the actions of the House – but it was enough to spook foreign investors. Both Houses of Congress had passed legislation repealing the section of the U.S. Code from which the President had claimed to derive the authority to issue unlimited amounts of coins made of platinum stamped with whatever denominations he wished, but the President had vetoed the bill and there hadn't been a two-thirds majority to override.
"There's a problem boss," one of his aides had told him this morning. "These new Western Canadian bonds are almost fully subscribed. They're going to sell at only a slight discount versus this round of Treasuries."
Hampton sighed. "Absolute fucking mess," actually understated the chaos of the bond market.
There was no global shortage of capital. But no one knew where to park it. The Euro, somehow, survived but no one really knew how long that would last and, therefore, people were hesitant to buy Euro-denominated bonds at anything like full price. The Japanese now obviously owed far more than they could ever plausibly pay back, having spent decades trying to spend themselves out of a hole. Now, the progressive debasement of the U.S. Dollar made even the global reserve currency substantially less attractive. Other nations were in better shape, but there were only so many Swiss or Australian bonds and investments to go around.
Thus when, the previous week, the so-called "Western Republic Victory Bonds" had become available they had instantly become a hot commodity. The bonds were denominated in the Western Dollar which, in turn, was the first modern commodity-backed currency. This made both the value of the bonds and the Western Dollar tremendously variable, as their future worth depended not only upon the victory of the Western Republic in its continuing war with the Canadian Government, but also upon the perpetuation of high energy prices. It was almost equally possible that the bonds would be worthless in a year or that they would make their holders very wealthy. And yet, with all of that risk, the bonds were nearing the discount offered on Treasury bonds.
This, Hampton realized, was being worsened by the mess in Washington. The markets might have been willing
to accept the President's action as a one-time maneuver. However, the heated rhetoric that had come in the defense of the President against his possible impeachment had convinced many that, in fact, the U.S. Government might repeat its maneuver many more times, progressively devaluing the dollar via inflation in the process. Furthermore, though the prospects of the legal challenge to the President's actions had initially been widely dismissed, the results of the first rounds of court action suggested that there was a serious possibility of the Supreme Court eventually holding the President's actions both illegal and unconstitutional. Some of the more radical Republicans in the Congress had begun to warn both actual and potential bondholders that, in the event of such an outcome, there was a serious possibility that the "illegal" bonds would not be honored as they would, in such a case, be considered personal debt issued by the President as an individual rather than debts incurred upon the credit of the United States.
"Well," announced Hampton after studying his latest spreadsheets for several minutes, "I don't see that we have much choice. We'll have to bid up this latest issue."
It was, Hampton would have privately conceded, self-destructive and pointless: one part of the Federal Government paying a premium to buy debt from itself, but it seemed to be the only course of action open under the circumstances. It was a patch while he and others prayed for a miracle.
"The question," President Warren told an audience of California college students, "is how we are going to share the benefits of an age of abundance. You know, I hear a lot of talk – and you have too – about debt and deficits and how the benefits of the middle class must now be cut in order to cover off these debts. But I don't know about you – but I've been to LA, to Vegas, to New York lately and, I have to tell you, there are a lot of folks who aren't hurting. And I have to tell you: I'm not going to be cutting benefits for middle class and poor folk so long as the money exists to pay them: and that money still exists."
President Warren had eked out his narrow re-election victory on the back of class warfare rhetoric and he saw little reason to stop now.
"We have millionaires and we have billionaires in this country – and soon enough we'll have trillionaires – running around buying up new yachts and planes, and you're telling me that we need to cut grandma's Social Security and Medicare? Come on."
"Now we have impeachment. Impeachment, I might add, for following one law that Congress passed in order to follow other laws that Congress passed. I didn't pass the laws requiring me to spend or the laws that allowed for Platinum Coinage. The Congress did that. And now they want to impeach me for not violating the law – for not spending the money that they voted for me to spend? Come on."
"When billionaires and the richest corporations in America use the most absurd of loopholes to avoid paying billions – trillions even – in taxes, they praise them as patriotic. When I follow their laws – the laws they passed – in order to find a way to pay for pensions for veterans and health care for seniors, they say that I've committed a high crime? Come on."
"They want to nose and poke around these Constitutional technicalities and trivialities. They're as much in thrall to some dead text as those who tell us that the world is only six thousand years old and that men lived alongside dinosaurs. Let me tell you something: the American people elected me to lead them, and I intend to do just that to the best of my conscience and the best of my ability."
Major Varro was listening to the radio in the car as he waited outside the journalist's home. He had studied the man's routine for nearly a week and he knew that he would be arriving at his walk-up apartment in minutes. He was happy enough to see the impeachment vote carry in the House but, at the same time, he'd seen the willingness of the President and his allies to brazen through this – to simply deflect their violations of the Constitution as acts of ordinary politics. It was all simply enough.
He attempted to lay low, his face covered by a hood and hopefully hidden by the cover of darkness. He'd already taken care to wipe down every surface on the car – though he'd been careful, in the course of stealing it, to not wear gloves and attempt to leave no trace evidence of his presence behind.
When the journalist turned the corner, Varro visually scanned to make certain that no one else was obviously in the path of the fusillade he intended to let loose. Once had had done that, he robotically emptied the entire magazine of his rifle into the journalist at a range of just fifteen feet, leaving what was left of the man a torn, shattered, and bloody mess on the pavement before jumping into his car and speeding off to a vacant lot – one he was certain was not covered by any cameras – where he had stashed a second car, this one purchased in cash several months before. He jumped out of the stolen car, popped open the gas tank, and stuffed a rag into it that he then set on fire before jumping into the second car and speeding off into the night.
First Armored Brigade, Western Republic Army had formally become 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Western Republic Army, overall command of which had been handed to General Wayne. With the money flowing and the Federal Government now ejected from most of the Province of British Columbia (the provincial capital of Victoria having surrendered without a fight a week after the Second Battle of Vancouver), a major force was now being assembled for the drive to the East. In addition to the 1st Armored Division, the Western Republic Expeditionary Force now consisted of the 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions and two independent regiments of armored cavalry, created from a mix of foreign volunteers and ex-Soviet tanks that had been fairly cheaply acquired.
The new WRA, no longer able to be supplied largely with stolen American weapons and weapons acquired from Israeli stocks, was now largely forced to subsist upon the sort of weapons that could be quickly acquired from the global arms market. The result was sometimes a logistical nightmare, with infantry units being equipped with different rifle types and using several different types of incompatible ammunition. Likewise, the artillery assigned to the newly formed infantry units included everything from ex-Canadian Army model to heavy-duty ex-Soviet equipment dating to the era immediately after the Second World War.
Likewise, the Western Republic Air Force largely consisted of foreign pilots flying planes of Russian design. After some debate the MiG-29 had been chosen as the standard fighter-bomber of the WRAF due to the fact that, though it was now somewhat obsolescent, it was the most-modern aircraft that could be acquired on the open market in any sort of substantial quantity. The three squadrons worth of the MiGs, purchased by Praetorian's agents at often-inflated prices and then shipped by sea to the port of Vancouver, gave the Western Republic and adequate-if-weak air arm.
General Jackson was sitting in his headquarters reviewing the final plans for the first stage of the liberation of the rest of the West when General King stepped into the room.
"I know that this is the worst possible time for this, but I think that I have to go," announced King.
"Go?" asked Jackson. "We're getting ready to move 50,000 men across the fucking Rockies."
"I know – and I know that this situation has the potential to pay off fantastically, but I have some information that has to be handled in the most confidential possible way. Believe me, it'll be absolutely worth whatever losing me here means in the short-term."
Jackson looked up at him and asked, "Can you tell me about it?"
"Are you still planning on moving along the front-lines with the rest of this force when the offensive is launched?"
"Yes."
"Then," said King tactfully, "I'd better not."
"Fair enough," said Jackson. "Are the C-130s that we ordered still on track to arrive on time?"
What good is a murder if no one notices? Major Varro wondered this as he scanned the latest news reports. The mainstream media was reporting the murder of one of their own as a tragedy – but as an ordinary act of violence.
Did no one notice that I put thirty bullets into the motherfucker? Varro asked himself, burning with a quiet rage. Of course, in Was
hington, DC murder was no unusual thing – there was one practically every single day. Perhaps also the media did not wish to face the reality of his act. He had thought that it would speak for itself. Evidently it had not.
He attempted to send messages to the media claiming responsibility for the act. Unfortunately, he was the fourteenth person to do this and, consequently, was roundly ignored. Next time, he resolved, he'd have to make his message clearer.
"We might lose some votes in the Senate," Alexis Jensen noted softly, "if the economic situation continues to deteriorate."
President Warren grunted and turned over in bed.
"Some votes, sure – but we'd need to lose fifteen, provided that all of the Republicans vote aye, which I don't think is even a done deal yet."
"I suppose," Jensen said, "the question isn't whether or not the economy gets bad, but who people trust to take care of them through the bad times. I mean, when the Republican alternative is to throw the poor out on the streets, are they really going to turn to them?"
"Anyway, the real reason the economy is getting bad – as I've been saying to anyone who will listen – is greed. Individuals hoarding money. Corporations with Trillions in profits stashed overseas in order to avoid taxes. That's the real problem," said the President.
"Really," replied Jensen, "we ought to think of this as a moment of liberation. They've taken their best shot at you and failed. Given that, we ought to take it as a renewal of your mandate."
The Western Republic Air Force – now nearly one hundred planes strong – filled the night sky. The MiG-29s led the way, scanning ahead with their radars and maintaining a wary eye for any sign of the arrival of Federal aircraft. Nothing had been held back.
Lieutenant Colonel Stern, now formally enrolled as one of three WRAF squadron commanders, preferred the Fulcrum to the Floggers that he'd been stuck flying during his first days in Canada, but still – even with the upgrades and Western electronics hastily fitted into the MiG-29s during their conversion by a mixed team of WRAF ground crews and specialists employed by Praetorian International - they did not really compare to the modern Western fighters that he had flown for the IAF.
