The Fiery Trial

by Adam Yoshida

  "That... That would be easier, Mr. President," replied Kensington, shifting nervously in front of the desk.

  "That's fine," said Bryan, looking up at the Solicitor-General, "now what about this business in Seattle?"

  "The shooting of the protestor?" said Kensington.

  "Look, Madame Solicitor-General, I know that you folks at Justice are very busy, especially right now," said newly-minted White House Chief of Staff Jamal Anderson from the side of the desk, "but you need to keep your heads up and look around. #JusticeForHarris is the top hashtag on Twitter today and it was yesterday as well."

  "Right," said Kensington, "but we've looked into it. As regrettable as it is that the King County Attorney didn't proceed, I don't think that we have any jurisdiction over what, ultimately, is a local homicide."

  "I think that you're wrong there," said Anderson as he slapped a file down on the Presidential desk.

  "What's this?" asked Kensington as she picked up the file folder.

  "Ballistics, straight from the Seattle PD," replied Anderson as the Solicitor-General flipped through he file.

  "I don't understand what I'm looking at here," replied Kensington. Anderson grabbed the file from her hands, flipped to a particular page, and then slammed it down on the desk, pointing his finger at a sheet with numbers about McLean's gun.

  "There," said Anderson. Kensington looked at him quizzically.

  "Look at the measurements of the bore of the gun. Just over half an inch. By a fraction of a millimeter."

  "So?" said Kensington.

  "That makes it a 'destructive device' and hence a weapon of mass destruction under Federal Law," said Anderson.

  "That's pretty fucking thin... pardon me, Mr. President," replied Kensington.

  "We'd appreciate it if you looked into it," said the President with a bland smile.

  "Yes... Mr. President," said the Solicitor-General after a long pause as the President blankly stared at her. After an uncomfortable silence that persisted for nearly ten seconds, she finally took the cue and left the room as the President began to walk aimlessly around the perimeter of the Oval Office.

  "Jamal," said the President, the rate of his speech rising rapidly, "she definitely had a point. I'll admit that. There's not a lot there to justify a legal proceeding. We need to add urgency to the matter."

  "We've got our best spinners on it. Our friends in the media are all pretty much on the same page on this one," said the Chief of Staff.

  "I know that, but I think that we're going to need a little bit of extra help on this one. Do you remember that guy – the one who worked on the campaign in New Hampshire? The CIA guy? He wrote a book. It was pretty good. Did you read it?"

  "Yes, Mr. President."

  "Get him. I want to talk to him."

  The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

  General Richard Hall was a tired man. It was true enough that the majority of the armed forces were, so far as their personal politics went, Republicans. Indeed, General Hall had voted for the GOP candidate in every single Presidential election in which he had been eligible to vote. But the armed forces themselves were not a partisan institution. In his opinion it was vital that they remained exactly that way. As a result of this conviction, the Army Chief of Staff had spent the nine days since the assassination of President Warren in what appeared to him to be an increasingly futile effort to reign in the politicization of the military.

  "General," he said, "I shouldn't have to remind you that, as an officer of the United States Army, you have an obligation to follow the orders of your Commander-in-Chief as well as to ensure that adequate respect is displayed for the chain of command."

  The commander of the Third Infantry Division, Major General Gregory Starnes, looked straight ahead as Hall continued his lecture.

  "Holding mandatory lectures on the Constitution? How is that going to be taken in this moment of national trauma?"

  "General," replied Starnes, "the oath that I and every other man of the division swore was to the Constitution first and above all other things. I consider it a part of my duty as an officer to ensure that the men and women under my command are educated about every facet of their duties."

  "Cut the bullshit, General. You know exactly what I mean and you know why you can't just go about doing things like what you did. Yes, you swore an oath to the Constitution and I swore an oath to the Constitution as well, but that oath was to follow the Constitution, not to interpret it and educate others as to that interpretation. We both know that these lectures of yours were hardly unbiased."

  The tone of Starnes' voice dropped.

  "Richard, sometimes the truth is biased."

  "Greg," replied Hall, "I know that. But I also know what my duty is. There are riots going on all over this country every single night. People have been killed already. It might be that we're going to have to do something that we haven't done in decades and roll on in with active-duty soldiers to restore order in some places. If the Army is seen as being on one side or another, that means that we're going to have to shoot our way in to some places. Do you really want to have to try and move on Atlanta like we did on Baghdad twenty years ago?"

  "Never mind the fact that the people under you are just, in the end, ordinary men and women. Extraordinarily brave and noble examples of each, I will grant you. But, in the end, flawed in the same way that all humans are. If you shatter the unity of our military, not everyone is going to jump the same way. Do you want to have shootouts in barracks?"

  "Of course not," said Starnes, "but I do know that sometimes history demands that men make hard choices."

  "Ah," said Hall, "that's the problem. Because it isn't just about you. There are thousands of would-be great men and they'll all make their own hard choices and where does that leave us? We have the law and we have the Constitution – the Constitution that you, as you have so vividly reminded me, swore an oath to – so that we can settle these disputes without shooting at one another. Because, even if you and everyone else who thought one way – and you damned well know that I am in agreement with your politics, Greg – were to shoot their way to Constitutional restoration, why should the next lot respect the Constitution? Why won't the next disagreement end in bloodshed as well and the next and the one after that until some stronger hand steps in to make certain that there won't be any more disagreements for a while."

  "I don't know," Starnes finally replied, "I just know that this can't go on forever."

  "I think that you need to trust in democracy, General," said Hall.

  "Democracy?" Starnes spat back, "you mean a system where a handful of Ivy League elitists take control of every single institution of significance and run the country into the ground while serving their own ends by buying off everyone with an IQ below 90 or so by offering them "free" goods of all sorts? With all due respect, sir, I took an oath to the Constitution of the United States, not to the whims of the mob."

  "General," said Hall, "I respect your right to your individual beliefs, but if you were to say such a thing in public, I would be forced to relieve you immediately. You understand that, right?"

  "Yes sir," replied Starnes.

  "Ok," said Hall, "get back to Georgia and run your Division, General. Knock this nonsense off."

  Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Manhattan

  "I think that we're pretty much out of ammunition," Daniel Hampton quietly admitted.

  Looking at the numbers scrolling across his screen, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recalled what Ernest Hemingway had written: that people go bankrupt, "slowly, then all at once." In the months since the President had availed himself of the so-called "Platinum Coin option" to evade the debt limit, the global marketplace had progressively lost confidence in the U.S. Dollar and dollar-denominated assets. Hampton had known that the trouble was serious from day one; he had begun to suspect that it was irreversible when the oil-backed bonds issued by the so-called "Western Republic", the new nation created as a result of
the revolution in western Canada, had begun to sell at a lower yield than Treasury Bonds. Increasingly the only buyer for dollar-denominated assets was the Federal Reserve itself.

  "I understand numbers. I have an MBA from Harvard, I've worked on Wall Street for twenty-seven years, and I'm the President of a Federal Reserve Bank," he announced to the morning staff meeting, "and I have no fucking clue what is going on here. Do any of you?"

  Around the table he saw only blank, sad stares.

  "Well?" he asked.

  "Fuck," he slammed his hands down on the table.

  "Perhaps," ventured one of the members of the Board of Directors and the CEO of a fading department store, "some confidence would be recovered if the civil disorders could be brought under control."

  "And how do you propose that we do that from here? Should I buy a taser and march out into the streets and join the police?" asked Hampton.

  "I don't know," said the CEO quietly, "I mean... I don't know that I have any confidence that this can be turned around. Scratch that... I know that I don't have confidence. We'll pulling money and assets out as fast as we can. Everyone in the business community is. Between inflation, lawlessness by the Administration, and now the rising tide of civic disorder, I think that more people are taking physical possession of gold than are buying anything valued in dollars. And, frankly, they're moving that overseas, since we've seen the government decide to confiscate gold before."

  "That's what's feeding this problem," another members of the Board, the leader of a large public sector union, furiously charged, "that, quite frankly, is downright unpatriotic."

  "I have shareholders to think about," replied the CEO.

  "Fuck you," one of the other members of the board interjected, stabbing his finger forward in the direction of the union president, "I know for an absolute Goddamned fact that your pension fund is moving assets overseas as fast as it physically can."

  "We have an obligation to ensure that we can service the pensions of our members," the union leader meekly offered in response before gaining steam, "but there's a difference between investing and simply moving money overseas in order to avoid one's duties as a citizen. It's the difference between getting a deferment and dodging the draft."

  The Oval Office, The White House

  "These numbers are catastrophic," the Secretary of the Treasury announced flatly. The latest figures, not yet released to the public, indicated that tax collection had fallen fully 23% short of projections for the last month, indicative of a collapse in economic activity.

  "Well," said the President, "we always expected that our program would meet resistance."

  "Yes, Mr. President," agreed the Secretary, "but this is impossible to overcome by any sort of conventional means. Money is being moved out of the country at an alarming rate and people are choosing to stay home rather than get caught up in the riots and the violence on the streets. Retail sales are down more than fall in tax revenue. Employment figures are getting worse by the hour."

  "Then we need to take more robust action," replied the President.

  "Mr. President, we're doing everything that we can and then some. The Federal Reserve banks are underwriting most of the economic activity – as least that which is being reported – that is going on in this country today."

  "What you have to recognize, Mr. Secretary, is that this is an all-out effort by the oligarchs to crush progress. It's been going on for years but it's been intensifying as we've gotten closer to really achieving something in this country and to breaking their power. That's why President Warren died and it's for that cause that we must continue to struggle."

  "Don't get me wrong, Mr. President, I fully support the notion of making the rich and the corporations pay their fair share – I'm just worried about the practicality of it."

  "This isn't about the economy-as-it-was or America-as-it-was. Not anymore. Not ever, really," said the President, "this is about building a new America. A better and fairer America."

  "I understand that, Mr. President, but we still have to consider the fact that if this crisis goes on, then some pretty big companies aren't going to be able to make payroll soon. There will have to be massive layoffs."

  "That's old economy thinking, Craig," said the President, "I want you to start thinking about how this is going to work in a new economy. It doesn't make any sense to me that we have tens of millions out of work and people getting laid off by the millions when these corporations are sitting on Trillions of dollars in cash. Sometimes in life, there are simple answers. I think it was Reagan who said that, actually. Not easy, but simple."

  U.S. Senate

  "All of us have good reason to denounce civil disturbances of all sorts," explained Senator Dianne Dawson of New York, "including those that we have seen in recent days in Seattle. Yet, at the same time, we all understand the anger that drives people to such rash acts. The murder of a President. Atrocities committed against innocent protestors. The indifference of authorities to those responsible for such acts."

  "Yes, Mr. President, let us denounce violence – let us denounce violence in all of its forms. Let us denounce the excited teenager who breaks a window in a rage against injustice. That is wrong. None of us can excuse that. But let us also denounce those who, safely ensconced in television studios and personal mansions, egg on deranged individuals to commit grotesque acts of violence. Let he denounce the economic violence of those who would make billions by shipping American jobs overseas and then shielding the profits from taxation so as to avoid even having to pay for the benefits that the workers who they laid off now require. Let us denounce the act of selectively refusing to prosecute those who have committed acts of cold-blooded murder simply because the targets of those acts were committing acts of vandalism. A burned car does not justify murder."

  The Democratic Senator from New York, appointed to fill the seat after her predecessor had been caught up in a scandal that had somehow managed to involve cocaine trafficking, homosexual prostitution, and inter-city bus services run by Chinese immigrants, had previously managed to earn herself two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives by spouting liberal platitudes and looking good on television. Indeed, the thirty-seven year-old Senator's good looks, blonde hair, and astonishing figure – especially when combined with her initials – had managed to earn her more than a few derisive (and, let's face it: often sexist and bordering upon misogynistic) comments from her opponents. She played this for maximum advantage, both using her looks for maximum advantage while using proxies to accuse anyone who criticized her for anything she had ever done or said of being a woman-hating bigot.

  Indeed, those who accused her of being a person of average or below-average intelligence who had managed to succeed in politics based upon her looks alone rather missed the point. Dianne Dawson could have easily used her natural assets and talents to gain a life of ease without effort. Senator Dawson had chosen a life in politics because she was smart and ambitious: she chose to speak primarily in liberal platitudes because it allowed her to avoid being pinned down on policy specifics and to cast moderate votes without ever being called to account for it by her left-wing constituents or the national media. This, she knew, would be of tremendous assistance when she sought to fulfill her ambition of becoming the first woman to become the President of the United States.

  "What's the latest from Seattle?" she asked Melanie McCullough, her Deputy Press Secretary and close alliterative compatriot as soon as she stepped off the Senate floor.

  "More window smashing. A little bit of tear gas. The police tried to arrest some people, but they turned them back."

  The Senator shook her head.

  "This is getting dangerous. I don't know if the passions that are being unleashed here are so easily controlled."

  "A President was murdered. So was another innocent man," said the aide.

  "I know. I know. Anything from back home?"

  "The NYPD have the city locked up pretty tight. I don't think that they'd
let anything get out of control like it did in Seattle."

  "Alright," replied the Senator, walking three steps ahead of her aide, "this is another day. What's next?"

  The Oval Office, The White House

  The President was watching himself on television.

  "We all regret this awful act. But this is not the way for anyone to vent their anger. A full review is being conducted by the Department of Justice..."

  He turned off the set and turned to the man in front of him.

  "Mr. President," said the man, turning his eyes from side to side, "usually these things are done at arms-length, for obvious reasons."

  "I know... But I don't know if I have any intermediaries that can be trusted with the sort of work that you do. This really is the most lonely place in the world."

  "Have you had this place swept?"

  "We keep it pretty clean," said Bryan.

  "No. No. For listening devices."

  "Umm... I suppose so. I mean, there are people..." said the President, but before he could finish his sentence, the man had pulled an electronic device out of his bag and began to walk around the edge of the room, waving it in the air.

  Then-Governor Bryan had first met the man, who went by the name Jack Deckard, at a campaign stop in New Hampshire nearly six years earlier. Deckard was an ex-CIA operative who had written a best-selling book discussing how the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community had been used to enhance corporate profits, rather than to serve the interests of the American people.

  Deckard had been an early and eager volunteer for the nascent Bryan campaign and had somehow quickly obtained control of the campaign's security apparatus. The intelligence community, he had explained to the Governor, was a tool the corporate interests that really ran the country and were out to sabotage him as they had done to every other true progressive candidate for more than half a century. The hidden government of America would do whatever they could to stop a genuine progressive like Bryan from reaching the White House: they would blackmail him, they would drug him, they would poison him, they would even fabricate records and use them to destroy him. As the campaign's self-appointed chief of security Deckard made it his mission in life to uncover all of the myriad conspiracies that were directed against his candidate.