by Adam Yoshida
Too soon it was over. Jackson was invited to a number of parties that evening, but he planned on only putting in an appearance at the official ball. When asked why this was, he would explain that it was because the soldiers deserved to enjoy themselves and that they would not be able to do so fully if they were in the presence of senior officers. Unofficially, it was simply the case that he did not enjoy parties or social occasions in general and now that his rank permitted him to dodge them, he would do so with alacrity. In any case, the combination of his personal prestige and the vast wealth that he now possessed as a result of the appreciation of his stock in Praetorian had opened up other avenues of enjoyment that had been mostly closed to him in earlier days.
General Jackson wasn’t sure if his new attributes made him more attractive to women or merely gave him the confidence to approach women he would have previously never dared to speak to unless first spoken to, but his status as the greatest military hero in the West and a billionaire had let him pursue one of the hidden passions that arouse from his complex personality: having sex with actresses.
Of course, the General’s politics made him – international fame and wealth or not – anathema to many. But not all.
“Those fuckers don’t know whom they’re dealing with,” said the General, stabbing his finger through the air as he returned to the bedroom in a towel, resuming a rant that had been stopped some thirty-two minutes earlier.
“Which fuckers?” asked Rachel Sanderson, who had become mildly famous for playing a doctor on a network television series half a decade earlier, as she lay propped up against the headboard.
“All of them,” replied Jackson, “in the Parliament, in the City Council... I mean, don’t they know who I am and who my friends are?”
“I can snap my fingers,” he continued, “and I’ll have ten thousand men and a billion dollars at my disposal. We can march into the Parliament building and dictate terms to them through the barrel of a gun.”
“I thought that you were a libertarian,” said Sanderson softly.
“That doesn’t mean that I have to stand by and be humiliated,” said Jackson.
“Let’s think this through logically,” she said, “the people out here know what you did for them. Why don’t you just run for President in the next election? I think that you could win.”
“I probably could,” said Jackson, sitting at the edge of the bed, “but that’s not a complete solution. We had a whole Goddamned revolution and the Vancouver City Council – on getting their city restored to them through the blood and sacrifice of this army – went right back to planning new bike lanes. The problem is that society itself is sick. I wish that we could dissolve the people and elect a new one.”
“I think that’s a little over-dramatic,” Rachel replied.
“Is it? We overthrew a government that had endured for more than a century and a half because of its willingness to use force to attempt to confiscate our wealth, and yet the new government in Vancouver is debating doing more or less the same thing already. It hasn’t even been a year! And can you really blame them? It’s what the people want, after all, and that’s what democracy is about.
“The problem is that it’s increasingly clear to me that universal suffrage is the greatest mistake that Western Civilization ever made. By all means, we should have liberty and representative government, but the idea of one-man, one-vote is founded upon the foolish and provably false notion that everyone has enough wisdom to participate in the government of the nation. Churchill said that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with an average voter. How long do you have to talk to the below-average voter to grasp their basic unsuitability to any role of trust and profit? It was one thing for us to have one person, one vote as our system when the role of the government was appropriately small but, as it grows larger, it becomes inevitable that the state will therefore be controlled by a coalition between those below the median who realize that by cutting a deal with the right amoral bastards in the other groups, they can trade their vote for something of value.”
“So, what are you going to do about it? Roll your tanks back into Vancouver?”
“No,” Jackson shook his head, “I can show them that I can play the fucking game too.”
Seattle, WA
Deep down Governor Mitchell Randall had hoped to have nothing further to do with the Seth McLean/Harris Folsom affair. The case was proceeding towards trial in a Federal Courtroom and the protests over the matter had largely burned themselves out. The Governor had hoped to put the whole awful business behind him and prepare to run for re-election. But any good politician knew that when your largest campaign contributor called, you had damned well better answer.
“Thanks for meeting me here, Governor,” said Augustus King as Randall entered King’s suite in the Four Seasons Hotel.
“Not a problem, Mr. King,” said the Governor guardedly.
“Take a seat,” King gestured towards a chair that had been carefully set out.
“I know that you wanted to talk about the Seth McLean matter, but I have to say that I don’t know that there’s that much that I can do about that at this particular point. That’s wholly a Federal matter.”
“The trial itself surely is,” agreed King, “but there are other elements and greater issues at play here.”
“Oh, I know that, Mr. King,” replied Randall.
“That’s very good,” said King, “because we need your help.”
“Who, in this particular case, is we?” asked the Governor.
“Freedom has many friends in this country,” replied King.
“Well,” said the Governor, “what would you have me do at this juncture?”
“I want the State of Washington to join a coalition of other states that are directly challenging the unconstitutional actions of the Federal Government. Not only in a legal sense, but in a political sense as well.”
King gripped his hands together and then spread them apart, grabbing the arms of his chair.
“To be even more exact, we want you to lead the State of Washington – and others – towards the calling of an Article V Convention to propose Amendments to the Constitution, specifically for the purpose of limiting the powers of the Federal Government.”
“I don’t have a majority in the State Legislature,” pointed out the Governor.
“Let me know what you need to make one for this,” replied King.
New York, NY
“How much money did we make investing in the Western Revolution?” asked Augustus King over the video link.
“I’ll grant that, Bill,” replied the former Secretary of State, sighing deeply, “but this is a much graver matter than that.”
“Is it?” asked King.
“This is what we do,” continued the soldier. “We are national turnaround artists. We find struggling nations – or would-be nations – with political systems in chaos and we invest in those nations and take a direct hand in guiding those places back to order and prosperity. It just happens that today the nation that requires our assistance is the United States of America.”
“Jeeesus,” said the former Governor of Mississippi, “that’s just plain fucking nuts.”
“No,” replied King, “it’s not. I’d remind you that, in total, we have the better part of a trillion dollars in assets sloshing around the world – that’s an awful Goddamned lot of money even with inflation – and there’s no way that we’re going to be able to preserve that value if the United States maintains its present course. Sure, we can – and we are – converting everything that we can and moving it out of the country, but there’s a lot of real estate, plants, and what have you that we just can’t move.”
“You have to consider the possibility,” noted the Governor, “that this President is going to come for us.”
“Oh, I have. We’ll be ready for that,” said King to skeptical looks from around the table.
“Look, gentlemen,” he said, “I f
ounded this company with a billion dollars and my training in the Army. I did it because I could see the way the world was headed and I wanted to do everything in my power to change that. I knew, even back then, that real change could only be driven by those with military and financial power, so I chose to turn what I had – and I had enough to retire and spend my life in luxury – into something that could really make a difference.
“It’s funny, you know. You go to school in this country and they’re all about ‘making a difference’ and ‘changing the world’, but they don’t seem to recognize that every change of significance that has ever happened has occurred as a result of the strange nexus between lawyers, guns, and money. Well, now we have plenty of all three and we are going to use them.”
The ex-Secretary shook his head.
“In for a penny...” he muttered before asking, “what do you need?”
“I already have it. Billions in cash. This President is attempting to extend executive power in extra-Constitutional ways, by abusing the Justice Department, by taking advantage of every loophole that exists in the law to print or to steal money... It’s only a matter of time before he goes further than that. We need to fund the legal defenses of those who are victims of judicial abuse. We need to organize Federal politicians and state governments who are opposed to the extension of executive power. In the meantime, I want to channel money back into America. Everyone else is selling, now is the time for us to buy. Let’s buy land, buy whole companies – anything like that. Not securities, though. I don’t know what’s going to happen to those.”
NBC News, New York City, NY
“...This just in to NBC News here in New York City. This is breaking news that’s just been released by the Associated Press,” explained the afternoon anchor as NBC and every other news network of consequence broke into its regular programming.
“The Justice Department has announced that a special Grand Jury in Washington, DC has handed out some seven-hundred-and-eighteen indictments against individuals charged with conspiracy in relation to the assassination of President Warren.”
“This,” continued the anchor, turning to the network’s legal analyst, “is just really staggering news. I know that all of us were aware of the continued investigation and the empaneling of a Grand Jury to look into events around the assassination, but this indictment... Which covers a mix of political and media figures as well as private citizens... That’s just really without precedent. Is it not?”
“It is,” agreed the analyst, “but the government believes that it has a strong case here. The position taken throughout this process by the Justice Department has been that those who engaged in what they describe as ‘eliminationist rhetoric’ – that is to say that words that could be taken as suggestive of extreme measures against President Warren – were potentially guilty of Federal Crimes under existing law...”
Fox News, New York City
“This seems a stretch, at best, and a dangerous one,” said the anchor.
“Well, yes and no,” replied the columnist from the New York Post, “this is an untested area of the law. What the Justice Department contends is that some forms of rhetoric, even if they stopped short of actually calling for the death of President Warren, qualified as incitement and inducement under Federal Law.”
“Oh, come on,” said one of the other panelists.
“I’m not saying that I agree, but hear me out,” replied the Post columnist.
“What they’re saying is that if you went and wrote something like, ‘this President has to be stopped at any cost,’ that’s equivalent to a mob boss talking about a witness with one of his lieutenants and saying something like, ‘it would be to our advantage if he stopped talking.’ There have been cases like that, where criminal figures have been convicted of conspiracy and what have you without actually issuing direct orders. The Justice Department’s theory of the case is that this worked in a similar fashion.”
“That’s absurd. This is the biggest attempt by the Federal Government to trespass against free speech since the First World War. Perhaps even all the way back to the Alien and Sedition Acts.”
“Well, look,” ventured the lone Democratic panelist, looking uncomfortable, “reading these indictments, I would note that the prosecutors have been very careful in this. They haven’t gone in and arrested every Republican in the country or anything of the sort. My reading of this is that they’ve carefully only gone after those whose comments have crossed the line from ordinary political commentary into the sort of words that might actually incite violence. And, I’ll remind you, that we’ve only moved so far as the indictment stage – the whole of the judicial process has yet to play out in this case, but it will be allowed to do so.”
MSNBC Studios, Washington, DC
“...It’s long past time that we take a real look at the state of the right in this country,” said the MSNBC host, “years ago, when Gabrielle Giffords was shot, a lot of people said that we had to look at the atmosphere of hate that was being allowed to build up – that was being fostered by certain individuals for commercial gain. I’m glad that the Justice Department has finally approached this matter with the seriousness that it deserves.”
“Indeed,” agreed the former Democratic Congressman from Ohio, “it’s long past time that we recognized – as has been upheld by many courts in this land – that the Constitution protects free speech, not hate speech.”
“We see it time and time again,” continued the host, “where people on the right commit these spectacular acts of violence and no one has done anything. I just think that it’s sad that it took the death of President Warren to finally bring about a true examination of the atmosphere of hate that really does exist here in America. When people say hateful things about gays, lesbians, transsexuals, Muslims – all of the groups that Republicans hate – they often act to trigger acts of violence in others. Now, I’m not saying that all of that is intentional or that all Republicans condone the murder of minorities, but it’s definitely something that needs to be looked into in an official sense.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Crisis
The Oval Office, The White House
President Kevin Bryan read through his morning press briefing with satisfaction. One of the great advantages of the severe polarization of the country, he realized, was that partisans on his side were apt to defend him, no matter what he did and partisans on the other were going to attack him under any circumstances. The rhetoric on both sides was so continuous and overheated that the apolitical middle didn’t really understand what was going on and, therefore, were prone to split the difference. As a result of this, the mass arrests of political conservatives conducted by the Justice Department, while they didn’t poll particularly well, had also failed to arouse additional opposition.
The economy was more of a problem. Its free-fall continued without abatement. Even here, however, the President benefited from the lowered expectations of the American people: everything had been so terrible for so long that people were immune to bad news. This presented him with an opportunity.
“This is iffy, at best, Mr. President,” said the Secretary of the Treasury on reading the Executive Order drafted by a junior attorney at the White House Counsel’s office.
“Perhaps,” conceded the President, “but it really just needs to be plausible. Is it that?”
“I suppose,” replied the Secretary after a pause.
“Will it work?” the President pressed.
“Define work.”
“Look,” the President got up from his chair and walked around to sit on the desk, “the question is whether or not this will be able to be enacted.”
“My opinion – as the Secretary of the Treasury and as an attorney – is that this will create a mess of litigation unlike anything that we’ve seen in recent memory. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act was meant for, you know, seizing a Japan’s assets after a Pearl Harbor or an Iran after a hostage crisis. It hasn
’t be applied to individual companies before on the theory that their business practices constitute a hostile act in and of themselves. I’ve held to your orders and not circulated the draft, but I expect that you would get the same answer from the lawyers over at the Department.”
“The counsel’s office has looked into this question,” said the President, “and we think that we have a work-around.”
He grabbed another sheet of paper from his desk and handed it to the Secretary who paused for several seconds to read it.
“John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it,” commented the Secretary softly.
“Something like that,” said the President.
The Secretary whistled, “that’s bold. I’ll give it that. But what happens after that?”
“The greatest opportunities,” said the President, who had begun walking in circles around the perimeter of the Oval Office, “come in moments of maximum crisis. We all agree – at least in this room we agree – that economic reform can’t wait. Therefore we are going to create a situation where economic reform is the only answer to the questions at hand.”
Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC
“Alright, shut up!” yelled Terrance Rickover over the din of the whole House Republican Conference speaking at once.
“We need order,” said Michael Halverson, the Speaker of the House, raising his hands in the air to no avail.
“Fuck,” muttered Rickover. He picked up a book from one of the desks and hurled it into one of the television monitors that hung in the front of the room, shattering it and allowing quiet to descend upon the place.
