The Second Civil War- The Complete History

by Adam Yoshida

  “Ok,” he said, “I know that everyone is upset. But we can’t have this meeting if everyone else won’t shut the fuck up.”

  The Majority Leader paused for a moment before calling on the lone Republican from Massachusetts.

  “Yeah. Go, Cal.”

  “They came and arrested a talk show host from my district. They claimed that a broadcast of his where he said that the “President is violating both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and we have to stop him” constituted incitement to murder.”

  “Look,” replied Rickover, “I know. There are seven hundred and seventeen other equally outrageous stories.”

  “Well, what are we going to do about it?” shouted a Representative from Missouri to general agreement.

  “We need to consider all of our options,” said the Speaker, “but I believe that we should let the justice system take its course. Yes, these indictments have been brought and there is reason to consider them to be illegitimate, but I have confidence in our judges and juries...”

  “Come on!” called out one Congressman to general agreement. Rickover stood up.

  “With all due respect to the Speaker, I agree with you: there needs to be a robust response to this. I have one: let’s shut down the government.”

  “That hasn’t worked out so well for us in the past,” pointed out Michael Nelson.

  “I understand that,” said Rickover, “but it’s also the real power that the Congress has. At least, without a super-majority. We can refuse the power of the purse to this President unless he assents to laws that would ban his activities.”

  “The President has already repeatedly proven to be willing to exceed the Constitution and that he’s more than willing to ignore laws passed by this Congress. What’s to prevent him from spending without a budget or from signing the resolutions that we pass and then ignoring the restrictions set out in them?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Rickover, “we’ll have to cross that particular bridge when we arrive at it.”

  “I think,” interjected Speaker Halverson, “that this is still a little bit premature. I don’t think that there’s a public appetite for extreme measures. The truth be told, the polling still says that the President has some support for his crackdown on what he insists on referring to as ‘hate speech.’ I don’t agree with any of that, but I think we have to recognize that there is that sentiment out there in the country.”

  “Bullshit!” shouted one Congressman. The Speaker raised his hands.

  “I didn’t say that I agreed, Jack – but it exists,” maintained the Speaker.

  There were murmurs throughout the assembled crowd.

  “Look,” Michael Nelson took the floor, “there are times when the acts of a tyrant – and I use that word knowingly and advisedly – become intolerable. I believe that this is one of those times and that, in view of that, we are now have an obligation to more than simply talk these matters over eternally.”

  “What would you have us do?” said Halverson, “we’ve opposed this President with a full legislative program, just as we did his predecessor. We even tried to impeach the last guy – as you were fully for – and we are in no better a place today for any of it. I don’t know that there’s anything more that we can do.”

  “Nothing more that you can do, old man,” sneered Nelson. He tried to speak further but could not make himself heard over the uproar.

  Olympia, Washington

  Governor Mitchell Randall hadn’t asked what had motivated a half-dozen Democratic legislators to flip their vote in favor of endorsing an Article V convention to amend the Constitution. He was pretty sure that he didn’t want to know. That convention – with news that Iowa had also passed a resolution calling for a general convention to propose amendments to the Constitution – had been the biggest news in the land until just before the close of business on Friday. Then a terse release from the White House Press Office had caused the world in general – and Mitchell Randall’s world in particular – to explode.

  “In accordance with the provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the President has issued a number of orders that have the effect of seizing the assets of hostile foreign entities that have engaged in acts of economic warfare against the United States,” was the complete text of the release, which was followed five minutes later by another announcing that the President would address the nation in an hour.

  “I’ve just gotten the call,” the CEO of a major software company was screaming over one phone line, “they’ve seized every fucking asset that they could tie to any of our foreign subsidiaries. We’re talking billions of fucking dollars. No one here has any idea how the fuck our operations even work tomorrow!”

  “This is out of control!” a talk show host was shouting on the television, “this is wholly out of fucking...” a bleep came a second too late, “control and we’ll be lucky to get out of this in one piece.”

  The Governor sat down in his chair and allowed himself to physically sink into the cushions. He was generally regarded as a moderate Republican in his politics. In fact, he had managed to get the inside track on his opponent with some voters in the last General Election by pointing out that he had supported the legalization of homosexual marriage in Washington State whereas his Democratic opponent had been against it. He was certainly no radical or revolutionary in his political orientation. Yet, even so, the actions of this Administration were pushing him to adopt views that just a few months earlier would have been considered shocking or radical. No one wanted to hold a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution because they were satisfied with the status quo.

  “What if it doesn’t work?” he said aloud to no one in particular.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say, Governor?” asked Sally Magnussen, his deputy Press Secretary.

  The Governor pointed at the television.

  “Sally,” he said, “for the first time in my adult life I am genuinely afraid for the future of this country. Its survival – at least in its present form – depends upon our ability to communicate and compromise. And if we can’t do that... Then what?”

  “I mean,” he continued, “if this President – and this President does speak for millions – believes that he has an absolute mandate to continue spending indefinitely because he believes that the most fundamental obligation of the government is to continue paying benefits to people and, further, if this President and his supporters believe that it is acceptable if they must exceed the strictest bounds of the Constitution and the laws in order to do so... And if those of us on the other side believe that this President, by his actions, is destroying liberty and, in fact, creating a dictatorship... Where does it end?”

  Washington, DC

  Like tens of millions of others all around the world, Christopher Sorensen and Sarah Watkins were glued to the television waiting for the President to speak. The junior lawyer and the elementary school teacher had shared a home for only a few months. Like tens of millions of other Americans they, despite their co-habitation, did not share identical political opinions. And, like many of those tens of millions, they were arguing over just which channel to watch insofar as the different channels represented wholly different versions of reality.

  “...This is simply a usurpation without any precedent in the history of the United States,” said the Fox News host.

  “But not without precedent elsewhere,” one of the guests glumly chimed in.

  “No,” agreed the host, “this is the kind of behavior that you would expect to see from a Latin American dictatorship... From a Fidel Castro or a Hugo Chavez.”

  “And it remains to be seen whether the courts will uphold this,” noted the Fox legal analyst.

  “And it remains to be seen whether the President will even accept the rulings of the court!” interjected another of the guests.

  Sarah grabbed the remote and changed the channel.

  “...Given the continued flight of trillions – literally
trillions – of dollars of capital from this country, money that was earned by companies doing business in this country and which was then moved overseas in all sorts of dodgy games to avoid taxation, I don’t see how this was anything other than inevitable,” said the MSNBC anchor.

  “These companies,” agreed one guest, “took trillions of dollars from the pockets of Americans. Then they moved them overseas in order to avoid taxes. Now they’re taking these trillions – trillions of American dollars – and they’re pulling them out of the market to avoid paying their fair share. I don’t think that there’s a way to describe this as other than an act of economic warfare against the United States and, in that light, the action of the President is wholly appropriate.”

  “Let’s go back,” said Christopher.

  “Fine,” Sarah pouted.

  “...This is a part of a pattern of behavior by this un-elected President,” said the guest on Fox, “of unconstitutional acts by this President, who is relying upon the slowness and weakness of the courts and the fact that polls show that he has, if not majority support, then at least enough support to make impeaching him impossible.”

  “Not just this President,” emphasized another guest, “but this Administration and its predecessor. The problem is that, in the absence of a majority in the Congress dedicated to upholding the Constitution – regardless of partisan considerations – than there is no effective check upon the power of the President. And then what?”

  “Look,” said Sarah, speaking over the host, “I don’t see what’s so wrong about this. There is a law passed that says that he can do something like this and the country needs money. Who else is going to pay for teachers and the police?”

  “First of all,” sighed Christopher in response, “those things aren’t the responsibility of the Federal Government – or at least they aren’t supposed to be. They’re supposed to fall within the control of state and local governments. Second – the problem is just like that last guy was saying: if the President is free to take existing laws and either ignore provisions or invent new ones that aren’t supported by the text, than the President has become a dictator.”

  “But the President only has to do that because the Congress won’t pass the laws the people want...”

  “That’s why we have a fucking Congress, Sarah,” he slammed his fist down on the table, “we don’t have a Congress to do what the President wants. Every single member of the House and Senate has their own electorate that put them in office and they’re doing their jobs as they’re supposed to under the Constitution.”

  “All of these laws and technicalities don’t do anything to help the poor, or hungry kids, or – well, anyone except for the rich,” said Sarah.

  “That’s not why we have a government. We have a government to protect or liberties from people – either here or abroad – who would curtail them. That is the essential purpose of the government, not to control the distribution of resources or to do any of the fine and worthy things you’re always talking about. That’s charity, not government.”

  The Oval Office, The White House

  President Kevin Bryan was circling his desk as the CEOs of a quarter of the Fortune 500 shouted into their speakerphones all at once.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” the President boomed, speaking at a rapid rate as the controllers silenced every participant in the call other than him, “I understand that you believe that you followed the rules. And perhaps you followed such so-called rules as existed. Whether they were fair or not is another question altogether, but I’ll defer it. But the rules of the game have changed.”

  The controller released every other microphone at once, letting a hundred and fifteen voices turn the audio into an utterly indecipherable mess. The President hopped and clapped with delight as he allowed the cacophony to persist for a full minute before resuming control of the call.

  “The Federal Government is here to serve the people and, to the degree that it means helping you as well, I fully intend to do just that. In serving the people I’ve used every trick that is available to me under Federal Law, but now I need your help. The President can Constitutionally use existing law to raise new money for already-approved expenditures, but I can’t begin the kind of spending that you’re going to need.”

  The President signaled to free the audio feeds once again as he fell back in his chair and laughed for thirty seconds before beginning to speak once more.

  “Yes, indeed, our goal is to preserve the jobs of the American people and to do that we will work with you. Of course, in order to ensure that we get value for taxpayers’ money, there are going to have to be some terms and conditions...”

  Dirksen Senate Office Building

  “I understand that, believe me. I’ll do my best,” said Senator Dianne Dawson as she ended her call with the CEO of the Bank of America.

  “Jesus,” she breathed as she dropped her phone on the desk with a thud.

  “There are more call-backs to make, Senator,” said her scheduler as Dawson stretched out in her chair.

  “At this point, what difference does it make? Everyone is fucking frightened, and there’s not much that I can say until I know what the President is fucking up to. He hasn’t said a word about this to anyone on the damned Hill.”

  “I wish that I knew what the fuck he was playing at,” said Melanie McCullough, nominally Senator Dawson’s Deputy Press Secretary but actually her most trusted aide.

  “I wish that he knew what the fuck he was playing at,” said Dawson, “the only Goddamned reason why Henry Warren put him on the ticket was to solidify the votes of disgruntled liberals. No one ever thought that that nutcase would run the country. Certainly, the party wasn’t going to back him for President the next time around, no matter what he thought.”

  “What’s he going to do next?”

  “Who the fuck knows? He bounced the Senate with this stuff – and he’s struck enough of a populist chord that we can hardly just run away from him. He has the wheel and he’s going to take us all for a ride.”

  New York, NY

  The Board of Directors of Praetorian were conducting an emergency meeting via a secure video conference. During the preceding years, Praetorian had built up its own private communications network that was not linked to the regular internet in any way, shape, or form. Instead the system used a series of peer-to-peer satellite connections together with a closely guarded and limited number of hardware units that had access.

  “We managed to get out pretty securely,” noted King glumly, “we’ve been moving money beyond the reach of the U.S. Government for years now and so I think that the total assets frozen on our end are limited to a few billion dollars.”

  “Just a few billion?” asked the former Secretary of State with a sharp tone.

  “Yes,” confirmed King, “just a few billion. Given all that we control and the fact that we needed to keep some money controlled by foreign subsidiaries in places where the Federal Government has reach in order to pay expenses, we’ve gotten off pretty lightly. There are a lot of companies that have lost significant portions of their total assets.”

  “Actually,” King continued, “we stand to make a substantial amount of money on the upswing. Though we don’t know the full sweep of what the President plans to do here, he can only touch money that’s ‘foreign’ in this context. That means that he can’t, unless he intends to go even further beyond the law in a way that he really doesn’t have any legal means to do so – touch our purely domestic assets and also we’re going to see very large gains on all of the precious metals and resources that we’re holding.”

  “Hmmm...” said the former Governor of Mississippi, going through the papers in front of him, “this makes the purchase of all of those Canadian banks seem like a better decision than it did at the time.”

  “He’s about to start,” said the former Secretary.

  The Oval Office, The White House

  “Good evening, my fellow Americans,” President Kevin
Bryan began speaking, his hands gravely folded on the Resolution desk in front of him, “I am speaking to you tonight to explain several extraordinary measures that I have been required to take in order to ensure the continued financial survival of our nation.

  “For decades we have struggled with a core problem: the growth of income inequality as exacerbated by the arrival of the modern cycle of globalization. Different people attribute this to different causes and almost everyone has a point. The increase of inequality is driven by greed, to be certain, but it is also accelerated by international trade, the newfound mobility of capital, and the startling increases in productivity that we have seen in recent decades.

  “Last month a new factory opened in Alabama. It uses advanced 3D printers to assemble parts for a new generation of Hondas. Decades ago such a factory would have employed several thousand people. This one employs one hundred and six – all either highly paid specialists or very lowly paid manual laborers. This factory was built to supply parts for another factory of which very much the same is true.

  “A lot of money for the people at the top and a little for people at the bottom and not very much in-between. This pattern has been repeated all across our country.

  “How do we assure the prosperity of the American people through this change? Some would say that we should adopt a winner-take-all, sink-or-swim philosophy. But I don’t believe that that is what the American people want and that they have said as much by the election and then the re-election of this Administration and its predecessor.

  “I believe that the modern economy requires the government to take a more active role in ensuring that fairness, empathy, and respect remain at the core of our society.

  “Now, others take an opposite view. And, in so doing, they have gone to extraordinary lengths in an attempt to thwart the desires of the American people. The Congress has repeatedly attempted to use every trick in the book in order to force broad and across-the-board reductions in spending that would be devastating to the majority of Americans. My predecessor found a way around this form of blackmail by using the existing laws of this country in such a way as to evade Congressional obstructionism. Indeed, as it was that action that set off the storm of hatred that led to his impeachment and, eventually, to his assassination as well, it might even be said that he paid for his efforts with his life.