PEOPLE’S
REPUBLIC
A Novel By
Kurt Schlichter
ISBN: 978-0-9884029-3-5
ASIN: B01M0H7WQZ
Version 092616d
Text Copyright © 2016 Kurt Schlichter
Cover Images © 2016 Kurt Schlichter
Cover Design by @SaltyHollywood
PRAISE FOR
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC
Kurt Schlichter’s People’s Republic is a surreal, fast-paced journey through a dramatically different America but less than a generation away: a flag with fewer stars, crack-shot Mormons, “militant climate change deniers,” trendy genericism, cat tacos, iPhone 16s, “the border in Kentucky”, rote protests, “Harry Reid International Airport” and eerie new definitions of “red lies”, “Indian country” and “the border wall with Mexico.” Violent, imaginative, full of mordant humor and dark, gritty details, you won’t want to live in this People’s Republic…but you’ll feel a chill as you wonder how different our real future will be.
Jim Geraghty, Author of The Weed Agency and Heavy Lifting and Columnist at National Review
The dystopian, Orwellian picture of an America gone mad in People's Republic sounds too frightening to ever come true -- until you realize that the leftism behind that dystopian picture has destroyed societies the world over. Read this chilling book and learn the true cost of leftist policy.
Ben Shapiro, Radio Host, Author of True Allegiance, and Commentator
My friend Kurt Schlichter — attorney, Army vet, and compelling writer – has written a thought-provoking action thriller set against the backdrop of a shattered America. If you are trying to make the case to your politically disengaged friends about the dangers of the growing attacks on the rule of law, People's Republic is Exhibit A.
David Limbaugh, Author of The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament and Columnist at Townhall.com
People’s Republic is a well-written, action-packed political thriller that cleverly shreds progressive hypocrisy in a multitude of ways. Kurt successfully did what our mutual friend Andrew Breitbart advised that conservatives do: Get out there and compete in the world of popular culture!
Dana Loesch, Author of Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America and Radio/BlazeTV Television Host
They say conservatives are terrible storytellers, but Kurt Schlichter destroys that stereotype in his new novel People's Republic and issues a dire warning about the future of America. But do not fear, we can still change course and this page turner will embolden the country to take action and do so.
Katie Pavelich, Fox News Contributor, Author of Assault and Flattery: The Truth About the Left and Their War on Women, and editor at Townhall.com
The fast paced action of a Brad Thor thriller blended with a dystopian future worthy of Orwell. Kurt Schlichter's People's Republic is a roller coaster ride through a post-election Hellscape that will leave you wanting more.
Cam Edwards, Author of Heavy Lifting and NRANews Television Host
So, what's the worst that could happen?" So say the folks who don't pay much attention to politics, candidates, elections, courts. The real answer is: Lots you don't want to think about, unimaginable things that come out of nowhere. Schlichter puts a whole flight of Black Swans in the air --each of them plausible-- and the result is a riveting, page-turner, and a demand from Schlichter for...more.
Hugh Hewitt, Author of The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second Clinton Era, Columnist and Syndicated Radio Host
Reading Kurt Schlichter's description of a future People's Republic of North America reminded me of my 1987 visit to East Berlin but without the Cold War charm. His novel is a timely warning of what could happen to our Republic if our Constitutional norms are abandoned and the vitriol of our political discourse continues to increase. A retired Army Infantry colonel, who deployed to hot spots himself, Schlichter brings the brutal violence, long stretches of tedium and gallows humor of combat to life on his pages. People's Republic is a fast-paced thriller that will almost certainly end up on the big screen.
Robert C. O’Brien, Author of While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis and U.S. Diplomat
People’s Republic by prolific author Kurt Schlichter is a must read for all who care about the future of our currently rapidly deteriorating nation. The fast paced, dark, deadly, all too realistic actions of former special operations soldier Kelly Turnbull makes it a book you will not be able to put down. People’s Republic is a frightening but realistic portrait of what our nation may well become if we cannot reverse the current destructive trends destroying our constitution and our society.
William V. Wenger, Writer and Colonel (Retired), Infantry, United States Army
In his previous book, Conservative Insurgency, Kurt Schlichter reexamined what it was to be an American surrounded by grilled steaks, alcohol and weapons. His new effort, People's Republic, peeks into the not-too-distant future and shows Americans not only how to kill that meat themselves, but how to annihilate despair. It is powerful, gripping, and priced to change your life.
Stephen Kruiser, Comedian and Columnist
I can’t wait to see Lin-Manuel Miranda make a musical out of this!
Tony Katz, Radio Host, Commentator and Blurb Legend
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people helped make this novel possible. Not that I am attempting to shift blame should it turn out to be a raging dumpster fire of jumbled words and stupid ideas – in that case, the fault is entirely my own.
Always first is hot wife Irina Moises, who was there from the beginning. Actually, not from the beginning – I would not let her read it at first, but she eventually became the first reader and my primary advisor on whether I was veering entirely off the rails. Without her hard work and support, this book never would have happened.
Kellie Jane Adan again joined in to proofread the entire manuscript, for which I am immensely grateful. She is a heck of a writer – check out her latest book The Method.
Thanks also to Drew Matich, Brad Essex, and Jimmie Bise, Jr., for their takes! Also, to all those who read the sample chapter and provided feedback – thank you!
The amazing Salty Hollywood turned my very basic idea about a cover into the remarkable cover you now see. Thanks, Salty!
And, of course, I want to thank radio studs Larry O’Connor, Tony Katz, Dana Loesch, Hugh Hewitt, Derek Hunter, Ben Shapiro, Cam Edwards and Cameron Gray. There are others too. Their support brought me to a wider audience despite the risk to their own careers.
Folks like Michael Walsh, Robert O’Brien, Owen Brennan, Stephen Kruiser, Adam Baldwin, and John Gabriel talked through the scenario with me even if they didn’t know it. Thanks for the input, suckers!
Two gentleman who have since passed on inspired me to do this work. One is Andrew Breitbart, whose reaction when facing the cultural gatekeepers of the left was never to ask to be let inside but to simply scale the wall without permission. The other is Captain Daniel Deaton, United States Navy, who became a friend through social media and provided me with much valuable feedback on my fiction from the perspective of a guy who had been there and done that. Any officer the NCOs adored as much as they did CAPT Deaton had to be squared away. I wish both of them were still here, but we are richer for having known them.
And finally, there is noted author of real literature Kenny, who drank many a beer with me back in J3 talking about how we would write our own books someday. Remember: I don’t like fiction, I can’t use fiction. Brochures – now that’s where it’s at!
There were many others whom I may have overlooked. Thank you too!
And, of course, I want to thank every single one of my Twitter followe
rs (currently 71,000+) for being so very, very #caring.
Kurt Schlichter
PREFACE
This novel is not an eager fantasy of a future that I or any other sane person wants. Rather, it is a warning. It, or something very like it, could represent America’s future if we continue down the path we have embarked upon. And we must reverse that course before it is too late. We still can – if we choose to.
The key feature of a democratic republic is less that each participant has the capacity to win than that each participant has the capacity to lose and accept that loss. They can lose gracefully because they believe they have been heard, that the system is fundamentally fair, that it is not rigged. So when they lose, they accept their loss and continue to press for their preferred candidates and policies through the existing system. Chaos, violence, upheaval – while not unknown, even in recent decades, these are entirely foreign to a healthy United States of America.
The idea of ending the system, of truly disrupting the status quo, does not arise in a healthy democratic republic. But I fear that our Republic is no longer healthy. In fact, I fear that there is an elite distinguished both by its cultural and political progressivism and its geographical concentration in the cities and on the coasts that is seeking to disenfranchise the rest of the population by altering the rules that competing interests have, until now, played by.
There was a time when politicians did not seek to win the presidency by the thinnest of margins over 50%, where the President was the President of all Americans, where he (or she) did not encourage his supporters to “reward our friends and punish our enemies.” He (or she) did not label millions and millions of Americans as “deplorable” and “irredeemable.”
There was a time when presidents did not attempt to escape the legitimate input of Congress through executive decrees and appeals to unelected judges who all seem to have graduated from the same dozen liberal universities. There was a time when the media prodded and poked every candidate and leader, instead of targeting only the opponents of their preferred candidates.
There was a time when reasoned debate was possible, where an opponent’s argument was honestly framed and debated on that basis instead of misrepresented and the points raised ignored in favor of personal slanders and cheap snark. Remember that if you read a critique of this novel accusing me of hoping to see the future People’s Republic depicts.
These norms, laws, and customs, along with our Constitution, are what holds our country together. But these are also the very things that our cultural elite attacks, undercuts and weakens. After all, these are obstacles to their power; they are meant to be obstacles to rule without restraint. They are designed to be employed by other citizens to check and balance those who would rule without accountability, without the need to consider the other half of the population.
When the norms, laws, and our Constitution are ignored for short term political advantage, those who would do so likely imagine that it is merely an expedient measure, that somehow, down the road, we will return to normal again. But it is not that easy. It is not that simple. You cannot expect that your opponent will placidly continue to abide by the old rules even as you reap the advantages of the new ones. If you push and push, eventually there will be a push back. There will be a reaction, and we may not be able to control it. Because when you change the rules, you change the game. And when you change the game, it might not be into a game you are prepared to play and win.
This novel explores what might happen, how the forgotten half of America might react, if we choose to change the rules. But we can also choose not to throw away the greatest, freest nation in the history of mankind.
And I pray we do.
1.
“Stop talking.”
The young man in the passenger seat wisely did as he was told, but he kept loudly breathing in short, shallow puffs. He was scared, as he should be. Kelly Turnbull, behind the steering wheel, was merely ready – his breathing slow, but deep and steady. Turnbull stretched out the fingers of his right hand, his shooting hand. He felt the pressure of the sixth gen Glock 19 in his belt. He mentally ran through the motions – left hand on the door handle, pushing it open, swinging out onto his feet as his right hand retrieved the pistol, bringing his hands together to grip it, taking aim, and rapidly putting two 9 mm hollow point rounds into the faces of each of the three gangbangers now staring at them from the crosswalk.
The gangsters decided to keep walking – there weren’t many cars to jack anymore out on the roads outside secure sectors, but something about this guy told them that the cost benefit analysis of potentially grabbing a working ride versus dealing with the hard case in the driver’s seat was not going to work out in their favor. Even dirtbags have intuition, and they prudently obeyed theirs.
The light turned green – naturally, one of the few working traffic lights left in Los Angeles had to be right there – and Turnbull pressed the gas. The Dodge was nearly 20 years old, but it still ran fine – Turnbull had made sure of that before he bet his life on it.
He had gone east right through this same part of Pico with his parents a thousand times as a kid, running errands, shopping, eating out. Most of Los Angeles was prosperous then, not just the parts behind the fences and the guards where the rich people now partied while everyone else fought over scraps.
On those drives – everyone had a car back then and you could always find gas – his dad used to listen to talk radio, before all radio came under the “fairness” guidelines and morphed into straight up propaganda. The shrunken media here – you didn’t need a lot of outlets when they were all spewing the same thing – merely regurgitated the government policy du jour, with a healthy dose of hate for the enemies within and without. The villains were always the same – the religious, the hardworking, the liberty-minded, the ones who refused to kneel. And especially bad were the ones over there, on the other side of the border, in the red.
Turnbull distinctly remembered being right on this very same block listening to KABC radio and hearing about how the country was about to collapse if the big banks didn’t get bailed out. That was late 2008, right before Obama was first elected and things really started heading downhill. Turnbull was what then? Twelve, thirteen?
Most of the small businesses that had lined Pico were long gone, some boarded up, others just abandoned when the owners fled east – they were usually referred to as “worms,” the ones who were beneath contempt for rejecting the paradise that progressivism offered. Now piles of trash lined the sidewalks, and a few people squatted in the urine-soaked doorways, glaring at those lucky enough to have cars. A few blocks north, running parallel to Pico, was the southern part of the wall that blocked off the Westside Sector from the rest of the city. These derelicts lurking in the ruined buildings along the road were just some of the people being walled out.
Inside the Sector, there was order and prosperity. But here, not so much. Here, graffiti helpfully informed passersby about the local gangs in charge of each little bit of turf. On this block, it was the Pico Deuce 40s. And up above it all, the billboards cheered the big gang that was in charge of everything. The blues.
The people who had been trying to kill Kelly Turnbull since the old United States broke apart.
They certainly loved their propaganda. One billboard looming over an abandoned coffee shop offered a picture of a bunch of unsmiling, multi-ethnic children with their fists raised into the air. Superimposed across their chests were the words “FREEDOM FROM HATE IS TRUE FREEDOM. REPORT HATEMONGERS, DENIERS AND SPIES TO YOUR PEOPLE’S BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION!” In the lower right corner lurked the People’s Republic of North America’s rainbow flag, or at least one version of it. The flag kept changing as one group or another agitated to add its color to the mix, or to move its color to some position of greater prominence; the billboard had to be six months old because the flag had changed twice since. This month, the color of the top stripe was orange; who or what group orange represented Turnbull neit
her knew nor cared.
After the United States split up, they called the half that inherited the two coasts a “People’s Republic,” choosing the same hoary old cliché every medal-bedecked Third World butcher had grafted onto his country’s name in the 1960s and ‘70s. The political/media elite resurrected the term as yet another jab at the hated bourgeois primitives who remained in the now independent blue states; it was a much more benign provocation than the various political pogroms and cultural assaults that followed. The blue elite was determined to grind the faces of their opponents into the dirt, even as most picked up and left until the blockade stopped the migration. Labeling their new country a “People’s Republic” was just one more way to do it. Take that, nobodies.
Of course, it was not the People’s Republic, but only some People’s Republic. And, in fact, it was not much of a republic at all. The blue elite had always felt that when the people have a voice, they often say the wrong thing. So, unrestrained by ancient parchments, they gagged those unworthy of input into their own governance – a group conveniently consisting of everyone not within the blue elite.
But none of the people cared much about what the elite was calling the country anymore. Its name was really the least of their problems. They were too hungry to care about the liberty they had lost. It was no longer freedom they were concerned with but survival. Reds, blues – what did it matter if your kids were crying because you didn’t have the ration coupons you needed to get them some dinner?
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