[…] Following his triumph in mortal combat against his fellow House members, Connors would be inaugurated as President […]
Deer College Odyssey
The Buck Stops Here
| THREE PORTLANDS | FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 2049 | 15 BOTTLE CAPS |
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
A LOCKDOWN PRIMER ON THE STATE OF AMERICAN POLITICS FROM THE 2020S UNTIL NOW
by Amber Garcia (⁂Amberalerted)
Hi. For all our British originating readers, you're probably wondering how we got into this situation. Unfortunately, a record-scratching freeze frame of the current world isn't possible, but I sure as hell can give you a flashback sequence, at least in the form of words on a page.
This is that written flashback. Have a seat for a minute or two, it's good to take a sit down sometimes.
THE NOT-QUITE ROARING TWENTIES
Let's begin our look into the past in 2021, the year the Veil fell. The year before, Joe Biden had been elected, and despite a rough start to his time as POTUS, he was getting along pretty well. Then, as we all likely know, it stopped going well for the poor old guy.
The early 2020s were an extremely rough patch for politics and economics globally. Many people questioned just how much they could actually trust their elected officials after Vanguard made the anomalous public knowledge, the likes of Marshall, Carter and Dark and JOICL did their rounds of buying out other companies, laying off thousands of people as more and more people tried to work from home and, to top the shitshow off, the Roman Empire invaded Ireland at the tail end of 2022. Even though the Atlantic Ocean put a solid divide between the conflict and the US proper, Biden was quick to offer his aid to the GOC forces holding position along the British coast and southwestern county bounds.
In spite of this move not exactly being controversial, Biden's term evidently put a strain on him, as it did many heads of state the world across, and he would not seek reelection in 2024. In spite of his evident resignation in the face of what had he brought before him over his time in office, Biden would still be forced to contend with a series of sweeping changes in the political landscape of the Middle East, and the New Zealand incident before he could retire, leading many to reconsider the nickname "Sleepy Joe" to some degree. To be fair, I'd want to take a nap after all he put up with on the job too.
The 2024 Elections were a tense period for many. A significant portion of the population had come to fear the possibility of a re-elected Donald Trump, following a stream of constant inflammatory remarks following the Veil's collapse and the wider behaviors of many representatives of the Republican Party raising massive concerns among even more. Biden refused to run for reelection. Kamala Harris also failed to run due to, at the time, being the center of a curse which would have caused the population of Alameda County, California to be turned into string cheese in the event she took power. This left Trump up against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also hailing from the state of New York. Trump promised economic stability, consistent employment in the face of newly-unveiled corporations' waves of layoffs, alongside increased security against the anomalous (in practice, the policies he proposed to do so would've turned the Unusual Incidents Unit into a force rivalling the US Army in funding and practice, and made the PENTAGRAM into a borderline secret police force), AOC promised to work towards properly integrating Fae, Yeren, and other non-"baseline" humans into the workforce, alongside improving education surrounding reality-bending, thaumaturgy and other paranormal fields.
Unsurprisingly, AOC won by a landslide, taking 78% of the popular vote and and 317 Electoral College votes.1 Trump would, in the coming months, be placed on trial by the International Court for the Paranormal after accusations of massive tax crimes using Swiss thaumaturges and banks located in several Free Ports would be brought forward by Goldbaker-Reinz Ltd. This would not result in him serving time in prison, but would prevent him from running in future elections on account of the aforementioned thaumaturges being paid using campaign funds which had been allocated for advertising in North Dakota.
As AOC faced into her first term as President, the world seemed to have calmed itself, however briefly. While political uncertainty remained high, particularly in western Europe as Nova Madeira became one of the first fully independent Free Ports, the United Kingdom began to tear itself apart and Emmanuel Macron continually riled up the French population with a series of nonsensical policies banning the use of thaumaturgy to do anything from messing with traffic to somehow undoing the mass exorcism Prometheus Labs performed on Paris in 1902, things at home were particularly quiet. The United States would become one of the first countries to recognize places like Druv'tuul, Hy-Brasil and, I cannot believe some of you all don't believe this is a real place,2 the Islamic Republic of Eastern Samothrace as sovereign states in 2027, introduce laws to protect other species and groups such as Nälkä and Mekhanites from discrimination throughout the four year period and imposing hard limits on the ability of the PENTAGRAM to interfere with foreign affairs alongside the UN (which, let's all face it, have been ignored with unsurprising frequency). Relatively speaking, AOC's time in the White House was stable in a period of constant change. In 2028, she would win a second term against Florida Republican Jeanette Nuñez, which would pass in a similarly peaceful fashion.
While the 2020s were a time of massive social upheaval, they were relatively calm for the USA on a federal level. Talk of Washington D.C. becoming a state began, economic uncertainty smoothened out and integration efforts by Vanguard and the GOC were going ahead rather swimmingly. In all, the future looked bright.
THE FUTURE GETS A LITTLE DIMMER
The 2032 Elections were rough. The British-Scottish Civil War had just broken out, the Third Turkish-Greek War was looming, and Silesian independence factions were beginning to get a little bit fed up with their surrounding governments. People were beginning to wonder if America would need to once again take up the role as the "leaders of the Free World," and that very much showed in the year's elections.
On the left, we had the Democrat's nominee, a respectable bi-partisan from Texas by the name of Harvey Connors. Former detective from Austin, wanting to preserve what America was while making it a place where everyone could have an equal shot at life. Good intentioned, if a little paradoxical in his initial goals. Across from him, in the Republican corner, James Lewis, Missouri's finest military budget increase advocate with an odd, borderline fetishistic obsession with weed-smokers that seemed to swing from incredibly supportive to stirring up a Green Scare week on week.
It will likely surprise many of our European readers to learn that neither of these men would win the Presidency. This election would go to the independent Californian representative, the Specter of Communism, who initially remanifested in the state after the collapse of the Soviet Union left it unable to haunt Europe, and would somehow manage to continually gain governmental prestige up to the conclusion of the 2032 Election. Unfortunately for communists and socialists nationwide, the Specter would only remain in office for three weeks after its inauguration, as a visit to the White House by the recently elected Pope Adrian VII would result in its exorcism and remanifestation in Eritrea, immediately preventing it from reclaiming its position due to its newfound lack of American citizenship. Its vice president, Indianan independent Julia Yurie, would immediately fill in for the remainder of its term.
Yurie was immediately unpopular among several populations, not the least of which being more independently inclined enclaves such as Backdoor SoHo and La Rue Macabre, as she spent a great deal of her time as POTUS working to financially integrate Free Ports on US soil to the wider American economy. While many residents of these areas grumbled to themselves as taxes were raised to funnel into the federal government, others were extremely active in their dissatisfaction, such as the anartists of the aforementioned Backdoor SoHo, and the people of Eventide, Oregon, who were already one of the most heavily taxed populations in the country on account of the Bavarian Illuminati's control over the city.
Several months' worth of riots, dozens of arrests on account of dangerous paragraffiti in the streets in New York City, and one extremely confusing case of the Bavarian Illuminati's headquarters becoming a quarter of an inch larger on the inside, Yurie would be removed from office in December of 2034 after being turned into a marble statue by a SoHo separatist while attending that decade's "Sommes-Nous Devenus Magnifiques?" in Nashville, Tennessee. This, unfortunately, would lead to a few unforeseen complications, on account of Yurie's vice president, one Kendrick Smith, having died in a car crash two weeks before her own "death."
THE FEDERAL THUNDERDOME
Normally, when both the POTUS and VPOTUS cannot serve in office, the title goes to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. While Iowa Democrat Fausta Weissman was both perfectly able to serve and more than willing to do so, opposition arose from almost every possible corner of the house.
Weissman was, in a word, unpopular among her fellow Representatives. Republicans believed she was failing to represent their side of the House on a wider scale, Democrats believed she was, to quote then-West Virginian governor Harold R'yann, "simply unqualified to lead any group of people larger than an average troop of Girl Scouts." Within days of Yurie's removal from her position, several people had risen to challenge Weissman's position as Speaker and to-be-sworn-in President. Instead of responding to these challenges in a reasonable and level-headed manner, Weissman would invoke an obscure, but very much still real, piece of legislature surrounding challenges for the Presidency: the President-To-Be reserved every right to challenge any who believed that they would be better suited to the position to a mage's duel. In this case, a mage's battle royale.
Immediately, several of her detractors would bite their tongues and rescind their challenges, but several accepted the offer, and the 2035 Presidential Contention Duel, known more informally as the "Presidential Duelbate," would be scheduled to take place in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, on January 2nd of the following year.
The day came. The county's residents were advised to take refugee in neighboring counties. The five members of the House, all operating through PENTAGRAM-provided simulacra to prevent the duel from truly being to the death, were teleported in to random locations across the county. Iowa's Fausta Weissman, Texas' Harvey Connors, Idaho's Hylrye Niil, Nevada's Tobias Dickins and Arkansas' William Abernathy.
Immediately after his arrival into the field of battle, Dickins would get to work on a ritual which, in his own words, would purge the other four from the region and immediately grant him victory. However, whilst performing the ritual itself, a flock of passing ducks would rain filthy white retribution upon him, leading to the ritual experiencing a number of difficulties and concluding with Dickins' simulacrum exploding into roughly five thousand Italian lira (minted 1991). Meanwhile, in Newton, Weissman and Abernathy would meet in spell-to-spell combat, trading geomantic blows from the tarmac of the roads beneath them and the concrete surrounding them. Due to both parties having reinforced their physical bodies with concrete prior to the engagement, it takes several hours before either one displays any signs of damage, albeit fatigue sets in well before this. Connors and Niil spend the majority of the day engaged in a shootout across Cambridge, largely without using thaumaturgy. Connors managed to catch Niil off-guard with a round of .45 ACP to the chest as the daylight begins to fade. A matter of hours later, Abernathy dispatched Weissman at around midnight.
This left Abernathy and Connors alone in the county, where they would spend the next week hunting one another and attempting to ambush each other regularly. This came to an end on a cold Wednesday evening in the town of Bedford, when Connors approached an unprepared Abernathy and executed a series of convoluted tricks with five revolvers, involving shooting himself in the knees twice, reloading with his mouth and eleven hollow points being delivered straight into Abernathy's faux-heart. Emerging from Middlesex the sole sort-of-survivor, Connors was immediately inaugurated as the President, and named Abernathy his VP out of respect for the dedication he had displayed.
Following his triumph in mortal combat against his fellow House members, Connors would be inaugurated as President and, to the surprise of irrational Texas haters the nation across (you know who you are), do possibly the best job he could considering the circumstances he was handed. While many Free Ports were unable to be unassigned the label of US territory, Connors did his best to provide them with self-autonomy, and deal with the hordes of insane conservatives who still wouldn't believe that Communism Itself had ever become the POTUS. Connors would run twice more in 2036 and 2040, and would win both times. While his rather lax stance towards foreign affairs made many feel the US was becoming distant from the wider world, especially following the beginning of UN intervention in Silesia and a reported record low of American citizens joining the peacekeeping efforts, the Galway Grandson Gunslinger was undoubtedly popular in and around home.
Through a combined effort of balanced policy passing, borderline forcing open dialogue and debate among younger Americans in schools and colleges, as well as funding campaigns to improve historical and political education to provide special focus on fascism and other far-right ideologies, and how many failed without the direct application of hate, to relatively good effect. For the first time in forever, American teenagers and young adults were having healthy discourse with others from across the political landscape about their beliefs without it quickly falling into bigotry, name calling and repeating the same three points about one another all over again. Younger people experienced a temporary trend towards political moderacy. While his second term ended before he could finish everything he had promised to do, Connors actively pushed for a complete restructuring and reorganization of the police force to attempt to remove actual Nazis and violent racists from its ranks (which, while I appreciate the acknowledgement of that fact, we all know full well is next to impossible at this point) throughout 2039. Things looked good, all things considered. One could only wonder how his successor would fit into the shoes he'd left behind.
Oh boy.
THE COMING OF CRENSHAW
With 2044 came Dan Crenshaw. Good ol' Danny Cren. The Cyclops himself. Possibly one of the least popular presidents to date, and one who has miraculously managed to make it through more than one term. Most of you probably know him, more of you probably hate him, but for those who don't know, here's a quick primer.
Dan Crenshaw was born in March of 1984 (how fitting) in Aberdeen, Scotland, growing up in Texas. He served in the Navy from 2006 to 2016, losing his eye during service in Afghanistan in 2012. After retiring from the military, he would go on to become Texas' Second District member of the House of Representatives. As you are all likely well aware by now, Crenshaw was and is a very conservative man, and his stance of several topics in recent years have soured some people's opinions of him beyond what a cool eyepatch can help to redeem. He was the Republican Party's nominee to run against Connors in 2040, and ran again in 2044. This time, he would win the position of the fifty-second president, despite statements from before voting began indicating he was the less popular of the two presidential candidates.
Let's take a moment to look at a few outside circumstances that contributed in some way to Crenshaw's victory the first time around, in spite of his middling popularity prior to Election Year beginning. You're likely aware of a few of these, but maybe I'll manage to enlighten you a little more.
Number 1. Exclusion. Or, rather, feelings of exclusion. Society post-Veil has been… weird in the States. The country, alongside the world as a whole, has largely leaned leftward, politically speaking. Maybe this had to do with Vanguard's sudden arrival into the wider world. Maybe people had just gotten sick of how the world had been going throughout the 2010s. Maybe taking a look at the literal Roman Empire made a lot of people reconsider their stance on a number of things.
Either way, the 2020s and 2030s are generally regarded as being good decades for leftists the world across, with continual streaks of heads of state and wider governmental powers fitting well under that umbrella. Combine this with the sudden appearance of a massive population, seemingly out of thin air, who align themselves in the same direction that Vanguard and world governments do, and it's clear to see why so many people with right-of-centre beliefs felt like they were living in a world that was completely misaligned with their thoughts on the matter, and why many in America saw Crenshaw as a chance to change that.
Number 2. Silesia. Most of what made Silesia so terrifying to so many people was the sheer lethality to which thaumaturgy was utilized. One needs only to quickly google the Wrocław Inferno to see one of the most well-known examples, and dozens more examples of the horrors magic could inflict upon someone else with the drive to do so. While Crenshaw himself rarely commented on the growing fear that these reports stirred within a ever-growing part of the American population, the people around him certainly did.
To-be Vice President Mary Jeannotte and Republicans in the northwest of the country stirred the pot until the handle nearly damn well snapped in half, and while I don't doubt that Crenshaw would've received a sizable portion of votes regardless, playing into the beliefs of a country who you've managed to whip into a fear-frenzy to rival that of the GOC when it comes to reality benders is going to land you in a lot of people's good books.
Lastly, number 3. Pressure. Silesia was the tipping point, yes. But for there to be a tipping point, there needs to be something to nudge whatever or whoever towards that place. Silesia was the final nail in a coffin that had been building itself for over twenty years, taking parts from Ireland, Greece, Turkey and Samothrace, Britain and a thousand other, smaller occurrences. The sentiments among voters throughout the 2040s have been there for years, but only recently have they been brought to a head.
Crenshaw was well aware of the growing feelings of the voter base. He'd been fearmongering since 2030, and he really ramped up his operation the second Silesia threw the world a curveball. He knew that, by exploiting a population of bitter conservatives and terrified moderates, he could easily get into office. He wouldn't even have to propose a proper solution until the time came for an attempt at a second term, by giving the impression he wasn't going to rush and create another major international incident.3 Unfortunately, Crenshaw did that job extremely well, and became the first proper Republican President the nation has had since the 2010s.
But, outside of the rampant paranoia among most of the population? Crenshaw's first term was a veritable nothingburger. The few major occurrences that did crop up were largely on the state level, which Crenshaw very rarely commented on. While he was extremely vocal when speaking on foreign affairs, such as his now-infamous speech delivered on the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of the Veil and how it had permanently altered global geopolitics for the worse, Crenshaw's eye was not on domestic politics for the most part. Maybe if he hadn't lost the other one when he was in the Navy…
And, of course, we all know exactly what Crenshaw was promising during his reelection campaign in 2048. If you somehow don't, I am fully convinced you live underneath a rock. Go on unVeiled, Aviatica. Turn on the news. You'll see what it is fairly quickly.
SO, WHAT NOW?
Simply put, we have no idea.
Crenshaw is on his second term, and if history tells us anything about these sorts of situations, indictment is either not going to happen or not result in jack-shit being done before the cyclops is on his deathbed. On the brighter side, I have very real doubts that we'll see another Republican president in the foreseeable future, meaning a series of events this poorly executed as an election promise won't crop up for another while. The Democrats seem to already be planning their 2052 campaign with a firm belief their victory is almost assured. However, the American populous is a strange beast, and I wouldn't put it past us to vote in whoever Crenshaw's successor may be. And even then, I have a feeling we might not make it too far past Crenshaw.
People have been foretelling the collapse of the United States since forever. They did it after 9/11, they did it during the 2020 Elections, they did it during the House of Representatives' internal schism, and they're doing it now. Normally, I'd take the opinion of the average doomsday believer with a pinch of salt, but I'm beginning to think there's a degree of sense in what they're saying. Genuine vitriol towards the federal government hasn't been this high since the 1860s, and never been as justifiable as it is right now. The Texan government's recent revival of the topic of independence, in spite of Connors' best efforts to prove that doing so in the current day would be an absolutely awful idea. The growing Canadian nationalist movement in Montana and the Dakotas is growing in size and power every week. The still very much present want in Free Ports across the nation to exist in a way they did prior to the 2030s driving mass strikes in the work-from-home environment. All these things very much indicate to me that the USA isn't as united as many would think, and I'd argue that this pandemic may be the inciting incident for one of the the most politically restless periods in the nation's history.
Definitely worth mentioning is the role the Democrats play in this landscape going forward. My mother told me about an old saying she and some of her old online friends used to use, back in the 2020s, that she feels is apt for the route our politics are going down. 99% Fascism versus 100% Fascism. Both sides of the 2048 Election were very openly fearmongering with what had happened in Silesia, and while the Democrats were nowhere near as drastic in their promised measures to counteract thaumaturgical threats to the state, they promised significantly more authoritative practices surrounding its use, the rights of its users and education on topics concerning and adjacent to it. In the years to come, I wouldn't be surprised if the Democrats take every opportunity possible to push these policies, likely citing it as a much more humane and responsible path than that taken by the Republicans. While I doubt it'll be for the best, I'd rather live in a prison than die in one.
While I sure as hell won't be running to Vault-Tec to save me before we blow ourselves up, I might think twice about coming back from a holiday to Europe in the near future. Happy quarantining, folks.
