I'd gotten away from posting to this blog, as I've mostly moved the posts from the Positive Reconstruction series to Substack. Ryan and I are still posting regularly to Substack under the title Compounding Fractures, to both promote Inequality by Design, as well as speak on current issues. We have series on Universal Basic Income, State Capitalism, and of course, this fictional series about the future direction of the United States. If any of that interests you, please head over there, peruse what we've written, and subscribe if you like what you read.
Without further ado, here's the next post in the Positive Reconstruction series:
2029 - The Eye of the Hurricane
By January 2nd, half a million citizens surround Washington. They carpool, take buses and trains, they sit in cars, crash on friend’s couches, they rent rooms, and some even camp out at parks a day’s walk from the borders of the district. The people bring signs, they bring food, they buy bottles of water for fellow travelers. Some bring hopes and dreams. Some bring cynicism or opportunism. And yes, a great many of them bring guns. The Congressional session for 2029 is scheduled to start January 3rd.
In the last days of 2024, military bases around the district cancel leave and stock up on MREs. Junior officers and NCOs scour strip clubs and flophouses for the enlisted men and women missing from morning muster. In some units, desertion rates reach 40%. For those still on base, many report to the infirmary. Accident rates spike on bases as troops become desperate to avoid the orders they know will come down. On January 1st, several combat regiments are mobilized and deployed to interchanges along I-495 in Maryland and Virginia, just outside DC. The governors of both states ask the federal government to remove the troops, and get no reply.
Early on the morning of January 3rd, half a million Americans wake up, partake in the early morning rituals of eating breakfast, cleaning up, and start towards the nation’s capital, unsure if they will live to see the sunset. It may seem cliché in an age of global supply chains, information superhighways and trans-national corporations with budgets larger than the GDP of entire countries, but control of the levers of government still matters. America rolled the dice in 2024 and wound up in an era of lawlessness and rampant corruption, both monetary and moral. These things happen fairly regularly to peoples all around the world and throughout time. So on a not-so-chilly January morning, the country rolls the dice one more time.
The notion of who sits in the halls of Congress by the end of the day isn’t just an issue about changing the window dressing at the Capitol. In November, 16 states put secession on the ballot. The language varied a bit from state to state, but most followed the line “if the federal government refuses to seat the lawfully elected senators and congresspeople of this state, will the state consider itself sovereign and independent of federal law?” Yes or No? Of the 16 secession referendums, only one failed. And that one failed because the state, Texas, voted it down in favor of another referendum to break the state into 5 separate states and form the Lone Star Confederation. If everything is bigger in Texas, and secession is a ‘go big or go home’ proposition, Texas voters chose to go that extra mile.
While the Solidarity Movement is largely decentralized, the President-elect and Congress-elect do agree they shouldn’t approach DC in one group, as every one of them knows how drones work. So the President-elect approaches, along with some 50,000 supporters and much of the congressional delegations from the Northeast Corridor, from Baltimore. The VP-elect and much of the Southern delegation gather and march from Manassas Junction. Other delegations and their supporters depart Bethesda via I-70 for the district.
In a moment made for history books, a half-strength platoon of nervous Air Force MPs halt the President-elect and their supporters at the I-495 overpass over Good Luck Road near Carrollton, MD.
The MP’s commanding officer tells them to turn back, that they constitute an unlawful assembly. Ominously, drones approach, hovering over the people massed on the two lane road. The President-elect asks if the CO intends to betray his oath to the Constitution and receives the retort that his orders are lawful. A tense standoff ensues until word runs through the crowd that the Solidarity delegations from California, Nevada and Utah have been waved through the blockade at Friendship Heights and have made it as far as the Washington National Cathedral. A woman in the crowd shouts at the MPs that the blockade is over and if they fire on the crowd they’ll just be murderers. The CO orders his men to do just that.
The MPs refuse. Their NCO and junior CO arrest the senior CO and let the Solidarity people stream past.
Later, people on both sides of this confrontation find out these reports weren’t entirely accurate. The blockade was still intact at the DC-MD line in the area of Friendship Heights, but when asked, the Army CO told the delegates the Metro system was still running. With a less-than-subtle wink, the CO stated that his orders only covered the surface roads. The delegates and their supporters made history by getting on the subway and simply riding it to the Capitol building.
Similar events play out repeatedly around the area. By lunchtime, two hundred thousand people are milling around on the National Mall, and supermajorities of the new Congress are ready to take their seats. In a scene we’ve seen before in this series, both DC and Capitol police refuse to block entrance to the Capitol Building, and in the case of the Capitol Police, actually arrest ICE and DHS agents that try. While the Solidarity-dominated Congress sits at the Capitol, the remainder of the regime barricades themselves in the White House.
Congress swears in the President and VP-elect, an event which is broadcast and live-streamed to the whole country. The President calls on all 50 states to recognize the new Federal government, and in what will go down as an act of borderline-megalomania, orders the military into the city to force the surrender of the criminals hunkered down in the White House. Fortunately for both Solidarity and the nation, the generals and admirals not holed up with the regime announce they will defer to the duly elected government.
By the time the sun sets, the Washington National Guard, the DC police, and 10,000 armed Solidarity supporters have the White House surrounded and the utilities cut off. Construction of the new bunker under the old East Wing included many redundancies for fresh water, gas and electricity.The regime declares they will wait out the besiegers until the military clears the streets. But at some point in the design process, unpaid construction workers ‘forgot’ to install redundancies for the sewer lines out of the building. The current regime emerges surrenders after three days of having to smell their own shit. On January 7th, the Solidarity President declares to the cheering crowds on the National Mall, the renaissance of the United States. Next week, we check in with the kids of the three protagonist from Inequality by Design. The week after, we will find out if Solidarity can make it stick.