As the Tear Gas Clears Pt. 2 - Keeping It Personal

Marty Junior

Marty puts himself first in line to shake the governor’s hand at the recognition ceremony hosted in Ann Arbor. Michigan’s governor recognizes the key role played by the Office of Remote Surveillance in putting down the strikes, and elevates the agency to the level of department. Marty's boss’s boss becomes  the Secretary of Surveillance. The ripple effect of promotions, and the governor’s handshake, earns Marty a plum day-shift supervisor spot. Marty rejoices at the prospect of spending nights and weekends with Tina, Trey, and newborn Tonya. 

Ann Arbor, Michigan
As noted, the tear gas has cleared.

The family settles into a comfortable, and what they hope will be, stable life. Trey needs the stability, as he is diagnosed with developmental delays, which were likely inherited from the male side of the family. His grandfather had to cope with dyslexia, and though Marty Junior never got a formal diagnosis, he joked that his love of numbers and logic problems stemmed from borderline autism. Domestic life takes priority over profession for Marty Junior and family, as the upheavals around the General Strike fade in the rear view mirror.

Until Detroit hosts a mega donor event in the summer of 2030. Marty is off-duty the evening of the Midterm Massacre. Detroit is the scene of the botched attack that devolves into a hostage situation, so Marty and his day shift team get called in. They manage to track down the extended family of a Shining City fighter who allowed a brief lapse in ‘no technology’ discipline. State Police round up the extended family, which is brought in and threatened with execution if Shining City won’t lay down their arms. The fighter in question agrees to surrender, but the rest of the group refuses. The governor demands a show of force, so police storm the venue. The ensuing gun battle leaves 127 dead, including the extended family of the fighter who attempts to surrender.

With this successful detective work, Marty gets promoted to Deputy Director for the Upper Peninsula in 2031. While the wife and kids bemoan moving to Marquette, they soon fall back into a comfortable routine, albeit with few of the educational services Trey needs. Marty complains to Tina that he should have received a more prestigious post, but she reminds him to play the long game. They don’t know it, but out of the populated areas of the state actually serves Marty’s career. He receives little of the blame for the intelligence failures of 2036.

Jillian

Jillian gets less sleep than she did during residency in the wake of the General Strike. Their son, Vern, named for the Vernal Equinox on which he was born, is a needy boy wracked by separation anxiety and night terrors. During middle-of-the-night changing of soiled bedsheet, she must remind herself how terrified the boy was he would never see his dad again, or that the men in blue suits would come back for him. 

Ashtabula, Ohio
You can almost see Canada from here!

And Jillian loses sleep every time Chris gets out of bed. Due to the torture during his imprisonment, Chris falls into a crippling addiction to legal painkillers. Jillian always writes him fresh scripts and clings to hope that he will clean up. But social welfare and drug treatment programs are not funded by the government and are ruinously expensive for all but the most well-off. If anyone who keeps track of the paperwork notices the trend, she’s never called into question over it. 

Chris’s shoddy bookkeeping drives the clinic closer to net loss every year, which affects the family’s bottom line, as well as providing another source of depression for Chris, which positively reinforces his addiction. Of course, this net loss is only on the books. Many of Jillian's patients must make payment through barter rather than formal crediting and debiting. Fortunately for Jillian and the staff, in the wake of the General Strike, they voted to turn the clinic into an employee-owned co-operative. When a patient must offer barter to pay for medical services, someone on the staff likely needs whatever goods or skills the patient has to offer. 

Jillian gives birth to a second child, daughter Autumn in 2032, during a year and a half streak of sobriety for Chris. On warm summer afternoons, the family walks along the shores of Lake Erie. Jillian looks north with no small degree of longing. She attended medical school in Montreal, and speaks fluent Québecois French. The couple figures they could move north and fit right in. But with the disillusion of the Canadian state, legal crossing becomes ever more difficult. For a couple still clinging to the belief that they operate in a world of just rules and laws, illegal immigration remains out of the question. 

Bobby

Arriving in Tennessee with a fistful of dollars and no real prospects doesn’t much bother Bobby. Growing up, his father worked 12 hour shifts as a manager at a burger joint. His pay went to ever-increasing contributions to an HSA that never quite covered the bills for treating his worsening diabetes. As a result, Bobby spiraled away from his nuclear family, couch surfing and finding kindred spirits amongst other high school slackers. As the train rolls to a stop in a changing yard on the north side of Memphis, Bobby feels good about his chances.

Frisco Yard, Memphis, Tenn.
This picture is over 50 years old. 
Train yards don't change much.

Bobby finds employment at a fried-fish restaurant in the midst of hiring staff to fill holes left by the strike. Bobby took seriously his grandpa’s admonition to learn to cook, because cooks never starve, and lands a job on the line. The rest of the staff treat him like a plague rat, until a young hostess, Jeannie, figures out that he was in the city for the Battle of Louisville. That Bobby sat in jail as the bullets and drone-grenades flew doesn’t matter to her so much as the residual scent of tear gas and delousing powder.

When Bobby receives his first paycheck, he’s shocked that his wages receive the same deduction for lost potential profit as everyone else. Bobby initially reacts sourly, but a common refrain from the Louisville strike keeps ringing in his head; “they withhold something from all of us.” Bringing it up to other staff leads to stony silence at first, until Bobby makes clear that he wants a solution for the whole crew, not an exemption for himself. They know management won’t change the policy, and striking is now illegal. Perhaps rashly, perhaps because of their budding romance, Jeannie asks if Bobby would carry the message for the staff to the debt collectors.

In a dark alley behind a boarded up tire factory, Bobby meets a young woman. She asks a few questions, gives simple instructions, then ends the meeting after five minutes. Bobby returns to work, on the look out for the information the debt collector requested. He discovers that that the owner of the restaurant faces financial pressure from his principal creditor, a wealthy owner of multiple franchises in the Memphis area. Bobby scribbles this info on a scrap of paper and leaves it in a small tube on the back of a bench in a bus stop shelter.

A few weeks later, headlines scream about a suspicious explosion that leveled the house of a local financier. The police arrive at the restaurant and arrest seven members of the staff, including Jeannie. While they have no specific evidence, they hold them without charges. Four of those arrested return to work a few days later, but the other three including Jeannie, are held an extra five days. With a split lip and swollen black eyes, she can barely keep eye contact as she breaks up with Bobby and tells him he needs to leave town. Reluctantly, Bobby packs his bag again and rides the rails south, this time winding up in New Orleans. 

Allison

Allison walks from her crash pad to the restaurant with confidence. People in the neighborhood giver her friendly, almost knowing smiles along the way. At work, the new owner discontinues wage garnishments over lost profits, and even shares some of the profit directly with the staff. Rumors swirl around the Firestone Park neighborhood that anyone with a predatory creditor ought to visit the fried-chicken place on Millington Road. If you leave an empty pack of cigarettes, with a name and address tucked inside, at the booth next to the kitchen entrance, you might get a paper note tacked to your door with a time and location to talk to one of the Memphis Debt Collectors.  

Abandon Firestone Plant, Memphis, TN
Looks like a great place to build an IED...

Federal laws passed by the Reactionary Party remove ever more categories of debt from the list of what can be discharged through bankruptcy, including medical bills, home and even auto loans. The trickle of empty cigarette packs, sometimes appearing only once every few months, becomes a weekly occurrence. Soon, Allison, and her two accomplices have more work than they can handle. They take a quiet break from threatening and murdering creditors in the wake of the bust of Jeannie and her coworkers. This decision comes at a fortunate time, as the police raid the restaurant a few days later. Thanks to a scheduling error, which turned out to be quite intentional on the part of the restaurant’s new manager and owner, neither Allison nor her accomplices were at work that day. 

The staff of the restaurant continue to secretly feed Allison and her two accomplices, and the three begin squatting in an abandoned warehouse, before acquiring a defunct RV on an abandoned lot on the north end of the city. One night in late 2035 Alison answers the door of the RV and finds herself face-to-face with a man who simply introduces himself as “the Professor.”

The man gives them an address and promises that in two weeks time, for one night only, there will be a suitcase EMP in the dumpster out back. If the group takes the device, he will assume they are ready to turn the country back into a shining city on a hill. With that, the Professor disappears into the drizzle and fog of a February night in the Mississippi delta. Two weeks later, with shaking hands, Allison pulls a heavy brown suitcase out of a dumpster. Back at the RV, the trio inspect the device and decide to dig up their stash of ‘faulty’ batteries and ‘expired’ blasting caps, to take one last shot at toppling the oligarchy.

As the Tear Gas Clears Pt. 1 - The Bigger Picture

Before We Begin

As often happens, both life and the creative process can muddle up what one is trying to do. In my case, kids getting sick and other projects, constrained time I could dedicate to the blog. Also, as I worked through the first five years, I’ve come to realize that telling the stories of the four characters is as important as the broad tends and the snark directed at the dumbpocalypse the ruling classes built for us. As a result, I’m going to further break down the narrative. In addition to switching from ten year to five year chunks, I plan to write one post outlining the broad trends and the monumental sweep of history we are likely to get, and another about our four protagonists as they navigate the near future. And we should be clear that, while all four will make decisions that you, dear reader, might make differently. These four are, like everyone else, the protagonists of their own stories. Also, given the upcoming line editing process of the book Dr. Ryan Mattson and I are writing Inequality by Design: A People's Guide to Overhauling Our Rigged Economy, I will have less time to dedicate to the blog. I’m also considering ending the narrative with the initial 50-year time horizon I’d outlined, and coming back to the second half of the Long 21st Century after publication of the book, which is still on track for a July 2025 release. Mark your calendars. 

The Second Half of a Decade of Poor Choices

That puts in mildly...

The failure of the 2028 General Strike leads to a number of aftershock events, some of which will take on a lives of their own. In the immediate aftermath, the country holds nearly 20,000 funerals to bury strikers and security personnel. The failure of the strike and ensuing crackdown also triggers a wave of political refugees crossing both northern and southern borders. 300,000 US citizens claim political asylum in Canada between 2029 and 2032. Another 750,000 end up in Mexico, mostly in the northern states along the Rio Grande. About 50,000 flee to farther destinations in western Europe or southeast Asia over 2029. Lucky for them, they arrive just in time for the Pan-Eurasian War. Drawing from mostly higher-educated, higher paying professions, these refugees don’t do much of the fighting. They do contribute mightily to the technical and engineering efforts of the European Union and Japanese Commonwealth.

The new European Union.

I'm sure it won't end poorly this time...

In addition to the refugees, more than 3 million US citizens count among those injured, arrested, or both, as a result of the General Strike. This exacerbates the overcrowding of private prisons (where most protestors end up), and swamps an increasingly threadbare healthcare system. Most dismally, the protestors are villainized by politicians and portrayed as economic terrorists in the media. The Reactionary Party seizes on this characterization; they regain control of Congress and hold the Presidency in the November 2028 election. 

But there are knock-on effects which have less obvious, though equally important, effects. Arresting or hospitalizing three million workers triggers a recession, drives ever-more smaller businesses into bankruptcy, and strengthens the economic power of the US oligarchy. The overcrowded prisons force governors to engage in chaotic, mass releases as local and regional economies tip into recession. The mass release of both political and common criminals creates shadowy, and at first informal, networks. These people have axes to grind with the established order, and now have experience with what to, and not to do, to fight it. And these networks extend across international borders.

Speaking of International Borders…

This picture isn't from the southern US border...

In Canada, the 300,000 US refugees are unwelcome. The Canadian federal government has enough problems on their hands without having to feed and house a bunch of rowdy, derisively labeled Yanks and Dodgers. Most of the refugees are working age, and as they receive little-to-no aid from the Canadian government, they have to work to survive. This  ends up giving a boost to the Canadian economy. But unlike pliant American workers who dutifully get back to work, the Yanks and Dodgers are also very much committed to keeping Canada from falling to the same corporate-oligarchic forces which now appear firmly ensconced in power to the south. 

With the opportunity to start from scratch, many found co-ops or work places with strong unions. The Yanks and Dodgers push back hard against the bosses of Canadian firms, who then put pressure on the Federal government to deport the new arrivals. This crackdown pushes the refugees to throw their support and energy behind the confederal factions, as their rhetoric is more populist and anti-authoritarian.  They join ongoing protests that bring the Toronto metro area to a standstill. The isolated federal government in Ottawa sees employees quit in droves and tax receipts from the provinces dry up. By 2034, Canada has effectively broken into 5 successor states: Pacific Columbia, the Athabasca Union, Ontario, Quebec, and the United Maritime Provinces. 

Canada: NASCAR Edition
(Side Note: I tried to get AI to generate something better and the results made me wonder if ChatGPT knows what Canada is...)

        In northeast Mexico, many of the 750,000 US refugees find common cause with the budding Joventud movement, offering their experience with staging low-tech, stand-up strikes that avoid on-line censors and policing. And what is the Joventud movement? It is made up of younger Mexicans fed up with decades of cartel violence and what they see as a Federal government which operates as a US subsidiary. When these young people witness the failure of the US General Strike, they come to the conclusion that mega-businesses now control the US, and Mexico will be next. What starts as small groups of university students and young labor organizers quickly morphs into a revolutionary group which looks to the experience of 1910-1920 and thinks ‘we missed an opportunity and didn’t go far enough.’ Before Joventud can contest the 2030 presidential election, either with ballots or bullets, another group, better organized and much better armed, makes their move. 

The economic turmoil north of the border causes recession in large swaths of the legal Mexican economy, principally in agriculture and mid-level manufacturing. As the US gets poorer, its people import fewer illegal drugs, opting to make them at home instead. The Mexican cartels see their revenues from drug and human trafficking drop by 35%. While the Sinaloa Cartel operated more as a business than a traditional criminal empire, the decades of warfare between the Mexican state and the cartels shattered the Sinaloas, creating a power vacuum in the 2020s. Other cartels like the Zetas, Jalisco and Tijuana move into this vacuum and do quite well for themselves until the 2028 general strike. By 2030, they find themselves forced to move into more traditional spheres of organized crime: racketeering and extortion. Unfortunately for both the leaders of the cartels and the citizens they victimize, violent crime and a violent response from the state pushes the cartels towards bankruptcy. 

At this point, the leader of the Zetas holds a meeting with other cartel leadership, and the group comes to the conclusion that the only way way to beat the state, is to become the state. 

This book is about Tanzania,
but I think Louis XIV's statement
crosses both time and space...

Over the first few weeks of 2030, they seize police stations, government buildings, and most crucially, public utility operations. Government officials that don’t resign or go along with this change in power are, if they’re lucky, dismissed. Many more are simply executed for failing to declare loyalty to the local cartel. Initially, the process runs uninterrupted, resulting in only 800 documented deaths, and the seizure of 10 western states. In response, the United States launches an intervention in northwest Mexico, led mostly by Special Forces conducting clandestine drone strikes and targeting killings. The Reactionary President threatens Mexico with outright invasion if the situation, which the US is actively making worse, isn’t quickly stabilized. This, combined with the humanitarian crisis in the 5 eastern states, leads the sitting Moreno President to declare a state of emergency. 

And these are just people protesting the undermining of democratic institutions through
boring means like cutting funding for election security and poll worker training in 2023.

But the backlash is immediate and swift. The people of central and northern Mexico learn from the failure of the US General Strikers. They spend one day taking walks in the park, and ten days seizing government offices and crucial utility and transportation hubs. Fortunately for them, only the federal police oppose the Joventud Revolution. The military and local police stand by, or actively support the revolutionaries. Within days of declaring the Joventud candidate the new President of Mexico, the revolutionaries consolidate control and are now stuck with the difficult prospect of governing a shaky coalition with two internal rebellions and a threatened international intervention. This, along with a humanitarian crisis and an economy in free-fall. International reporters and pundits give the new government less than a year before being overthrown. But they underestimate the resolve of both Joventud and the willingness of older generations to go along with, or at least fail to oppose, the revolutionary regime. Many in Mexico take a ‘wait and see’ approach, many hoping, in the back of their minds at least, that the new government in Mexico City will be able to put the cartels in their place and bring relief to the Yucatan.

We’ve largely ignored developments in the Caribbean and Central America, so let’s take a quick look at those two regions. In the chaos of the 2028 General Strike, the US government forgot to continue propping up the governments of Haiti and Puerto Rico. By 2035, the Haitians are seven years into self-government sans Yankee meddling. The strongest gang of the current crop vying for control of the country emerged on top after a civil war. Puerto Rico defaulted on its dollar-denominated debt, but without being chained to absurd fiscal policies dictated by Washington, the country is finding its feet as an independent nation for the first time since Spanish conquest in 1508. The Mayan-speaking people of Guatemala and El Salvador are watching the action across the border in Mexico quite intently, as the violence and famine ebbs and flows across their border. 

Back in the United States 

By 2030, most of the residual violence and disruptions from the strikes are over. The Reactionary Party prepares for the midterm elections with an air of glee as trimmed voter rolls and outright disqualification of rival candidates means they are almost certain to maintain their majorities in Congress. But in the shadowy networks of former criminals and former strikers a new movement has emerged. It is the brain child of an out of work engineering professor and it takes its name from the famous speech which described America as “the Shining City on a Hill.” This movement resolves to fight the corporate oligarchy through violence and terror rather than through normal political channels. Because this network is cellular, each operation works independently of the others. Once a goal or target is agreed upon, communications between the groups are severed, with each operating based on local realities, with local resources, rather than relying on electronics, all of which are heavily surveilled by the state. The one connection between them all is a device invented by the professor, and refined during the general strike.

The device itself is referred to as a suitcase EMP, but that's not technically what advice does. Rather than overloading and destroying electronic circuitry the way an electromagnetic pulse would, the suitcase EMP sends out a low-energy signal which disrupts surveillance and communication equipment within a few hundred yards of the device. Electronics within the functional radius of the device begin to malfunction, but they don’t immediately fail as they would in the wake of an EMP. Lights will flicker on and off, cell phones remain on but show no reception, computer screens begin showing distorted images but never quite fail. Shining City plans on this disruption lasting long enough for them to carry out their objectives. Over the summer each cell picks a target and in late July they swing into action. 

Suitcase EMPs are activated near the target areas and heavily armed militants storm into high dollar fundraisers with the express goal of killing both mega-donors and their congressional lackeys. Of the 12 planned attacks, 10 go basically according to plan. The EMPs disrupt communication just long enough for the gunman to get into the donors’ suites, kill their targets, and leave before security forces have a chance to react. Only one of the 12 attacks is disrupted in the hours before it was scheduled to happen. Authorities interview the suspects, who remain tightlipped. One even kills themselves in custody. The local authorities have no idea that this is part of a wider plan. Only one of the attacks does not go according to plan, only because of a last-minute addition of security by an extra paranoid billionaire. The Shining City operatives make it into the facility, but then find themselves in a gun battle with private security. The attack turns into a hostage situation. By the time the tear gas clears, all the attackers, their targets, and many innocent bystanders lay dead, 127 fatalities in all. This number almost doubles the 68 other fatalities in the other 10 attacks that went according to plan. 

This attack becomes known as the Midterm Massacre and triggers what later historians will call a ‘vigorous government response.’ Many of the political prisoners and even common criminals who have been released in the previous year in the wake of the general strike, are now targeted for arrest or, barring that, extrajudicial killings. The oligarchy looks at the paranoia of the billionaire who hired extra security in the days before the attack and decide that further privatization of policing is the order of the day. Pro-corporate media works hard to portray the Shining City movement as a bloodthirsty terrorist organization, but 60% of the population looks at the Shining City movement and thinks, “I wish I had the courage to do that.”

A single murder by handgun is a tragedy,
a thousand murders by spreadsheet is fine, apparently.

In 2032, the Reactionary Party crushes the Demonstration Party and easily wins election. This victory is largely a product of naked voter suppression by further trimming voter rolls as well as open election interference, disqualifying many potential rival candidates. One of the Reactionary Party’s first priorities is to illegalize bankruptcy for private individuals as well as eliminating protections on inheritable debt. Another law allows corporations to vest personhood in artificial intelligence programs, turning corporate personhood from a political fiction into a technical reality. That these programs operate in a manner subservient to corporate boards, and are in no way independently intelligent gets swept under the rug. Corporate boards use these AI programs to tell the public that any ‘tough’ decisions they have to make, for instance closing a factory or laying off office workers, is called for by the AI, and not the voting members of the board. 

Over the next few years the government continues to roll back protections for citizens, turning the bill of rights into a legal fiction. Political-economic decision making becomes ever more the purview of a handful of mostly men living in fabulously wealthy enclaves surrounded by ever-growing slums and shanty towns. The reforms passed by the Reactionary Party really begin to bite; more and more people drop out of the formal economy because the risk of taking and passing on debt outweighs the need for formal employment. In practical terms this means that the US economy shrinks from a high of $29 trillion to just over $25 trillion by 2035. Furthermore, the population declines from 335 million to just over 325 million. This in-formalization of the economy and the detachment of 70% of the population from it means that a serious revolt is brewing amongst the underclasses. While security services disrupt half the cells of Shining City in the years after the Midterm Massacre, the movement has not gone away. Instead, they're busy recruiting allies for 2036, and planning something big.

Crossing the Threshold of the Long 21st Century

Before We Begin…

The rough draft for the decade from 2025 to 2035 ballooned to almost 6,000 words, so I concluded I would need to scrap my initial plan to tell the story of the coming century by the decade. Instead, each Friday will cover a five-year period, starting in 2025 and ending in 2125. On top of changing the chronology of the storytelling, I realized I had a second issue on my hands. I could tell the story of the coming century solely through a dry, textbook style, outlining momentous events and tracking broad trends. But to really tell that story, we need characters to follow. People who’s lives can give the imagination something more concrete to grip on to as the wild beast of history careens from one landmark event to another. So I've decided to take a page, and four characters, from the book that Dr. Mattson and I are finishing. At the start of Inequality by Design, we meet three high school graduates of the class of 1980, and follow them for 40 years, as their lives are buffeted by the corporate-approved creative destruction of the neo-liberal economic era. By the end of the opening chapter, as the main characters enter elderhood, their kids and grandkid are entering adulthood in the year 2020. So it is these four who we will follow through the first half of the unfolding Long 21st Century.

What better metaphor for the coming century, than a gate topped with barbed wire, dwarfed by an approaching storm?

Also, Oklahoma's wild weather generated this image, not AI. More on that later...

The rough draft for the decade from 2025 to 2035 ballooned to over 6,000 words, so I concluded I would need to scrap my initial plan to tell the story of the coming century by the decade. Instead, each Friday will cover a five-year period, starting in 2025 and ending in 2125. On top of changing the chronology of the storytelling, I realized I had a second issue on my hands. I could tell the story of the coming century solely through a dry, textbook style, outlining momentous events and tracking broad trends. But to really tell that story, we need characters to follow. People whose lives can give the imagination something more concrete to grip on to as the wild beast of history careens from one landmark event to another. So I've decided to take a page, and four characters, from the book that Dr. Mattson and I are finishing. At the start of Inequality by Design we meet three high school graduates of the class of 1980, and follow them for 40 years, as their lives are buffeted by the corporate-approved creative destruction of the neo-liberal economic era. By the end of the opening chapter, as the main characters enter elderhood, their kids and grandkid are entering adulthood in the year 2020. So it is these four who we will follow through the first half of the unfolding century.

A fine read, even if it was
as much a way to talk about
the USA in the 60s and 70s,
as a detailed examination
of the Long 14th Century.

    But before we meet our protagonists, I want to throw out a quick note about the title of this post. Calling an era a 'long century' is, like everything else under the sun, not new. Perhaps the most well-know example come from Barbara Tuchman's book A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous Fourteenth Century. Published in 1978, the book covers the events of the Great Famines of the early 14th century, the Black Plague, the Papal Schism, peasant revolts, and the general breakdown of Western European society as it transitions from the Medieval Period (roughly 800-1300 AD) to the Early Modern Period which began sometime around 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople, the flowering of the Italian Renaissance, and the start of the Age of Sail. Setting aside the academic criticisms, the concept that Tuchman spoke to was the idea that the events which defined a period of transition didn't conform to the neat limit of 100 years. Thus, the changes experienced by Western Culture which were amplified by the beginning of the Little Ice Age, fundamentally reformed what it meant to be a member of Western Christendom. And that era ran for nearly 150 years, aka a century and a half. A long century, if you will. And that period seems suspiciously similar in length to the philosophy underpinning the Iroquois Confederacy's Great Law of Peace, a philosophy that one should consider the impact of their actions on the next seven generations. Arabic thinker and historian Ibn Khaldun's Dynastic Change and Its Economic Consequences posits a similar length of time as the life cycle of any given dynasty.

    This is all to say that I believe we, the people of North America, have already crossed the threshold. While I don't know what event future historians will point to as 'the' triggering event: September 11th, the Great Recession, Calderon's War on the Cartels? Heck, they may even reach back to the first iteration of NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994 and ushered in a transformation of the North American economy from three big, separate entities, into functionally one, tightly interlinked mega-economy. Indeed, if the Long 21st Century began in 1994, and runs until some seminal event circa 2125, that would bracket the Long 21st Century quite nicely. 

For giggles, I played with AI image generation for the four main characters. This was a for-fun experiment and I will return to stock images. But let us return to the four characters of the narrative, shall we?

    The first is Marty Junior, first-born son, unsurprisingly, of Marty Senior. Growing up, Marty took his role as big brother seriously enough he had a few run-ins with the law, beating up anyone he perceived as picking on his little brother or sister. By 2025, Marty Junior is a 33 year old cyber security specialist who works for the State of Michigan. He lives in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan with a wife, Tina, and their (uncreatively-named) newborn son, Marty the third, aka Trey. 

    Little sister Jillian celebrates her 30th birthday in 2025. Her parents secretly joked that she got all the brains of the family. Those brains won her free rides to the University of Michigan and that to a Canadian medical school. A few years out of residency, she and her husband Chris run a health clinic in Ashtabula, Ohio, which operates at perpetual near-bankruptcy. Jillian is pregnant with the couple’s first child. 

    Our third character is the younger brother, 26 year old Bobby, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Like his father, Bobby suffers from dyslexia, which has made him a perennial temp-worker. He is a bit of a black sheep of the family, as their overworked father’s deteriorating health over the course of the 2010s left Bobby without a stable father figure. Bobby showed up quite drunk at the father’s 2020 funeral, and hasn’t spoken to Marty Junior or Jillian since then. 

    Apart from these three siblings we have 16 year old Allison, the granddaughter of Jenny, another protagonist from the first chapter of Inequality by Design. In 2020, her family left the rustbelt for the warmer climate of the Gulf Coast, but their 30 year old car only got them as far as western Tennessee before breaking down for good. In 2025, Allison is slogging through what passes for an education at a chronically underfunded high school. Unlike her mother at the same age, she is not boy-crazy. Having spent her entire childhood moving from one apartment to the next, always one step ahead of eviction, she never established close friendships, and was never quite able to pin down what she wants to do with her life. 

The Big Picture: 2025 to 2030

Is that a sunrise or a sunset?

The first few of the years are deceptively calm for both the United States, and our four main characters. International headlines periodically mention a devastating drought pushing the people of the Yucatan towards starvation. A dramatic series of financial and political crises across the northern border in Canada disrupts some cross-border trade, but most people in the U.S. are just trying to get by. Making basic ‘getting by’ harder, import tariffs cost every American roughly $2,600 each year, but US-manufactured goods to replace more expensive imports often fail to materialize. At the same time, attempts at mass deportation pursued by the Reactionary Party administration in Washington pushes more and more recent immigrants and native-born relatives into a shadow economy rife with exploitation and criminal elements. While events in the eastern hemisphere make trouble over there, North America appears a serene island of stability by comparison. But pressures in all three major countries are building. 

I don't know what this chart measures, but 
it certainly looks bad for Canada...

Three horsemen of the economic apocalypse visit Canada: first comes electoral chaos, with no obvious replacement for the Trudeau government, followed by the collapse of an inflated real estate market and declining exports to the US. These factors spark a government debt crisis. The western provinces demand grater financial accountability from Ottawa, and hold referendums to refusing to send tax monies on to the federal government. Like the independence referendum in Catalonia, the government responds with arrests and laws banning provinces from holding plebiscites. This goads Quebec into outdoing the western provinces, with the provincial parliament votes to formally ‘confederate’ with the rest of the country. The province will no longer enforce laws passed by the national parliament, and will explore creating their own currency. The move is meant to force the Canadian government to backtrack on banning plebiscites, but instead provokes the national government to send in the Mounties and dissolve Quebec's National Assembly. But the move backfires, and the western provincial parliaments side with Quebec, passing laws to explicitly ban local businesses from collecting federal taxes.  By 2028, the country is divided into two hostile camps, the confederates of the periphery, and the centralizer provinces in between. 

Mexico's drought monitor readings last year.
Yes, I know, the Yucatan looks okay for now.

If Canada suffers from a deluge of problems, to the south a lack of deluges causes a different set of problems. The failure of cool-season monsoons leads to crop failures across southern Mexico and Central America. Starvation pushes some five million desperate people to crime and lawlessness, a situation local criminal gangs are only too happy to exploit. While the government in Mexico City does attempt to ship gran to the region, most of the shipments end up looted by the starving or stolen and held for ransom by gangs. The Maya-speaking peoples of the region view the fight between the Spanish-speaking gangs and government forces as just another instance of second-class citizenship and historical brutality. The Maya break into outright rebellion, and they are quickly dubbed the Zapatistas Nuevas by the Spanish-speaking population. This Pan-Maya movement even appeals to Spanish speakers sick of being held at arm’s length by the central government in Mexico City and being forced to take in people deported from the United States. 

As the year 2028 begins, the United States appears insulated from the brushfires burning to the north and south. But that appearance is deceiving, and the US is just a much a tinderbox of economic and cultural resentments. Every conflagration requires a spark, and because history has a sense of humor, an income tax cut proves to be that spark. A law passed in 2026, supported by both political parties, goes into effect. It eliminates the higher tax rate on overtime, while simultaneously ending the requirement that employers pay overtime for any work past 40 hours a week. Most work-forces without a union contract, and even some with one, quickly find their OT disappearing from their paychecks in January. 82 million Americans work hourly-wage jobs, and many salaried employees also receive some form of overtime compensation, so the consternation and fury spreads quickly. 

If your start a republic by protesting taxation, why not end one protesting taxes?

Still believing the political process might solve the problem, Americans flood congressional offices with angry calls. But Congress fails to repeal of this despised reform, with some even responding to constituents to get different jobs. Since the right to strike was also eliminated early on in the reactionary administration, labor unions and non-unionized workers must turn to a more informal method of protest. They call for everyone in America to take a walk in the park on April Fool’s Day, and stay there until tax day on April 15th. Municipal parks across the USA fill with millions of people. The media sends the message that this April Fools joke will be a one-time event, but the next day, the parks fill up again. Then the next day. Then the next. A week into the General Strike, some 30% of the US labor force takes “walks in the park” rather than going to work. Many who do not call off work participate in slow downs and stoppages, vowing to do half the work expected. The strikes prove surprisingly successful, grinding the economy to a halt. 

The oligarchs hold the cards though, and tell every elected official in the country if they ever want to see a single cent in campaign contributions again, they will break the strikes. The majority of elected officials comply with their corporate task-masters. National Guard units are mobilized, and police officers called in for extra pay working on “park clearing” details. In some cases, local cops and national guardsmen refuse to comply with the orders. When this happens, private security companies fill in support roles, freeing up those who do obey orders to put on riot gear. 

It is NOT hard to find a real-life image of cops 
clearing protestors out of a park. Your challenge,
dear reader, is to guess which park clearing this
is a picture of...

At this point, our four characters re-enter the narrative, and we will follow them through the General Strike of 2028. So, let’s make this all personal…

Marty Junior

Marty Junior counts himself as one of the good guys. Working for the State of Michigan’s eponymously-named Office of Remote Surveillance, Marty monitors the online activity, especially financial transactions, of organized crime with a focus on human trafficking. Starting in 2025, the state received federal money and expanded definition of human trafficking, including labor organizers and charitable NGOs accused of harboring illegal immigrants or naturalized citizens targeted for deportation. Marty finds the expanded definition troubling, but a round of automation and job cuts puts to rest any doubts he may have. Junior even gets a promotion to shift supervisor, which largely insulates him from the job cuts. Plus, his superior assures him that ‘loyal men’ will be needed in the near future, rather than increased automation.

When the general strike begins Marty and his agency are more than willing to backstop National Guard and private security forces with communications and intelligence. They monitors both live feed cameras and cell phone traffic of the park walkers, turning the information suspected organizers of the strike over to local police agencies. Arrests take place overnight at suspects residences, before they can get to the protection of crowds at local parks. Marty goes home every day after work and loses no sleep about the possible fates of these political prisoners.

        In the years following the crackdown on the General Strike, Marty Junior boasts to his superiors about the vigor with which his office tracked down cell traffic and cash app transactions. He concludes the late-night arrests prevented the Detroit-area protests from getting out of hand. When speaking to people outside the office, Marty rarely mentions his work, and often draws on his experiences before the strike, if the other person asks anything like probing questions. Even with Tina, he rarely talks about the core of his work.

Like this, but with corporate sponsorship...

Jillian

Julie and her husband Chris thought they would be a power-couple; she would be the doctor providing care, while Chris the accountant would make sure they get paid. They even identified Ashtabula, Ohio as a community underserved by the health care system, thinking this would provide a stable customer base. But the joke was on them, as insurance payouts declined and patients found themselves unable to afford copays. To keep their clinic open, the pair find themselves having to hire additional staff to collect payments and manage paperwork, rather than provide direct patient care. 

While Jillian, Chris, and the fifteen clinic employees sympathize with the striker’s, they know they cannot take time off to join the strike, as the clinic would certainly lose too much revenue. The staff of the clinic demands some sort of solidarity, and a vote is taken to is taken to open the clinic to them anyone ‘walking the nearby park’ without up-front payment required. The Ohio governor declares a statewide curfew, and the State Police show up to close the clinic. Jillian and the staff leave, but show up the next day to operate as normal. Much like in Michigan, the state authorities in Ohio regard such actions as trouble making. Since he manages the clinic, state police arrest Julian's husband Chris while he is on his way back to a local park to spread word about the services the clinic might provide. This move infuriates both Jillian and the members of the staff who then vote to take half of their staff to the park to help treat any injured strikers. While Jillian stays to oversee clinic operations, half of the staff is present when the local park is surrounded by mounted riot police and the National Guard. 

Eventually, the tools of empire used abroad,
end up getting used on the people of the homeland.

When the protesters refuse to disperse, the state attacks. Hundreds, including the entirety of the staff are either injured or arrested very few escape the police cordon. The crackdown results in several deaths a number of critical injuries, and sparks general outrage across the state. The next day when protesters meet at the parks, they come heavily armed. In some places this results in tents standoffs with the police but in others, including Dayton and Toledo the strikers shoot first. Dozens are killed and hundreds injured across the state. Those currently in custody are beaten and tortured on suspicion that they are somehow coordinating the spontaneous riots on the outside. The victims of this state brutality include Juliana's husband Chris, who staggers out of the prison with broken shoulders and black eyes.

Bobby

As mentioned earlier Bobby works a series of temp jobs in Louisville Kentucky. Needing every dollar he earns, he does not participate in the first day of the general strike, referring to the people by the media moniker of April fools. As the strike enters its second week, Bobby loses his temper job unloading trucks at the Louisville train station.Most of the freight trains in the country are either halted or operating way way behind schedule. While Bobby is initially frustrated with the strike, an idle railway worker encourages him to go to one of the local parks and actually meet the people he's upset with. Bobby follows the advice and ends up befriending several strikers. With temp jobs dried up and rent due on the 15th, Bobby sews what’s left of his cash into his windbreaker, grabs his sleeping bag, and heads to the park. There, he joins hundreds of others on the path to homelessness. 

As word of the riots in Ohio filters down to Kentucky guns, improvised explosive devices, and Molotov cocktails begin showing up ay discrete locations around the park. Bobby is highly suspicious that at least some of these have been placed by agents of the state, and he and a friend actually detain someone leaving a crate of national guard issued hand grenades. 

Go south, young man!

When Bobby receives a phone call from his mother begging him not to participate in the strikes he tries to do the right thing and turn the hand grenades over to a police officer. This move predictably backfires, with Bobby arrested for possessing stolen government property. Fortunately for him, he's sitting in county jail when the crackdown begins in Louisville. The park he had been at is the scene of some of the worst fighting. Over 300 people, both strikers and security forces, losing their lives. Bobby is further fortunate that the governor of Kentucky is much more soft in his support of the corporate state and very quickly offers an amnesty to everyone arrested during the rioting if it will get the bloodshed to stop. This tactic, along with the collective horror due to the Battle of Louisville, brings the general strike to a slow-motion. Finding an eviction notice on his door, Bobby grabs his sleeping bag and jumps on an empty freight train. As the train rumbles south, Bobby calls his mom and lets her know he's leaving Kentucky.

Allison

I mentioned above Alison found everything about school boring: classes, teachers, fellow students, all of it. So she dropped out and started working full-time at a fried chicken place. At the beginning of 2028 Alison is 19 years old working as a shift manager. As the strike begins the fried chicken places teeters on the verge of bankruptcy because the franchise owner keeps demanding more and more profit from the business. The owner even visits the restaurant the day after the general strike begins, and threatens to fire anyone who participates going forward. To show he’s serious, the owner fires two line cooks who called out the day before. This action completely backfires. The entire staff walks out and heads straight to the nearest park. They make impromptu meals for fellow strikers and generally serve as a nucleus to organize everything people living in the park might need from food to clothing to shelter to sanitation facilities. Well this would mark Allison out as an organizer and someone targeted for arrest, the entire operation is done with sticky notes, pencils and absolutely no electronics. 

Allison throws herself into the organization of the strike camp with enthusiasm, finding a meaning that she never found in the mindless rigidity and conformism of high school. Allison and the other strikers are fortunate that the mayor of Memphis is one of few elected politicians in the state of Tennessee to not tow the corporate line. The Mayor argues quite publicly that the police department has better things to do than kick people out of parks that are technically owned by the public which currently is filling them up. This buys the strikers an few extra weeks until the Tennessee National Guard moves in to clear out the protest camps in early May. The Tennessee state government then dissolves the city government of Memphis, turning all its functions over to the county and declares that anyone found in the parks after the middle of the month will be arrested and charged with domestic terrorism. 

Allison and her work crew stolidly return to the restaurant. Their boss agrees to rehire them, on the condition that they pay back the franchise potential profits lost during the strike. This move has the double effect both garnishing meager wages while simultaneously showing the employees just how much profit they provide the franchise owner. The workers in public agree to this, but hold a secret meeting and decide to assassinate the franchise owner. The restaurant’s bartender has military experience and improvises an IED from household items. A week later, the franchise owner’s car blows up shortly after leaving the restaurant. Everyone in the restaurant is suspected of participating, but they all keep quiet and the police can never actually pin it on anyone. From the silence surrounding the bombing of the boss's car, emerges an unspoken consensus; "We could do that again."

"I don't know what happened, we were busy at working..."