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.