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November 17, 2004

Secession Diaries, Part VI: Postcards From The Ledge

The leaders of the Two United States couldn't have been more different.

Buck Lincoln, who won re-election in a hard-fought battle in 2012 against New Democrat candidate Angela DiLligio, was a native of rural Montana and a former Marine who'd become a multimillionaire in the construction business. Along with his wife LeAnne, he'd raised his three children plus two adopted special needs kids; his experience at raising them led him into a third career, as the founder of a charter/semiprivate school in the inner city of Denver; he was drafted by the local GOP to run for state Senate, and although he had to practically be dragged into politics, he served well. After The Split, he was in the right place at the right time, and was swept to the Presidency.

Prime Minister 1092 was the same age as Buck Lincoln, but they could hardly have been different. Raised on a commune, she was picketing non-vegan lunch lines in the cafeteria while Lincoln's Force Recon unit was pinned down under enemy fire on Grenada - an action that earned Lincoln the Silver Star as he shot his way through a cordon of Cuban contruction workers carrying a wounded comrade on his back. She'd worked in non-profits and the public sector ever since.

But they had one thing in common. They both hated, hated, hated the book "Atlas Shrugged". 1092 hated the Ayn Rand because of its unabashed libertarian themes, which she called "unabashedly libertarian" - a vile imprecation in her personal argot.

Lincoln hated it not so much on its own merits, but because he associated it with the strain of "pie in the sky, feet in the clouds, holier-than-thou" libertarianism that he felt negated the cause of libertarianism.

It wasn't much to go on.

The Gathering Storm

The USoC campaign to break the farm strike was a disaster; troops from various USoC federal ministries were accused of much pointless brutality, and in one tragicomic incident even chased a group of fleeing farmers across the border from Illinois into Iowa, capturing and looting an Iowa farm town; the unit commander, a native New Yorker and graduate of Columbia University, when informed that his unit was in Iowa, asked "What state is that in?"

Minnesota and Wisconsin, who'd been on the brink of voting "red" before The Split, were on the verge of open insurrection; repeated, perhaps even majoritarian calls for a re-vote on joining the USoC were rebuffed only because seceding from secession wasn't covered in the USoC Constitution.

The USoC stock market crashed. Unemployment, which had been endemic and growing for years, skyrocketed. Crime spiked in the inner cities, and spread. The Black Market devoured massive swathes of the economy.

Prime Minister 1092 looked at the numbers - and saw the "Red" USA booming - and knew that not only was her political future in jeopardy - but so was the future of the great dream, Progressive America.

If only there were a solution...

And she remembered; in 2009, the USoC administration had sold nuclear fuel, as promised, to the Iranians. She placed a furtive phone call.

A week later, a freighter slipped its moorings from a heavily-guarded dock in Bandar Abbas.

Diplomacy

USoC Foreign Minister Darby Von Minion scheduled a summit meeting between the leaders of the US and USoC, to be held at the border cities of Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead, Minnesota, for January of 2014. Preparations went ahead; hungry and disheveled farmers were removed from the area around Moorhead, while Fargoans tried to tone down at least the appearance of rampant prosperity, to avoid appearing ostetatious.

As the final preparations went ahead, and Lincoln and 1092 left their respective executive residences to go to the meeting, the freighter pulled into a shrouded dock in Bayonne, New Jersey. A convoy of black vans met the ship at the dock, as elite Ministry of Love troops scoured the area. The convoy left quickly and quietly.

The next morning, the summit opened.

Posted by Mitch at November 17, 2004 08:23 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Check the names, it changes from Lincoln to Humphrey about a thrid of the way in

Posted by: b at November 17, 2004 08:32 AM

Yeah, I caught that too. Buck Humphrey=MN politician, grandson of Hubert. An almost inevitable slip.

Shoulda named the President "Rocket" or "Hammerhead".

Posted by: mitch at November 17, 2004 09:26 AM

"...across the border from Illinois into Iowa..."

I swear I've seen cartoons where a line of anthropomorphic dog soldiers marches right into a river, becomes completely submerged, and re-emerges soaking wet on the other side, still in cadence. That is the image I have of this USoC batallion's tragicomic adventure. I can't even imagine them bothering to look for a bridge.

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