SCENE: A conference room in Zürich, Switzerland. An international team of historians is gathered in a conference hall. Behind the panel tabel, a large “Powerpoint 2170” holographic slide displays the title for the session: “Origins of the Second American Civil War”.
PROFESSOR A: Welcome, one and all, to this discussion on the origins of the Second American Civil War. We’d like to start with this presentation from PROFESSOR B.
PROFESSOR B: Thank you. As you know, the origins of the Second American Civil War, 150 years ago, are shrouded in mystery. But we found this exchange on “X”, a “social medium” popular around 2024, that sheds some light on the subject.
(B swooshes his hand in the air, and the holograph advances to show a “Twitter thread”i)
ProgressiveDuke1332: ReTHUGlicons have no policies to fix Minneapolis’s problems.
Mitchpberg: Of course we do. Arrest, prosecute and incarcerate actual dangerous criminals. Make life better for law-abiding citizens. Get rid of impediments to affordable life, like rent control, the Met Council’s idiot zoning policies and city policies about “driving density”. Have a a sales tax holiday. Cut spending, and cut taxes, especially some of the more niggling, punitive taxes like parking meter rates and hospitality taxes, to simulate traffic and business.
ProgressiveDuke1332: Hahaha, mitchpberg think you can eliminate crime by lowering parking fees!
PROFESSOR B: This, I hold, was the beginning of a pattern where nobody in society could communicate about anything.
PROFESSOR C: So, part of America lashed out at the other part as a matter of…
PROFESSOR D: Intellectual self-defense?
PROFESSOR B: Precisely.
(Brow-furrowing and beard-scratching follows)
PROFESSOR E: I mean, it doesn’t not make sense…
(General assent breaks out).
And SCENE