July 2023 – A Possible Future

Though many things had slowed down in the past three years, the media onslaught did not. The news continued to assail its consumers, though now it teemed with stories about the Navy forcibly turning back Chinese relief supplies from reaching earthquake-stricken California. Stories ran about the ongoing fallout crossing the Pacific from North Korea, where huge areas still smoldered after the retribution for the squib nuke that landed near Seattle.

The round-up of dissenters continued apace in much of the rest of the US. Those who failed to consent to making a public profession of support to the Great Leader, awaited the knock on the door, often in the middle of the night. Many who had never seen the need for a gun, were scrambling to procure any kind of protection against the onslaught of supposedly legitimate law enforcement, and the masses of supporters in red hats who believed anyone not in complete agreement with them, was sub-human and deserving of torment and death. It was no longer a matter of winning the next election to reverse the direction of the country, it was a recognition that there would be no next election, that the current regime was instituting a measure of hereditary succession, thus ensuring that only the reality desired by the Trumpistas became the actual reality.

Still, the true realities of the economy occasionally stirred above the shouting of the party in power. Auto manufacture in the US never recovered from the supply chain disruption wrought by the original coronavirus outbreak. Indeed, the degree of economic international interdependence developed over the past few decades, became unraveled at breathtaking speed once it proved impossible to rely upon just-in-time inventory methods. Yet it was proving impossible to reconstruct the same supply chains domestically since no US based company had the resources to build the network of suppliers within this country. But the exhortations from the regime continued, and Potemkin factories were proudly displayed as being the answer for all to see.

It was the huge quake striking California that really proved to be the death knell for the economy, and the country, to a large respect. The verbal warfare that had been waged between California government, and the Federal government, went hot immediately afterwards. An Executive Order implemented a travel ban into and out of the State of California. The POTUS declared that since they didn’t buy into his administration’s efforts, they could just recover from this disaster themselves. Pictures of the devastation flowed out despite the efforts of the administration to embargo even the knowledge of the extent of the death and damage. The worst came when international efforts to provide succor were turned back by the vessels of the Navy, firing upon the Chinese vessels. Small sailing vessels began to emerge from the coastline and headed both north to Oregon, and south to the Baja as desperate people tried to extricate themselves from the humanitarian disaster.

In Washington, one would never know of the extent of the disaster. All members of Congress had either professed allegiance in huge public ceremonies, or they were summarily dismissed and replaced directly by the President, using the façade of requesting suggestions from the Republicans of each state. The bureaucracy lumbered on, dissension crushed within its ranks. Still, all of the power, and thus the money, flowed through the government. The swamp grew larger and larger, its fetid maw swallowing all of the offerings proffered by the rest of the nation.

The rest of the world wept. Wept for those in California who were trying to recover from their natural disaster. Wept for those in North Korea who were killed in the initial deployment of nuclear weapons. Wept for those in both Korea’s whose lives would be forever altered due to the fall-out. But maybe most of all, wept for the country that used to be the symbol of freedom around the world, now irreversibly turned to the dark side and held under the sway of one man who believed himself better than God.