http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-five.html
He ends his story on an optimistic note.
I suspect that the optimism would soon give place to acrimony, and that matters would pass from harsh words to harsher blows.
Beyond that , I wondered how not just the power but also the presence and the attitudes that have defined America and it's place in the world might pass away, and what might replace them.
This is a 'politically incorrect' vision. Caveat lector.
AFTER AMERICA
Prologue
"Look granddad!", said my young granddaughter, showing me an animated display on her laptop computer screen."It's a satellite image of the earth at night. See all the lights across Europe and Russia. Not many in Africa.There's lots in India, South East Asia and Australia. China is completely lit up. Isn't it pretty! I started where we are and followed the lights eastward, into the night. Now see the Americas come up out of the Pacific. There's plenty there, especially along the Atlantic coast of Brazil; but there's hardly any in North America. Isn't it funny? We now have two Dark Continents!", she said, laughing. "Tell me granddad, Africa I know about, but why do we see and hear nothing about North America? It used to be quite important, didn't it?"
That made me pause, and ponder for a while. "To tell that tale, my child", I said at last "would be to tally 'a great reckoning in a little room', as the Bard put it." "Don't people live there any more?", she asked. "What happened to them? Is that why we hear ever so much about the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, the Europeans, the Brazilians and everyone, but nothing about the North Americans? Do please tell me granddad, if you know, I would so like to hear."
Part One.
Awakening from the American Dream to the American Nightmare
Initial Excitement
At first there was a great deal of excitement about the dissolution of the United States.The chattering classes of the whole world were transfixed by the event. It was the gift which kept on giving. The long drawn out, although remarkably smooth political process of elections, debates, arguments, demonstrations, celebrations, reorganisations and renewed lobbying and jostling for power, wealth, influence and publicity stoked a prolonged world wide media frenzy. Reporters for every TV station and newspaper wanted to be there, to bring breathless commentary to their audience as events unrolled or unfolded and the USA unraveled or underwent rebirth. The exact nature and significance of what was happening was subject to a variety of interpretations; all grist for the media mill. It was a dream assignment, far preferable to coverage of riots and revolutions in the Middle East or epidemics and tribal atrocities in Central Africa. It was still safe, comfortable, civilised. The natives who mattered spoke English and were easy to interview. There was no difficulty in obtaining human interest and vox populi stories. Life on expenses was wonderful. The shopping was great. The opportunities for one-up-man-ship over worsted rivals left at home or in less favoured destinations were outstanding. It was the highlight and most fondly remembered period in the careers of most of the media folk. Naturally they milked it for all it was worth.Initially the world had watched in horrified disbelief as the American fleet burned and sank, the American airforce was blown out of the sky and the cream of the American army was beaten and captured. All in a short time and on an obscure part of the world which had been of very little interest to the American public or to the rest of the world. How had Tanzania, aided by Chinese 'volunteers' done this? Were the Chinese about to emulate the amazing success of the initial Japanese attacks in the Second World War? Was Diego Garcia the equivalent of Singapore? Was this a Pearl Harbor attack on an unprepared American fleet? Would the Americans nuke China back to the stone age? Many questions were asked. The answers were seriously embarrassing to American pride. None of their remaining forces were able to change the situation. Russian Support for China prevented a nuclear attack and the rest of the world was not ready to join America in a suicidal war. In a way the Americans were lucky.Their own territory was not damaged or threatened. The Chinese were magnanimous in victory. The Americans could abandon the war abroad to focus on recriminations at home. The world watched in renewed amazement as the American ship of state scuttled itself,after the suicide of it's captain, following it's navy under the waves of history, whilst the squabbling and mutinous crew attempted to escape in the lifeboats.
This was all good fun for the media. The scandals just kept coming. Military disaster; attempted cover-ups; the suicide of the President responsible for the military disaster and cover-ups; impeachment and flight of his successor accused of attempting a military coup which the military rejected! You couldn't make it up. The gutter press was in ecstasies for months, life just couldn't get better for them. The 'quality' press of the Western world was filled with anguished assessments and laments. 'How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished' was the text of many a media sermon by pundits, preachers and prophets, not all of whom were well acquainted with the Bible, despite the general tendency to conflate America and Israel as both a literary conceit and a present concern. There was plenty of concern, of course, not just for the fate of Israel and the effects on other countries, but mostly for the effects on the journalists own careers. Would their expertise, contacts and talking points cease to be relevant as America ceased? Should and could they rush over there to renew acquaintances and scrape acquaintance with newly influential figures? If America was going down, one had better hurry to make as much money and reputation as possible out of it before it all disappeared.The instant-book writers got busy and soon a tide of purple prose poured forth producing eulogies which also served as epitaphs for the people, personalities, history and geography of the United States. At least the geography would still be there and for a while it would still be easy and pleasant to visit, The cartographers would be busy, as they had been after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and those of the public who were interested would get used to more colourful maps.
At a higher level It kept the Chancellories of the world busy assessing the likely course of events and their probable consequences. The sum of the parts obviously being much less than the whole, American power and influence had shriveled. In a few months, as the United States dissolved,it went from a giant to a gang of squabbling dwarves. From America to Pakistan during a single nightmare from which there was no awakening.it's successors were themselves unstable and fissiparous. Their strength was untried, their territory and identity uncertain, their interests clashing. No one had confidence that any of them would last long. Easy come, easy go; here today, gone tomorrow, were maxims all too likely to apply to them and to any promises they made. Only a fool would trust any of them. The 'full faith and credit' placed in the promissory notes of a faithless and discredited and now vanished government, had been sadly misplaced. The successors of those thieves, often the same people new-minted in shiny new political identities would take a long time to earn any faith and credit from the publics of their own new countries let alone from the rest of the world; a world now experiencing economic woes which were largely blamed on the deceitful and larcenous Americans. It was a poor omen and bad precedent for the financial prospects of the successor states of the old USA. Every foreign government immediately began to think harder about the Chinese, the Indians and the Russians. They were the important powers now. The EU was too sclerotic to count for much, but Brazil was now more influential than the fragments of the United States, and a better prospect for investment and trade. Even it's bonds were more highly rated than those of the disunited states.
The disappearance of the influence of the United States was like taking your hand out of a bucket of water and seeing how little impression was left behind. The American impression on the world's organisations was just as transient. American membership of most international organisations ceased,and the organisations declined in importance as no-one else would pay the share that the Americans had done. The American veto in the Security Council of the United Nations lapsed as the UN would not allow it to any of the squabbling successor states, none of whom could even assert a successful claim to membership of the Security Council and all of whom had to apply for membership of the General Assembly as newly independent states. There were even anxious discussions, chaired by Pakistan, about how the safety of ex-American nuclear weapons might be assured. How were the mighty fallen, indeed. The previously dominant American influence in organisations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund evaporated. Plenty of American voices were still heard in their halls, but now it was a babble of American voices arguing with each other, until the Americans were left to argue amongst themselves and the rest of the world adjusted to the economic powers of the east. Attention soon shifted from the setting to the rising sun and countries and businesses began to pay a lot more attention to the newly important powers,anxiously analysing political nuances and seeking economic opportunities. Even the world's media paid less and less attention to the fragments of America, they were scarcely more important politically, economically or culturally than the smaller countries of South America. The strident voices were still vocal in north America, telling everyone what to do and predicting doom if they didn't, but few paid attention any longer. All the previously trendy liberal causes were forgotten by the rest of the world, although still influential within the ruling class of the EU. The Chinese, Indians and Russians were not interested in them, and Chinese, Indian and Russian opinion, or at least that of their rulers,now mattered to the rest of the world, far more than the noises within the North American freak show.
Adverse Consequences
The disappearance of the United States and the insouciant manner in which it's successor states sought to shrug off liability for it's debts had consequences. Adverse consequences. The loss of the reserve currency status of the dollar and the devaluation and disappearance of the dollar had made imports very expensive for Americans, and made international trade more uncertain for other countries. The banking system which had dominated the finances of the world had been a fount of corruption and scandal. The government and banks of America had manipulated everything to suit their immediate interests, and the additional strains caused the web of arrangements to become entanglements strangling everyone involved. Financial panics ensued in which the collapse of major American banks and the credit of the American government, and then the collapse and disappearance of the American government and the whole political entity of the United States were dominoes whose fall pushed over the already very weak banks of Europe and the credit of their governments. The debts of the old American government were worthless, and no one would or could lend to the new ones, and now the same inability to borrow to roll over existing debt caused European governments to default and their banks became zombies owned by the state, which repudiated liability for the banks speculative gambles, whose paper now also became worthless, ruining the funds and institutions and persons who had invested in them. Bankers were already loathed, now those who wanted to stay alive went into hiding. It became difficult for governments to maintain even a simple retail banking system completely freed of speculation. Confidence in the currency was shaken, and hyperinflation loomed in both Europe and America.
This mess was worsened by the fact that the gold held by American banks on behalf of many clients, including foreign governments was found to have been used, and lost, in the corrupt banking and regulatory malpractices which had been used to subsidise the banks and the governments my keeping interest rates low. Keeping gold prices low by surreptitious selling and speculation had helped reduce pressure to raise interest rates. The government had kept interest rates down, cheating savers and crippling capital formation in order to give profits to banks and to reduce their own interest charges, which made it easier for them to continue wasteful expenditure for so long.When they had to pay the piper, they had instead run away, and there was hell to pay. Much of the gold had been bought by the governments of China and India, and other rising countries. They may have had their suspicions as to what had been going on, but they were certainly not going to give back the gold, even if it could be determined whose gold it had really been. The main foreign losers were the governments of Germany and the Netherlands. The EU ceased to be on friendly terms with the old or new governments of America.
Americans had long thought that they held the world's greatest hoard of gold, more than 8,000 tons of it, in Fort Knox, Kentucky. This site was heavily guarded. It had been chosen because it was near the centre of the American landmass, for fear that foreign invaders might seize it. There had been bitter wrangling over how it was to be divided between the successor states of the USA. Although other Federal property went to the state in which it lay, and Kentucky was very eager to claim it, none of the other states were willing to allow them to have much of it. Now it was near the borders of several of the successor groupings of states, and many greedy and envious eyes turned to it. Kentucky's local forces took control, and when representatives of the other states arrived, it was opened for inspection - a process of audit which had been resisted for decades by the old Federal government. To the surprise of no one who had followed the tale of the gold held by New York's banks - the same banks who had effectively controlled the financial policy of the Federal government, the cupboard was found to be bare.
The days of being able to buy things from the rest of the world by simply printing their own currency or selling government debt abroad, were now over for Americans. Now they would have to sell something abroad, either by exporting some product or service or by selling a tangible asset before they could buy anything from abroad. This was difficult. No one would buy promises to pay from governments on that continent any more. No one would lend them anything, and the international financial collapse meant no one had much to lend anyway, and they would require good security for any loans. Hence many Federal assets were sold at fire-sale prices, after financial collapse and devaluation, by state governments desperate to get cash from any source, especially if it was foreign currency, particularly because tax receipts had fallen drastically due to the economic dislocation. Exports were also a cause of contention. The main exports of the old USA had been food and raw materials from the south and west and financial chicanery from New York and Washington. The latter would be accepted no longer, so it became difficult to feed let alone maintain the previous standard of living of the inhabitants of the big cities of the north, where government and welfare claiming had been the main activities after finance.
The south and west could sell their products to the rest of the world. Even if it was not sufficient to maintain the old lifestyles in the new circumstances, they hoped to get by with a lot of belt-tightening. Now many Americans were foreigners to each other, and their money was definitely not as good as that of other foreigners. The northerners were more closely associated with the old regime, and much of the odium for it's financial and political scandals attached to them. Quickly their ex-fellow countrymen, together with much of the rest of the world came to loathe them. They were blamed for the financial and economic collapse and regarded as thieves and layabouts. They were blamed for causing the loss of the old prosperity and power and prestige. They were abused as fast talking Yankee crooks, although most of them had more negro and Amerindian than Yankee blood in them by that time. They were not popular. The population of the south and west was far more inclined to fundamentalist Christianity than the atheism and exotic superstitions more prevalent in the north, so it was widely believed that God was punishing America for it's sins, and the main sinners were in the north.
This aversion was fully reciprocated by the northerners. They despised many of the beliefs, practices and identities of most of their ex-fellow-countrymen. For decades before the defeat and dissolution of the United States, 'Political Correctness' had reigned. The whole value system was inverted. White men, especially Southerners, were increasingly insulted and demonised, blacks were exalted, and G-d forbid anyone should say 'boo' to a Jew. In this evil atmosphere it had become common for statements to be made, such as the following direct quote from a Jewish commentator who looked to see what was wrong with America, and saw, 'poorly-educated Southern suburban white trash religious fanatics'. Black crime, arrogance, sense of entitlement to live at the expense of whites and over-estimation of the own abilities and worth were all approved and encouraged by the loathsome vermin in control of America. Many of them therefore felt justified in attempting to seize what they wanted from these politically incorrect racist redneck rural retards, and confident of success. Big mistake.
International Reaction
The disappearance of the United States was so quick and so slick that it left many people astounded and incredulous. It had a fictional quality about it. The 'with a single bound he was free' type of implausible escapist fiction. It seemed to be a conjuror's trick, providing an escape from responsibility and punishment for those who had caused and profited by the mess they left behind. There was an impression of debtors making a midnight flit, changing their identities and hoping to carry on blithely fleecing the gullible. These were impressions which the rest of the world did not like, especially when they had been left holding the baby, or in this case holding the now worthless government paper. Just as after the fall of the Soviet Union there were suspicious souls who suspected that it was all a trick and the communists would suddenly come together again when they had lulled the West into a false sense of security; so now there were people who suspected that this was just another trick by the cunning, corrupt, devious and treacherous Americans to shrug off their debts whilst continuing their larcenous ways.
In this atmosphere of anger and suspicion, it was an act of folly, insensitivity and chutzpah for the northerners to revive the name of the United States of America for their new confederation whilst simultaneously disowning the liabilities of it's predecessor of the same name. It was even pretty much the same bunch of politicians and bankers and bureaucrats sitting in exactly the same buildings! It was like a fraudulent bankruptcy where the criminals started a new company with the same name, in the same premises and run by the same directors whilst denying responsibility for the previous enterprise. Insolent contempt just couldn't get more blatant.Nor was there any sense of contrition or realisation that they needed to do anything different this time to avoid the same results that had destroyed the previous effort. No, that had all been someone else's fault or just bad luck. Even if they failed again they would once more attempt to shrug off responsibility, dust themselves down and get back in the saddle as soon as possible. That, after all was the American way, was it not?
All the old arrogance was still there and on display. At first foreign visitors who had known the old America were a bit confused. So little seemed to have changed. The same, but increasingly stale,hot air was emitted; 'land of opportunity', 'hope and change','new birth of freedom','temporary difficulties','reform', 'equality', 'feminism','racism', 'climate change', 'minority rights' ad nauseam. The second time around it was even less convincing; 'the first time as tragedy, the second as farce'. The people who had demonstrated their incapacity and dishonesty were still in charge! The lunatics really were running the asylum. It was a smaller asylum with more and poorer inmates, on bad terms with their neighbours, but as far as they were concerned it was everyone else who was mad. The old Americans had been keen to 'win friends and influence people', their successors appeared indifferent to losing friends and making enemies, despite no longer being the Masters of the Universe that they still assumed themselves to be.
This was a dangerous attitude to have. The world had changed. It was no longer dominated politically, militarily, economically and culturally by the United States version one, and would not accept the same nonsense from it's small brother United States version two. At least the other successor states showed some signs of prudence and adjustment to the new reality, trying to cut their government spending and increase their exports to achieve solvency. They did not continue to spout nonsense whilst threatening their neighbours, hectoring the rest of the world and demanding that they invest in their new financial scams or just give them stuff for free because they were so wonderful!
The rest of the world looked to the new United States to reimburse them for losses caused by the old USA. When those politicians simply shrugged and turned out empty pockets, the reaction of many countries was to seize any American property that they could lay hands upon, without caring about it's relevance to their losses or regard for which successor state it was now affiliated to. This included the personal property of American individuals including bank accounts, investments and real estate. Such assets were likely to belong to rich and politically influential Americans, so they received a painful message, and relations between all of the American successor states and the rest of the world rapidly soured. All those ill-gotten gains squirreled away in offshore bank accounts and safe deposit boxes were suddenly at risk. Some countries remembered and revived the old custom in modernised form, of issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal to privateers who were thereby authorised to wage private war on the persons and property of Americans to obtain compensation for their losses. Discreet bankers in places like the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Lichtenstein, Switzerland and the Channel Islands became discreetly richer as American depositors were no longer able to reclaim what they had thought was theirs, not all of which went to governments and privateers. A good many affluent Americans abroad were simply kidnapped for ransom, tortured and murdered, sometimes by the men they had paid to guard them. Poorer Americans were likely to be assaulted by aggrieved individuals or enraged mobs, under the indifferent gaze of local authorities. Foreign travel became almost impossible for Americans, and foreigners soon became almost as unpopular in America.
This meant that media as well as tourist travel to America almost ceased. The mood had changed in any case. The elation and interest which had greeted the first developments changed to impatience, disgust and anger. There was still plenty of news from America, but it was of a harsher and more strident sort, with no good resolution expected. The great cities and their citizens were becoming shoddier, down at heel, unkempt, malnourished and aggressive or surly in demeanor. The old American openness and sunniness of disposition disappeared. It became difficult to get useful interviews with prominent officials and politicians, who were the only people who still appeared to be doing well. The hotels and the shopping deteriorated, life there became unpleasant, restrictive and dangerous. The international media circus moved on.There was still electronic communication, but the rest of the world's attention moved away from America. They lost interest and knowledge and understanding of the place and the changes it underwent. America became like Africa as far as most of the world was concerned, a faraway place about which little was known except that it was dangerous and uncomfortable, a place whose ferocious native tribes murdered each other in varying combinations for obscure reasons but with tiresome predictability. It ceased to be news except for the most dedicated specialists.
American Word
With apologies to St. John, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. That word was America, the same which was Washington and New York and occasionally Boston, Chicago or San Francisco. Foreign correspondents rarely went anywhere else. That's where the people they talked to lived and worked, and those were the people who mattered as well as the people who nattered in print and on TV. Thus it was the views of the northern elite which formed the view which the rest of the world had of America. By no coincidence these views were very similar to those held by the elites of Europe and the academic and media personalities who gave them publicity. The lessening of the influence of these people in America and around the world was distressing to their ilk in Europe, all the more so as relations with their government deteriorated and the European elites themselves came under pressure. Their parroting of American ideas and policies had brought similar evils upon their own countries. The loss of American influence, the growth of poverty and the rapidly increasing arrogance and violence of the 'culturally enriching' immigrants at the expense of the British and European natives, produced angry reactions and made it difficult for the 'liberal elite' to cling on to power and have their ideas universally trumpeted as the only acceptable possibility. These were the people who had performed the black magic of perverting the good name of America into the opposite of what it had originally meant.
Part Two.
Words come to blows
Angry Words
Initial euphoria at finding themselves free from the ghost of the United States had not dissipated or exorcised it's surviving spirit of moralistic declamation and legalistic wrangling. There was much to argue over. Even the most amicable divorce could leave questions, not only about division of the property. How much of the old legal system would survive, for instance. Whether or not it had been intended, the dissolution of the United States ended the relevance of the Constitution and all that stuff about freedom and rights. Even when the newly sovereign States made grandiloquent pronouncements on such subjects, they were unenforceable rhetoric, irrelevant to the new situation. The Federal laws which had been used to extend the crushing power of a centralised bureaucratic state had not been popular in many states, and a new jungle of local legal codes and jurisdictions sprang up. Extradition of criminals from state to state became more difficult. Federal programs, entitlements, contracts, employment and pensions disappeared. Even when the states and their new groupings promised to honour them, they were now at the back of the queue behind local interests and were squeezed out as money became harder to find. Federal handouts had maintained many blacks in the South, and when they ceased, many blacks flooded north, convinced that they would have a better chance there of continuing to be supported by the taxpayers.They were able to vote themselves money from the remaining productive people, even though this led to even faster inflation as the northern government printed more money. There were many bureaucratic casualties. Florida, for instance, found itself the owner of a space program which it neither wanted nor could afford. Science turned out to have less political clout than the illiterate denizens of the barrios and ghettoes. America's loss provided a slight boost for the space programs of China, Russia, India, the EU and Brazil. The desperate need of the newly powerful states for increased revenue led to much wrangling over fees and tariffs imposed on each other's products, people and trade. The vast American common market, standards, legal system and currency dissolved in a welter of snarling and competing local interests. The need for a visa to visit an adjacent state was something few Americans had anticipated, and fewer still that it would be expensive and hard to obtain, or that the journey might be to a strange and dangerous foreign country where they did things differently and the accustomed legal and constitutional protections no longer applied. Nonetheless the vast new boundaries were porous and impossible to police strictly. Many confused angry and fearful people were on the move, some of them in search of prey.Scapegoats
The loss of wealth status and power was deeply resented in all quarters of the old America. Although the chosen villains differed, there was widespread agreement that it was all the deliberate fault of someone else. Americans who lost their 'previously advantaged' lifestyles were generally not easily resigned to the passing. Nor were many willing to 'cultivate their gardens' when they could cultivate their grievances.Reorganisations
The First War Between the States had been highly organised, with little disorder behind the fighting lines. The Second was much more confusing. There was a great deal of disorder behind the fighting lines, which themselves were more often zones of desolation, debatable burning lands of raids and counter-raids than firmly defined front lines. This was partly caused by each side's aerial bombardment and special forces infiltration of the other, to destroy their infrastructure; but mainly it was caused by the chaotic breakdown of the old society, itself already in advanced moral decay, and the emergence of several 'new world' orders. Their births and stillbirths were midwifed by a fistful of ideologies and attended by much suffering, bloodshed and tears. The formal 'war between the states' defined by solid blocks of colour on maps, could hardly get started or be more than a secondary consideration until those solid blocks of colour had been assembled.Each state was consumed by the fires of ambition and jealousy as aspirants for power and influence vied with each other. Not much government business could be done until it became clear who was to govern and who would be governed and by what means. The old way was dead but there were many claimants for a share of the spoils and innumerable would-be Madisons, Jeffersons, Hamiltons and so on out-shouting each other before coming to out-shooting each other. Whilst the politicians wrangled, the bureaucrats intrigued, and the thieves and opportunists made out like the bandits they were. The public became increasingly fearful, confused, divided, angry,hungry, lawless and violent. The police and military kept out of the way and served their own interests by protecting themselves and the closest officeholders who might be able to pay them. Only later could there be much question of cooperation or conflict between the states.
People soon sought safety by sticking close to those who were most like themselves in race, language, religion and attitude, fearing others and directing their hostility outwards towards them. This led to much violence and to people fleeing from areas where they were actually or potentially at risk.
In the South the churches became the framework upon which society organised itself, much as it had originally been. The church leaders became the political, social, economic and even military leaders. Loyalty to race and religion became the basis of citizenship; social and political institutions became organs of that godly society rather than separate and superior. Anyone who was not known to be active within a well respected church could not be trusted in other matters, and soon became the target for suspicion.
In the North, it was the other way about, or perhaps one could say that there atheistical Lefty organisations were the Churches. In North as in South, as in medieval Europe, there was to be No Salvation Outside the Church.
Provocations
The Second War Between the States began and continued in a manner more confusing than the First. The Pharaoh Lincoln had refused to let the Southern People go, and lacking a Moses capable of performing miracles they had by force of arms been subdued, humiliated, butchered and execrated; obliged to remain in a union they despised, under an identity which was not their own. At the time of the Dissolution, both North and South were glad to see each other's backs. They opted for Apartheid, for Separate Development. They did not want to conquer each other, they wanted to ignore each other. This state of happy ignorance the South was willing to maintain, they wanted nothing from the North, they did not want to tell them what to do; had the continent split and the northern portion sank beneath the waves, they would have felt no sense of loss. Problems arose because Northerners did not maintain the same detachment. Instead of minding their own business, they increasingly made it their business to meddle in their neighbours affairs.To begin with they had not intended to do so. Once again, it was embroilment with the negroes which got them into trouble, seconded by their habit of self righteous and hypocritical preaching and interference with other people's business - and it was very noticeable that the causes which they preached, the moral and financial superiority of wage slavery over the chattel variety, 'democracy', 'human rights', 'free trade','colour revolutions' richly and chiefly benefited their own business interests. This two-fisted assault had beaten much of the world into submission, the left broke up other peoples identity and institutions with their propaganda attacks, and the military and economic strength of the right reaped the benefits of wealth and power, recycling some of it to feed the left via grants from foundations and government. The Left made great play with Eisenhower's reference to the military-industrial complex, but smothered the whisper that he had also contemplated making a similarly minatory reference to the government-research complex where they luxuriated. However much public antagonism the two factions showed towards each other, they worked well together.
After the Dissolution, and even before it, Big Business had turned away from America in search of bigger fortunes elsewhere. Interfering leftists and bureaucrats in large numbers were left as outsized mouths on a shrunken body, screaming all the more shrilly for food and ordering everyone else around. The Northern government became increasingly dominated by these shrill self-righteous leftists. They and their favoured supporters, the black criminal and beggar class, throve basically at the expense of the remaining white population, who were the victims of the crime and the taxation and the regulation that occupied their rulers. Now, as the economy crumbled, and the socialist demands of the state increased, the black underclass got increasingly out of control. Venting their savage lusts on their miserable white fellow citizens and overburdened tax-slaves was no longer sufficient. They started to make pillaging raids into the South and West. At first this was simply criminal enterprise and completely unofficial. When the Southerners responded by killing the raiders and making revenge raids of their own, at first also unofficial, the Northern lefties were completely outraged by this. Outrage was what they did best, (both in sentiment real and false and in perpetration). It was meat and drink to them, they were uncomfortable without it. As blacks in the South and West, still under the comfortable Federal delusion that rioting and violence would frighten the whites into giving way to them, went on their own rampages and were shot down, the Northern lefties attained paroxysms of indignation and ecstasies of outrage that blacks should be submitted to justice and that whites should stand up for themselves. That threatened their whole mental universe - and it would loosen their own grip on power.
The Magnolia Revolution.
The North still did not want to conquer, occupy and directly rule the South again. They were also aware that any such attempt would be difficult, dangerous, bloody and expensive. Casting their minds back to the American instigated 'colour revolutions' of the early twenty first century, they devised what they thought would be a cheap and cunning plan. A 'Magnolia Revolution' would be fomented in the South. This would leave a bunch of violent and corrupt black thugs in charge of each of the Southern states, and they would do more or less what the Northern lefties told them. Reconstruction Mark Two.Of course it was botched. The South soon became aware of the infiltration of Northern agitators and saboteurs and their recruitment and payment of local thugs. There was no longer much tolerance for the 'civil rights' nonsense. They knew they were fighting for their families, homes, identity and way of life. TV was no longer an effective lefty weapon. Government was no longer in the hands of enemies. Southerners were enraged, not only by the attacks but also by the hypocrisy. They organised and fought well. Tens of thousands of whites were killed or maimed. Hundreds of thousands of blacks were killed and millions fled or were driven north. Any who remained were extremely well behaved and polite and eager to prove useful, or at least very humbly and ostentatiously Christian. None were enslaved; slaves have to be productive and hence valuable. Soon there was a chaotic situation as refugees packed the roads, blacks fleeing north and whites fleeing south or west. Skirmishes began between regular military units, semi-regular militias and informally armed mobs on both sides. This was in addition to the widespread opportunistic criminal upheavals, murder and looting across the whole continent.
Oil War
Another route to conflict was provided by economics. Oil was becoming scarce, and increasingly expensive to import. The main domestic oil and gas fields were in the South and West, who were disinclined to sell it to the North when they could use it themselves or export it for harder currency than the wastepaper emanating from the North, which had little with which to barter. What the North did have in abundance was a self righteous sense of entitlement and a large population with criminal tendencies and poor self control. Self interest and self righteousness combined to launch raids intended to capture oil wells and facilities and refined fuel from those evil- white-racist Southerners and Westerners. This left them on the wrong side of a guerrilla war, with long lines of communication to protect, vulnerable garrisons and the need for strong escorting forces to take the oil out and bring empty tankers and replenishments of supplies back. This substantially reduced the net gain. There were other losses. Large Northern convoy movements were road bound and their movements were highly predictable. Southern and Western Americans proved as adept at the use of mines, roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices as the Iraqis and Afghans had been, and it was more difficult for the North to replace their destroyed or damaged vehicles than it had been in those earlier conflicts.In contrast, cannon fodder was now much cheaper and more readily available.Diplomacy
The Northern political and diplomatic losses were perhaps the most severe. Initially the North had been the biggest, strongest and best coordinated group of states, which had perhaps fed their arrogance and determination to throw their weight around. The other states were far more individualistic, reluctant to combine in a single strong group. It was Northern aggression and arrogance which convinced them that they needed to co-operate , that what they had in common - the hostility of the North -was more important than what divided them. They ruefully revived Franklin's realisation that unless they hung together, assuredly they would be hanged separately. The Southern and Western states were soon screaming to the United Nations about Northern aggression, and they had the evidence to prove it. The UN was no longer a vehicle for American propaganda. The rising powers of the world had little sympathy with the leftism espoused by the old USA, and even less for the more extreme creed evangelised by the USA v2. The rest of the world was heartily sick of America and it's financial deceits and ideological aggression. It was no longer a source of wealth and stability. In it's new incarnation as the Northern states, it was just a dammed nuisance. The rulers of these countries had no desire to find their own lower classes agitated and enthused by American propaganda and infiltration. America was no longer significant in world trade and finance; it was spending it's military strength to destroy itself; it was time to act against it. Hence the complaints against the North were well received, and the UN imposed sanctions against it. These were mainly of moral effect, making clear that the rest of the world disapproved of the North, and creating some sympathy for the South and West. It sent the Northern lefties into renewed paroxysms of indignation, bitterness and outrage. How dare anyone criticise them! Their racism card was trumped; the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Indonesians, the Egyptians; indeed the leaders of all the large non-white countries in the world opposed them. Even the Africans, who well knew which way the wind was blowing, failed to support them. This was infamous! After all they had done and continued to do to advance the coloured man at the expense of whites, such ingratitude was intolerable! In practice it was the economic bankruptcy of the North which kept them out of world trade and finance, UN sanctions were just a formality which justified refusals to become involved. There were no eager blockade runners happy to profit by bringing in much wanted goods in exchange for equally valuable goods or bullion. The UN did not need to bother imposing a more than formal blockade, although it did give the Russian, Chinese and Indian navies the chance to discuss co-operation in mounting such a blockade or joint patrols of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of America, perhaps from a base in Brazil or Panama.A few years later the Russian navy was actually in action in the North Atlantic against what was left of the Northern navy. As their economic circumstances went from bad to worse they could no longer maintain much of a fleet to venture out of port beyond the protection of their anti aircraft and anti missile defences. Fuel was almost unobtainable anyway. It was the imminence of starvation which drove the North to desperate measures. Memory of their commerce raiding New England predecessors and their current political approach to the level of Somalia, made the Northerners take to the Atlantic as pirates. Small ships roamed the sea-lanes seeking prey. Prize crews sought to bring home the stolen merchant vessels with their cargoes of food or oil or anything at all. By then the south had also run out of rockets and fancy technology, so a lot of them managed to sneak in to a quiet bay or small port along the northern coast. Some crews took to voyaging on their own account, forgetting America and selling what they captured in out of the way places in Africa or South America or the Levant with the aid of bribes and false papers. This piracy became a nuisance to world trade and the Russians were willing to garner some prestige by taking the lead in sinking these pirates. Times had indeed changed when the Russian navy patrolled the coast of the North, close inshore, seizing or sinking any vessels found, bombarding coastal settlements and generally behaving like cocks-of-the-walk, even landing parties to seize and hang Americans on their own soil.
The descent from sole superpower to pariah state in a single lifetime was steep and shocking. It had been a rapid slide down the sequence of grandeur; Sole Superpower, Unclothed Emperor, Successor State, Just-Another-State, Failed State, Pariah State, 'Hu dey?'
One sign of the declining situation came when the rest of the world voted overwhelmingly in the United Nations that the USA v2 was a threat to world peace and that sanctions should be imposed against it. Outrage, scandal, riots in New York! The trendy lefties and their underclass followers were energised for weeks, marching, waving placards,shouting slogans,appearing on TV, throwing rocks and firebombs at diplomats and other foreigners. Previously such antics would have been the main feature of world news and the subject of earnest confabulations within many governments. Now the world and it's media was bored and impatient with American news. The main effect was to energise the assembled worthies in the UN to make the sanctions more stringent and to move themselves and their headquarters to Geneva. The shopping was now much better in Geneva than in New York. The city was much cleaner and safer and more central to the concerns of the world. Those world famous Swiss banks were at hand, their clients freed of concern that they would be forced to disclose any information to prod-nosed investigators and their media contacts in New York or Washington, which cities would be free to relapse into their primeval state of swamp or urban jungle at their own pace. Geneva had been the setting for the short-lived League of Nations, short-lived because of American refusal to participate in it. Now it's successor would be happy to return there, freed if possible from the incubus of the dead but still blustering corpse of America. Geneva was a city and in a country far more congenial than USA v2 was proving, to it's distinguished diplomatic community. Those tiresome humanitarian agencies which the old Americans had insisted on appending to the UN as a means of meddling in other countries affairs, although they had largely to pay for the privilege, had withered away. Now the diplomatic community could resume their proper business of discreet back-scratching and back-stabbing and equally discreet visits to even more discreet bankers, without all that tiresome humanitarian claptrap.
Escalation
In any case, by that time there was very little in the way of American foreign trade or financial transactions for the rest of the world to monitor or prevent. The Americans had already done an excellent job of sinking each others' ships, and the ships of neutrals visiting each others' ports. North and South watched each others' ports and used rockets and torpedoes and mines from drones, small boats and submarines to sink ships moving in or out. There was no pretense of applying the old fashioned rules. It was not possible to stop and search ships for contraband or to take off passengers and crew before sinking them. Those were niceties from bygone days. Any ships in the vicinity of the enemy's coast were simply sunk on sight. Since the South had still had an export trade whilst Northern trade had dried up, this exchange tended to benefit the North.Part of the reason that the North no longer had an export trade, in addition to their economic problems, was that the export of grain from the mid-west and ore from the Great Lakes region via the St. Lawrence Seaway had ceased. To begin with, after some hesitation these productive areas had joined the North or USA v2, and thereby had provided it's main source of foreign exchange. As the economic situation worsened the government had insisted on selling as much as possible of these materials abroad to gain the money with which to buy oil and chemicals and other things they needed. At the same time the need for food increased as more and more refugees flooded the northern cities. One day a freighter loaded with explosives transiting an important lock had blown up and put the whole system out of action for years. Around that time ships plying the Great Lakes began to disappear. Suspicion soon fastened on the South. Survivors reported that their ships had suddenly blown up and sank. It became clear that mines, frogmen attaching limpet mines, rockets from drones and torpedoes from small boats had been responsible for a very successful campaign of destruction which had crippled the North's ability to move large quantities of material or men by water, or to replace the lost ships.
As a result, the North had lost it's main source of foreign exchange, and found it very difficult to transport food to the starving cities of the east coast. At first the attempt to transport food by road and rail imposed a further strain on their limited supplies of fuel and on their rolling stock. Further developments caused the virtual cessation of such attempts. One was the liberal way in which each side bombarded the others' infrastructure and transport facilities. Americans, North and South, proved very adept at dealing out large doses of 'shock and awe' to each other, as long as their fancy munitions and the capacity to resupply them lasted. The targeting of railroad bridges and freight trains soon made the rail service extremely unreliable. Another was the fact that much less food was being produced, because of the economic and social and military disruption, and there was little left for transport to the east because of the fighting and the claims of local cities on what food they could find. The third factor was the devastation caused by the incursions of raiders from the South. The link between the farming and mining area of the mid=west and northwest and the big cities of the Eastern coast was a relatively narrow territory between the water to the north and the hills and mountains of the east and south which were inhabited by predatory enemies.
Nature's Law
The previous raids from the north, together with economic stringency and the growing war fever had aroused the fierce instincts of the hillmen. Seeing their hated foes, the despised Yankees, in trouble, the immemorial habits of the hillmen who saw opportunity at hand took over and they gleefully sallied forth to 'spoil the Egyptians'.The hillmen knew opportunity when they saw it. Like Wordsworth's Rob Roy, and as free of moral qualms, they followed nature's law and fell upon the booty of the plains.
"The creatures see of flood and field,
And those that travel on the wind!
With them no strife can last; they live
In peace, and peace of mind.
"For why?--because the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take, who have the power,
And they should keep who can.
"A lesson that is quickly learned,
A signal this which all can see!
Thus nothing here provokes the strong
To wanton cruelty.
"All freakishness of mind is checked;
He tamed, who foolishly aspires;
While to the measure of his might
Each fashions his desires.
The War Song of Dinas Vawr may not have been upon their lips as they leapt forth from their hills of West Virginia and Kentucky to harry the plains to their north, but it's spirit, redolent of the age old conflict between the desert and the sown, hillman and plainsdweller, Abel and Cain, doubtless sang in their hearts.
The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;
We met a host, and quelled it;
We forced a strong position,
And killed the men who held it.
The Politically Correct denied it with all their venom and hysteria, but the poet Horace had told the truth long before: 'Naturam expellas furca, tam usque recurret..'. You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she always comes back, over your foolish contempt. Those whose plans and actions accorded better with nature fared better than those who strove to alter nature and deny her reality.
God's Shadow
Jungians could say that the Devil functions as God's Shadow. Whilst the government of each side saw itself garbed in robes of light and it's opponent robed in the darkest hues, their intelligence services functioned in the same murky shadows using the same dark means to the same dirty ends. The old tradition in American intelligence services of criminal involvement and participation in the trade in illegal drugs was maintained, partly to extend their reach, partly to finance themselves and partly to undermine the morale of the opposing population. This had more effect on the North, because in the more godly South, drug dealers and addicts were fewer, more likely to be caught, and when caught were usually executed promptly. God's quality controller found much that was lacking on both sides, but when they were weighed against each other in the balance it was the sins of the North which weighed more heavily; and it was upon Northern walls that the writing appeared, 'Mene Mene Tekal Upharsin',although the readers thought it was just graffiti.Apostolic Blows and Knocks
In the South, Christianity of a somewhat anarchic sort, fissiparous and vociferous, was strong and prevalent.If these congregations might have been considered theologically or philosophically weak, yet they were strong in emotion and physical action - an excellent basis for a Church Militant. Those amongst their members who were more intellectually inclined were sympathetic to the idea that the originally strongly Christian settlers of America had been subverted and betrayed by deists or atheists, who had engineered the coup that replaced the original confederation and subordinated the States to the Federal government, changing from a Christian people, via religious neutrality, to an oppressive anti-Christian rule. They easily accepted that the subsequent corruption, decay and decline of the United States was God's punishment for these sins. The Dissolution of the Union appeared as a providential gift from God to his faithful remnant, blessing them with the opportunity to regain his favour by mending their ways and returning to organising themselves as a Christian Commonwealth. All that religious tolerance and separation of Church and State malarkey had been an error, grievous in the eyes of the Lord, who now gave them the need and the opportunity to repent.God, it seemed, despite the saying, 'vox populi vox dei', was not a big fan of democracy, elections, majority voting and minority rights. There had been that still unresolved issue with Satan over which of them was to rule in Heaven, and the loser had been expelled along with about one third of the angels. That had been a shock. He had had no idea that he was expected to curry favour with an electorate. He was known to be keen on hereditary monarchy. He had made his son his Chief Operating Officer. He liked families. It was horrifying to consider that Lefties might have pressured the Virgin Mary into having an abortion, or encouraged a divorce because of her husband's mental cruelty in forcing her to travel by donkey when she was heavily pregnant, and given her and her offspring government subsidised housing and medical attention after that inappropriate birthplace in a stable. Lefties always seemed to hate Christmas.Strangely, so had Puritans. Cromwell had abolished it. It was confusing. Much prayer would be needed, and many appeals for divine guidance before they could see what sort of political system God wanted them to adopt. Perhaps a heavily armed Commonwealth, retaining Christmas?
As among Galapagos finches, so among Christian Fundamentalists who preached against evolution, a certain Darwinian selection became evident. As their environment changed they adapted. Those who prospered in the competition for followers and resources were those preachers who best adapted their message to the circumstances of the time. In a time of Liberalism the gospel had been social. When red war, famine and disorder was at the door it became Old Testament. Biblical Joshua and Oliver Cromwell became favoured models. It was not lost upon them that the New Model army had been the most formidable host of it's time, and that the Lord of Hosts had abundantly favoured it with victory in a civil War and made it, for a time, the mainstay of a godly government. It was not a canonical text, but it might as well have been the text of many days, that 'the God of Battles has an eternal preference for the better troops', and there were indeed many amongst those grim, tough, disciplined, passionately prayerful, earnest, efficient and deadly serious men whom the Lord Protector would have praised God to be able to welcome amongst his Ironsides. Naturally all units were not of such a high standard, but the leadership and their best units set the standard and the tone for the others to emulate as best they could.
Those who searched the scriptures pondered upon texts such as Matt. 10:34, 'think not that I come to bring peace, but a sword.'They noted that their Father Yahweh was a god of war who delighted in his servants smiting his enemies 'hip and thigh'. The precise anatomical significance was obscure, but easily translated as 'terminate with extreme prejudice'. Prejudice became extreme, terminators abounded and the pace of the smiting waxed mightily and the smiters waxed mighty wroth. A godly thorough reformation was underway. Another great and terrible day of the Lord was at hand, and this time the terrible swift sword of the Lord was to be wielded by Southern hands.
Putting aside doubts and books they submitted their cause to trial by combat, girded up their loins and followed, all unknowing, but with less bathos, the example of the Puritans of Sir Hudibras, and became:
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and desolation,
A godly thorough reformation,
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell seems an unlikely figure to be the godfather of the renewed South, but his energy, rectitude, ruthlessness, military and political ability, prolix and passionate prayerfulness seeking God's guidance and approval and finding it in the results of battle and debate appealed strongly to the newly aroused Southerners. Like him and his Cause, they felt that they and theirs were beset by enemies determined to destroy them and undermined by the less godly brethren on their own side. God's Englishman with Welsh connections had not been expected to influence the history of America; but there had been Americans involved in the English Civil War. Now Cromwell's great and brooding spirit was more welcome in the new South than in his native land.Many of the Southern religious groups were of an independent spirit. Although the Independents of his time had been Cromwell's supporters, he had well known the risks of anarchy which a drift in that direction could pose. He had opposed the Levellers and the Diggers, imprisoned Lilburne and resisted that tendency in the Putney Debates. In America such trends in religion and society had been associated with the North, becoming Abolitionists and Lefties. Somehow, the spirit of the Lord, or at least of the Lord Protector, kept the Southern divines sufficiently united to give their people firm and united leadership.
Jihad vs Crusade vs Revolution
In the decadent dying decades of the old America, an amazing number of Muslims had infiltrated or been encouraged to settle there. They added their invocations and imprecations to the cacophony of confusion, and their murders and martyrdoms to the tears and bloodstains that bespattered the land. The Dissolution and the consequent chaos and criminal bonanza provided superb opportunities to those obliged by religion and inclination to rob murder or enslave infidels. Jihadis roared into action. This was a heaven sent opportunity to show their mettle to Allah and to each other, enrich themselves, kill Americans and spread Islam in the traditional way - by force. In the South this soon proved to be a fatal error. Nothing else could so efficiently have united Southerners, crystallised the new identity of the South as a Christian nation of Christian soldiers marching as to war, and enabled them to cast off any remaining liberal secular tolerant 'American' attitudes, as to find themselves treacherously attacked in their own homes on their own territory by Muslims who had been allowed to live amongst them. Many of them had served or lost family in the American wars in the Middle East, or remembered incidents such as 911 and the Fort Hood massacre. A great wave of patriotic and religious fervor arose, sweeping aside the quarreling politicians, achieving effective cooperation between states and institutions and churches. The military and the semi- or unofficial militias, police forces and gangs enthusiastically cooperated in finding and fighting Muslims. Muslims were soon eliminated from the South and West, and the experience led to strong common political and military institutions and units, which were immediately applied to the similar elimination of other internal security problems such as Mexican immigrants and gangsters, black criminals and agitators, drug addicts and layabouts, Northern infiltrators and those who sympathised with them, and eventually the rich criminal dross and the members of the old political regime who failed to 'get religion' in time to avoid a bullet or a noose. lord Protector was not a title which appealed to the South but the personality and achievements of Cromwell became an inspiration. His insistence on military efficiency, godly behavior and radical political reform towards a Rule of the Saints were examples that were followed. The spirit of the South, like a Phoenix had risen again, and it was incandescent with rage and fervor.In the North there was much less reaction to Muslim violence. It was all just part of the rich multi- cultural and vibrantly multi-ethnic rainbow community they praised to the skies in public, although their leaders took good care to avoid suffering it's consequences in person. They were too busy advancing a social revolution to be bothered by anything as reactionary and old fashioned as religion. They took their inspiration from Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Pol Pot, Fanon, Toussaint and Dessalines.
Second Coming of the American Revolution
In times of turmoil and crisis it's not really surprising that people go to extremes. In the South they coalesced into a Church Militant. In the North the militancy of the Atheist 'churches' was no less extreme. It was the opportunity for which all the 'activists', agitators, 'trustafarians', 'occupiers', squatters, protestors, unheeded prophets and aggrieved academics, third generation hippies, criminals, race-hustlers, bearded-weirdies, avant garde artists, psychos, deviants, transexuals, feminazis, socialist splinter groups and wannabe revolutionaries had dreamed of all their miserable wasted lives - a chance to inflate their egos by inflicting misery on everyone else. Like demons allowed out of Hell to afflict humanity this pandaemonium of evil burst into a cacophony of slogans and with a devilish infusion of energy took to marching, rioting, protesting, demanding, looting, burning, occupying, organising and taking over political power. Millions of angry, confused, worried and impoverished people were eager to follow anyone who claimed that a little violence and some changes in the organisation of daily life would bring 'Justice', 'Fairness','Equality' and anything else that sounded like a new and improved version of 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness', 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', or even 'Bread, Land, Peace and All Power to the Soviets'. Police, bureaucrats and soldiers were also infected with this revolutionary mood, so the country was soon in the grip of bloody-minded revolutionaries who persecuted and executed everyone else when they weren't persecuting and executing each other, until a certain stability was achieved under the heel of the most competently cruel and cunning tyrants.Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
Yeats knew a thing or two about revolutions and their effects.
All the worst elements in America, the most bestial, passionately enthused by the prospect of feeding on the corpse of decency, of continuing their practice of drowning innocence in blood, of making their degraded selves supreme over better people, had not just slouched but ran to Washington and the other state capitals of the North, as rough beasts to Bethlehem to be born in a Second Coming of revolution in America.
This anarchic Dionysiac rout was thirsty for blood, and soon became drunk on it. Well primed with the histories of the French and Russian Revolutions they sought to emulate and outdo their mentors and each other in ferocity and brutality, and to complete the work begun by the first American Revolution by making it's second incarnation the most sweepingly nihilistic of them all. Isolation from the rest of the world and conflict with their neighbours increased their certainty and made them all the more zealous in their efforts to destroy everything from the past and create, not just a desolation to be called peace, but a tabula rasa of the minds and souls of man, upon which they would inscribe, like paradoxical antinomian anti-Moses', new laws for a new humanity and society made in their own inhuman image.
Things certainly fell apart under such management. Sanity fled, competence was punished, mere anarchy ruled Northern endeavors.The politically correct nonsense became even more vicious and intense. Arrogant and corrupt thugs with political connections filled the senior positions in all organisations. Competent subordinates were blamed for the follies and failures of their superiors and their inability to do the impossible things that were frequently demanded of them. Guillotines were not in fashion, but machine guns, clubs, knives and pistol shots to the back of the neck NKVD style, efficiently slaughtered far more people than those over-rated French revolutionaries had ever managed. This was the application of 'good old American know-how', new style. Killings on an industrial scale, in the post-industrial age, rivaled the achievements of the Bolsheviks.Gulags of concentration camps sprang up, where class enemies and actual or potential counter-revolutionaries were incarcerated and worked to death to dispense with them and to keep some production going and to terrify the rest of the population. These emulated and endeavored to surpass their Nazi, Soviet and Chinese precursors. All the rumours in the old America about FEMA camps being established to jail dissidents under cover of providing help to disaster hit areas, proved the merest hint at the truth that emerged. White men and their alleged anti-revolutionary inherent and institutionalised racism, became the scapegoats for the inability of the increasingly hysterical revolutionary regimes to build heaven upon earth, let alone accomplish such more modest goals as keeping the populace fed, clothed and housed. No one expected miracles such as heat and artificial light, and resentful stories and complaints about how much better things used to be were treated as counter-revolutionary activity, subversion and defeatism. The works of Tolkien, along with most English and other literature, including the Bible and Homer, were banned and burned along with their possessors. Still it was whispered that in the USA v2, the Dark Lord ruled from the White House. The Orcs ran wild, killing, ruining, perverting, proclaiming that the Age of Man was over and the Time of the Orcs had come.
In the South the old American civic religion of Democracy gave place to Rule of the Saints. In the North it was sacrificed on the altar of Revolution. The anti-religious anti-religion of Political Correctness and it's priests, the diabolic rabble previously mentioned, destroyed what was left of civilisation in America, rather as the Taliban had blown up the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan and disposed of historical relics from the museums. It's shrines were desecrated and the Founding Fathers besmirched for being insufficiently black and female and insane. The White House was quickly re-designated the Black House, and repainted whilst stocks of paint were still available; whether as the government alleged, as as act of restitution to acknowledge the undervalued role of blacks, or as their opponents whispered, because of the heinous crimes plotted and committed there by the increasingly black revolutionary rabble, who were said to maintain torture chambers stained with the blood of their mainly white victims in the basements there. All the old monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia were destroyed as counter revolutionary distractions and reminders of an evil past unfairly dominated by evil-racist-white-men. Museums and libraries were closed and cleansed, only to be re-opened when they were able to present a Politically Correct display.
Education and the media had been prominent in the subversion and demoralisation of the old America. Lefties had buzzed and fattened there like flies around carrion. It was no surprise that in the new North they were kept under very tight control so that only Lefty views were permitted and all children were brought up as lefties. Families were broken down even more, children were obliged to spy on their parents, if they had any. The full Communist programme of education and social engineering was introduced, or more accurately, accelerated, since the introduction had already occurred under the old America. Soon the hatred of white people became so intense that they were increasingly squeezed out of education, and skilled training, regardless of ability, and prevented from obtaining or retaining good jobs or attaining positions of responsibility unless they were the most rabid leftists.
Christianity in the North had already become weak and insipid under the old America, little more than a kindergarten for wishy-washy leftism, grovelling and fawning over all anti-Christian, anti-white and anti-civilised influences, a grotesque parody of itself. Consequently it had little depth and when persecution came there were few martyrs. Most were willing to bow and sacrifice to the new Caesar.
Perverts, paedophiles and parasites of all descriptions had flourished in the old America. They were made extremely unwelcome in the new South and West, so flooded into the North, where the revolutionary ferment suited them and they flourished all the more, preying as ever on the weak and white.
Before the French Revolution Haiti had been it's most productive and profitable colony. The revolutionaries freed the black slaves and made them equal to the white citizens. Before long the blacks had murdered all the whites. Then they killed the half-castes. Then they fell upon each other. Soon the island became and remained the most primitive and impoverished in the western hemisphere. Black revolutionaries did the same for the North, and thereafter it might as well be called Haiti North. Most of the old American people and attitudes had disappeared by the time the North went down, destroyed by being taken to extremes.
Southern Phoenix
The North had been happy to repudiate the debts of the old USA whilst continuing it's identity, attitudes and antics. The South repudiated the identity which had been forced upon them, as well as the debts which had been incurred in that name. They wanted their own identity, as well as their country, back. All the cant of the previous couple of centuries was rejected, not all at once, but gradually as defrauded and impoverished heirs awaking from the spell that had been cast on them, now determined on restitution and revenge. Rage and fury brightly burned. Their hearts to wrath and vengeance turned. All Northern lovers quickly burned. Instead of being the insultingly termed 'crackers' - white and easily broken, the fires of adversity baked them into biscuit - the old 'ships biscuit', bread twice baked and hard enough to break teeth.The Left Coast
California and the whole 'Left Coast' of America went it's own way. Indeed, it may be said that they fulfilled their wonted boast of leading America into the future. Sympathetic to the North, yet separated from them by mountains deserts and plains occupied by the sort of 'redneck' white people whom the liberal elite disdained and strove to do down. Well, it was California which went down, and not in the long expected mighty earthquake which dumped it under the sea.A large, populous, previously very wealthy, state, it was bankrupt even before the Dissolution - broken by lefty fiscal and economic policies, huge bureaucracy and provision of benefits to illegal immigrants and state employees. It soon dissolved into Mexo-anarchy. Black and Mexican gangs took control from the PC bureaucracy, fought amongst themselves and killed or ignored the liberal elite. Any sane surviving whites soon fled. It descended into the Third World failed state category, twinned with Somalia. Although California had been a major agricultural area, the violence, chaos, loss of skills and loss of water for both urban and agricultural use, as the irrigation supplies and facilities were shut off or destroyed, brought it to ruin. Order and civilisation only resumed beyond the mountains, where the Westerners and Southerners were too busy to restore water, electricity, farming and civilisation to the Left Coast, which became the first part of the old America where the lights went out permanently. Not to worry, most of the Hollywood glitterati had prudently and promptly removed themselves to the safety of substantial estates in Canada or other safer and warmer parts of the world where they could continue to sparkle, even if only in front of a smaller and less admiring public.
The Mormons
These people were more successful in asserting their identity and obtaining a territory of their own in the new America. They already had a history of attempted independence from the United States, having been forcibly suppressed and incorporated into the USA in the mid 19th century. Now they were able to spread their wings and free themselves. They became the buttress and bastion of the South and West against incursion by their enemies from across the mountains and deserts. Clannish and secretive, they were sober, conservative, well armed and well organised. Soon they gained control of Utah and surrounding regions.This useful but somewhat isolated geographical position reflected their political and religious position in relation to the new South. They were more respected than liked. As America's native Christian offshoot or heresy they were regarded a bit askance by the main Christian churches, but their help against the ungodly was appreciated, and no one was yet in any position to persecute them. It may be that they will have a larger role to play in the future history, if there is any, of the continent as it lives apart from the rest of the world.
Aggressive Mexicans
The Mexicans, or the variety of mestizo and amerindian admixtures posing as such, were amongst the elements seeking advantage in the Dissolution of the United States, to develop and assert their own identity and territory at the expense of the Americans. Mexico itself had already developed or devolved into a corrupt and brutal dictatorship masquerading as a 'democracy' whilst trying to control a diversity of regions, interests, ethnicities and criminal enterprises all of which had their own political and military power. The confusion and chaos following the Dissolution gave plenty of opportunity for aggressive criminals. They were able to raid, rape, torture, and slaughter with little to stop them. Their revanchism and contempt for the soft Americans who had allowed themselves to be imposed upon led them into overconfidence. As the Southerners and Westerners became better organised and in control of their core territory, they eliminated all such trash from their cities and towns and went on to bring superior numbers, weapons, organisation and tactics to bear in hunting the remaining troublemakers in the remoter regions. Any Mexicans they met were sent 'to Hell or Mexico' by the business end of a bullet. The Lefty 'human rights' nonsense no longer applied, or at least only applied to those accepted as worthwhile humans. The economic interests of large corporations in importing cheap and disposable labour were no longer allowed to overrule the rights of the People, the only people who counted, to physical, economic and cultural security in their own territory. Some arrogant, greedy, unpatriotic and old fashioned businessmen took the trip 'to Hell or Mexico'. This hunting provided training for the Southern forces. Few Mexicans survived unless they fled either to Mexico proper, California, or the North - and stayed there. Some Mexican military units were so cocky as to invade Southern territory, but the survivors went home with a convincing message not to return.War readiness
By the time the conflict with the North became serious, internal and external threats from Mexicans, blacks and Lefties had been almost eliminated. Southern territory was socially and politically cohesive, well organised and secure, and the coloured map gave a reasonably accurate impression. The spirit, organisation, armament, disipline and training of many of the Southern forces had been thoroughly tested. Competent, cunning and ruthless officers were coming to the fore. The public were roused and broadly content with fiery political and religious leadership who inspired a sense of destiny. They were ready for war. This was not as true of the North.Part Three.
The Fighting
Stomach rumbles
Napoleon was right about an army marching on it's stomach , as he was about many things which were illustrated in this war, including the line that large armies starve and small armies get beaten. Much of the fighting took place in the breadbasket of the north and west. That was partly why there was little food left to transport to the eastern cities, and partly why units from the east were sent there to fight.
The fighting which began with Northern attempts to grab the resources of the Western states led to much raiding from both sides, destroying mining and transport facilities and crops and farms. The big cities such as Chicago and Detroit and Buffalo began to starve. They requisitioned and pillaged the farmers of their own states with increasing severity and desperation. 'Racist','kulak' white farmers were accused of hoarding food to deprive the black urban proletariat. Many were tortured and executed, which didn't improve food production, or fled to the South, which didn't help the commissars to meet their targets. In true Soviet style, production statistics became artifices of creative lying, the urban trash sent to replace the farmers could scarcely grow enough to feed themselves, and famine and disease stalked the big cities.The comrades were soon the only people to be reasonably well fed or even fed at all.
Washington and the Pentagon were soon ringing with demands for larger forces with which to drive back the Southern and Western forces, consolidate a grip on the resources of the north central states, and administer a good hiding to those insolent Southern 'racists'. That was the easy part. Difficulties began when they tried to get the troops there.The Southerners happily harassed the marching columns, keeping them hungry in a landscape of burning farms, attacking and withdrawing, avoiding their angry attempts at pursuit, weakening and wearing them down before they reached the designated theatre of operations. Difficulties increased when the Northern troops found themselves tired, short of supplies, frustrated by marching around a desolate landscape without being able to bring the enemy to battle, or tied down in large garrisons which ceded control of the countryside to the enemy because small garrisons were picked off. Reinforcements made things worse. More casualties, less food, still no success. The Northern strategists even found a cunning way to lose more troops. They persuaded the Canadian government, contrary to their position of neutrality, to allow Northern troops to use Canadian roads and railways to pass around the Great Lakes.
Canada
Canada was in an awkward position.It's people mostly sympathised with the North. It's government was under heavy pressure from the North to comply with it's demands and to declare war on the South. The destruction of the St.Lawrence Seaway and the sinking of shipping on the Great Lakes had damaged their economy and made the South even less popular. Prudence whispered that Canada was not sufficiently strong to make a decisive difference in the American conflict, but that it was very vulnerable to much greater destruction if it declared against the South, even if the North eventually won. Turning a blind eye to Northern movements through their territory prevented them from simply being annexed by the North. Everyone knew that the North was broke and their currency of little worth. Northern troops expected to 'live off the land', whether that land was North, South, West - or Canada.Canadian merchants and farmers had the normal expectation that they would be paid for their produce. The experience of being looted by the North was displeasing. Even when the Canadian government tried to cover up the requisitions and promised payment in Canadian currency, this upset other Canadian taxpayers. Soon the Quebecois took the opportunity to resume agitation to break completely with the rest of Canada. When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. Between Northern thefts and Southern sabotage to destroy and deny supplies for the North, the Canadian wheatlands were wrecked. All varieties of American became deeply unpopular throughout Canada, except in the far West, where isolated from contact with the war, and in contact with the trendy lefties who ruled the Left Coast, the trendy lefties who ruled there remained sympathetic the the North. Thus a side effect of the Dissolution of the United States was a weakening and almost dissolution of the ties binding Canada. Eventually, the destruction and chaos in the North spilled over into Canada. The hordes of refugees, mobs of looters and detachments of disobedient or deserting soldiers destroyed order in eastern and central Canada, and took the country down into the same darkness as overcame the North. The Quebecois bitterly and despairingly recalled stories of the Hundred Years War, when 'English' and other foreign troops and local bandits had devastated, pillaged, raped and murdered their way across the fair face of France, torturing and flaying and burning the wretched population. When the lights went out in the North the same fate overwhelmed Canada,Loss of the Midwest and Lakes Region
None of this helped feed the cities, where disease and discontent increased as population dwindled.It wrecked several Western states as well as the mid-west, but left the Southern forces undefeated. Smaller numbers of Southern forces were able to tie down larger Northern armies and wear them out. The South was quite content to bleed the Northern armies slowly, without seeking major battles, until the Northern troops were obliged to retreat or surrender. The South did not wish to capture the big cities, being content to keep them bottled up, and repulsing raids and attempts to escape into the countryside which had increasingly come to support the South, until the cities died. Eventually the North ceased to reinforce failure. The leading politicians and generals escaped back East via Canada and the cities and remaining Northern forces surrendered. They still continued to die as there was little food available, and that was destined for more friendly stomachs. The states from Ohio westwards withdrew from the USA v2 and accepted occupation and Reconstruction at Southern hands.This was a huge military, political and psychological success for the South and a corresponding defeat for the North. It ended fighting over a large area, allowing recovery to slowly begin and it concentrated conflict along a shorter better defined line, much further east. It gave evidence of God's approval of the South and encouraged them to continue the good fight to not only achieve independence for themselves but to bring God's blessing of liberty to His people in the North from the oppression of godless savages, estranged brethren though they might be.
Southern Shieldwall
The West had not been the only theatre of operations. The North had flung large forces into attacks on the Shield of the South, the hilly and mountainous area from West Virginia through Kentucky. This was stubbornly defended, so progress was slow and bloody although weight of numbers did achieve a measure of success. It pushed back but did not break the Southern Shieldwall. Along the coast the situation was similar, although less strongly defended by the South. The South did not wish to fight their way north through heavily defended urban terrain. They were willing to allow the North to assume the burden of attack south through a townscape increasingly open to flank attacks from the hills as Northern forces advanced into a zone of elastic defence. Tactical gains in the east did not compensate for strategic losses in the west.In the beginning the North had had greater numbers and resources, but the South had had several advantages, of which they made better use. Despite a smaller population Southerners were more likely to serve in the military, and to have military bases on their territory. Their forces had more rapidly become battle hardened and their people inspired by the new spirit of militant religion and patriotism. Their leadership was somewhat more effective, so all in all they had the edge and it was only to be expected that they would have more success. That however had not been expected by the North which had inherited the arrogant old American expectation of easy and overwhelming superiority in all areas simultaneously.
It should not have surprised anyone with common sense, and some knowledge of history and of the Old Testament, although it did from time to time surprise the North, that on the whole God's followers made better fighting men than the followers of multicultural political correctness. Men in touch with their masculine side tended to beat men in touch with their feminine side, officered by women in touch with their masculine side. Battlefield promotions on demonstrated merit produced more effective generals than selection by politically correct box-ticking. Not even the Soviet-type innovation of Political Commissars to supervise planning and operations, and to shoot those who gave signs of 'defeatism', could stem the tide of defeat which inexorably engulfed the Northern forces.
Three Generals
Among the most effective opponents contributing to the defeat of the North were three generals. General Shortage, General Hunger and General Discontent. Most of the better Northern troops and equipment had been lost by the time the Midwest surrendered and the fighting line contracted to the east. It's always hard to negotiate an ending to a war, as the party in the ascendent is likely to press their advantage further and the losing party hope to gain a better position by fighting on. Thus, despite mutterings on both sides that there was really nothing to be gained by fighting on, the war continued. The North was relieved to go on the defensive and attempt to hold a defensive position. It increasingly lacked the material and the morale to make further large scale attacks. Most of it's troops were dispirited, poorly supplied and of low quality, reluctant and hardly able to do more than huddle in large fortifications and hope to fend off Southern attacks. This left the initiative with the South. Their troops and leadership were of higher quality, better supplied and organised and better able to employ effective infiltration tactics. They flowed around and nibbled away at the smaller Northern positions, isolating the larger ones and making movement reinforcement and supply difficult for them. Many Northern troops deserted or surrendered at the first opportunity. The Northern generals found that they could only keep their armies in being by keeping them concentrated, which made it harder to keep them supplied and ceded freedom of movement to the Southern forces. They were like icebergs slowly melting, adrift on a current of fate. Thus the South was able to lever the Northern positions backwards out of West Virginia and Kentucky and through Pennsylvania and into New York. A shrunken Northern army attempted to hold the line of the Hudson river, but a strong Southern assault achieved a decisive breakthrough and the whole Northern line crumbled, it's soldiers surrendering, deserting to rove as gangs of looters through the dwindling and already impoverished territory still available to them or fleeing back into the big cities,leaving the New England hinterland open to Southern occupation.General Discontent had made a significant contribution to this result. People in the north were tired of the war. It had brought them nothing but misery and failure. They were also tired of a leadership which had brought this about and which was increasingly tyrannical and socialist and incompetent, although they were also afraid to voice this discontent until liberated by their enemies. Southern treatment of the occupied Midwest had been fairly mild and outside the cities the area was starting to revive. This was known in the North despite it's rulers claims to the contrary; so the country districts resigned themselves to Southern occupation, put up little resistance or even took control of their own areas and declared neutrality before any Southern troops arrived. The Southern forces were well behaved when they did arrive. Short of food like everyone else, they saw that the locals were in worse case, and tried not to take much from them, and even to help them when they could, such as in repairing damaged structures and offering medical attention. Northerners and Southerners still did not like each other, but with care and courtesy they might be able to get along together.
Southern Occupation
That left what was left of the lefty government of USA v2 in only tenuous control of only the coastal cities of the North East.As order there collapsed amid wild rumours and panic, the political, bureaucratic and military leaders abandoned their positions and attempted flight to Canada or the Caribbean. Some were successful, some were caught, some were betrayed, few lived happily ever after. There was no formal surrender, the Northern government just ceased to exist. There was turmoil and starvation in the Northern cities. Individuals fled towards the Southern forces, hoping for food and security. The remaining Northern units disbanded themselves or surrendered as soon as Southern forces approached. Strangely or not, it was the Islamic jihadis who put up the fiercest resistance when Southern forces approached the areas they controlled, but this was soon overcome.One of the things that shocked white liberals and surprised blacks in the North, was to find that the first representatives of the evil-white-racist-Southerners to enter their cities were often black. Some blacks gave loyal service to the South. They were useful spies whose Southern accents combined with or countered by a sob story about having been driven out of the South by evil-white-racist-Southerners allowed them to evade suspicion. Seeing something of both sides, they were shrewd enough to stay with the winning side. Sincerely religious blacks, of whom there were quite a lot in the South, were just as disgusted and offended as sincerely religious whites (of whom there were a great many more) at the immorality, crime, perversion and disorder tolerated or promoted in the North, and often perpetrated by blacks upon whom the white liberals fawned. Such malefactors were indignantly surprised to find that instead of going easy on them as fellow-blacks, black administrators and judges were often harsher than whites in their judgments on them. Liberalism was a mental disease which mainly damaged whites. There had been no trace of it in traditional African societies, where within the elastic limits of custom and public approval manifesting as the will of the gods, the chief's word was law. Criminals, deviants and the insolently disobedient had swiftly received the harshest punishments. Even when modern politicians were enabled by white liberals to displace the chiefs their rule was no less harsh or arbitrary, despite cloaking itself as a 'democracy'. Brutal physical treatment was normal. West Africa was still a place where drivers who infringed a traffic regulation could be taken out of their vehicles and flogged by traffic policemen; and where a tourist who asked a traffic policeman why he had whacked a motorcyclist in the face with his baton was told, 'He no wearing his helmet, sah!' When God's justice came to the sinners of the North, it was often administered by a strong black arm.
The outcome of the war was taken as conclusive proof of the failure of the experiment of the USA v1 and v2 and as the clearest demonstration of God's favour towards the South and it's people, who were obviously His People.
Part Four.
Post-America.
American Nuremberg
Following the soldiers came the inquisitors.After the collapse or overthrow of the North, victor's justice was meted out. New York was deemed a suitable location to host judicial proceedings modeled on the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War. The leaders of the North were arraigned on charges of plotting and waging aggressive war and of committing crimes against humanity. All those who had been politically or bureaucratically or intellectually or culturally or militarily or economically prominent in the Northern regime were hunted down, imprisoned and those who did not manage to commit suicide were tried and executed. Since they had termed themselves 'Liberals', to the indignation of those who knew that their emphasis on overwhelming state power and hatred of individualism, the family, private property, racial and national identity, and promotion of everything perverted, debased, immoral and evil was socialism and not classical liberalism, there had to be a 'de-liberalisation' programme, (or was it pogrom?), equivalent to the 'de-nazification' campaign in Germany. Communist methods were applied to those who had 'objectively' been Communists or their dupes. Those, unto the third or fourth generation, whose ancestors had been leftists were assumed to carry a hereditary taint and were to be denied access to jobs, positions, education or influence beyond the most basic. They were not to interbreed with the rest of the population, if allowed to breed at all, beyond the need to maintain a class or caste of basic physical workers.The education system was overhauled to eliminate leftist influences. School and University appointments and curricula were strictly supervised to prevent the recurrence of lefty influence. Persons who could even imagine behaving in the uncouth, unkempt, slovenly, noisy, insolent, arrogant, riotous,immature,immoral, brazen, criminal, coarse, disruptive, drunken, drug-crazed, degenerate, contemptuous and contemptible, irresponsible, wasteful, anti-intellectual, unaesthetic and uncivilised manner that had characterised earlier generations of American students and academics, would of course never have been permitted near such an institution, except possibly to clean the drains and even then only under stringent supervision in case they left a mess or made things worse or offended decent people by their presence and continued existence. The administrators who had allowed and encouraged such degeneracy were no longer in existence. Perversion and immorality and filth of every kind, especially the love and lure of filthy lucre were no longer allowed to exist in those responsible for such positions. Academic virtue was to be no longer prostituted to sport or money and their associated perversions. As 'more' had meant 'worse', so 'less' was expected to produce 'better' as higher education regained it's intended function of producing a morally developed ruling class and a technically competent upper administrative class, rather than producing a debased parody of these things as a consumer good for a greedy and unqualified lower class who thought that aping virtue was better and certainly easier than attaining the real thing - which in any case was always denied and derided by the evil ones who were in control of the society.
It had long been noted that the extension of the franchise in America (and abroad) went hand in glove with a coarsening and debasement of standards. Rightly had Franklin (or was it Madison?) predicted that the Republic would be doomed as soon as the electorate found that they could vote themselves money. The extension of the franchise speeded the process of corruption, most of the population came to believe that they were entitled to live at someone else's expense, and that arranging this was the business of politics and the sole concern of their political representatives. In a way, the vile venal politicians they elected were a reflection of their voters, although like toxic pollution, evil concentrated ever more at higher levels of the political food-chain. Had there been a lottery of random penalties assigned to politicians, few would not have deserved the harshest penalties that could have befallen them. Madison had remarked that the constitution of the United States would only serve for the government of a moral and religious people and would be insufficient for any other, and as the people became less moral and religious and less like the original American citizens, so their society and government had changed and become increasingly debased to match the nature of the people and the scope available to the corrupt nature of their rulers.
Soon after the forces of the South secured each Northern state they set up an occupation administration, which was kept occupied dealing with claims, many of them genuine, from people who had fled or been driven out of the state. They wanted restoration of their property, compensation for losses - and vengeance. Some of this was reasonable and feasible and was done. Sometimes property had been destroyed or had disappeared, compensation from dead, fled or destitute people was not possible and vengeance was not possible or acceptable to the new authorities.Sometimes, as is ever the way in times of confusion when force and connections outweigh truth and justice, property was transferred and punishments meted out by means which were less than godly.
The victorious South did not wish to continue in permanent occupation of the North. Nor did they wish to risk allowing a new generation of troublemakers to arise. They were willing to let Northern states go their own way and manage their own affairs, provided hostility to the South and interference with it were not what they made their business.The previous Northern political class and the public attitudes they promoted had been a moral abomination, and this could not be allowed to recur.In addition to the judicial and moral cleansing of the society and control of it's educational and media institutions to prevent the spread of evil attitudes, a constitutional and political change was needed. Their (very classical) solution was to purge the franchise and limit it to those who would have held it in early America. It was known that had this franchise been maintained the more lefty party would never have dominated more than a few small states, even in the North. They hoped to get civilised leaders, who even if not friends of the South would not be rabid foes. Political influence was to be limited to right-thinking god-fearing property-owning and tax-paying white males. It was too soon to allow the Northern states to re-create armed forces of their own, so the new political order fronting the Southern occupation was to be protected by a new institution to root out malcontents, plotters and remnants of the old America v1 or v2, which soon came to be known as the American Inquisition. Reconstruction, Mark Three.
Not Back to Africa
By this time the population of the North had become trash, physically and morally the refuse of the planet, it's most degraded detritus, a miscegenated morass of mongrels manifesting the worst rather than the best characteristics of their forebears, a melting pot from which the better metal had escaped or been removed and where only the worthless waste residue remained. By this time, also, the predominant attitudes in the world had changed. They had become much more conservative. The reduction and elimination of American influence in the world had enabled a revival of decency. Decent people were proud of their race, they were not like the miscegenated Americans, vile Orcs bred from perverted Elves. Proverbially it was the fox which had lost it's own brush which wanted others to lose theirs. It was the foul and degenerate Americans who had pushed destructive nonsensical concepts like 'racism' and 'sexism' to degrade the rest of the world to their level. Now the world was less tolerant of such nonsense and quite happy to quarantine the Americans in a hell of their own making, where their stooges or acolytes were welcome to join them.Thus, when the South suggested that black Americans should be transported back to Africa, the Africans refused to accept them. The OAU indignantly pointed out that most of them were not fully black, and they did not want even those that were. In Africa most of the population had to be humble, good humoured, uncomplaining, patient and enduring; there was only room for a few insolent, arrogant, corrupt rulers with vast senses of entitlement and absurdly inflated views of their own worth. American blacks were not like the common people, they shared the attitudes of rulers. That could not be tolerated. The Africans did not feel much fellowship with these 'brothers'. They thought that their ancestors had got the better end of the deal when they had sold the ancestors of American blacks; they did not want their descendents back. They had enough trouble already and did not want to import any more. Whites were no longer very important in the world, indeed all white countries had been swamped by black immigrants so there were hardly any whites left. Blaming them for everyone else's natures and misfortunes was about played out, but the African rulers enjoyed 'playing the race card' for the last time. They pointed out that American blacks had been spoilt by soft and crazy American whites. They had created the problem for themselves and should solve it themselves. The North could continue rotting as Haiti North as far as the rest of the world cared. If they disappeared, no one would lament them.
Darkness falls
Darkness fell even whilst the war continued. It was an aspect of General Shortage's campaign that the electricity supply had become erratic, and eventually failed, disrupting production and making domestic and public life more difficult. This resulted partly from the bombing and destruction of facilities, but also from the economic chaos and confusion which the war had worsened. War Socialism government by decree had not managed to keep the lights on and the machinery working. The purges, murders, military conscription and flight of skilled staff had also made it difficult to find people with sufficient skill to keep things going. The disruption of the systems of education and training, by similar causes meant that skills were lost as competent people were no longer trained to replace their predecessors. In any case, much of the old technology was no longer feasible, lacking the resources and skills to create and maintain it or the wealth to pay for it or it's products had they been available.At the start of the First World War the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had made the famous remark that 'the lights are going out all over Europe, they will not be re-lit in our generation'. In America the failure was literal, and the lights never were re-lit.
The South had similar problems, but they were less severe. They managed to keep a sufficient, if sketchy, supply of munitions and domestic products in production, and their shortages were eased by 'voluntary' religiously inspired renunciation and adoption of simpler lifestyles. In the North the simplification became compulsory as the areas under Northern control that had produced oil, coal, gas, electricity, metal, food and even firewood were lost. Urban gardens could only supply a portion of the food that the population really needed, so disease resistance diminished, illness and starvation thinned the population, and the total population declined drastically.
The ravages of war reduced the population of the rural areas, but most of the deaths came in the cities. In effect the cities died, or were greatly reduced to the level that could be supported by the hinterland which provided food for them and which they supplied with goods and services in return. That level in turn was reduced by the social and material destruction. After the war the north had relapsed not just to a pre-industrial level, but to little better than subsistence farming with a culture to match.
The internet had first ceased in the North, strengthening it's isolation from the rest of the world. Lack of electricity, equipment and skills had contributed to this, but lack of time and freedom to do anything but obey the commands of the government was more important. The Northern government disliked it intensely. It encouraged individualism and privacy rather than collective action at the behest of the rulers. It made information and views available that those rulers did not like. It was subversive and counter-revolutionary, so it was shut down. This left those few in the rest of the world who had any interest in American events, dependent on Southern news sources. Obviously, radio and television and publishing had been completely under government control, and had withered away along with the Northern state. At least Marx had been right about that one!
In the South greater technical capacity and the ability and willingness to use it efficiently and relatively freely lasted longer. Although not destroyed like the North, they had been greatly damaged by the war, the social upheaval and the diminution of available resources. There were fewer people than before the Dissolution, and a much more sober and parsimonious attitude to the use of scarce resources, so they lasted longer. The change to a very religious and serious society was also important. Frivolity and waste was frowned upon, and could be penalised. Keeping immense numbers of streetlights on all night, and large empty buildings lit was definitely wasteful. It had tended to attract enemy attention, so it was imprudent as well as wasteful. Motor vehicles were now rare, apart from use by senior officers, administrators and clerics, and there was little night-life. Night life apart from godly prayer or useful study was definitely frivolous in the eyes of the godly. It was prudent not to come under searching scrutiny from the eye of the godly, although it was not Sauron's. Mark Twain's quip about Americans having three great blessings, the right to speak freely and to assemble freely - and the good sense to know when not to exercise them, gained point. The old American expectation that people were free to say and do things that offended their neighbours and public order and decency had passed away. In the North it had passed into a socialist tyranny. In the victorious South, those in charge were still too busy to bother about discreet dissidence, but the institution of the Inquisition to scour the North, and the historical parallels as well as common prudence, made people who were less than fervent in their Christian adherence keen to disguise the fact under a hypocritical show. There were no more openly proclaimed covens of satanists or witches or druids, for instance, any more than there were openly proclaimed groups of criminals, or moslems or socialists. Consequently, no campaigns to identify and burn them had yet been proclaimed. Discretion had it's uses, sweeter than those of adversity.
Thus, communication between the South and the rest of the world remained open for longer, but dwindled as interest on both sides waned. People adapted to a more sober and industrious lifestyle, rising and setting with the sun, as their ancestors had done, concentrating on their immediate lives and aiming to increase their families and circles of godly friendship rather than spending time on electronic amusements. There might be quite a lot of people still living in North America, but as with North Korea of old, they didn't show on night time satellite views from space.
Moving on
The rest of the world was too busy to bother with whatever was left of America. The attitudes that it had expressed seemed outdated. The Age of Democracy had ended. It required a type of citizen which was no longer common. Even in America the attitude of the public had changed. In the South it had reverted to a pre-modern religiosity. In the North it had 'advanced' to post-modern nihilism and destroyed itself. The rest of the world had already had more than enough American sermons on the virtues of Democracy and was no longer listening. Perhaps fortunately, the South, although it offered many sermons on the virtues of Christianity, now kept them for home consumption. The rich and powerful may assume more liberties than the poor and weak, whose messages are more likely to be scorned.The other messages that had come from the old America were also being successfully ignored. Talk about 'human rights' had ceased to be trendy, and humans were managing about as well or badly as ever. The scare stories that the world was running out of resources and cheap sources of energy and would smother in it's own waste had not proved true. New understandings of science and new technologies and new sources of energy had emerged and the rest of the world was profiting from them. Ironically, some of them had been pioneered by Americans, but suppressed by big business, until implemented beyond their reach. The prophecies and intimations of doom may however not have been entirely wrong; the application seems to have been to the old America and it's worldview rather than to the whole world.
The loss of America had not been all gain to the rest of the world. Evil remained, and in their better days the Americans would have tried to stand against it. There had been much generosity and goodness of heart, and some greatness of mind and spirit. The world was the poorer for their loss.
Greenwash
One of the curiosities of that worldview around the time of the Dissolution had been a strange materialistic religion known as 'environmentalism', practiced and promoted by people known as 'greens'. This appears to have been a cult for materialistic atheists, who experienced spirit apparently mediated through nature rather than through the more usual religions. Their divinity was the earth itself, as a living entity. Their holy object was the element carbon. Humanity displeased the earth goddess and disordered her natural manifestations through the sin of excessive use of carbon, inseparable from a modern, and especially a modern American, way of life. This sin was to be punished by their version of Hell, 'global warming', rendering the earth much hotter and basically uninhabitable. The chief sinners were - of course - the notorious 'evil-racist-white-men', without whose diabolical inventions and activities interfering with the state of nature, the much smaller number of humans on earth would be living in a state of pristine savagery; although it is not clear just which aspect of life in the Hobbesian state of nature 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish - and short' most attracted them. Their more extreme theologians were frankly anti-human and preached a great reduction in the number of humans. This doctrine became very popular as Christianity declined, especially in the North and among Lefties in Europe and worldwide. As with 'scientific socialism', it claimed to be scientific. Science was the great god of Truth at the time, although the pronouncements made in his name often lacked the consistency and objective evidence usually expected of both Truth and Science. This was no problem to some of the more fervent believers. Like those medieval monks whose pious forgeries were justified as supporting the faith of weaker brethren by supplying them with copies of evidence which was not available but must surely have existed because the doctrine so intensely believed in must obviously be true, their 'scientific' successors did not scruple to falsify and manipulate data, suppress contrary evidence and intimidate opposition, whilst seeking the power of the state to punish heretics and to subsidise themselves and advance their programmes. After all, 'the science was settled' so who could object- apart from those old fashioned scientists who objected that it was not 'settled' but 'fixed', and they were probably 'evil-racist-white-men' who could be suppressed for a while.This movement seems to have been a decadent derivative of Romanticism. Many of its features were obvious copies or parodies of Christianity. The Mother Goddess aspect lacked the emotional warmth and personal connection experienced by worshipers of her competitors, and therefore lacked their ability to become more generally popular.The words of the old hymn, 'where every prospect pleases and only man is vile' already expressed their main tenet. Their exhortation to personal austerity was very mild and 'milquetoast' compared to the earlier practices of other religions, including Christianity; involving no hair-shirts, scourges, group or self flagellation or death fasts, and no threat or opportunity for martyrdom.Personal austerity did not extend much beyond feeling good by consuming - a bit - less. No attention was paid to the fact that this did not reduce total consumption, merely re-distributed it, by means of the price system. Voluntary abstention may have appeared more noble and sacrificial than admission of having been priced out of the market by not-so-voluntary poverty.
Their main ritual activity was preaching doom if their injunctions to consume less were not heeded. Again, nothing really novel in this, many medieval friars would have agreed with them. They would have differed however in the desired salvation, and in the range of sins abhorred. The Greens were fixated on material consumption; they ignored everything else which their precursors would have regarded as sinful. They particularly hated travel, especially if it was comfortable travel by other people. This appeared to be especially displeasing or disturbing to the earth goddess, although for some reason she allowed her followers, or at least the more senior and voluble among them, an exemption or indulgence, to travel the world spreading their gospel and attending conferences with each other.
It should be no surprise by now to discover that the people whose consumption and 'carbon footprint' - a very unholy icon - most displeased the earth goddess were of course those evil-evil-evil-racist-white-men. Somehow she was more forgiving of the carbon sins of yellow people, who by then were actually doing the majority of the carbon consuming and emitting and whose resistance to this doctrine was much stronger. Bluntly, they had no intention of allowing the Americans to impoverish them by accepting their new religion. Misery loves company it is said. As the Americans declined they were suspected of seeking to take the rest of the world with them, although at least they didn't do it in the obvious way of nuclear suicide.
The Greens' notion of salvation was also different from those of other religions. Rather than a comfortable after-life in 'heaven' for the masses and union with divinity for the mystics, they looked forward to controlling the climate of earth for the general good of the earth. There was no questioning the need of the earth for this service or the ability and wisdom of the Green priesthood in performing it. Otherwise the personal benefit was to be the acceptance that virtue is it's own reward. The requisite austerity to achieve this was to be attained through their holy sacrament of 'carbon trading', which amounted to a modern version of the medieval sale of indulgences. Not altogether co-incidentally, the big oil companies were enthusiastic supporters of this idea, because they expected to make even more money from trading in these indulgences than from selling the diminishing supply of oil. St. Augustine had prayed to God to make him chaste - but not yet. For the Greens the requisite austerity, beyond their feeble personal efforts, was to be enforced on other people by the power of the state, preferably a global super-state, guided by their wisdom, whose power and reach and depth of interference in the lives of individuals would far exceed that of the most repressive Pope or Emperor. Thanks Greens, but 'No Thanks'.
Acirema
It used to be said that the secret name of Roma, it's inner essence, command of which would affect its external manifestation, had been Amor. Love was not a concept usually regarded as a prominent feature of Rome, but the great loyalty which it had inspired and it's strong attraction to outsiders, who more often wanted to become Roman than to overthrow Rome, and the long nostalgia for Roman laws and culture,the great hold of it's ruins and achievements on the hearts and minds of first the educated and then the popular culture of more recent times, and the revival of the civilising influence of it's literature and culture by the Renaissance humanists shows that there may be much in that supposition. Theoderic the Great famously said that a good Goth wanted to be like a Roman, but only a bad Roman would want to be like a Goth.America was often compared to Rome, and indeed it attracted much admiration while it was strong, although more for it's material than it's cultural achievements. Many people wanted to go there and become Americans. At first this was beneficial as it attracted vigorous and ingenious people who were in sympathy with the nature of it's founders and their culture. As it decayed it became the prey of parasites and wolves in sheep's clothing. Unlike Rome it lacked the spiritual power to renew itself for many centuries and finally to rise again as a new and long-lasting religious empire emerging from the husk of the old political empire, a religion whose essence if not it's external manifestation, was claimed to be Love.
The spiritual essence or polar opposite of the external manifestation of America turned out to be nothing coherent or meaningful. 'Acirema' made no sense, but senseless incoherence was what it eventually became, and was the effect of the supposed idealism which perverted it and turned it against itself and made it the opposite of what it had aspired to be. From a guiding and illuminating light unto the Nations, a visionary holy city set on a hill, it became the city of the Pit, Dante's Dis, model of dis-cord, dis-unity, dis-order and dis-aster, gathering place and guiding force for the refuse of humanity preying upon and dragging down all around them until they destroyed themselves. The world was a better place without them as they had become, but it was a pity that they had come to that. Shakespeare told us how it would be:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds
Tennyson also, in the Morte D'Arthur:
The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Let no more be said. After two great poets have pronounced a requiem, silence suffices.
Epilogue
This, then, is what I told her. It's a longer, more considered version, the best I can manage; but my skill is small, my knowledge fragmentary, my sources incomplete and partisan. May I be forgiven for garnishing my poor efforts with 'other mens' flowers'. Some of it I saw myself, mostly from the comfort of a good hotel. More I heard from those who were where events happened or had good accounts from those who were. Much was common rumour and report at the time. The interpretation and the sardonic tone are all my own. I had good occasion to know and to seek out those who knew more, for I was a journalist, a foreign correspondent, at the time. There's a debt owed to Clio and those who were there must pay their share of it. My granddaughter's right though, it's years since there was much, if any any, notice taken of the Americans. The world has moved on, their place in it's affairs has been taken by others,and even their name is slipping from the memory of humanity. That's a pity, for they were a great people once, the Americans. It may be true, as Shakespeare also said,'the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interr'd with their bones', but their memory should not be altogether of evil, for there were great men and many good people among them, although evil had most rule over them in their latter days.That evil, though, is part of the reason why we don't hear about them any more; it had become too like the One Ring of Sauron. It had not been destroyed, evil can never be destroyed, or uprooted from the heart of Man, but it's bearer of the moment had been destroyed and it's remains shut off from human contact lest from an ember the flame should leap forth again in the same form. Perhaps the Northmen of old were wrong to be so driven by the goad of fame, thinking that a reputation for courageous deeds would last forever. Munin may remember them, but accurate memories are not long preserved in the mouths and records of men. Those old Northmen would, however strange they found the Americans to be, have quickly identified one of their besetting vices, 'gullveig' an insatiable thirst for wealth, at the expense of everything else, carried to self destruction. Nor would they have admired that end, it was not noble; they would have scorned it as the end of people of no honour and no worth. Straight to Hel, they would have said, straw-deaths, none fly to Valhalla from that fray.
I'm astonished how apt to unsuspected circumstances can be the words of poets. Before there was an America, here're words to herald it's decay, from that other famous playwright of Shakespeare's day. Marlowe's Jew of Malta foreshadows the covetous greed which did so much to corrupt America and the world over which it's moneymen presided.
And thus methinks should men of judgment frame
Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade,
And as their wealth increaseth, so enclose
Infinite riches in a little room.
Here have we little room for so great a reckoning as the Decline and Fall of the American Empire. To attempt it leaves me but the ape of an historian, the butt of japes. Yet Prospero hath broke his staff and Ariel is fled. Here's only Caliban to tell this tale. May it please you well, my masters.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
A fair enough epitaph for any people, and may those who deserve it, Rest In Peace.
Wow, that was very good. I expect the same outcome, a republic where only white Christian men are allowed to vote. There will be much protesting, rioting, crime, and ethnic strife along the way, but not the civil war that you foresee. Materialistic hedonism may win elections but it doesn't win battles. Why put your ass in harm's way if you have no children and no belief in an afterlife? As for racism, I wouldn't be surprised if the North starts herding Blacks into internment camps before the South does.
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