FAR Future, Episode 41: Maximum Disruption

It’s kind of eerie when stuff starts happening that you write about happening in the future…

Ghostburbs (video)

Monday, November 24, 2014
Maximum Disruption

The Beltway pundits have largely been sidelined, due to the tight media controls and spotty electrical service… such is their reward for going along with the coup, or at least not taking a stand against it. Serves them right, IMO; if they hadn’t been tut-tut’ing everything the real government did to try holding things together, maybe it wouldn’t have emboldened the militias. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that you can’t reason with a conservative, you can’t compromise with them, you can’t negotiate with them. You can only prevent them from harming you or everyone around them. You can only wait for a few of them to fall into the pit they dug and wait to stop digging it even deeper. I’ll admit, a few people — even one or two I remember as GCM’ers — have told me (in private) that ‘I never supported anything like this.’ Good for them for finally waking up… too bad it’s too late to make a difference.

But if the Rumps were looking for maximum disruption, they couldn’t have come up with anything much more effective than the “Latino Repatriation Act” and all the riders that went along with it. With no president to sign or veto bills, anything passed becomes law after 10 days… but nothing gets introduced without the blessing of the junta. The LRA has really made a mess on this part of Planet Georgia. There are a lot of people directly affected by the law here; many of them came to work in the poultry business, and landscaping, and restaurants, and anything nobody else wanted to do. And if they have less than five years of “legal residency,” they have to pack up and find their way back home. Of course, the junta wants them to leave, but doesn’t want to have the expense of sending them away.

The whole “must carry proof of citizenship” BS is a little more than a backdoor version of a national ID card. It’s also an obvious invitation to profiling — you can bet Ms. Lily White will never be asked to show a birth certificate or voter registration card (unless she’s voting). I expect I’ll probably be carded more than once, not exactly being blonde and blue-eyed myself.

School started in October, but we yanked the kids out after a week — the junta has rolled out a “universal curriculum” that’s indoctrination and nothing else. About a third of the teachers, even in this Red neck of the woods, quit over it. Daughter Dearest, who plans to come home after her school year is over, pointed us to some good materials and we’ve started home-schooling. I’m working at home all week now, for however long the company going to last, and we’ve set up school time for the afternoon and early evening. It seems to work well for us: the kids help with the chores and gather deadfall in the morning, do their homework in the afternoon, and we go over lessons in the evening. Guillermo and Maria are more than a little concerned about this repatriation thing, but I’ve talked them into sitting tight for now — I’m kind of counting on my ambiguous relationship with the GCM to shield them, at least temporarily. Besides, if they left, I think Kim and Serena would try to go with them; the kids have turned into some kind of eight-legged composite creature. :-)

Down in Atlanta, The Prophet has been busy with ministry. A lot of people are getting thrown out of their houses, even though nobody else wants them. Between that and some draconian laws about vandalizing foreclosure properties, the banks are ending up with a lot of real estate. Like as not, the junta is forcing counties to “overlook” taxes on the houses, so the bankers aren’t getting hurt. It’s not just Atlanta, either. But The Prophet is almost daring the junta to come after him; he blasts them from his cardboard pulpit and continues to gather food donations. A suburban Pat-riot Club has vowed to take him down, and I’m seriously worried.

The big-box joints have taken a pounding in the last couple of months. Sales, clearance sales, “store closing” sales, then people break into the stores and swipe what little is left. Some homeless people outside of Springfield, IL took up residence in an abandoned Wal-Mart to get out of the cold, and it was nearly a month before anyone realized they were there. Not much in one of those stores that would burn, especially if the merchandise was cleared out, but trash is free for the taking (who can afford trash pickup now?) and they built some walls inside out of scrap materials, for privacy and to trap heat. A lot of people are picking up on the idea, especially since nobody cares too much about those old buildings anymore… and people have to have somewhere to go. Sometimes it’s slot campers rolling inside from the parking lot; others come from the street. Somehow or another, they’re building a new kind of home.

Winters really suck when people can’t stay warm.

continued…