FAR Future, Episode 65: Run, Run, Run, Run Away

You know, I was so looking forward to writing this one.

Saturday, August 20, 2022
Run, Run, Run, Run Away

Wingnutistan delenda est.

I can’t imagine there’s much of it left, anyway — they did their “strategic redeployment” from Planet Georgia night before last. The news has been burning up the phone lines all over the place, about how they all disappeared overnight. Turns out a lot of vehicles were found at the Atlanta Airport — in this area, they must have all drove to the airport, drained the remaining fuel from their vehicles, loaded up, and flew away. Atlanta’s been one big street party since the word got out; most of the army wasn’t exactly married to the junta (even if they didn’t defect) so they handed the baton to the local cops and retreated to Fort McPherson and Fort Gillem.

The local 'Riots got disbanded, I guess… I bicycled by one guy’s place yesterday, one I know who was part of the gang. He had a big truck parked sideways across his driveway with a hand-lettered sign on the side:

NO TRESSPASING
WILL BE SHOT

Someone with more moxie than I have wrote across the bottom of the sign: But can you please get this truck out of my driveway? Cute. I haven’t heard any reports of Riot-cleansing around here, at least outside of Atlanta metro. They might get laughed at a lot, though… after carrying water for the junta, being the local bad dogs, they were abandoned to their fate.

If you had your TV off the last few months, I can’t really blame you… but now is a good time to turn it back on if you have juice. There’s a lot of news — real news — being broadcast. It turns out the junta bolted for Texas. Or “The Republic of Texas,” if you want to call it that (they do). Sounds more like Iran with a cross in place of a crescent, if you ask me — that fat televangelist from San Antonio, one of those monopolizing the TV until recently, is part of the inner circle, with the title “Minister of Moral Values.” The Taliban had their “Virtue and Vice Commissions,” looks like the Rotters (Republic of Texas → RoT → Rotter) have a Moral Values Ministry. Iran is dead, long live Iran. The question is whither the oil, as it always is these days… I suspect that if they want their own wingnut homeland, most of us would be happy to let them have it. But only if they don’t try playing games with the resources, and power tripping is what those guys are all about.

It’s good to see the President on TV again — he’s on his way back to Washington. His term expired while he was in exile, but I don’t guess there’s a problem with him running a caretaker administration until they get things put back together. He’s taking the train cross-country, stopping along the way to talk to people, and spending a lot of time on the phone. He’s called all the surviving congresscritters to come back and help, demanded the resignation of the Supreme Court (who went along with the junta), most of the Court of Appeals (ditto), and much of the lower federal courts. I suppose that the reconstituted (ahem) Congress will impeach and remove the ones who don’t go on their own.

At least the army is the US Army, and not the Grand Army of Wingnutistan or something like that. The Joint Chiefs issued a joint resignation, claiming that the laws didn’t allow them to take sides in a political conflict but they understood that there would be bad blood if they tried to stay on. At least we heard from Rene: “Hola, y’all. Still can’t talk about what we’re up to, but glad to be working for the good guys. Manny deserted, but the rest of us are on the job. Hope to be home soon.” The President has already said that he would honor the service-for-citizenship deal that the junta offered to the signees, but they’re cutting it off at the end of the month. That came up in one of the status reports that he delivers in the evenings, wherever the train has stopped. After the brief, he takes questions from the locals. One question that comes up at just about every stop is a variation on “When will we start getting fuel again?” The answer, “Probably never. We need to make other arrangements,” usually doesn’t go over too well. After 10 years, you’d think that people would have started getting used to the idea that we depend(ed) way too much on a finite resource that was running out. I’m amazed that some people still think we can bring back the glory days of SUVs and Outer Suburbia… or maybe I’m reading too much into the question. Maybe people don’t understand that what used to be the prime world supplier is now a radioactive no-go zone. Or maybe they’re hoping to hear that Pacifica came up with a techno-fix during the junta days and was just waiting to gift the rest of the country with it when we got back together.

It might sound a little early, especially since people like us are still sleeping outside where we can get some cool air, but the President has already started asking people to get together and make sure all their neighbors can stay warm this winter, or at least not freeze to death. I’ve never been able to figure out why people won’t think of these things themselves, but when the junta didn’t seem to care about what people were going through, it never occurred to many people to just go out and take care of business. At least we’re getting some prompting, and with enough lead time to think about what needs to be done before it starts getting cold.

Hey, the net’s up! Off to get this posted while I can…

continued…