Shanghaied - 2ACW (preview)

[lordroel]

Preview Chapter I of Shanghaied - 2ACW

Prelude – Shanghaied

Shanghaied: the name of a film released by the Hollywood studio Paramount in 2028.

The film wasn’t a commercial success and just about broke even for Paramount. It’s title was the subject of controversy in the United States, just one of the many, varied political disputes during the turbulent years of the Twenties. The plot concerned the stories of several fictional characters in early Twentieth Century San Francisco who interacted in a murder mystery. The principal lead was a ‘crimper’, a man who used guile and deception to supply crews to naval merchantmen making the run to China’s coastal city. This practice was known at the time as ‘Shanghaiing’ and was legal (just) as well as highly profitable for those involved in crimping.

Using such a title was said to be not politically correct and allegations were made of anti-Chinese bias and xenophobia. Paramount disputed such wild claims though studio executives did plan to release the film under a different name in China. That never came to pass due to the international situation which cut off the once lucrative Chinese market for Hollywood. In America, those on the opposite side of the partisan divide, who were outraged at the actions of their opponents who claimed offense at such a name, flocked to see the film just to make a point. Without this organised viewing – not for the story’s promise but just to rub the other side’s nose in it –, Shanghaied would never have just about managed to break even as it did.

Part One - Political Violence

1 – Blue states and Red states

When the United States of America entered the 2020’s, the decade witnessed the most turbulent period in the nation’s history. Civil war could come about before the Thirties were reached due to events occurring during the Twenties. The causes were many but at the heart was the fact that every single societal issue, no matter how trivial, became one of partisan politics. Americans divided themselves into Them and Us every day. Whereas in previous decades, splits had concerned such hot button topics as gun rights, the death penalty & abortion. Now it was about everything imaginable: gender, climate, pop culture and school dinners. The partisan political lens was through which Americans viewed it all. What were They trying to do to Us with this? Such was how so many Americans came to look at their lives. They were encouraged by this by those seeking power, to make money or just out to cause trouble.

The latter really did that.

In late 2020, American voters selected a new president. The results of that contest were bitterly rejected by the loser but the loser he was. Out of office went the 45th President the following January and replacing him in the White House was the 46th President. The latter’s term was beset by health problems and that increasing societal divide across the nation. Mid-term elections in ’22 saw his party, the Democrats, lose the House. The Senate was already in the hands of the Republicans and now they had complete control of Congress. Come February the following year, the suffered an eventually fatal stroke on Valentine’s Day. He collapsed in the Oval Office and doctors lost the battle to save his life the following morning. Ascending to the presidency was his vice president. She became the nation’s 47th President. A ‘woman of color’, there wasn’t that much love for her among a good portion of her party nor many of the Democrats’ supporters at-large. Obstructionism in Congress from the Republicans became more brazen. They impeached Cabinet members and then went after her in late ’23. The latter concerned baseless and hypocritical charges yet the whole nation was split down the middle as to what side they were on with that. Not having enough votes to convict her, impeaching the 47th President was about playing the long game rather than getting her out of the White House. Democrats themselves looked at the future with concern at her being in office too: it was possible that she would be president for ten years as, constitutionally, she was able to run for two more terms should the voters allow for that.

An incumbent president usually sails through re-nomination by their party. For the 47th President, it quickly became apparent that such a feat would be impossible for her. Fellow Democrats lined up to run against the president. She was a neo-Liberal in a party where Progressives had major influence not at the top but among the wider ranks. Mark Walsh, the junior senator from Virginia, emerged as her leading challenger for the Democratic nomination. He was a noted Progressive with a rapidly expanding base of support. Impeachment, despite its failure, had hurt the standing of the 47th President. The Republicans intended that their own candidate would take advantage through 2024 but, instead, Walsh’s campaign was booming. He won the opening primary election and didn’t look back from there. Staying in the race in the face of calls for her to drop out, the 47th President lost each one which she contested. It was an embarrassment the longer it went on. Eventually, after Super Tuesday, she gave in. Walsh then threw everything at winning in November. The party establishment fell in line behind him where they finally conceded that they couldn’t fight the will of the voters and have their favoured candidate stay where she was. The 47th President would eventually campaign for Walsh though not with that much enthusiasm it must be said.

That didn’t matter. The 2024 US President Election was won by Walsh. He was to become the 48th President after a narrow win against his Republican opponent. As to that victory, it was only narrow when it came to the outcome of the votes tallied in the Electoral College. With the popular vote, his win was secured by more than nine million votes more than Roy Allen, the Governor of Ohio. However, only by sixteen votes in that body did Walsh win. North Carolina decided the election with Allen almost managing to pull of the impossible but just losing there and thus being denied the White House. A central plank of Walsh’s campaign had been for the post-election abolishment of the Electoral College: a method of selecting presidents which his supporters, and many Americans too, considered undemocratic. He won the presidency via it but wanted rid. This he was going to be unable to do after winning though. The Republicans had managed to maintain their hold on Congress despite the Democratic victory in the race for the White House. Losses were taken to shorten their majority in the House, but in the Senate, the Republicans expanded their control. They had fifty-five senators (out of a hundred) whose representation was granted by less than forty per cent of the electorate. If the Electoral College was undemocratic, what term would be best to describe the situation with the Senate!?


Through the Twenties, the national political partisan divide became one of a regional matter. Individual states became increasingly Red (denoting the Republicans) and Blue (the Democrats). Within them, the other party was increasingly marginalised and left without avenues to assume power. In previous decades, for example the Republicans had managed to be strong in California despite Democratic dominance while there were large numbers of Democrats in national & state offices through states such as Florida & Texas. This changed as the decade moved on. One side forced the other out of force either by mobilising enough voters in elections or by playing political games which opponents deemed undemocratic. The Democrats channelled money into previous Purple – swing – states to turn them Blue while expanding their control within Blue states. Voters within those states were kept politically-engaged. During elections which fell in years when there wasn’t a presidential race, votes for the Democrats had previously not been so strong. They were now. The Republicans did much the same (they had always had better support in non-Presidential years too) though went further as well. Back in the 2010’s, party strategists had created the REDMAP project. This was a national effort to turn large areas of the country Red on the map though control of state levers of power. Following the ’20 Census, they doubled down on REDMAP with access to all of that census data made available. Within Red states, the Republicans were able to control redistricting and apply that on a scientific degree to follow what they had started last decade. A friendly Supreme Court helped with this. Where there was strong opposition coming from Democratic governors in states with the Republicans controlling the state's legislatures, the former were stripped of their powers to stop this. Gerrymandering ran rampant to ‘pack, stack & crack’ Congressional districts as well. Voters were disenfranchised in a legal manner. Data from that national census conducted in ‘20 was applied not just for state governments but on a national level too. It changed the make-up of the Electoral College to the overall benefit of the Republicans. They were allowed to stay in the game when they really should have been locked out of it due to the demographic make-up of the nation.

Within those states which became Red and Blue, residents who were on the opposing side increasingly began to leave them for elsewhere. The United States had been undergoing democratic changes via population shifts throughout its history, but what was seen during the Twenties was one of a political nature. Republicans left Illinois & Massachusetts: Democrats moved out of Missouri and Ohio. These citizens who labelled themselves as such, or were given that label by others, did so because of societal changes within them influenced by the national political landscape drove that. In the face of extensive, but failed, opposition from the 47th President leading the charge, the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2023. That was done from that Republican-friendly body at the behest of several Red states efforts. The right to access abortion services for women was lost at the national level meaning that states could, and did, outlaw it within them. A dozen Red states did so within six months. Blue states expanded access to abortion and several passed legislation to give legal protection to women from Red states who came to them and subsequently faced the threat of penalty where they lived. Another significant Supreme Court case the following year helped these demographic changes occur. In Suárez vs. Alabama, the former (a young man) lost his case against the state of his residence when they sought to impede his right to attend university elsewhere in the nation. Alabama had passed a law exempting that state from any financial costs – even minor ones – involved with residents attending higher education at facilities on a so-called ‘hit list’. Suárez wanted to go to New York University, which Alabama regarded as far too liberal… and in a Blue state. If he wanted to attend, he could freely do so, but they blocked the transfer of education records via financial measures which had been signed into law. Suárez, nor NYU, couldn’t pay for them and nor could they access what Alabama said was state property. It sounded petty on the face of it but it was important. The young man went to the university of his choice yet this Red state had made its point. The Supreme Court allowed for this state to do as it wished, negatively impacting the futures of its residents who wished to be educated in Blue states by causing them administrative headaches. State’s rights were increasing in many fields and the Red states did all that they could as they fought a rapidly increasing all-encompassing culture war where everything was a fight based on political lines.

The culture war of the Twenties meant that negative opinions of those from states on the other side of the divide meant a big deal. ‘Oh, you’re from a Red/Blue state’ might not have been an overt insult, yet it became a remark which summed up an individual. Even if you were a Democrat, if you lived in a Red state, that defined how everyone else viewed you. More and more this became important. Certain companies were barred by state legislatures from doing business within them. Red states did this in the main but there were some Blue states who followed the lead set. Consumers couldn’t access products and services which their fellow Americans across the state line could. Another case which made it to the highest court in the land was Dolan vs. South Carolina. The Supreme Court rejected the plaintiff’s suit against the state where he was a resident when it came to him being fired by his employer due to his political activity. That private enterprise terminated him because he was an active Democrat – he’d run for local office – in a Red state. This was done under the protection of a state law giving his employer permission to do so: they could fire those whose politics they disagreed with. Many Americans in Red and Blue states reconsidered their residence in light of this and moved elsewhere in the nation in light of Dolan vs. South Carolina when further states followed the example set by South Carolina. Georgia’s state government, in the hands of the Republicans while a powerless Democratic governor could do nothing, moved to ban the media networks CNN and MSNBC from the state. The case went to the Supreme Court and Georgia prevailed. CNN left its home offices and while it and MSNBC – the two of them liberal networks – could broadcast into Georgia, their employees were banned from entering the state under penalty of individual imprisonment. California, joined later by Hawaii, then used the same reasoning to impose restrictions on the right-wing Fox News. In the interests of public safety, it was argued that that media network was a danger to their residents. More states soon found other ways to restrict unfriendly media to connect with the public. This turned Red states redder and made bluer Blue ones.

[mpipes]

Assume this is set in the 2030 time frame?

[lordroel]

Originally Posted by mpipes

Assume this is set in the 2030 time frame?

Middle 2020s to 2030s.

2 – Years of Lead

There had been acts of political violence in the Teens, the Noughties and back throughout the history of the United States. However, the multitude and severity of the politically-motivated acts of domestic terror undertaken during the Twenties would lead to a columnist in the Washington Post deeming the decade ‘the Years of Lead’. The term came from aboard – Italy in the late 20th Century – were there was relentless violence. The term took a-hold whereas the similar ‘Troubles’ (echoing Ulster) positioned by various internet-only media outlets lost out.

In July 2022, the husband and twin sons of Fay Fry were murdered in a home invasion. The Illinois Senator was in Washington while her family were slain in their Springfield residence. The murders were livestreamed over the internet. There had been high-profile live-streams before on the Facebook and YouTube platforms… but this was something else. The two companies were accused of acting far too late and their defences as to why they didn’t stop the broadcast rang hallow. Those three deaths shook the country. Fry’s family were helpless and brutally murdered while begging for their lives. The masked pair of killers, who took absolute joy in what they did, made assertions during the killings that they did this due to Fry’s politics. She was a well-known Democrat who’d faced death threats before. However, no one expected this. Federal and state forces sought the fleeing killers. They were identified as members of a right-wing militia from Kansas. One was arrested by the FBI in Illinois but the other managed to make it back to his home state. Kansas had passed a state law months earlier giving itself extensive domestic policing powers which contrasted sharply with those of the federal government’s ability to enforce national law within the state. Whether the domestic terrorist knew this wasn’t known but was in Kansas when the FBI sought to arrest him. Kansas had no intention of shielding him – the slaying of the Fry family united all Americans, at least for a while anyway – but the ‘federal invasion’, as one of the state’s Republican senators called it, led to a stand-off between Kansas’ state police and armed FBI agents… with that killer in the middle. It was live on television where armed officers pointed guns at each other and exchanged insults. Kansas took their captive into custody and would later extradite him to Illinois – from a Red state to a Blue state – but refused federal involvement. Public attention through August and September ’22 shifted from the Fry family murders to this stand-off between a state and the federal government. That division was the ultimate outcome of the killings in Springfield.

Race riots in the inner cities and the armed establishment of so-called ‘autonomous zones’ by left-wing militia groups took place during 2022, ’23 & ’24. These were events played out in the media which gripped the nation. The partisan divide was apparent when it came to the opinions of how people saw these events. Supposed inaction by the 47th President was criticised by the Republicans who demanded that she act to intervene against protesters. At the same time, when federal action was taken, there came the criticism that the state’s rights were being violated when there were measures within them: the unrest gripped areas within Red and Blue states leading to much mental gymnastics. On the Democratic side, the 47th President came under fire from people within her own party for acting and not acting: it depended upon where this was/wasn’t done based on what part of the country which the violence which came with the protesters was seen. Looting, arson and killings occurred. Police shootings and arrests by federal officers took place. Right-wing militia elements, always well-armed made appearances in front of the media with assertions made that should more violence grip certain Red states, they would intervene against that and also make a stand against federal forces too. In Miami, during October ’23, this came to a head in front of a federal building in that Florida city. A left-wing mob – Marxist protesters, not Progressives – surrounded the building and were threatening to storm it to set it ablaze. A group of armed militia from a well-known right-wing force turned up. Shooting started with Miami police officers caught in the middle. Eight deaths were incurred. In the aftermath, while criticising Washington and blaming the 47th President for it all, Florida, a redder state than it had been a few years past, gave itself extensive civil law-and-order powers. The state’s governor soon signed this into law in the face of (weak) internal and (strong) national vocal opposition to what Florida had done. Miami, a Blue area of the state surrounded by a sea of Red, was under near martial law for the rest of ’23. Journalists from Blue states and unfriendly media organisations were banned from entering first Miami and then the state as a whole.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) had been for many long years focused on firearms than the other two elements of its name. It was a federal agency with wide-ranging powers. Republican efforts in the Senate had blocked the 47th President’s choice of director and then impeached the man they first approved when the AFT did what they were supposed to: enforce national gun laws. In May ’23, the agency had an acting director put there using an Executive Order when the senate refused to confirm the president’s nominee. Within months, at the behest of the White House, the AFT seemed to gain a new lease of life under new leadership. Agents moved to enforce the law more extensively than they had previously done so due to the appearance of so many armed militia groups nationwide. Not all of them were so perfect with their legal paperwork and select groups had access to illegal weaponry too. Far left groups were targeted alongside right-wing ones but when the latter were subject to AFT raids, in Red states, the Republicans were up in arms. Federal officers were said to have violated state’s rights during seizure operations – to confiscate guns as well as explosives – across the country. When the White House stuck with the ATF, the battle with the 47th President went nuclear. Congress defunded the ATF ahead of the stated goal of state’s setting up their own agencies. The consequences were soon going to be apparent as no one was enforcing the law.

In November, an explosion rocked the Washington suburb of Georgetown. A car bomb blew up one of the nine justices on the Supreme Court. Susan Meadow was one of the few liberal members in that conservative-dominated body and was killed alongside three others. FBI investigators were unable to discover who committed this infamous act. The following month saw a trio of acts of political terror elsewhere in the nation. A Democratic Congressman was shot and badly wounded by a sniper when in his California district. In what was regarded by federal investigators as a tit-for-tat attack, the next afternoon saw a gunman use an illegal automatic rifle to spray with bullets the office of a Republican Congresswoman in Mississippi. Elizabeth Evans and six others died with the attacker escaping detection. Days before Christmas, when the Minnesota Legislature was meeting in Saint Paul, a bomb went off in the senate chamber. Democrats and Republican lawmakers alike were targeted and slain in that (recently turned) Red state. Twenty-three deaths were the outcome with the perpetrators of the Saint Paul bombing unknown.

Things got worse the next year.

In early 2024, when on the campaign trail, the 47th President is suddenly pulled away from the crowd by the Secret Service with the shouts of ‘gun, gun, gun’. An armed man is pounced on before he can fire on her with all this caught on live television. A week later, at a presidential debate, there is a suspicious package found in a last minute sweep of the event in Las Vegas. Only this last check avoids what could have been a terrible blast targeting the president as well as candidates such as Walsh: all other security was bypassed by whomever planted that bomb. In Oklahoma the following month, a CNN reporter is shot to death. She is in the Red state the night before a law comes into effect banning her media organisation from Oklahoma. Arrested by local authorities, the shooter, a neo-Nazi from a militia group, is eager to explain why he did what he did as he seeks media attention and national notoriety. On the violence goes through the following months of ’24. In upstate New York, a Republican state legislator is badly wounded in a shooting by an unknown gunman. A major fundraiser for the Democrats is killed – and his eight month old grandson left in intensive care – when a letter bomb explodes at his Delaware home. Caught on camera is the shooting by two masked gunmen on the outskirts of Denver of a crowd of people registering as volunteers for the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaign for November: eight are left dead there and a shootout with police & the perpetrators later sees another three lives lost. In rural Pennsylvania, a senior staffer to a Democratic Congressman – who’ll be fighting hard for his re-districted seat in the upcoming election in this Red state – is kidnapped from his boyfriend’s apartment. A body is left there and then the staffer turns up the next day also killed, with a message of hate carved into his bare chest. A police officer’s funeral is targeted by a failed bomb attack in Michigan but the next morning, two policemen in Detroit are killed by gunfire in a deliberate attack. A bitter state sentate campaign race in North Carolina – one of the few Purple states left – is suspended when the brother of one candidate kills his opponent’s wife. This is no domestic dispute but an assassination due to politics. Walsh and Allen spend the presidential campaign surrounded by Secret Service agents. Events are cancelled or curtailed with regard to crowd numbers. Assassination fears run high. The Secret Service has an agent with the Commerce Secretary yet he fails to stop her being murdered when in Arizona. A noted Democrat who was campaigning on behalf of an old friend running for Congress in that Blue state, Traci Bennet is shot to death when the member of the Cabinet supposed to be protected against that.

In the last days leading up to the elections in November 2024, as Walsh and Allen battle it out while the 47th President is effectively a lame duck, there are more incidents. In Arkansas, California, New Jersey & Wisconsin, political terrorism occurs. A Democrat running a no-hope campaign for governor in the Red state of Arkansas has shots fired at him: they miss but an innocent bystander is killed. In Sacramento, the California state capital, a pipe bomb thrown into a political rally for a Democratic candidate for the US House wounds him: two others die. Police in New Jersey arrest a man outside the house of the state legislature speaker who was planning to kill that Democratic politician. Up in Wisconsin, a sitting Congressman, the Democrat Paul Gonzalez, is strangled to death in a public bathroom with his killer evading custody. There are false alarms nationwide with terror fears. Armed groups, militia of various political affiliations, are shown on the news boasting of their strengths and sharing messages of hate.

Against such a backdrop, Walsh wins that presidential election. He inherits the leadership of a country beset by political violence with no sign of the Years of Lead coming to an end.