Okay, fellow voyagers of the blogosphere, here's your chance.
Let us create, as a flashcrowd/crowd sourced/ 21st century group orgy of imagination--the new Netflix Series: "2024: Jigsawed America"
Here's the set up: you write the follow on scenes, events and outcomes.
But here's a suggestion for the opening:
Single card each: white on black. Ten seconds each. Roughly a three minute sequence.
Background music: Marvin Gaye, "The Ecology"
2024
+ President Trump is starting the final year of his Presidency.
+ Medicare and Social Security have been privatized.
+ The Supreme Court Overturned Roe v Wade. Abortion now legal in only 12 states.
+ The Right to Parenthood Act stipulates wives need written permission from their husbands to have an IUD inserted
+ Sanctity of Marriage Act, outlaws Gay marriage.
+ The Supreme Court has struck down all restrictions on gun ownership and sale.
+ The Immigration Reform Act of 2022 forbids immigration of Muslims.
+ Camps in Arizona and Texas house 10,000 illegal immigrants
+ Gitmo houses 5,000 prisoners.
+ Reservations for Muslims near Detroit house 20,000
+ Windmills, solar panels now carry a 50% excise tax.
+ Drilling in Alaska and the lower 48 states is permitted without government approval.
+ Fishing and shrimping collapse from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico after a series of oil leaks from offshore drilling.
+ The average annual temperature in Minneapolis has risen from 55 o F to 74 oF.
+ Palm trees planted along lake Michigan in Chicago have survived four winters.
FADE IN:
Rally in Madison Square Garden, New York City.
Man at the podium: I don't need to tell you why we are here today. Why we have to be here today. And I don't need to say more than, "Here he is!"
To the background of general tumult, a man walks across the stage. He is smallish, trim beard, might resemble Ulysses S. Grant, or maybe Jon Stewart, or maybe that hobbit from "Lord of the Rings."
He reaches the podium, barely seems to hear the crowd, pauses to smile a friendly smile and begins:
Hobbit: Are you ready for something completely different?
The crowd responds with delirious roar, standing on chairs, thunderous.
Hobbit: Really, this can't go on. Not like this.
I've never been one of those to think we have seen anything really abnormal in this country over the past 8 years.
Our national history, since its inception has seen wild partisan divides, conspiracy fantasies and true conspiracies, punctuated by political violence, assassinations, deliberate subversion of constitutional principles, years of bumbling ineptitude, bizarre personalities in the Presidency.
And I am happy to live in a country which, unique in the world's history, fought its most costly war, its most desperate, tragic and costly war to free an underclass.
That war was sold on a lie, at first, or at least it was sold as one thing and then there was a bait and switch: It was a war to save the Union, which even racists could support, but by his second Inaugural, Lincoln, in a burst of candor and deep honesty, admitted, "everyone understood that somehow slavery was the cause of the war."
Well, I'm glad we fought that war. It was the right thing to do.
But you know, as we've begun to engage in this discussion about dissolution, we keep hearing, "Well, we fought a war about that already."
But no, not really.
That's a half truth.
I'm glad we stayed together in 1865. Our nation, a continental Goliath, played a huge role in defeating two of the twentieth century's most malignant nation states, and had we been divided, had we been smaller, we might not have been able to play that role.
But now we have to face a different truth.
You know, in the final years of the Soviet Union, Russia became a society where everyone knew what their leaders were saying was not real. But everybody accepted that and pretended it was real, because NO ONE COULD IMAGINE ANY ALTERNATIVE.
Silence in the Garden. You could hear the proverbial pin drop. The hobbit looks around and continues:
Hobbit: Well, we have reached that stage in our nation's history, where "alternative facts" and "fake news" and "don't take him literally but take him seriously" have played out for the past 8 years.
And now folks who depended on, who planned for health care with Medicare are languishing, dying for lack of care. Retirees are losing their homes, moving in with their kids, if they have kids, going on the street if they don't. The ranks of unwanted children are swelling again. Racism has been institutionalized again, this time aimed at Hispanics and Muslims.
And it is all so normal now. And legal. It's been enacted by Congress and supported by the Supreme Court.
But that Court is the creation of a new mean gerrymandered tide centered in the Bible Belt and which now controls Congress, not by force of numbers, but by manipulation of an obsolete and now corrupted system of redistricting and a President who has appointed the 21st century version of Roger Taney at every opportunity.
From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, a small, determined group of Southerners controlled Congress and made sure our armed forces, our neighborhoods, our schools, our restaurants, swimming pools and even our bathrooms were segregated. Eventually, they were thwarted, but only temporarily. Their will remained unsuppressed.
Our Congress is now in control of an equally determined group of reactionaries, but they are not exclusively from the South, although, for the most part they are from the South and those from the South are almost exclusively in this Far Right party.
I do not pretend to like these people, but I cannot say they have done anything illegal or immoral. They have simply seized power and wielded it.
But they have created a country which suits them, not us. It is said every Northern state is a melange of large metropolitan with Alabama in between. But the fact is, nationwide, the Alabamans among us are not in the majority; they reign by voting in blocks and by playing with voting districts. Nationwide, the Right constitutes about 2/5 of the population and the Left about 3/5. The distribution places the Right in the empty spaces of the West and the rural parts of the Midwest and solidly in the South, so they are strategically placed to control the country as an army, strategically deployed can control and occupy a much larger population.
We have, in the North, the East and the West Coast, functionally, become an occupied country. Occupied by the Far Right.
They want their guns and their Bibles in public schools and their churches ruling community life and they want their communities to be all White again and they don't want immigrants or different languages heard on the street or in stores and really, they want to return to the 1950's when Whites ruled and the colored cowered and things were stacked in their favor.
Can't blame them. They want to be winning again.
So, as you know, I've proposed a difficult but obvious decision.
We have a dysfunctional, unhappy family. Let us dissolve it. Let us divorce--a no fault divorce. We do not ask Southerners or rural Pennsylvanians to accept our view of them or their values. We simply ask to be allowed to go our own way.
It will be good for them, and we surely think it will be good for us.
There will be a time of transition and difficulty. I hope and expect conservative people living in the new United States of Diversity, will look around and find the taxes, the role of government, the restrictions on guns and proscriptions against religion in government will not suit them, and many, if not most will move to the more welcoming South.
I hope we'll not have anything so traumatic as the India/Pakistan experience, where Muslims moved out and Hindus remained behind and the two new countries were at each other's throats for generations. I hope our parting will be less rancorous.
We have simply reached the point of irreconcilable differences and we should part.
The details remain to be worked out.
The only clear form I can see is our new nation, the United States of Diversity, will not be contiguous. But we've had Hawaii and Alaska which have not been physically connected to the lower 48 and we can easily handle this.
Will we need passports to travel from Boston to Montgomery, Alabama? Very possibly.
But, from my point of view, that is a price well worth paying to not have Alabama controlling my Medicare, my Congress, my future.
If fate wills it that we should part, then let us make the most of it.
Let us appeal to the Red States to accept our request for divorce and start our negotiations.
And let us consider, as we do this, exactly what sort of a nation we want to build among the states or parts of states which want to join us.
FADE TO BLACK.
Okay, that's the pitch. You've seen the pilot. You write the next episode.
Let us create, as a flashcrowd/crowd sourced/ 21st century group orgy of imagination--the new Netflix Series: "2024: Jigsawed America"
Here's the set up: you write the follow on scenes, events and outcomes.
But here's a suggestion for the opening:
Single card each: white on black. Ten seconds each. Roughly a three minute sequence.
Background music: Marvin Gaye, "The Ecology"
2024
+ President Trump is starting the final year of his Presidency.
+ Medicare and Social Security have been privatized.
+ The Supreme Court Overturned Roe v Wade. Abortion now legal in only 12 states.
+ The Right to Parenthood Act stipulates wives need written permission from their husbands to have an IUD inserted
+ Sanctity of Marriage Act, outlaws Gay marriage.
+ The Supreme Court has struck down all restrictions on gun ownership and sale.
+ The Immigration Reform Act of 2022 forbids immigration of Muslims.
+ Camps in Arizona and Texas house 10,000 illegal immigrants
+ Gitmo houses 5,000 prisoners.
+ Reservations for Muslims near Detroit house 20,000
+ Windmills, solar panels now carry a 50% excise tax.
+ Drilling in Alaska and the lower 48 states is permitted without government approval.
+ Fishing and shrimping collapse from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico after a series of oil leaks from offshore drilling.
+ The average annual temperature in Minneapolis has risen from 55 o F to 74 oF.
+ Palm trees planted along lake Michigan in Chicago have survived four winters.
FADE IN:
Rally in Madison Square Garden, New York City.
Man at the podium: I don't need to tell you why we are here today. Why we have to be here today. And I don't need to say more than, "Here he is!"
To the background of general tumult, a man walks across the stage. He is smallish, trim beard, might resemble Ulysses S. Grant, or maybe Jon Stewart, or maybe that hobbit from "Lord of the Rings."
He reaches the podium, barely seems to hear the crowd, pauses to smile a friendly smile and begins:
Hobbit: Are you ready for something completely different?
The crowd responds with delirious roar, standing on chairs, thunderous.
Hobbit: Really, this can't go on. Not like this.
I've never been one of those to think we have seen anything really abnormal in this country over the past 8 years.
Our national history, since its inception has seen wild partisan divides, conspiracy fantasies and true conspiracies, punctuated by political violence, assassinations, deliberate subversion of constitutional principles, years of bumbling ineptitude, bizarre personalities in the Presidency.
And I am happy to live in a country which, unique in the world's history, fought its most costly war, its most desperate, tragic and costly war to free an underclass.
That war was sold on a lie, at first, or at least it was sold as one thing and then there was a bait and switch: It was a war to save the Union, which even racists could support, but by his second Inaugural, Lincoln, in a burst of candor and deep honesty, admitted, "everyone understood that somehow slavery was the cause of the war."
Well, I'm glad we fought that war. It was the right thing to do.
But you know, as we've begun to engage in this discussion about dissolution, we keep hearing, "Well, we fought a war about that already."
But no, not really.
That's a half truth.
I'm glad we stayed together in 1865. Our nation, a continental Goliath, played a huge role in defeating two of the twentieth century's most malignant nation states, and had we been divided, had we been smaller, we might not have been able to play that role.
But now we have to face a different truth.
You know, in the final years of the Soviet Union, Russia became a society where everyone knew what their leaders were saying was not real. But everybody accepted that and pretended it was real, because NO ONE COULD IMAGINE ANY ALTERNATIVE.
Silence in the Garden. You could hear the proverbial pin drop. The hobbit looks around and continues:
Hobbit: Well, we have reached that stage in our nation's history, where "alternative facts" and "fake news" and "don't take him literally but take him seriously" have played out for the past 8 years.
And now folks who depended on, who planned for health care with Medicare are languishing, dying for lack of care. Retirees are losing their homes, moving in with their kids, if they have kids, going on the street if they don't. The ranks of unwanted children are swelling again. Racism has been institutionalized again, this time aimed at Hispanics and Muslims.
And it is all so normal now. And legal. It's been enacted by Congress and supported by the Supreme Court.
But that Court is the creation of a new mean gerrymandered tide centered in the Bible Belt and which now controls Congress, not by force of numbers, but by manipulation of an obsolete and now corrupted system of redistricting and a President who has appointed the 21st century version of Roger Taney at every opportunity.
From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, a small, determined group of Southerners controlled Congress and made sure our armed forces, our neighborhoods, our schools, our restaurants, swimming pools and even our bathrooms were segregated. Eventually, they were thwarted, but only temporarily. Their will remained unsuppressed.
Our Congress is now in control of an equally determined group of reactionaries, but they are not exclusively from the South, although, for the most part they are from the South and those from the South are almost exclusively in this Far Right party.
I do not pretend to like these people, but I cannot say they have done anything illegal or immoral. They have simply seized power and wielded it.
But they have created a country which suits them, not us. It is said every Northern state is a melange of large metropolitan with Alabama in between. But the fact is, nationwide, the Alabamans among us are not in the majority; they reign by voting in blocks and by playing with voting districts. Nationwide, the Right constitutes about 2/5 of the population and the Left about 3/5. The distribution places the Right in the empty spaces of the West and the rural parts of the Midwest and solidly in the South, so they are strategically placed to control the country as an army, strategically deployed can control and occupy a much larger population.
We have, in the North, the East and the West Coast, functionally, become an occupied country. Occupied by the Far Right.
Can't blame them. They want to be winning again.
So, as you know, I've proposed a difficult but obvious decision.
We have a dysfunctional, unhappy family. Let us dissolve it. Let us divorce--a no fault divorce. We do not ask Southerners or rural Pennsylvanians to accept our view of them or their values. We simply ask to be allowed to go our own way.
It will be good for them, and we surely think it will be good for us.
There will be a time of transition and difficulty. I hope and expect conservative people living in the new United States of Diversity, will look around and find the taxes, the role of government, the restrictions on guns and proscriptions against religion in government will not suit them, and many, if not most will move to the more welcoming South.
I hope we'll not have anything so traumatic as the India/Pakistan experience, where Muslims moved out and Hindus remained behind and the two new countries were at each other's throats for generations. I hope our parting will be less rancorous.
We have simply reached the point of irreconcilable differences and we should part.
The details remain to be worked out.
The only clear form I can see is our new nation, the United States of Diversity, will not be contiguous. But we've had Hawaii and Alaska which have not been physically connected to the lower 48 and we can easily handle this.
Will we need passports to travel from Boston to Montgomery, Alabama? Very possibly.
But, from my point of view, that is a price well worth paying to not have Alabama controlling my Medicare, my Congress, my future.
If fate wills it that we should part, then let us make the most of it.
Let us appeal to the Red States to accept our request for divorce and start our negotiations.
 |
| The USD (In Blue) Member Need to Apply |
And let us consider, as we do this, exactly what sort of a nation we want to build among the states or parts of states which want to join us.
FADE TO BLACK.
Okay, that's the pitch. You've seen the pilot. You write the next episode.
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