Tag: the old man

Part 4 and the whole thing will be on Patreon later. Gotta give the paying customers a taste, too…

Article V, Constitution of the United States
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress…

In 2083, Lewis’s Dynamicists controlled two hundred and sixty-two seats in the House of Representatives, sixty-one seats in the Senate, and full control of twenty-seven state governments: easily enough of a majority for legislation, but not enough to pass new Amendments. The annexation of Central America added forty-eight states (while being promised statehood, Canada’s status had still not been resolved, due to the excuse of the ongoing civil war/rebellion). The annexation law of 2084 would thus add ninety-six Senators and forty-eight Representatives to Congress, to be elected in the 2084 elections; a full slate of new Representatives would take place in 2092, after the 2090 Census established the new population. That same legislation also doubled the size of the House of Representatives to an even thousand, starting in 2093. It was assumed that this would give the new states plenty of time to integrate themselves into the existing system.

Continue reading Some background stuff for the Unfiltered setting, Part 3.

Part one here. There’s at least one more part, maybe two. Possibly three.

The 2080 election was a foregone conclusion, under the circumstances: President Lewis didn’t even bother to formally suppress the Columbian Party, given that its organization had been thoroughly disrupted above the county level. The Dynamic Party swept through Congress, managing to capture eighty percent of the House of Representatives, and sixty-five percent of the Senate. Most US states at the time did not have gubernatorial elections in Presidential year (this would later be ‘reformed’), which limited Dynamic gains in the upper chamber. Still, Lewis now had a strong majority in Congress with which to establish his policies.

Continue reading Some background stuff for the Unfiltered setting, Part 2.

I realized I needed a more articulated look at how bad the USNA got before it started getting fixed, so I decided to write up the last President of the USA, and the first one of the USNA. The Old Man. You will not like him, although I will grant that at least he took full advantage of the transportee system to exile his enemies, opponents, and inconvenient groups, instead of killing them.

As long as they were… normal.

The Old Man
Trevor Castaigne Lewis, 2020-2102
Representative (MA-03, Dynamic Party), US House of Representatives, 2055-2079
Speaker of the House, 2069-2079
President of the United States of America, 2079-2085
President of the United States of North America, 2085-2102

Trevor Lewis was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, on April 23, 2020. Raised in an old Massachusetts family of some but not excessive wealth, he attended Boston University, graduating with a BA in Political Science in 2042. Served in the US Air Force as a JAG, 2042-2052. Honorably Discharged, with the rank of Major.

He ran in Massachusetts’ Third District on the new Dynamic Party ticket in 2054, winning election in a plurality. Ironically, Major Lewis owed his first election to the help of the Dynamic Party faction that later became the True Gaian extremist group, but had fallen out with them by the time of his first re-election. 

He served in the House for twelve terms as a Representative, and five terms as Speaker of the House until the 1-23 attacks. The successful use of weapons of mass destruction on Congress left Lewis as the highest ranking official in the government, although he resisted taking the Oath of Office as President until March of 2079, when the death of Vice President Anthony Ramierez finally required him to take the position. Officially, Lewis had been holding out hope that Ramierez would awaken from his coma; later historians would conclude that the new President preferred the freedom of ruling by decree.

Those historians inevitably made their conclusions from the Jefferson colony world, because the new President moved quickly from the beginning to concentrate all power in the executive. Lewis used the excuse of the True Gaian atrocities to detain every radical environmentalist he could find, shipping them en masse to the Bolivar colony world on any excuse, or none. In this he was supported by surviving politicians from the Columbian Party, who shed no tears over the thought of violent or just unpleasant extremists being permanently exiled offworld.

The Columbians also tacitly endorsed Lewis’s intervention in the Canadian civil war of 2079, although the vote to actually annex the country was closer – and, again, hampered by the federal government’s desultory efforts to call for new elections for slain members of Congress. One exiled Columbian Senator admitted later to Jeffersonian researchers that she expected that it would just be useful fodder for the 2080 Presidential election.

The Columbian Party did not participate in that election on a national level.

On February 29, 2080, elements of the new Liberty Corps (later to be renamed the People’s Liberty Corps) detained Columbian party elected officials, and their families, and their staffs, and their families, and so forth. By March 3rd every one of them was irrevocably on a colony ship to Jefferson, leaving President Lewis to gravely explain to the country that he had been forced to let them flee, rather than have the country face destruction. Their own radicals had taken control of tactical nuclear warheads, you see. Columbian fanatics had even set off two of them, in thankfully low-population areas; and while brave Liberty Corps operatives had managed to keep even more nukes from detonating, the situation was starkly and dangerously unstable. Eventually a compromise was made: the Columbian leadership would be allowed to emigrate to Jefferson, in exchange for no reprisals, and the surrendering of the remaining bombs.

Lewis had it all: documentary evidence, video confessions, and even the nukes themselves. Given that the world was fully in the grips of the horribly brutal Consolidation Wars, it was not actually difficult to sell this to the American voting public. Or more accurately the American public, since voting was about to become a somewhat vestigial civic duty for a while.