Moe Lane's Blog, page 125
January 6, 2025
Some background stuff for the Unfiltered setting, Part 3.
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.
Instead, the new state legislatures – as well as the Dynamist-controlled states – promptly called for a new Article V Constitutional Convention.
Political scientists from Jefferson Colony would later not so much allege the process had been corrupted as they simply assumed it, but it was all legal enough to allow Lewis to thoroughly ‘reform’ the Constitution. The resulting document created a government run by an imperial Presidency with a thoroughly weakened legislature, and a judiciary dependent on the executive. The District of Columbia was made a state and drastically reduced in size, effectively giving the President immense power over who would be its Senators and Representative. The amendments were particularly hard-hit, with the 9th, 10th, 17th, and 22nd being repealed entirely, most of the others being revised at least slightly, and the Twenty-Fifth revised into something entirely different (although it at least was conceded to be an improvement on the original).
But everything in the revised Constitution was overshadowed by its two most controversial provisions. First there was the capping of so-called ‘Original’ State populations for the purposes of determining representation at ten million citizens. Then there was the admission of additional states at a lower representational level. Under the new system, the so-called ‘Extended’ States would have only one Senator, and two-thirds the Members of Congress of an Original State of the same population. Any state that voluntarily split off from an Original State prior to 2085 would be able to claim Original State status; any made afterward would be deemed an Extended State.
It seemed inconceivable that the new state legislatures would sign off on this plan. But they did, joining the Dynamicist-controlled states to effectively ratify a new Constitution. With it came a new name: in 2085 Trevor Castaigne Lewis was the last President of the United States of America – and the first President of the United States of North America. It was a position that he would hold until his death of old age in 2102.
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January 5, 2025
Welp. First official snow day tomorrow.
But no actual snow, as of yet. Same thing happened Friday: they closed schools early, and – nothing happened. Mind you, I fully expect there to be snow. Whether it’ll be five inches will be another story.
Moe Lane
PS: Was catching up with old friends and working more on the Old Man this evening. It may end up a full-bore addition to Unfiltered. I just don’t really care if I do the other ones, except maybe the New Empire. It’ll be interesting to explain how the Windsors ended up ruling India again – and speaking Hindu in the process…
Some background stuff for the Unfiltered setting, Part 2.
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.
The Lewis administration concentrated on consolidation of political power in the executive, coupled with an aggressively assimilationist foreign policy in the Caribbean and former Canadian territories. It also showed a surprising lack of persecution of its critics. It became clear that citizens could still call the President anything that they liked, and even demonstrate against him and his policies, as long as they were peaceful about it. But anybody who lost his temper, and took even a swing at their political opponents? Immediate arrest, quick conviction, and a one-way ticket to the colony worlds.
Given the widespread carnage and wholesale political oppression going on abroad, Lewis’s early willingness to keep the peace and permit quiet enjoyment at home appealed to many Americans. Many of the ones who it didn’t appeal to got the hint anyway, and voluntarily applied to emigrate to Jefferson. The dissidents who remained quickly proved to be ideal, from Lewis’s point of view: loud, unreasonable, ineffective, and best of all, embarrassing.
Even with the removal of his major domestic opponents, President Lewis might have found keeping power difficult after 2089, assuming he won the 2084 election. The Constitutional amendment was clear, and the 2082 state and gubernatorial elections were unexpectedly bad for the Dynamists. The party’s Congressional majorities suffered, too, hovering around the sixty percent mark in both Houses. Lewis might have even lost in 2084… if foreign affairs had not worked out in his favor.
In 2083 West Europe provoked a crisis with the governments of Colombia, Venezuela, and Surinam over supposed aggressive moves towards French Guiana. Despite the best efforts of a by-now moribund United Nations, West Europe declared war on the three nations — and immediately followed it with kinetic energy weapon attacks from orbit. KEW strikes were by now an unfortunate feature of the Eurasian and African theaters of the Consolidation Wars, but this was the first time it had happened in the Americas. A full-scale invasion of northern South America followed, and it became clear that West Europe was interested in suitable launch sites first, oil supplies second, and the welfare of the inhabitants not at all.
Mexico and Central America could read the writing on the wall: they had no orbital capacity, and hence no KEW weapons of their own as a deterrent. The United States had both, and a vested interest in keeping the Panama Canal out of West European hands. It was time for them to make whatever deal they could with the Lewis administration.
The deal that they got was surprisingly good. Mexico would enter the USA as thirty eight separate states, Guatemala as three, Honduras as two, and the remainder as one each (even Belize). Official business would be done in both English and Spanish. The United States would invest heavily in building up Central American infrastructure. And, of course, existing local power structures would be respected during the integration period. Indeed, they would be relied upon.
Getting the annexation through Congress took quite a lot of effort. Even some Dynamicists blanched at the idea of bringing in two hundred million more citizens in one swoop, and the opposition parties (by now there were six) all had their own reasons to be at best skeptical. In the end, though, the Lewis administration rammed through the annexation bill via arm-twisting, appeals to naked greed (Central America still had lots of useful resources, plus so much land), and practicality (better the USA owning Mexico than West Europe). Even simple altruism came into play. The decision by Western Europe to respond to the Caracas Insurrection by putting the rebel city under siege, then publicly leveling it via repeated and seemingly random KEW strikes for three full days straight (there was an official timer) had a profound effect on the debate in Congress. In the end, the vote passed — and the United States of America almost doubled in population overnight.
And that was when Lewis’s quid pro quo came into play.
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Patreon Microfiction: ‘Priorities.’
Patreon!‘Priorities’ was possibly a little too subtle. The tribal names are arguably bad translations of ‘China’ and ‘America,’ further badly translated into whatever hell-language these aliens speak. It won’t matter in two minutes anyway, since the corpses are in fact booby-trapped. With homing beacons. I would have also put that in, but I only had one hundred words to work with.
January 4, 2025
‘House of the Rising Sun.’
I dunno, Bob. Maybe you screwed this one up good and proper, my dude.
House of the Rising Sun, Joan Baez
#commissionearned
We’re getting hit here by the storm Monday.
They’re saying three to five inches, which in suburban Maryland terms is basically the apocalypse. I’m actually surprised that my kids’ high school hasn’t posted messages screaming “WE HAVE ANGERED THE CLOUD GODS! ALL IS LOST! FLEE WITH YOUR CHILDREN BEFORE THE COMING OF THE FROZEN SKY-WATER!” I mean, five inches is absolutely a snowstorm, don’t get me wrong, but I have no idea how many days my children are going to school next week, and we’re only supposed to get hit on Monday morning.
Yay.
Book of the Week: Master and Commander.
Why Master and Commander? Well, let me put it this way: not all men think of the Roman Empire all the time. Sometimes we think instead about April of 1805, when Napoleon was master of Europe. Only the British Navy stood before him. Oceans were now battlefields.
Admittedly, Patrick O’Brian started the series before that particular point, but you gotta start at the beginning.
#commissionearned
Some background stuff for the Unfiltered setting, Part 1.
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.
Patreon!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.
The Greatest Science Fiction Exploration Game Ever (Starflight) is on sale on GOG.com.
Technically, it’s Starflight 1 & 2. The first Starflight was a few years old when I played this game in college, so do not expect the cover to be representative of the graphics. Let me put it this way: Starflight is old enough to run for President.
But, again: greatest science fiction exploration game ever. I will die on this hill. Singing the song of Starflight:
