Name:
The United States of America
Flag:
Government:
The United States’ government is the familiar federal system. It consists of a unified central government with powers vested in it by all fifty states. The central government itself of course has the Executive branch, consisting of the President and his/her cabinet; the Legislative branch (or Congress), consisting of the equal-representation Senate and the population-representation House of Representatives; and the Judicial branch, consisting of the Supreme Court and all Federal District Courts. Each state also has its own government, most often headed by a Governor and containing a legislative body of its own, but the structure of these arrangements differs between each state.
The reality of these affairs is that the consequences of the Visitation and its shattering of the American political scene has bred a new wave of cronyism and increased reliance on the private sector for effective fiscal policy, indebting the government further and increasing an already burgeoning deficit.
Territory:
The historical borders of the United States, with minor alterations in the department of overseas facilities.
History:
Pressing Issues:
The United States is in a less than optimal state as of 1991. Its primary concerns still lie with the Zones within its borders, and a combination of military and law enforcement personnel continue to contain and moderate access to the Zones that exist. Discontent over the increasing role of the military in enforcement of law around so-called ‘Zone towns’ on the border of Zones is a contentious topic. Displacement of persons during the Visitation opened wounds which have not healed thirty years later, with namely indigenous populations showing active discontent with the prior management of resettlement and federal aid. The United States continues to have issues with food production, going from once being a super-exporter of grains and beans to now needing billions in basic subsidies in order to satisfy its own hunger.
The general population, as well as dissenting lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, grow angered with the interventionism abroad, and war exhaustion has made the situation in Rhodesia untenable. Intervention in Canada and Mexico is still a hot-button issue, with Republicans justifying continued occupation under the Monroe Doctrine, and Democrats calling for gradual transition to independent governments in each country.
The true scope of issues within the United States is impossible to quantify in simple words, and cracks in the superpower allude to the decline of Rome. The problems are many, and solutions are few.
Budget:
The United States of America
Flag:
Government:
The United States’ government is the familiar federal system. It consists of a unified central government with powers vested in it by all fifty states. The central government itself of course has the Executive branch, consisting of the President and his/her cabinet; the Legislative branch (or Congress), consisting of the equal-representation Senate and the population-representation House of Representatives; and the Judicial branch, consisting of the Supreme Court and all Federal District Courts. Each state also has its own government, most often headed by a Governor and containing a legislative body of its own, but the structure of these arrangements differs between each state.
The reality of these affairs is that the consequences of the Visitation and its shattering of the American political scene has bred a new wave of cronyism and increased reliance on the private sector for effective fiscal policy, indebting the government further and increasing an already burgeoning deficit.
Territory:
The historical borders of the United States, with minor alterations in the department of overseas facilities.
History:
- Pre-Visitation: The United States of 1961 was dubbed “the Affluent Society”, and for good reason. The unrest of a wartime economy with no war to fight after the end of the Second World War ushered in a wholesale relaxation of regulation in the domestic US economy. The boom of the economy invented the concept of American Suburbia. Fifty-two percent of urban Americans owned their homes. Eighty-one percent of Americans with electricity owned televisions. An interstate highway system linked each seaboard, and it seemed America was more connected than it ever had been. Aside from momentary slumps during and following the Korean War, the economy was in an unprecedented state of growth.
However, to say this “Affluent Society” was without issues is disingenuous at best. Counterculture movements concerning the governmental and societal inaction on civil rights, rural poverty, and active subversion of liberalism plagued cities. This was the era of McCarthyism, and of the Second Red Scare. Communism was the monster under America’s bed, and public confidence in Congress eroded as lawmakers partook in cronyism and mudslinging. Polarization was on the rise.
The one shining hope was the outcome of the 1960 Presidential Election. Richard Nixon, a shrewd former Vice President and Congressman, was pitted against young, charismatic lawmaker John F. Kennedy. The economy, which had entered a steep downturn in 1958, had stagnated ever since. Where Nixon promised gradual rectification, Kennedy championed radical change and a promise of reduction of poverty, unemployment, and promotion of civil rights. The election, while close, ended with a victory for young Kennedy, and the US looked forward. - The Visitation: The Visitation was a shock to the United States. The exact course of events was lost to the sheer confusion and panic that followed, but it was the first and only case of the US military going to DEFCON 1. Though small pockets of anomalies surfaced across the states, the most severe was a large anomalous triangle of land in the Southwest which became unsafe for habitation, and in the immediate wake of the Visitation the new Zone displaced almost three million people, and affected the livelihood of millions more.
Though the DEFCON was downgraded 33 hours after the incident, the ramifications of the Visitation impacted the US harshly. Panic and disruption of everyday life was the most noticeable, with the news capitalizing on the story of the Visitation. National supply chains broke down almost immediately as panic-buying and disruption of the interstates and rail lines left shelves bare. The stock market, which already had been on a slow recovery since Kennedy’s inauguration, fell into free fall. 48 hours after the incident, President Kennedy gave an address from the Oval Office. - Recent History: The Post-Visitation America was a changed America. Many political and economic upheavals followed. Kennedy, ailing for reasons unknown and increasingly unable to get his hands around the economic crisis, was ousted in 1964 by Republican candidate Richard Nixon, who instituted a series of anti-inflation measures and subsidies for businesses to decrease unemployment. Nixon also was a supposed champion of civil rights, signing in the Civil Rights Act of 1966 (which he would later be criticized for due to its ambiguous language and half-baked measures). Nixon attempted to keep a lid on the growing Vietnam conflict, which Kennedy had escalated throughout his term, and President Nixon eventually played party to the 1966 Paris Peace Accords, facilitating a cessation of hostilities between North and South Vietnam, with a gradual US withdrawal. Nixon would serve two terms, however his controversial stance of detente, loss of popularity with Southern voters, and defection of Northern voters to the Democratic party would see a Democratic victory in 1972, with George McGovern gaining the Presidency and the Democrats splitting Congress down the middle with the Republicans.
McGovern would only hold office for a single term. His support of Social Security expansion, funding of welfare programs, and signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1974 (which improved upon the 1966 Act) garnered significant support among the poor of all races. McGovern’s government would be marred with budgets failing to pass and legislation being stonewalled. The most important event in his tenure was likely the 1975 Mutorashanga Killings, in which a series of American and Canadian foremen were killed and others taken for ransom at a Freeport Minerals gold mine by what were believed to be ZANU rebels. McGovern, strictly anti-war himself, was forced to negotiate for the release of the miners through Rhodesian Security Forces negotiators. McGovern eventually would authorize a mission of 200 advisory personnel to Rhodesia.
With a deficit still climbing and economic recovery hitting a wall, the Democrats had small losses in the 1974 Congressional elections, before taking a steep dive in 1976, losing the Presidency to Ronald Reagan, who ran on a hardline anti-Soviet stance, as well as economic stability and national security.
Reagan’s government would begin with an economic boom, with the stock market steadily climbing in his first month of office. The GOP, now having disavowed Nixonian principles, saw a surge in popularity, largely winning back defected voters from previous elections. Now having a slight majority in Congress, they enacted a series of economic policies coined as “Reaganomics”. As promised, the economy began to recover again, and Reagan began to implement an anti-crime campaign which targeted drug users and those guilty of violent crimes. His foreign and defense policy saw a military buildup that was used to antagonize the Soviets.
Reagan increased troop numbers abroad, seeking to rekindle US overseas commitments, especially in Africa, where fresh thousands of troops advised and trained Rhodesian and South African personnel. By the end of his first term, 2,000 US advisory troops would be deployed amongst Rhodesian and South African forces in the Bush War, with the number climbing to 8,000 by the end of his second term. A constitutional crisis in Canada sparked in 1982, consisting of multiple successive votes of no confidence and suspected foul play by the Liberal Party of Canada, which prompted the US to invoke Article 4, which was struck down unanimously. Furious, Reagan authorized subversion without NATO consent. After a coup within Parliament involving US-loyal Canadian military forces and US ‘oversight and policing’ personnel, a reformed Conservative Party of Canada took office. The incident would lead to a dispute between the United States and France (the latter of which had almost unilateral support of NATO). The United States invoked Article 13 of the North Atlantic Treaty (albeit was likely to be separated and censured even if not planning to withdraw) at the end of 1982, formally breaking with the organization in January, 1984.
The GOP, seeking to ride the popularity of Reagan, fielded Senate majority leader Robert ‘Bob’ Dole in 1984. Dole won handily, marketing himself as a ‘pragmatic conservative’, with policies such as budget cuts to reduce the national deficit, reducing welfare payments by ‘weaning’ recipients off the program, and continuing the hardline stance against the Soviets and the ‘Marxist’ rebel groups in Africa. The Dole administration was much of the same as Reagan’s, albeit without a charismatic and straight-talking figurehead to push the policies through. Dole was a former Senator and gifted speaker, but he could not match the charisma of Reagan. Just under a decade of warfare in Africa, along with the frigid relations with most of Europe, rendered the United States at an impasse. The stock market had stagnated since mid-1984, and by halfway into Dole’s term, a combination of lost seats to Democrat lawmakers and an increasing break by moderate Republicans saw a failed budget which resulted in the worst government shutdown in US history.
However, Dole’s administration was not without ‘accomplishment’. The 1988 Mexican general election, held in July of that year, was marked with irregularities and suspected fraud. The FDN party, a Socialist International member, claimed victory. The United States, suspecting foul play by the Soviets or other ‘Marxist’ parties, sent National Guard observers to administer the vote counts. The more conservative PRI party head Carlos Salinas de Gortari was declared the victor after months of deadlock and unrest. In return, the US was granted a lease on Mexican land, allowing them to construct military bases. The entire election fraud affair is theorized to have been fabricated in order to ensure conservative control of Mexico and US control of Mexican oil fields.
Dole was unceremoniously voted out in 1988, marking the first loss of an incumbent Republican president since Herbert Hoover. His better was Michael Hunter, a Senator from Arizona and former aide to Richard Nixon. A moderate Republican-turned-Democrat, he ran primarily on a drawdown in Rhodesia, as well as the return of social programs, coined a successor to Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was not to last. Hunter, facing a Congress split down the middle, had difficulty pushing through any significant legislation, but managed where Dole had not, negotiating a balanced budget even in the face of a 400-billion dollar deficit.
To make matters worse, Hunter inherited a global interventionist operation burgeoning under its own weight. With troops on all continents save Antarctica and Oceania, the military and foreign policy budget was at its highest ever, with fingers in too many pies to withdraw from cold-turkey. With de-facto puppet governments in Canada and Mexico, along with propped-up failing apartheid states like Rhodesia and Sotuh Africa, and commitments to military bases the world over, there was simply too much banking on US support. Dole committed to making good on his election promise of a Rhodesian drawdown, however the process would be interrupted.
A league of terrorists by the name of EALN began targeting the United States, thundering onto the world stage with a targeted explosion that vaporized the Hawthorne Army Munitions Depot. Hunter and his administration now must pull together a wounded nation, a shell of its former self.
Pressing Issues:
The United States is in a less than optimal state as of 1991. Its primary concerns still lie with the Zones within its borders, and a combination of military and law enforcement personnel continue to contain and moderate access to the Zones that exist. Discontent over the increasing role of the military in enforcement of law around so-called ‘Zone towns’ on the border of Zones is a contentious topic. Displacement of persons during the Visitation opened wounds which have not healed thirty years later, with namely indigenous populations showing active discontent with the prior management of resettlement and federal aid. The United States continues to have issues with food production, going from once being a super-exporter of grains and beans to now needing billions in basic subsidies in order to satisfy its own hunger.
The general population, as well as dissenting lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, grow angered with the interventionism abroad, and war exhaustion has made the situation in Rhodesia untenable. Intervention in Canada and Mexico is still a hot-button issue, with Republicans justifying continued occupation under the Monroe Doctrine, and Democrats calling for gradual transition to independent governments in each country.
The true scope of issues within the United States is impossible to quantify in simple words, and cracks in the superpower allude to the decline of Rome. The problems are many, and solutions are few.
Budget: