This is a Multiverser setting, an alternate reality, for role-playing gaming. It depicts a possible horrible future that even as we enjoy playing in, we can all hope never comes to past.

The Red and Blue
By Eric R. Ashley

The key issue of the war, like the preceding Civil War, would be much debated by scholars in later centuries. Some said it was economics with the Northeast and the Left Coast trying to hold onto their positions of economic dominance, and other said it was abortion. Just like in the First American Civil War where economic domination by a Northern industrial society impatient with and yet at the same time wanting to parasitize a Southern agrarian society blended with the outrage of slavery.

Was it slavery, the Saving of the Union, or simple economic exploitation? The most obvious answer, avoided by partisans, is “yes.” Both the South and the North had things to be ashamed of, and proud of at the same time, and no mass of tens of millions of peoples ever does one thing for one reason alone. On balance, the North was right, and even if they weren’t there is a tide to history that can be hard to resist…as the Native Americans of the West later found out to their sorrow. A more advanced culture, more adept at exploiting its environment usually crushes any competitors into the dirt.

But enough of history, let us examine the Second American Civil War. The first issue is to realize the economic and social mastery (or if you are a Red Partisan, the cruel stranglehold) the Northeast, and later Kalifornia had on the Nation as a whole. If you wanted to play in the big leagues, this was where you went for generations upon generations. Even those who opposed the Establishment had to go to the Establishment’s home courts in order to play.

Needless to say, this bred arrogance perhaps best exemplified by two comments. “Flyover Country” (that darkened in electricity and mind which the Bicoastal Elite flew over on their way from one side of the country to the other), and “All the oxygen in the Nation is concentrated near Nova Yawk. One can hardly breathe past the Hudson River.”

Some of that arrogance was justified. Most of it was self-serving, or the smugness of life’s economic winners telling themselves they deserved every award and plaudit thrown their way. But the best and the brightest were often there in the Bicoastal Elite, or at least a large, if unrepresentative sampling of the best, and their factories and ideas produced vastly more per person than any average citizen of Flyover Country.

The great cosmopolitan cities truly were great, magnus.

But all things change. The Red Partisan would have you think that the cities drifted from their moorings, and got into increasingly illogical binds. But its also true that the Blue Cities were being faced increasingly with a number of separate choices with no palatable alternatives. But they still imagined the times to be their glory days, and that their dominance would never be challenged. And so they never found the courage to do the hard things that might have saved them.

One word spelled the doom of cities. Not crime, not taxes (although both surely did not help), but telecommuting. It is an open fact, not much remarked upon, or considered that most people simply do not prefer to live in vast cities. Oh, they are wonderful paeans to the grandeur of cities, and the marvels of living close-up with so many fascinating people, and the beauty of university and museums, but in the end, most people would prefer to live in a small town.

Back in the day of the Bicoastal Elites power, such was not possible unless you accepted a limited world, and a poor pay. Now, with telecommuting, one can work together on a project all over the nation, or indeed the world. One can do top-quality work with world-class experts, each living in the type of terrain that he finds most congenial.

The writer sees cactus, the illustrator mountain lilies, and the publisher lithe young females sunning on a beach. All are happy.

Except for the ones at the top of the old power pyramid. Their rental properties decline in value as the flood of new, ambitious workers trails off, but still the price the powerful pay is still too high for the lack of value they receive. In the old days, one had to be close to talent in order to arrange things. Physically close.

And as the economy of the cities tails off, their workforces need new services such as unemployment (which was contracted at very generous levels in the old sunshine days of boom), but now the taxes to pay for these new services is at an all-time low. Instead of a steadily rising economy greasing over differences, we have a shrinking pie. Every man jack is shouting “Let the other bum lose out, I deserve my share.”

Crime is rising as well, and here the cities face only the most obvious face of a challenge. Will they weather the changes by austerity and true cutbacks, and accept their declining role? Will they crack down as needed? But men of power, accustomed to insuring their power by the handing out of gifts are not the cold sort eager to cut back. Instead, they turn avaricious eyes to the new centers of power.

Why should not the new wealthy lands pay the cities? Did not the cities train the human capital these new lands are using? Did not the cities…there are various excused promulgated, and they are not totally without merit. But the new rising powers are in no mood to bow to the old master who sneered at them. Perhaps if he begged they might have, but he demands as his right.

And there is one thing you should know about the Red Lands, which even the fiercest partisan will admit too. They are not the sort of people to whom backing up, and compromise come easily too. It is thought that the Cities are havens of violence, but actually the suburbs and small towns of the Red Lands are more violent on a per person basis. Because the Red Man or Woman tend to be more direct, and prone to reach for a gun to handle personal insult or threat of danger.

This has positive effects. The Mafia and the Organitskaya tried to move out to the Red as well, but they ran right into a fusillade of bullets driven by ordinary citizens in no mind to let some two-bit thugs dictate to them how they should live. The Yakuza did better because they had a tradition of deference to law-abiding citizens. And sadly enough, every town needs its dark side. Often, the Yaks filled this need with discretion.

Perhaps if things had rested there it might have been okay. It is often true when someone says “Its not the money, it’s the principle of the thing.” that it is indeed the money. But while people get vicious and bitter about money, they more rarely get into a fine fury about it, and then declare war. Things would have been tense and nasty, and more examples of the Internet Hub Bill would have been passed.

Ah, the infamous Internet Hub Bill. It was passed in Congress, and almost immediately ignored by the Hub companies. That is until Federal Marshals, backed up by tanks enforced it (which was necessary as several governors threatened to call out the National Guard). It was based on a widely criticized study that suggested that the best place for all the Internet’s major junction points was in the major cities run by the Blue political forces. This study was akin to all those studies where people suggest the most efficient location for the new plant headquarters, and then after spending a million bucks pick the location closest to the CEO’s house that won’t spoil his property values. I think honest Blue Partisans will admit that this study was seriously biased.

And once those Hubs were moved in, the next day, or at most the next week, had brand-new tax bills on everything that went through the Hubs. The City Angelus, Nova Yawk, Bostoney, and Me-am-I, and their lesser kin had just succeeded in taxing the Internet, not only for the Nation, but for much of the world as well. They thought this was just fine, and with happy faces announced plans to rebuild their cities.

The rest of the nation was not amused. The amount of spam and viruses that sprouted all over the Bicoastal Cities was enough to cause (along with the incompetence of the new managers, since much of the old managers of the Hubs quit in protest) a near complete shutdown of the Internet for a week, worldwide. Many ordinary Red citizens who had never sent a virus, or even seriously contemplated doing so, did for the first time this week.

But there was a second tine of the pitchfork the nation was suspended upon. Moral issues. At this point in the conversation that was national life, neither side understood the other. Oh, the Reds understand the Blues a bit better since the Blues had most of the broadcasting power in the Nation, and had been using it for generations to spread their message. But even still, the Reds could hardly wrap their minds around the Blue’s ideas.

In Red terms, most Blue ideas made no sense.

The Blue’s didn’t even have that advantage. They shadowboxed figures of their own imagination, and worried that book-burning hordes were about to descend on their precious libraries. But there is little doubt that understanding would have made much difference. It merely would have replicated the Red’s stance in reverse.

Both sides accused the other of being evil, stupid, and lying. Some of this was true. It always is. On both sides.

Like in the preceding Civil War, there arose over the preceding decades to all this foo-fa-ra a defining issue that allowed one to summarize another person’s views pretty quickly. At first, it was complicated as many Reds had subtle views, or even Blue views on this topic. But, as science advanced, the age of viability lowered dramatically. Improvements in the picture-making capability of ultrasound, and computer models allowed one to see what one’s child would look like in a year, or ten years. Sympathy for the right of women to terminate a fetus declined, especially among women. Add to that Blue rigidity which basically read one out of the party if one deviated in the slightest from the position that if the doctor hasn’t slapped him yet, he’s still just tissue, and the Reds started slowly to turn more rigid as well, but after they had captured a lot of people.

It was the Civil War all over again. One party wanted to allow the treatment of what some considered to be human beings as property. They were supported by a Supreme Court decision. The other side, the Whigs balked at the opposite choice, preferring to dodge the issue. Thus arose the Party of Lincoln that faced the issue, and eventually gave out a heartfelt denial. The Party of Lincoln stood for the argument that a person is a person, not property.

This happened here as well. The original Red political party tried to be open to all, and tried to bridge the gap between both sides. But in the end, a breakaway candidate overturned the party establishment, and while it was a near-run thing, the establishment backed down at pretty much the last second in what was then dubbed “As the first exciting Nominating Convention in over a Century” (the preceding others having became a mere rah-rah party instead of an actual contest). The bitter establishment sulked, and the breakaway candidate went on to win the Presidency.

The new, energized party of the Red was enthused. Finally, they had what they had been trying to have for forty years. An honest-to-goodness unapologetic supporter of their side. But, as things later show, perhaps the so-called “Loser Establishment” of the Red, named for their tendency to lose gracefully to the Blues might have been right.

Another factor to keep in mind was that the leading lights of the day were Boomers. That is, on both sides of the Red/Blue divide were intensely idealistic and uncompromising firebrands who absolutely believed that Justice was on their side. The same children who had earlier cried “What if they gave a War, and no one came?” for the Blues now were most willing to lead their side to war with the EVIL of the other side. In this respect, it was again a replay of the Old Civil War.

In that war, there had been firebrands on both sides. Anti-slavery advocates of great fervor, the Abolitionists, and Southern diehard loyalists, Firebrands, who would not compromise. In that time, it came to a beating on the Senate floor with a cane. In the prelude to the Second American Civil War, a group of “thugs” with military skills executed, House Majority Whip Stephen Parker as he left his home. It later developed that Islamofascist terrorists were recruited to do this shooting by fanatics on the Blue side.

Once captured, they justified this action by pointing out that Parker was “a Hitler type, and if one is faced with Hitler, one does what one has to do.” This defense produced wide outrage among the Reds who sputtered that Parker was no Hitler, and indeed for a few days it looked as if the general mourning across the land from both Red and the more responsible Blues, and shock at the murder might derail the oncoming confrontation.

Until the verdict came in. The deed was done in a Blue city. So a Blue jury heard the trial. And a Blue jury nullified, after a brilliant defense by a world-class lawyer (Timothy Givens…who later said, before committing suicide five years later… ”I wish I had lost that case. If only, then all this might not have come.”), and a somewhat fumbling prosecution the jury nullified the verdict. It was clear jury nullification for their was indeed taped confessions.

Still the jury rendered the verdict “Not guilty”, and went home proud of itself, not realizing they had just lit the fuse. A month earlier the Internet Hubs Taxes had kicked in, and most Americans were struggling under the weight of new taxes, and new ways of doing things that seemed less efficient than the old ways. And then, this blatant assassination squad got off scot-free…

People in the Red areas, the Heartlands, went a little insane with fury. The Blue, or Bicoastal areas, were nervous, but claimed the ‘rule of law’, and gulped hard, and put on a smug face. Perhaps if they had not done that last, that last tiny bit of ‘we’re right, and not only we’re right, but you’re stupid.’ then maybe things might not have fallen apart. The worst thing was it wasn’t real. Most of the Blue knew that the verdict was wrong even if they could not admit it to themselves. They were scared and furious and at the same time contemptuous. People say there isn’t destiny. There is destiny. Its character, its past choices, its habit, its how you turn in a crisis when you don’t even think about it.

Neither side was in the mood to back up, and in fact, many had no inkling of how to do that. And when some few did make a gesture, it was either derided as a trap, or taken as just desserts, and the takers then demanded more. In ways, there was a similarity between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia in that both sides learned from each other. In the past decades, if the Red invented a new form of direct mailing, it would not be two weeks before the Blue were doing the exact same thing while calling out imprecations on the Red for doing that.

In the wake of de-constructionism, logic was wrecked, especially for the Blue leaders. But while logic always had an existence, the deconstructionist were right to a degree in that political power often over-informed one’s views on a topic. Ironically, their theory stripped logic of much of the rest of its power. Add to that the naked distrust exhibited by both sides with the comment heard frequently “If a Blue (or Red) said the Sun was to rise in the East tomorrow, I’d double-check it.”)

Both sides considered the other to be inveterate liars, while many considered their own side to be pure of any taint of dishonesty. And if there was any, it was made necessary by the other side’s actions.

The Blue’s were the worst at this as they held the greatest fear of the Reds. They told the world so many times that the Reds wanted to institute a “Dark Ages crossed with Nazism” that they started to believe this nonsense. This led them to two unfortunate conclusions 1)Anything one did to oppose the Red was justified because of how evil the Red was. 2)Anyone who supported the Red must be a purblind idiot, or actively in connivance with EVIL for their own personal gain or out of deep emotional issues they sought to cause pain.

In other words, the Blue thought the Red was demonic.

The Red had, of course, no kind thoughts about the Blue. They varied between considering them completely clueless, and incipient totalitarians who were eagerly awaiting the day they could open up the gates to the gulags, and machine gun Red Partisans in the forest. But this fear, never did quite gain the same hold on the Red imagination, perhaps because the Red never believed in their heart of hearts that the Blue had a chance of winning. Or perhaps the Red was more stoic, less imaginative, and more bolstered by faith in God so that the fears did not get the same hold on them as did the Blue’s fears on them. So, it did not have quite the same toxic effect as the Blue’s fears.

A flurry of Denial of Service attacks started things up. No one knows who launched the first attack…Indeed it may have been an anarchist intent on blowing the whole rotten system up (and with no plan for replacement either.) But soon other attacks came back the other way.
In order to stabilize things at all, the Net had to be cut in two. Which only slowed down the fight as now Americans used off-shore links to circle the globe and slap each other through the global links that had not been cut.

A Protest Warrior group (a Red group in a Blue state) did their typical shtick of counter-protesting a group of Blue demonstrators. But their wit was not appreciated, and before the Protest Warriors could regroup, over five hundred demonstrators launched into the fifty Warriors. Despite the superior military training, the Warriors were overwhelmed.

And here a hard core showed its hand. It seemed a counter-counter protestor group had been waiting a chance to jump the Warriors, and “teach the fascists the only way they know how to learn”. I.E. by setting over a dozen of them on fire after dousing them with lighter fluid.

This was an example of what happened nation-wide. In the run-up to this, the voting areas had become more pure. Also, the side with the less numbers in an area tended to hide, or leave often for good reason.

It seemed clear that this was premeditated murder. And the Red just knew in their heart of hearts that this time would be like last time…the perpetrators would walk, and get big book contracts while the dead bodies of their victims rotted in silent graves. Over the next twenty-four hours, a number of riots broke out in what had been peaceable Red communities, and trashed symbols of Blue power. Also a number of Blue citizens of special annoyance factor, or of high national status were shot.

Movie houses were a special target because many Americans were in general ill at them because of the steadily increasing ticket price which had reached twelve dollars per ticket. What had been a Middle American pastime was becoming the province of the rich in front of everyone’s eyes, and since the Movies knew where their bread was buttered, they started to make movies more appealing to “limousine liberals” than ordinary Americans which the Red regarded as an added insult.

“Not only can’t you afford to go here, but nothing here is any interesting. So Go Away, ya philistine!” was the message of the movie theatres.

The shooting of ordinary Blue citizens, and the assassination of five major Blue figures (including two movie stars, a governor, a metropolitan mayor, and a senator) was a one-two punch that absolutely terrified both rank-and-file Blue, and their leaders. At this point, they had a hold of the tiger’s tail, and it is hard to see how anyone could have avoided a disaster at this point.

But calling on the Federal Government to send out the National Guard was definitely not the way to handle things. The Blue had a more imaginative, and theoretical turn of mind which also meant they sometimes lost track of ground realities like the fact that most Guard were Red. The National Guard suffered a plethora of ‘communication difficulties’ while a frantic behind the scenes shuffle got the governors of a dozen states to declare States of Emergency in their own states which would require all the National Guard on ‘flood control efforts’.

This was the time of the famous ‘Weekend of Baseball’ photograph. A Blue photographer took a picture of hundreds of National Guardsmen playing baseball in their uniforms on bright sunny fields in a state park just a dozen miles away from a riot-torn city where Red rioters were punishing Blue citizens. At this point, the Blue fully crossed the line, and joined in the blinding fury that the Red had already drank of. Blue police forces began to exile Red citizens from cities. Red politicians and pundits that were in Blue cities were captured. Gangs were given free sway to savage Red businesses and homes. And then when a small group of Hispanic business owners used shotguns to try to hold back a rampaging mob of gangbangers, a police helicopter came in and tear-gassed the business owners.

Blue congressmen demanded the Federal Government intervene since they hadn’t learned from last time. Red congressmen refused. Both sides passed resolutions trying the other side for treason, and demanding immediate executions by ‘any loyal Americans’.

It was not known who, although most serious analysts think the Iranians were responsible, but someone smuggled a nuke into Atlanta. It went off, and the Blue had thought the Red were insane. They now realized that the Red had been being polite and kind.

The overseas military stayed out of it. But the local military was tossed knee deep into the mess. Two loose confederations of factions started to go after each other with enthusiasm. From the beginning as tanks rolled and fighter jets roared, the fighting was brutal. Nova Yawk got napalmed, and burned for two days. Many a small American town was simply wiped out as tank shells blew up a dam above it and buried the town under the water.

Both sides thought they had the edge. The Red were convinced the Blue were cowards, and did not know how to fight. The Blue were convinced the Red were stupid. Neither was remotely true. Both sides were Americans…that is, some of the most dangerous warriors in the history of the world.

The Blue had several aircraft carriers they had overrun which had been in harbor. They also had the products of some of the finest universities and research labs. And not inconsiderably, they had aid from a number of foreign countries.

But the vast mass of military might both civilian and professional military was in the Red states. And the Blue generals knew this. So when the first tank spear came streaming down the White Mountains toward Nova Yawk it was met by a deliberate release of tactical nuclear weapons that broke the spear in an hour of fire and doom that set the White Mountains burning for weeks.

After that, there was a pause where sanity might be regained. Thoughtful people on both sides wondered if the country should be simply split, and each side go its own way. But, the Blue problem was essentially the same as before the War. They needed Red money to rebuild their cities. Many of them also couldn’t accept not being top dog because everyone with clear vision knew what would happen if the Red went their own way. Within a decade, America would mean Red Heartlands, and the Blue would be ‘that other place’.

The North in the first Civil War had pressed things because it needed the money from tariffs, and because it abominated the practice of slavery, and because of pride. In the Second American Civil War, the Bicoastal Blues needed the Internet Tax, and believed in creating a world without boundaries where a person could be whatever they wanted to be and history, or gender, or anything would not stand in their way of ultimate freedom, and they were proud because they had been the boss and who gives that up willingly.

And so the Bicoastals pressed, and let us be fair, the Heartlanders were not far behind them in pressing back. Hatred, revenge, and outrage burned brightly in every Red heart at the Tragedy of the White Mountains. The Red wanted to keep their own prosperity, they believed in freedom as well but a freedom limited by other human’s rights, and they were angry at how they had been abused and treacherously treated in the past and when finally their just due was come to them the old thieves wanted another round of beer at their expense. It was too much, and especially when it seemed that the drunken thieves wanted to drive the car home rather than let a sober fellow drive home.

At this point, tactical nuclear warfare became an accepted part of the Second American Civil War.

If the verser, who may be dropped in here, or earlier, does not radically change things for the better the ‘good’ end result yields ten to fifteen million dead from war, criminality, and starvation with a possibility of Blue submission followed by a painful Reconstruction (although it would not be called that), or a Partition. The bad result yields seventy to two hundred ten million dead, and a total collapse of society. Certain ports such as San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York are colonized by foreign powers but the destabilized and weakened exterior world is in no mind to enter the vast hinterlands populated by the utterly savage survivors who have a reputation as the most ferocious barbarians the world has ever seen. The hinterlands would become a place that would make Mad Max’s world seem enlightened and pacific.

Thanks to Cskendrick for the additional analysis reflected in some of the updates.