In March of 2020 the Bitch "nationalized" a major radio network. It had always been fairly right wing. It broadcast not only on local stations but on satellite. And it had hung in there, barely, through the whole Plague and the depression that followed. Lots of marginal stations just shut down, but it was still hanging in there.
Then it was announced, on all the stations, that they had been seized by the federal government for "violation of Fair Use laws." Essentially, their commentators had been saying Bad Things about the Bitch and thus she shut them down.
The FCC was ordered to ensure "Fair Use" of airtime in all radio and broadcast TV stations.
Short of simply turning off all the radio stations, she couldn't get rid of every person working for the company. And most of the "talent" were not exactly Friends of Warrick. But they knew the score. Toe the Party Line or toe the soup line.
But, hell, they were experts in playing with words. I got sent an MP3 in an e-mail from a guy who was still on his talk show down in Georgia. Very right wing. But he was "toeing the party line." The opening:
"We have another pronouncement of better things for tomorrow from our glorious leader President Warrick!" All in a tone of utter sincerity.
Subtle propaganda works for Americans. It was the stock in trade of the MSM. Over the top propaganda they spot in a heartbeat. And laugh their asses off.
But they weren't being "unfair." They were giving Warrick almost all their airtime. And when they spoke of her opponents it was . . .
"Today, the evil Senator from Tennessee, Fred Carson, who has the audacity to think he can best our glorious leader in November, suggested to a paltry group of scum-sucking supporters that perhaps some of her actions were uncalled for or perhaps wrongly judged. How dare he! The evil of the man suggesting that the vaccine distribution was, and I quote as the words cause bile in my mouth, 'less than optimal.' He should be shot and then hanged and then torn to pieces for suggesting our glorious leader is not perfect in every way!"
Yeah, they were "fair." Don't you think?
(Actually, there were people who complained about the presentation of Warrick's opponents as being "unfair" and "destructive." Some people just cannot get a joke.)
But we were getting into normal planting time in Minnesota. And snow was barely melting in Virginia. USDA estimates of "optimum soil temperature regimes" for various foods passed and were updated, passed and were updated. Based on those estimates, the tofu-eaters following the directions on the packet (that packet being the pamphlets they'd gotten from the county agents who were passing them from USDA headquarters) had laid in seeds, where available, for planting that were designed for a normal season.
It wasn't a normal season.
And a lot of the tofu-eaters had died on those farms in the middle of winter when they didn't ration their heating oil well enough and were stuck in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard and they couldn't even walk to their local emergency shelter for food and a place to sleep out of the killer cold.
Nine farms, recall. Two, Bob had managed through finagling to hold onto. I won't give the list of destruction that those tofu-eaters did to my farms. What I will say is that three of the seven died over the winter. Two of the other four only survived because they made it to Bob and he kept the grasshoppers alive.
The other two weren't bad folk. They're still my farm managers.
In Zone One, that is the great-white-north, that was about the rate. Three in seven of those "government cooperative farmers" died. So did all their livestock. It ripped the guts out of one of the most productive agricultural areas of our nation.
Going further south they survived in higher numbers. In a way that was worse. They were there to fuck things up.
Okay, let's return to Blackjack since we've used that before.
They manage to pull a good bit of their population through the Plague. The farmers in the community (and it's a heavy farming area) are looking at the forecasts. Cotton is a dead letter for the time being. People aren't buying new clothes. Food is the key for 2020 and although it's still summer of 2019, they're looking in their crystal balls. They've also looked at 2019 and have laid in their crops. Corn, wheat because the temperature regimes are going to be good for wheat in Georgia. (Wheat was not a major crop in Georgia prior to the Freeze. It's now one of our big wheat producers.) Potatoes. Soy because there's all sorts of things you can do with soy.
Some of them are seed farmers. They only produce seed. They get the base stock seeds from a seed company and plant those. The "harvest" is actually different from the base stock and that's what gets planted to make food and the harvest from that is different than what you get when you plant the seeds. (Trust me. It's complicated. I've given enough classes, I'm not going to give one in transform genetics. I'll just say it's not fucked up, it's how plants work. Period.) I don't mean it's a different species. It's just you wouldn't want to try to make bread from the stuff the seed companies send them to plant to make next year's seeds. You don't even want to make bread from the seeds. (Gluten content is wrong.)
So, they've got the seed in the ground. They've found sources for pesticides. They're ready to rock in what farmers do best; watching money grow out of the ground.
They first hear from the seed company. It's been nationalized. Not sure what that's going to mean except we've been told no genmod. We pointed out that the seed for next year is already in the ground and it's all genmod. They're in meetings. I have my pink slip. See ya.
Then the sheriff comes around looking pissed.
Farm's been nationalized. You gotta get out.
This has been in my family for generations. The hell you say.
I don't like it. Don't get stupid. Too many dead already.
Where go?
Parrish family died. House is in county hands. No buyers. Move there. Ten acres. Best I can do. Take personal stuff. Furniture even. No farm equipment.
So they move over to the Parrish house. And they look around at the belongings of people they knew through their kids going to school together. There are pictures on the walls. All the people are dead.
They take the pictures down. They move the Parrish furniture out into the storage shed. They put in theirs. They put the cans of food they've brought from home up on the shelves. They figure out how to get a new house going.
They walk five miles to town. They go to the feed store. There's a lot of other farmers in there, bitching. There's talk of revolting but it's just talk. There's a lot of "The South Shall Rise again" but the world's already a fucked up enough place and they know it. They're ants. If the South is going to Rise Again it's gonna have to be fed, first.
There's seed in the feed store. It's not much but there's seed. Most of the good stuff is getting stripped, fast. The feed store owner is pretty damned tight and he's not tied into the whole "futures" thing. But he gets another loan from the bank, which is only holding on from the government propping it up, and he buys more seed. He gets orders in advance and he lets people he knows buy on credit. Long-term credit.
There's a shortage of seed but what the hell.
There's a program that people who are farming can get gas for their tractors and combines. If you're a registered farmer. If you're a registered farmer and not tied into the "nationalization program" you're likely to be out on your ass.
People pool their gas rations. There's barely enough. There's a certain amount of "scrounging" and some finagling by local gas providers. But tractors get filled. Horses become a primary means of transportation.
Ten acres ain't much, unless you're a very smart farmer. Then you can do a lot with ten acres. There's land that hasn't been tilled in a long time. It's not great, but you're a pretty decent farmer. You get more credit for herbicides to kill the grass. You do soil samples. You have to get them tested through the county agent but you're not a registered farmer so you're waiting a while. In the meantime, you're planning.
Also in the meantime the "government cooperative farmer" has arrived at the farm. This is a "grade A" farm on the list the USDA keeps. It's gone to well-connected tofu-heads. Call it a former female marketing executive who specialized in promoting organic farming and her husband the lawyer, also an "agricultural expert." They've both been on the soup line a couple of times but mostly they've been able to get along. They don't have children because "they never found the time." As part of their "resettlement package" they've been given extra gas rations to drive to their "resettlement farm" and start a new life as happy farmers in the big wide open.
They arrive to find nothing in the house. Not a damned thing. Some scraps of paper. Everything else is gone. They drive to town to complain to the sheriff. He's to say the least uncaring.
They drive to the county agent's office. He's out and his secretary is less than helpful. They're handed a bunch of pamphlets.
They're low on gas to get to the farm. But they make it. They have, as part of the resettlement package, a bunch of instructions. They attempt to decypher them. "What is soil chemistry?"
They attempt to call the listed, USDA, help center. Their phone has been disconnected. They'll have to drive into town to get it connected. They run out of gas. They are out of gas rations for the time being. (As far as they know. Actually, farmers had plenty of gas but farmers needed it.)
They walk to town. On the surface people are very nice. They find the phone company. They get the phone and electric connected. The gas for heat and cooking is rationed. There's some in the tank. Don't use it up quick.
There is an "emergency food distribution center" at the Baptist Church. They don't like churches but they go there to get food. They explain who they are and that there's no food in the house and that it's a long walk. Reactions are mixed. A few people are hostile. Most smile and say "Bless your heart" a lot. (Southrons never ever say what is truly on their mind. They're very Japanese that way. In this case, "Bless your heart" means "So you're the poltically connected assholes that took over the Beauford farm . . .") A very young lady gives them enough simple foods to last for a few days. They leave. They try to hitch a ride back to the farm. Finally a guy in a pickup truck picks them up and drops them closish. They walk the rest of the way.
There is a truck garden the farmer's wife put in before they were thrown out. They pick some beans. There's a pig. They don't know what to do about the pig or the cows. They read the instructions. They try to figure out the instructions. They call the help center. It's a busy signal (because there are thousands like them in the same predicament).
The lawyer actually sits down and reads all the documents. The main thing he extracts is that they are entitled to "supplementary emergency fuel" allocations on the basis of being farmers. Okay! Styling. They can get gas!
They have driven down a Mercedes SUV from Atlanta. A gas turbo. The "fuel" they can get, by special delivery to the tanks at the farm, is diesel. Their car sits on the side of the road for a long time.
There are no diesel vehicles at the farm except a tractor. The diesel F-350 is at the Parrish farm, up on blocks until the "real" farmer can find fuel.
There are crops growing in the field. They look at them. There's not much else to do. The cable is out and the only channel they can get on the TV is CBS and that's snow-filled and nearly impossible to understand. There are no books in the house.
The wife runs out of birth control pills. They don't have any money to buy some from the small-town pharmacy that's still struggling along. It's not going to sell them birth control pills on credit. They are extremely polite but firm. The wife makes a scene.
At this point, some of them get fed up and find some way to get back to being real grasshoppers. The soup lines are better than this.
But we'll say they hang in there.
At some point an officious woman turns up at their house. The officious woman is the new rep for the seed company. It is pointed out that all of their crop is owned by the government. But it's genmod seed. So it can't be used. They need to till it under and plant new seed. That will be provided by the government, as well. And when it's harvested, it will be turned over to the government.
And we get paid . . . ?
In seed.
That's the next point where people said "blow this for a game of soldiers" and found any way back to civilization.
There are lots of such points. I'll skip most of them.
The husband finds out that driving a tractor over a plowed field is not easy. But he does it. The wife does not. She is attempting to learn how to cook. He also learns that:
Hooking up a plow is a bitch.
So is plowing. And it's very fucking boring. And it takes forever, especially if you're in a fucking little 35-horse tractor that the farmer only ever used for minor stuff. But he'd taken one look at the big combine and gone "oh, no fucking way."
The seed is delivered. He plants it. Despite being an intelligent person he is confused by the concept that the seed he's growing is going to be seed. But if that's what he's doing for a living . . . I wonder if the town needs a lawyer?
No, as a matter of fact. Ours survived, alas.
He then finds out.
Seed bags are very fucking heavy.
So is a spreader and if you don't know how to hook one up you can kill yourself. Or hook it up wrong and then bad things happen.
A standard grass spreader is a lousy way to spread wheat seed. He doesn't know that there's a seed planter sitting there. He doesn't know what a seed planter is. And, besides, it's designed for the big tractor he's avoiding.
And he has to keep filling the spreader with those heavy fucking bags of seed.
Things break. They always do. Some things you just have to get a repair guy for. Most, farmers can fix. He can't. The tractor stops. He doesn't know why.
He goes down the road to the next farm. That's no help, that's a young couple who look like they just stepped out of a rock concert and they haven't even bothered to figure out the tractor. They've got a nice crop of ganja out back, though. The crop's like, whoa! It's beans and shit! I think! Dude you have got to try some of this shit! Hey, Stacey's pregnant, man, 'cause we're like out of birth control pills . . .
His wife has cut him off because she's not going to have a baby, the tractor is stuck in the field because the spreader is on backwards and it's jammed the transmission and he really needs a drink, not a toke.
Leave point.
Instead, he goes into town looking for help. There are choices as to what to do.
There were those who said: "I'm a bigshot and you farmers had better fix this or I'll get the gub'mint on your ass!" Or just were hostile and in people's face.
In which case they got exactly dick for help. And the crops never got as far as planted. Seed sat in bags until it got rained on and rotted and was lost. This, alas, was common and contributed to the famines of 2020 and 2021.
We'll give this guy a more optimum situation. He's a dick normally but he also knows when he has to crawl. He's just not sure where to.
Sometimes he runs into the county agent who is running around like mad and gets some help. Enough to get the crop in the ground.
Sometimes he ends up on the phone with me. If he's not a dick, I'll do what I can long distance. Because I can see the train wreck on the way. If he's a dick, I figure he's not worth the time.
Sometimes he walks into the feed store.
There are a bunch of guys sitting around not doing much. There are rocking chairs. None of them are available. Some other guys are standing up.
He doesn't know it, but there's a defined pecking order to those chairs. If a guy gets up and leaves, a specific guy is going to get his chair.
The hayseeds in the feedstore kind of nod and go back to talking about the weather. He waits around for someone to walk up and ask him what he needs. No one does. He's not sure who works there and who is just hanging around. Everyone is in the same clothes.
He is, more or less, ignored.
One of the guys makes mention that it's gonna be a cold winter. The woolies are already getting wooly already. (And the old farmer knows where to look for real long-term predictions.)
The lawyer contends that predictions are for a mild winter. Yeah, it's been a cold spring but it's warming up and what with global warming . . .
They look at him as if he's a Martian. One of them finally says:
"Can I help you?"
He pours out his tale of woe. Little does he know that the guy he displaced, whose truck garden he is eating off of, is sitting in one of the rocking chairs. Everybody knows who the newcomer is. Everyone knows his "tale of woe." Everyone knows that the harvest is going to be fucked and famine is on the way. What they're discussing in quiet voices is how to survive.
"Put the spreader on backwards," one of the hayseeds contends. "Reverse and take it off. Put it on right ways round. That'll do ya."
"Why you usin' the spreader? There's a perfectly good planter."
"What's a planter?"
If, at this point, he just says "Look, I know this is fucked up. I didn't think we'd be taking someone's farm. I thought I'd be working on one. Helping out or something. I don't have the slightest clue what I'm doing. The only thing I know about farming is from watching reruns of Green Acres. But I've got to get this right or . . . it's going to be bad . . ."
Well, then sometimes they'd help out.
We'll continue this in two directions.
The first is the optimal result. It wasn't common, but it happened enough that it's probably why any of us survived 2020. And, remember, we're back in summer of 2019 when I was over in Iran.
The guy whose farm he took, the guy with the Browning ballcap on his head and the Winston dangling from his lip (in violation of the universal smoking ban in indoor public areas) pushes the ball cap up.
"Got a deal fer ya."
The guy in the Browning ballcap will teach him how to farm. The lawyer and his wife now work for him. The lawyer does what he tells him to do and he's not going to enjoy it. But the guy even knows where there's some furniture up for grabs and he knows there ain't none in the house. Do what I tell you to do and we'll make it through.
"Why? I mean, why would you do that?"
"I get a cut of the pay. An' cause that's mah John Deere you done fucked up. An' ah don't want it fucked up again."
There was, thank God, a lot of that. The two "good" farmers on my farms. They found out about Bob quick and told him they had no clue what they were doing. Teaching people who have no clue what they're doing, and are mentally and physically unsuited to farming, how to farm is ten times the trouble of professionals. And it was a very fucked up planting season. But Bob did it. And they didn't totally screw up.
The other five? They were . . . suboptimal results in various ways. I had to replace a lot of equipment over time. But the government paid for it eventually. Why not? It was the Bitch's fuck up in the first place. And the Congress let her get away with it.
But we'll go to the less optimal result. The farmers and store owner tell him the minimum he needs to know and suggest he call the USDA help-line. He points out it's overwelmed. The feed store owner finds a number for another help line. It's Army. See if they can help you.
So now we're back to the seed farmer.
He was not, in fact, in Blackjack. I won't say where he was except that it was "southern" and in prime farm country.
I never would have noticed if I hadn't been bored and listening to the techs answering questions. I always kept half an ear on that in case things were getting out of hand, as they frequently did.
This wasn't out of hand, it was the tone of confusion. That was nearly as good. So I hooked into the circuit.
". . . don't have any information on how to fix equipment, sir. We can give advice on crops and weather and pests but we don't have anything on equipment, I'm sorry. Have you tried contacting the manufacturer?"
"Major Bandit Six, cutting in. I've got it, Smedlap. Say problem again, over. Start at the beginning, go to the end and I'll see if I can help."
Tractor broken. Information I got doesn't work. Lawyer. Didn't know I was taking over someone's farm. Out of my depth. Army knows about farming?
Army knows everything. What kind of tractor?
I don't know.
What kind of spreader?
I don't know.
Get pen and paper. Go find out. Here's a number you can get through to me.
While he was gone, I considered the voice. The guy was clearly over his head and just a touch angry.
But it was also the middle of the damned night. And he was still working the problem. If he could get over the anger, there might be some worth to him.
He called me back.
"Bandit Six, if you've got the time, I've got the dime."
He had all sorts of information about the tractor and the spreader. All I needed was the model numbers.
"Oh, hell, yeah you've got the spreader on backwards. When they said 'reverse it' what they meant was just pop it in reverse then back out. You can't back it up. I hope you didn't break the spay arm. Okay, get ready to write this down. Memorize it. You won't be able to read it in the dark and do it at the same time. Do you have the lifting tines hooked up? Okay, I'll walk you through how to bring it back with the lifting tines, too. Get ready to write . . ."
It took about two hours to get through a fifteen-minute evolution. The guy wasn't getting much sleep that night. But we got the spreader back to the equipment shed.
"What were you using it for? It's not time to spread grass seed. Wheat? Why were you using a spreader to lay down wheat? Don't you have a planter . . . ?
. . .
. . . . . .
. . . .
. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Okay, calm down." Grin. "You're what I class as a C. That means there's some promise. You can get your back up and wroth and decide you're the expert here and then you're going to go to D and you'll be talking to my call center guys until you get tired of it and go back to the soup lines as an F. Or you might work your way up to A. But I'll give you the chance. It's late and it's about time for you to actually go to work. If you're willing, though, I'll walk you through a lot of shit and you might make a barely functional farmer . . . Yes, I grew up on a farm and I've got a degree in the shit. I'm about the only guy working this place who does so for anything farming beyond C-A-T equals cat, you're going to have to talk to me . . . I work nights. But that's not a problem. Because you're going to be getting up around . . . an hour ago. And you'll be going to bed around sunset . . . Yes, there's a reason. Are you listening? Is this actually sinking in? Because I'm not going to waste my time if it's not . . . You're welcome."
He'd been a lawyer in Memphis specializing in "environmental agricultural issues." He was, in fact, every farmer's worst nightmare. The kind of guy who environmental groups hired to sue farmers for drying out a plot of land that they considered "wetlands."
His wife started out the complete bitch.
We'd gotten beyond C-A-T equals cat by then. We were talking as he was getting ready for another hard day's work. He was fixing what he could find for breakfast. I asked him where his wife was. Asleep.
"Farming is team work. You're supposed to still be asleep. She's supposed to be cooking breakfast. Who's cleaning? Who's taking care of the garden?"
Getting his wife to sit down and talk to me was, I take it, not easy. But it happened.
"Bandit Six, this number is permanently connected to a nuclear tipped missile aimed at you, keep that in mind . . . Oh, Hi Roger. Mrs. Roger? Oh, that would be Miz Roger. Miss Roger-Not-Roger? We're going to have such a nice time. Hello, ma'am. My name is Bandit Six. Here is the deal . . ."
You and your husband are in deep cacky.
This winter things are going to be a nightmare.
The nightmare will continue into next year.
I don't care what the President and her ministers say, trust in me, I'm with the High Command.
You are an expert in whatever your field used to be.
You know nothing about farming or being a farm wife.
If you do not listen to me, you and your husband are going to die.
Did you hear me? Do you believe me? D-I-E.
Okay, here is lesson one. There will be many more. And you'll like them less.
" 'A man he works from sun to sun but a woman's work is never done.' That's not a complaint. That's reality. Your husband, in case you hadn't noticed, is now going out all day just about every day working his tail off. It's hard, brutal, necessary work. He's probably losing weight. He'll gain it back as he gets better at things and if there's food. But he will always be expending more calories in a day than you do. He will be working harder physically. You will be working constantly physically but at a lower level.
"Farm work is team work. You are part of the team. The part you have to do, not sort of have to do, not can ignore, is vitally important. You're going to think it's demeaning. It's not. You are a critical member of the team. Your job, accept it or not, is support for you husband and hands . . . Well, you're going to need them eventually. If you stick this. Here's your job list . . ."
Fix heartiest breakfast you can fix before your husband is awake. Cereal, if available, is insufficient. Carbo-load but add any available protein. There's a reason that bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast is called "A Farmer's Breakfast" on menus.
Wash kitchen thoroughly after each meal. Foodstuffs available to you have no preservatives. Flies carry bacteria. Flies are endemic to farms. The combination means any foodstuffs left out become bacteria magnets. You will suffer from food poisoning, sooner rather than later, if you don't keep the kitchen area spotless . . . If you don't have soap make it or trade for it in town.
Next chore is pick eggs. Get your kids to help you . . . Then I'm sorry. Hands are hands. Kids learn, early, they've got chores on farms . . . Go see if there are any orphans available . . . No, I'm not joking. If we chat some time I'll tell you about how my great-grandpappy started in the farming business. Short answer: he was an orphan from Baltimore who was sent out as slave labor. No, I'm not joking.
Then you're working in the garden . . .
Lunch for you, husband, family and hands. Heavy carbo load again.
Clean house. More garden work.
Dinner. Make it light. He'll be asleep in an hour.
Clean from dinner. Make sure everything is locked down and correct. Go to bed. Get up before husband and do again and again and again.
Canning.
Household maintenance.
Laundry.
Clothing maintenance. What do you mean, you don't know how to sew . . . ?
"There's a hole in the bucket dear Liza dear Liza there's a hole in the bucket dear Liza a hole . . ."
She eventually made a decent farmer's wife. She's a lobbyist for farmers now. Leopard can't change its spots, much.
There were about fifteen like that. "A"s that is. People who were out of their depth but willing to admit it and somehow got on the line with me.
There were way more that I tried to help and fell by the wayside. Farming is not easy.
One of the "A"s, sort of, that I tried to help was funny. I say "sort of" because there wasn't anything I needed to tell the guy about farming.
He'd been a farmer. He'd moved to Arizona when he retired. Sold the farm (big farms plural) to ADM. Didn't want to live in a retirement community. "Liked some space around him." Didn't like people much, that's for sure. Crotchety didn't cover it. Talked to his wife, once. Nice old lady. Didn't have to tell her about being a farmer's wife, either. She was glad he was back working since "he'd been a handful" retired. Given what he was like when I dealt with him, I cannot imagine what he was like retired.
Anyway, he'd bought a pretty big spread of fuckall. Think that desert I went through in Iraq. He wanted land around him, but he didn't want to actually have to work it.
Come spring of 2020, he's looking at what his internal computer is saying is prime farmland.
Huh?
Cli-mate Was Chang-ing. And not always for the worse.
Back in pre-Columbian days there was this race of "Native Americans" called the Anasazi. Had something sort of approaching civilization in the Southwest. Up and disappeared. Some indication of violence. Pueblo builders are thought to have been Anastazi "in retreat." But in retreat from what?
Probably each other. And surrounding tribes. See, in the mini-ice age back in the Middle Ages, the rains shifted. The "desert southwest" was about like, oh, Kansas. Prime farming country. As things started to warm up, it slowly dried out to the desert we know and love today.
Same thing was happening. The arid belt around the world was shifting south and contracting. Positive effect of global cooling. Thank God there was at least that.
Point is, this guy walks out one cold morning. Food around the nation is rationed. He's still keeping his ear to the ground about farming. Things are looking like fucking nightmare.
And here he is looking at what is quickly becoming some of the most arable land in the U.S. Rainfalls have been, for the southwest, nightmarish. The "arroyos" are rivers. Standing ones. He's not a climatologist but he's thinking they're going to stay that way. Sort of what the long-range forecasts, the good ones not U.S. Met, are pointing to.
Now, if he only had . . .
A big tractor.
Plows.
Planter.
Fertilizer.
Herbicide (still a bunch of that pesky sage around).
Pesticides . . .
Hell, it's a long list. If he only had everything he'd left up in North Dakota. And some weather numbers he could count on.
Oh, seed . . . that would be helpful.
So I'm leaning back in my chair, trying to stay awake and wondering how in the hell I'm going to get out of durance vile. There has to be a way. Marry a general's daughter? Nah, he'd think I did it to stay in the Pentagon . . . And I couldn't come right out and say "I married your daughter so I could get some career progression again, sir. Not that she's not a nice piece of ass but could you maybe call branch and get me the fuck out the Pentagon?"
"Yes, sir . . . I understand that, sir . . . Sir, we're not here . . . I don't think we have any actual equipment available, sir . . ."
I figure it's a tofu-eater. Let Smedlap take the heat. That's what enlisted guys are for, to take the fire.
"Sir, let me transfer you to my supervisor . . . No, sir, I'm not 'passing the buck.' He's a farmer, he might have some idea what you're talking about!"
Fuck.
"Major Bandit Six. What?"
"Do you know what time it is? I've been on this damned phone all night looking for somebody in the U.S. government who has a brain! I doubt it's you but maybe I'll find somebody sometime and I'll stay on this phone all night if I have to! I didn't pay taxes my whole adult life to get the run around!"
"All of which told me nothing about why you've called. So if that's all you've got . . ."
"My name is Farmer Bill. I've been retired for five years. I moved to Arizona and bought a spread. It was desert. It's not, anymore. I don't know what your bosses are saying, but as a professional I can tell you, sonny, that we're going to be short on food as a nation next year. So I don't see why a bunch of prime farmland should just go to waste. Can you understand that or are you as dumb as a box of rocks?"
"Hang on . . . No, seriously, I'm looking at the damned climate plat, okay . . . ? Yeah, Arizona's forecast for long-range increased precipitation. Gimme a township plat or your GPS location or, hell, your address . . . Okay." Tap, tap . . . "Yeah, you're right. But we both knew that. I see your plat. You're now the proud owner of four thousand acres of prime wheat, corn or soy farmland. Congratulations. And, yeah, Department of the Interior and the USDA both still have it marked as desert, the dumbasses . . . I'm not using their climatology models is why . . . Because I'm not as dumb as a box of rocks . . ."
Farmer Bill was a character. Called me every week or so just to chew me out. Reminded me of my dad if Dad had been a motor-mouth. It was heartening. I got to looking forward to his calls for the comfort zone.
Took me a while to find what he needed but the Army had "stood-up" a "military farming support network." And eventually I found everything.
Look, an army travels on its stomach. Soldiers are always the last people to go hungry.
In most societies, that's because we've got the guns. But the U.S. Army tries, very hard, not to steal all its food. (Sherman's March to the Sea being a notable exception.)
But our models were forecasting "chronic, serious and endemic nutrition shortages" in the U.S. That's a fancy way of saying "famine." It was classified Top Secret because the Policy Makers were saying everything was coming up roses. I saw the actual reports. And as the growing season of 2020 went on, the reports were getting worse and worse.
So the Army had set out to rectify that as well as it could. It was stepping all over USDA at that point, but it didn't care. Soldiers were going to eat. If for no other reason than so that they'd have the strength to stop the food riots that were coming. Without killing the rioters.
"Stuff" for farming was available. Dealerships had gone into receivership. Stocks weren't getting distributed. Seed that was "genmod" was just sitting in warehouses and getting ready to go bad.
The Army was handpicking some farms to make sure soldiers ate. It might not be perfect, but soldiers would have something to eat.
I really think it was mid 2020 when the coup was closest. (Other than at the election and I'm getting ahead of myself again.) The Joint Chiefs were looking at the fucking country starving and the President and her advisors leading the charge into famine. But they didn't revolt. They held firm to the concept of The Society of Cincinnatus. Civilian leadership control never truly broke. But they did whatever they could under the table.
Farmer Bill became one of those "under the table" deals. He got what he needed from "seized" stocks that were just sitting around. He sold his food to the Army when it came in. Quite a few soldiers ate actual wheat bread during the winter of 2020–2021 because of Farmer Bill.
Enough of Farmer Bill. This is about me.
It took several months for the general's schedule to open up enough for some chit-chat time. And it was late when we started and I had duty that night. He had my predecessor sit in for part of my shift. We talked late.
He really was interested in Khuwaitla. He wanted out of this rat-fuck, too. But we both agreed we were doing useful work even if we hated it. So I talked about Khuwaitla. And he agreed that Abrams were tough and thought it was funny that I was so ambivalent about them. I pointed out he'd never had to fight them. He laughed.
We talked about getting them over the Taurus and the Anatolians and he thought it was funny that I'd gotten the routes mixed up. He told a story about when he was commanding a brigade in the Entry Phase in Iraq and despite GPS getting on the wrong road and running into a hell of a firefight. I told him about swinging wide on Mosul, which I'd gotten from that op. And some reading over the years. We talked about Slim and he'd read "Unofficial History" and he recommended a couple of others that turned out to be excellent. Slim was big on logistics. We segued from that.
He asked me if I'd seen the classified reports on food production.
I admitted I had.
He asked me if I had any suggestions. Beyond expanding the "food for soldiers" program which was already as big as we could do and get away with under the table.
I said I'd had a lot of time to think on night shift.
And?
What? You want the full PowerPoint presentation?
That's how I got into Plans and Ops of ESM.
Not that that was a lot better. Every answer came down to the same equation: H.R. Puffinstuff. We could do a little, but we weren't going to be able to do enough.
Things were totally and completely screwed. Factor after factor was building up. The Plague. The bad weather. The false forecasts. The utter stupidity of the Zimbabwe Plan. USDA being forced to give all the wrong suggestions. "Organic" uber alles. Remember my rant about "Organic." Three times the tilled land for the same amount of food. We had less tilled land and mostly organic and all natural farming. "Farmers" breaking stuff for which the parts were becoming scarcer and scarcer and scarcer because the factories that used to make them were abandoned and the rate of breakage was beyond belief. And the "farmers" didn't know how to fix anything. (Okay, by 2020 the worst of them were gone. Most died in the winter of 2019. But then they got replaced by a new crop of idiots.)
Any single one would have been bad.
The combination had things totally and completely FUBARed. Fucked Up Beyond Any Recovery.
And we knew deep in our bones that as soldiers we were going to be left holding the bag. We'd be the ones that people threw stones at when there wasn't even the food for the soup lines. Or shot at.
The economy was still not coming back. Stocks were trading, commodities were trading, banks were sort of getting their feet under them again. But the damned "nationalizations" had people running scared. Say you bought stock in a company then the next day it got "nationalized." Know what you got? Nada. Nichts. Nothing. Nobody wanted to invest under those conditions.
And in the meantime anyone who was paying any attention to the news could see that the coterie around Damen Warrick was getting fatter and fatter and fatter.
Hell, if people had had the energy there would have been a flat-out revolt.
And, yes, that did break out in places in 2020. And as soldiers . . . we were left holding the bag. We were the ones that had to kick down doors and round up "insurgents." Our stock was starting to fall. We were going from saviors to "oppressors."
People, we didn't vote for Warrick. Nor for the Dems that gave her absolute power.
We just got left holding the bag.
It was July of 2020 and I pulled an idea out of my ass. It was shit. I knew it was shit. And soon enough everyone in the U.S. and in several other countries ate my shit.
I invented the Kula Bar.
Yes, that's right, people. You can blame that abortion purely on me. I am at fault. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.
The Kula Bar. The most reviled and despised food on earth, with the possible exception of Spam.
The Kula Bar in all four revolting flavors: Piss yellow, leprous green, horrible horrible blue and that truly stomach-turning red. I cannot to this day get the taste out of my mouth. I refer to them as their colors because there is no way to explain to those who have not experienced them the taste.
The sole redeeming quality? It kept the death rate down. Not gone, but down.
Here are the factors that led to that monstrosity.
Food was going to be short. Not "soup lines" short but "nothing" short.
Fuel was going to be short. Not "perhaps we should use the hybrid" short but "we can't even boil a cup of water" short.
It was going to be cold. Not "it's cool in here" cold but "if we don't get five or six people under this blanket we're going to be corpsicles in the morning" cold.
With enough food energy and some common sense and shelter you can stave off the cold. But we were going to be low on food. And you can't just hand out a bunch of semolina to somebody and tell them to come back in a week to get more when they can't cook it.
We needed emergency distribution rations that:
Oh. And here's the kicker.
We didn't actually want people to eat them. We wanted them to be starving to death before they'd eat them. They were "the food of last resort."
We were planning on passing them out in job lots. But we wanted people to eat anything before they'd eat the "Emergency Ration Bars." Because they were for even worse emergencies. Like, we're cut off in a blizzard and out of power and, fuck, all we have left is those fucking Kula Bars!
They tasted horrible on purpose.
We might have gone a little overboard on that one. I never saw any certified reports on it, but it was widely held allegory that people were found as emaciated skeletons with a pile of Kula Bars right in front of them.
Ever have a Bandit Bar?
It's a Kula bar with a different suite of artificial flavors.
Gotcha.
Do not mess with the Bandit.
When we got the harvests in from the "farmers for soldiers" program we looked at projected needs for the next year, compared the total input from the program and saw that we had a surplus. A sizeable one. The FFS program used only trained farmers and every trick in the book. The FFS program proved that the famines of 2020 and 2021 could be laid squarely at Warrick's feet. Also classified at the time. It's been released since under FOIA.
We poured that "excess" into Kula Bars.
That was starting in September of 2020. By then it was Warrick vs. Carson.
And then . . .
I mean how stupid could she be? Yes, it was clear she was going to lose barring some miracle. That the Dems were, across the board, about to take a shellacking.
But having her opponent arrested?
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?
I don't think so. I think she truly believed that She was Right and that The Way She Showed The Nation Was Just and . . .
I think she was thinking in capital letters. And the advisors she had around her were so insulated from reality that they weren't going to tell her different.
There had been a lot of quieter arrests. Commentators, reporters, minor political figures, even Congressional staff. Hell, members of the Army for that matter who hadn't obeyed her edicts and had been caught out. They weren't making the news because the MSM was still in her corner, I think horrified but horrified more of what would come out if she didn't get another term. They'd been covering for her and a change of administration was going to make that patently obvious.
She arrested Carson and about a dozen other senators, all from states with Democrat governors, and shut down Fox News and a bunch of radio stations all at once. For "conspiracy."
Yep, it was a conspiracy. It was a group of people coming together to enact political action. It's called a Political Party, you moronic Bitch!
But, man, can you imagine being on the Secret Service detail?
They'd already taken over security for Carson. He was the Republican candidate for President. They take over when a person gets close to that position. He's starting to be briefed in on peripheral matters, just in case he wins. (It's as clear as glass he's going to.)
And they get orders to take him into custody. Total incommunicado. Disappear him.
And they do it. Why?
Because you obey orders. You obey the law. The Congress had passed a law saying that this bitch can do whatever the fuck she wants. The Supreme Court had not overriden it. They let the son of a bitch stand. (5–4 vote. The dissents are scathing. Read 'em some time. Scalia has a way with words. You can practically feel the spittle.)
There's one other thing. One other reason to go along with the Bitch.
Because on November 2nd, or maybe January 20th, it's not going to matter.
Those are the drop-dead dates. Those are the dates when things are going to come apart.
What if she fucks with the elections?
I wasn't in on the "privy councils." They didn't even take place at the Joint Chiefs level. The JCS knew that if wind got to Warrick about any "special political operations planning proposals" that they'd be the first to disappear. It was going on at a much lower level.
But Warrick was serene in her belief that the People Would Do Right And Choose The New And Fresh Voice for the 21st Century. That she had Conducted A Conversation With The People And The People Would Make The Right Choice.
And she figured she'd assured it by sticking her political opponent in the Federal Prison in Marion, Ill. Right next to Manuel Noriega.
Things exploded. The military knew all it had to do was hold on until the election. If she didn't fuck with that, we were golden.
There were more than a few people who were tired of waiting for things to get better. And figured that if they couldn't kill Warrick they'd kill whatever representatives they could find.
Quite a few of the tofu-eater farmers were "made examples of." Democratic representatives, a few journalists.
"Right-wing death squads?" Try people who are fed up with being in a tyranny.
And the SCOTUS upheld the damned Act again!
"Interference in Executive powers during a National Emergency . . ."
Another scathing dissent. Thomas's was great, too. The "plantations" metaphor had a bunch of levels.
There's a song that has a line in it: "Everything exploded and the blood began to spill." That was the autumn of 2020. We were damned short on food. Harvests were in all over and they were scanty. Distribution was still fucked. Fuel was short.
The only thing that the U.S. seemed to have in abundance was anger and weapons and bullshit from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs finally had had enough. On October 5, he called for a press conference under emergency broadcast rules. He worded the order as if there was some new huge emergency and it was presented by the news media that way. So lots of people tuned in and turned on. Also simulcast over the Internet for those who had access and "Psy-Ops" units set up bullhorns near food lines.
"This is General Gordon. I'm Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Department of Defense. I'm not here to declare martial law. I'm not here to say that an asteroid is about to hit the Earth, which is about the only disaster we haven't had. I'm just here to say this.
"There are a lot of people who are very angry right now at the situation in the United States. I can understand that anger. But would you please quit throwing things and shooting at my soldiers? In less than a month you can feel free to express your opinion in a normal setting. It's called a polling booth. This is America. It is not some Third World dictatorship. Quit acting like it is and wait for your chance to be heard. Make the decision in the polling booths. And whatever the outcome, face it like Americans. Not terrorists. Thank you for listening."
Things calmed down. The Bitch asked for Gordon's resignation. He told her to stick it. And a bunch of the brass sent word through their contacts that if Gordon left, the Society of Cincinnatus was going into abeyment for "the duration of the current emergency."
On October 29, the last working day before the week of the election, Executive Order 5196 was issued ordering a "suspension of all Federal elections for the duration of the current emergency." At the same time, the news media released "secret testimony" indicating that Carson had been involved in "redirection of essential disaster relief material." It was on every remaining network and front page news in every major newspaper.
On Tuesday morning, November 2, 2020, people started lining up, early, at the polls. Most places it was snowing or freezingly cold. Right down to the bottom of "Sector Three." It didn't matter. People lined up in droves. Soup kitchens shifted over to polling places.
Almost every polling place in the U.S. opened on time. And the areas that did not? Well, they were the ones that were controlled by very hard-core factions of the Democratic party. Das (feminine) Fuhrer had said that there were to be no more elections and so there vere no more elections! Alles in ordnung!
The census of 2020 had never been completed. Nobody was absolutely sure what the population of the U.S. was. There were some areas where there were questions about voting. People had moved around, a lot. Documentation was sketchy. There were a lot of "questionable" ballots that had to be set aside for determination. A lot.
Things were not as efficient and fast as they'd been before the Plague. Ballots were primarily paper. Returns were slow coming in.
Warrick ordered the military to shut down polling places. She also ordered local police to do so. She went on television under the Emergency Broadcast rules and ordered it.
Flash Order CJCS Number 2187-20, OpPlan Open Polls, ordered local Regular and National Guard troops, by unit down to platoons (it had been written months before), to move to polling places and "ensure security and continued function of same." In any area where polling was not open they were to "find local polling officers and escort them and any necessary materials for polling to the designated polling office and ensure function of same until the normal close of polling."
Mutiny? Oh, hell, yeah.
Coup? No. That would have been what was contemplated for November 3 if the vote didn't go off.
Flawless? Not hardly. Nothing had been close to flawless since 2018 and that was a pretty fucked up year all things considered.
Good? Good enough, anyway?
Yeah.
The news media held its ground as long as it could. It was still declaring for Warrick when Army numbers showed California had gone to Carson. So had every other state in the nation except Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Carson was still unavailable to comment. He was in jail.
Warrick refused to concede. The vote was "illegal." The person elected a "criminal."
(Warrick, by the way, was one of the people to first castigate against "the politics of personal destruction.")
Not even the SCOTUS could take that one. November 23, when all the states had certified their results, they declared the vote valid and binding. 8–1. They ordered the release of the President-Elect on a 5–4 vote for.
Warrick said that nothing was going to change. She ordered the arrest of the CJCS and the members of SCOTUS, all eight, that had certified the vote.
The Capitol Police ordered to arrest the CJCS went to the Pentagon, took one look at the troops guarding the doors, and went away.
So did the ones that went to the Supreme Court building.
So did the ones ordered to arrest more Republican congressmen and senators.
We'd turned over most of the emergency resupply duties. The troops were just sitting there. Might as well camp out on the doorsteps of various "distinguished persons." Hell, we even had teams around the Democrats. Fair and balanced and all that.
The Secret Service brought Carson to his home in DC. He gave a very nice acceptance speech. Finally. He also mentioned that he'd been well treated during his "unfortunate stay in federal custody" and was pretty humorous about it. You got the impression he'd been at a resort.
Warrick threw the Secret Service out of the White House. She brought in a private security firm to protect her. She also never left from before the vote until January 20th.
Food was getting very scarce. Nobody was talking about it in the news.
The Carson "transition team" got underway. The word was out that as soon as Carson was in place and things were relatively stable, the Joint Chiefs were all going to resign. Carson wasn't having any of it. But they were pretty adamant. They'd performed a sort of de facto coup. And they weren't going to continue with power under those conditions. It couldn't be seen as a good thing. They were not only going to resign, they were going to forego any government service for the rest of their lives. They were going to disappear and live off their meager (for the job they do, anyway) pensions.
I felt really sorry for Carson in a way. He had a lot of picking up to do and there wasn't any good news in the near future. Projections for 2021 and 2022 were for colder and colder temperatures. Ice age here we come.
December we started distributing Kula Bars and the public view of the Army hit an all-time low. Everybody knew we'd saved the election but . . . Kula Bars? Fuck 'em. It kept people alive.
We were still in the "taking care of everybody" business and starting to get sick of it. We wanted things to start getting back to any semblance of normal so we could get back to learning how to kill people and break things. That didn't look to be happening any time soon.
India sent us grain shipments. India. My grandmother used to say "Eat all your food. There are starving children in India." By then there weren't starving children in India. But there had been in her memory and Grandma was a little besotted by then. Back when she was no more than middle aged, we'd been sending grain to India to help out with their famine.
Now they were sending us grain. We made it into Kula Bars. When they found out, they got a little testy. Till we explained the rationale.
Oh, India was an interesting case. But this isn't the time for that. Maybe later.
January 20th. Inauguration Day. Cold as a witch's fucking tit. I was part of the security. I know.
Carson stood up, raised his right hand and then let loose one hell of a speech. He didn't even use old catchphrases that were perfect for the conditions. The closest he got was his "continued hard times that will require great sacrifice. We will face them together as Americans and triumph over all that stands against us."
The guy had been an actor for a long time. He knew how to deliver a speech. He made even the weakest phrases ring with conviction that was so solid you could cut it and serve it as food. Better than Kula Bars, anyway. Could barely break those with your teeth. (Another "feature," not a bug.)
Warrick was not present. Her VP was and gave a short speech praising the new Prez and wishing him good luck.
Warrick had to be removed from the White House more or less with force. Actually, her personal physician sedated her and she walked out under her own power. She just thought she was taking a moonwalk or something.