So I’m reading book number four in the Drop Troopers
series by Rick Partlow (this guy: https://rickpartlow.com/ and if you like war movies or scifi like Star Wars films, you will likely enjoy his work, I know I do, and I’ve read a lot of it), and a weird idea just popped up into my head.
What if Trump declared martial law, because of ‘people said’ that “anti-fa” is out burning down more cities, like they did Portland, Oregon in 2018 (which didn’t happen, just another Trump lie) and he says it’s to save the cities - and in response to big rallies by folks who didn’t vote for his criminal ass, he then sends the national guard out to go home to home to collect all weapons because the country is at risk FROM WITHIN.
How do you think, all of those folks who’ve spent their lives fearing The Liberals would be coming to take their guns, and have voted Republican their entire lives because of that, will respond that that?
Think they’ll finally wake up to the idea that they’ve spent their life beliving bullshit?
What would they do, though, that’s the thing, would they just give up all of their weapons to the national guard for ‘national security’? Or would they do to Trump what he once wanted them to do to converge on D.C. to demand Congress do something about the dictator trying to take away their guns?
To give you some background, the series I noted in the opening is like a lot of what I’ve been reading ever since Trump took Office the first time in 2017. It has been referred to mil/spec (or Military Speculative Fiction), and it covers a range of story types.
Type One is a single person (usually a guy, okay, always a guy, but maybe I’ll finally write some fiction and give the starring role to a female character, anyway, back to the point… ) who finds something, a crashed alien spaceship, an interstellar communications device inhabited by a Created Person (machine based sentient lifeforms, including AIs without lockout codes or inhibitors, you know, like a real person). That meeting changes the trajectory of the person’s life, and they usually end up the leader of a small-ish crew who travel the galaxy exploring or becoming a leader in an interstellar Police Force or the like.
Type Two is usually an Earth-centric or Earth-based Military engaged in an intergalactic war with an alien or even a group of allied alien species, in a pan-galactic war. In these stories, we generally meet the protagonist as a late teen or early 20s male who has grown up poor, and in a violent area, and ends up getting to choose some horrific or entry into the off Earth war as a private. So there is a lot of military jargon and tactics and strategy talked about by the various characters from the lowly private we are living through the war with, right to up to the Generals in charge of the war effort. You either Served and are already familiar with some of this language, or you go Google “military acronyms” and learn yourself or spend half the novel slightly off-base on what in the hell is going on.
I really like both forms of this Genre of fiction, but for mostly the same reasons. The authors build superbly real worlds which my mind can imagine and shape around the action scenes in the book, and their characters are real people to me by the end of chapter one, without fail. Otherwise I never learn the end of that novel. The very best part though isn't just these characters, who all begin as just an everyday sort of person, end up being faced with monumental tasks and who often take on all sorts of personal upgrades (both mental and physical and many times in the futuristic tales, mechanical or digitzed implants); all of which changes the person they started out as, but generally keeping their onboard morals and personality quirks, and forming a person ready and willing to take on the biggest and baddest forces in the universe, so long as their crew or Squad or Platoon or Bridage is there fighting with them.
I’ve dived into the genre to remind myself of that for all that is happening now and will be happening out in the wider world starting in just about two months, now is the time for thinking about what is to come and planning on how to react to some of what might happen.
Gaming the outcome of some of the scenarios we’ll surely face will come from the eejits and fools and even criminals whom Donald Trump will stall into positions of power (it’s already started, and luckily for all of us, it ended with the ignominious Matt Gaetz resigning his seat in the US (no take backs, Matt) because Trump announced he was the choice for Attorney General of the United States. I swear, the first time I heard it I thought, “at least The Onion is still hitting it out of the park”.
Then something crazy happened. There was push-back. There was some talk of getting someone to leak the US House Ethics report on Matt Gaetz which was supposed to have been published (today or last friday or next friday, I’m confused on the exact date, sorry), and some sighing by Maine’s ever fretful US Senator Susan Collins over the very idea of Gaetz being thought about as a possible Attorney General…
all of which lead to the end of a four day wonder and Gaetz publicly kissing the ring, and announcing he had other fish to fry but thanks for the memories and simulaneously the Media announcing Trump was actually going to appoint Pam Bondi.
Now, you all can do your own due diligence about Ms Bondi, but when I read that she’d been teaming up with Sarah Palin back in 2010, when she was first running for the Florida AG job, which she got, by the by? I sorta/kinda had an idea about what more I’d learn from further sleuthing about Pam… except I don't have time and this part of the allegory is already about done, so let’s move on, and you can go google more if you want to, starting where I ended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pam_Bondi
So the long and the short of most of that is that even before Trump has again ascended unto the Office of the President of the United States, for the second time (and only for the 2nd time in US history for a 2nd non-consecutive Term), he is getting pushback about the people whom he will nominate to Offices of power and authority, many if not most of them Offices which can be life-long appointments.
So back to my original question, which when unpacked, really amounts to:
Do you think that buyers remorse from those who can act to prevent the worst things that Donald Trump most absolutely, positively looks like he will attempt to do, from happening?
Because my hypothetical scenario seems like I dreamed it up, just like the authors of the novels I’ve been reading dream up their war scenarios, and I did — but if you’ve been paying attention at all the past nine years, perhaps you, too, have a ‘spidey sense tingle’ that what we’ll see coming from the Trump Oval Office may well be something which resembles my suppositional situation, because of what he did before, and what he’s said he plans to do the second time around.
Thoughts?
Just a shout out to the authors I’ve been reading for a while and whose prose some of you may want to partake of, your own selves…
The prolific J N Chaney
https://jnchaney.com/ — what he says about himself:
J. N. Chaney has a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing and fancies himself quite the Super Mario Bros. fan. When he isn’t writing or gaming, you can find him in the Renegade Readers Facebook Group. He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.
I say, he’s a damned good writer and you all should go check out his site and give him a read, he’s mastercrafter when it comes to storytelling.
He’s also written MANY series with co-authors, all of whom you can find by just scrolling down his splash page.
The inimitable Kelley Armstrong:
Kelley has written in Fantasy, Mystery and Sci-fi, and I’ve loved every book of her’s I’ve ever read. My favorites though are the Mystery adventure series Rockton and the sequel series Haven’s Rock. GREAT characters and story arcs.
Oh, and if you’ve gotten this fair, WELL DONE, and as for the title image and it’s message, do I really have to tell you whom that message is talking about?
#MaliciousMango is my title going forward, unless I encounter anything better.
Enjoy your weekend, I know that I won’t be the only person spending this weekend cleaning and shining everything for next Thursday’s mob to descend upon your home, expecting a meal and good times.
So here’s to shiny kitchen floors and shiny white refrigerator shelves bowing under the weight of (in my case) a Bourbon Ham meal for eight courtesy Whole Foods and a deep dish pumpkin pie handmade by your’s truly and the 100+ year old recipe for it I got from my late Ex’s late great-aunt way back in the early 1980s.
Buen Provecho, friends, and clear skies and calm waters for the American Ship of State for as long as possible, moving into 2025.
🖖 🧡
post script:
Anyone who wants the delish pie recipe, DKosmail me an email I can send it to.