Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

[Undertoad]

OK, let's write it differently. And hell, let's have fun with it.

Bush decides in 2008 that he is the leader of a new religious reformation, and he cancels the election. He then assassinates all Generals who will not stand with him, and uses the military and private intelligence to take out major figures turning against him in major cities.

The British, aghast at this situation, knowing that the future of the world depends on it, decides that they can use their military might to enforce a regime change if they can flip 30% of the American military to their side. They invade Washington and find that they flip 80%, including many commanders who secretly hated Bush but had to play the game.

Bush himself retreats to an unspecified location. Members of the Bush team are pictured on packs of trading cards; Cheney is the Ace of Spades. The Brits dismiss the remaining military, and attempt to establish a level of control with too few troops, and fail completely to seal the borders.

An insurgency develops from a number of different places. One is a group of religious nuts in Colorado Springs, who recruit across the country, calling themselves the Bush Believers. They find they can maintain order in large areas, but at the highest levels they are true right-wing conspiracy people who have lucked into leadership of the red states.

Another insurgency develops out of what was a loose network of Organized Criminals - mobsters. In inner cities, the "mob" fights with even looser networks of criminals and Thugs for control of the streets. The police forces fold away after missing paychecks from governments that no longer exist, on a banking system that is no longer guaranteed on dollars whose value is diminishing. The Brits install a system of citizen policing but insist that no police can carry guns, so that the new cops can signal to society how things ought to be.

The Brits establish elections, and the people vote widely to express that they want things to go back to normal at least, hoping a proper government will get the job done. But real power is invested in the people willing to use it, not necessary where it is granted by vote; and so civil society continues to suffer.

All of the insurgency groups kill, but particularly the Organized Criminals, who make deals and find sources of arms and training manuals from nationalist Northern Irelanders. The common target of the insurgency groups is Brits, but they routinely kill each other, or anyone who they think will disagree with them. In particular, it's completely racist in certain areas, and one learns grimly of the murders of the only remaining black couple in Colorado Springs, along with many carfuls of whites whose crime was to drive through a Thug-controlled neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the British people have lost all patience and are demanding that it's gone on long enough. If 500 more of them can be killed, they will probably leave, letting the rest of the set fight it out for control. The new police, the new army, and the new government will probably fall, leading to even more chaos and probably even prompting invasion by other countries.

So, do you join:

- The Bush Believers

- The Organized Criminals

- The Thugs

- The Brits

- The Starter Government

- Head for Canada

- None of the Above