A reader asked me what the heck I had against the Patriots, the conservative Republican-ish party since I lambast them in my books. I have nothing against those folks! I wrote the stories before the Patriot Movement got into the news so much, the name is serendipidous. I chose to name the bad guys Patriots because patriot is a cherished concept in America; to be a patriot shows a deep and abiding love for what makes America great. In my story, the economy went to pot when the climate-changed weather and rising sea started tearing up the coastal cities. Here’s an excerpt:
“We had a neighbor at our first house that had a Fiat Mobius that he swore ran on olive oil. He’d say, ‘Essstrrra virrrgin olive oil’, rolling those r’s. It was a real showpiece, grass green, low to the ground, convertible.”
“They made an electric version of that, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but it didn’t rev, and man oh man he liked to gun that engine. Ended up stuck on some tracks and got smithereened by a freight train.”
After a few minutes of reflection, Doc said, “I wish I could forget the first panicked coastal evacuations, with all the pollyannas out in full force while everybody kept saying their town was ‘another New Orleans’. I got so sick of hearing someplace was ‘another New Orleans’.
When people got fed up with political dithering while the storms got worse and displaced coastal folks looked for shelter, they allowed a coup. The ringleaders used the Chinese-Capitallist model and to make the overthrow palatable, and they named themselves the Patriots. They eliminated the Congressional posturing and the reign of lobbyists, but also savaged Freedom of Speech as well as other Bill of Rights freedoms. The Freedom of Speech movement (News Front or Freaks) was spread far and near as a grassroots means of taking the government back and that’s a main element of the books – the struggle of the news Front organizartion – the true patriots – against the usurping Pats. Here’s another excerpt:
Marta worked at digesting this information, linking what sounded like facts to other things she’d heard. “And you? You were sentenced for asking the wrong questions? About Holland?”
“Sweetie, how do you think I know this stuff? And about those other blacked out colonies? I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck and ask a few questions to the schmo on the street corner; I was a member of News Front. Heard of them?”
“You were News Front?” Marta sat up ramrod straight, a jolt through her spine and a flood of pictures racing across her vision. Suddenly the ambient lighting was painful; she closed her eyes. In a scared little voice she said, “I saw News Front people, I have nightmares about them.”
“Where?”
“I saw them at the refugee camp in Nijmegen.”
Naomi, shocked speechless for a good minute, whispered, “You saw them? Nijmegen is in Holland. You’re talking about the South Netherlands Mega-Camp. Why were you in Nijmegen?”
It was the tyrant Patriots that turned interplanetary exploration and colonization into punishment for the Freaks and gave the elites somewhere to dump the millions of people displaced by the sea or by the elites.
Honest, there’s no connection to current political parties and as a former US sailor, I respect the Americans who fight for our constitutional rights in words and in deeds, whatever their affiliation.
To read it for yourself, go to
How Would You Do It? 