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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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A State
of Disobedience Tom Kratman
A State of Disobedience
is based round that idea that has haunted military and alternate history writers
since 1960 – A second US civil war. The
main problem with such a scenario, of course, is that the USA of 2004 is very
different from the US of 1860. A
massive, four-year long war with state against state is impossible, although
some writers have considered massive guerilla war and foreign support.
Many other people have preached and planned for a long war against the
government, perceiving it as hostile to the American people and slowly becoming
less and less democratic. A State of Disobedience is
set, contrary to the book cover, in 2012, which is the fairly near future.
In the usual US electoral mess – made worse by trends that make it very
dangerous to lose an election – the US elects a president called Wilhelmina
Rottemeyer.
Rottemeyer’s principles are simple, more power for her, and she’ll do
anything to keep that power, including developing a private army of federal
employees, political officers for the military and a private system of control
for the state governments, many of whom are unable or unwilling to rock the
boat. Rottemeyer’s policies – I
sense a right-wing cautionary theme here – bring serious disruption to the
lives of many Americans, including Alvin G. Scheer, whose trial we read snippets of throughout the book,
although we don’t learn why until the last chapter. The outcome of rasing taxes on businesses, it seems, is
increased prices and the law that gives medical care to all means that doctors
cannot treat the really desperate patients because of the screaming children.
Events come to a head in Texas, which is lucky
enough to have a governer with the courage to stand up to Rottemeyer,
although I suspect that Rottemeyer would have had someone like her killed
quietly. The federal law
enforcement agencies accidentally or deliberately kill hundreds of people in a
raid on a church – and accidentally kill the governor’s brother.
The shocked state of Texas separates itself from the rest of the US and
acts as an independent state. This,
of course, cannot go unchallenged by Rottemeyer and she acts to seal off Texas
and invade. What follows is a
bizarre war that ends with the collapse of the federal government.
It
might just be me being old fashioned, but the purpose of a book’s first
seven chapters is to interest the reader, not to turn them off.
Had someone not sent me a copy of the book electronically; I would never
have read it. They are sometimes
difficult to read and they give details that a) involve characters who will be
dead three chapters later and b) are irrelevant to the plot.
If you can read though the first few chapters – better yet, just read
the ‘interludes’ – you’ll find a reasonably interesting novel with many
plot twists. That
said, I don’t think that the author covered enough ground.
We are told about attempts to introduce impeachment legislation as a
throwaway line, and then we never hear any more about it.
Further, everyone on the Texan side claims that there is a serious
mismatch in military force, but the bad side believes that a quick invasion of
Texas is military impossible quickly – the Texans, it seems, are better
equipped than the immediately available regular army units.
The rest, it seems, are in Germany (why?) and the Middle East.
Further, civil disobedience in the surrounding states makes it hard for
the bad guys to send supplies through their territory, when the US has a massive
air transportation system. Given
the successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, I see no reason why the Feds could not
ship supplies via the air – flimsy excuses about the reliability of the USAF
do not cut it. This would be very
limited compared to ground transport, but if the objective is to capture a
single point, why not equip a bridge of fast ground vehicles? We
also learn nothing beyond frustrating hints of the outside world.
The Middle East and Israel are apparently American protectorates, but the
forces needed to do that must be very large.
Why, then, is Texas better armed than all the feds have immediately
available? “Treasury's face took on a somber
mien. "Still, I can't help but note that the Great Depression took a matter
of days to wreck the economy. This might, or—admittedly—might not, be as bad
as that. It's fair to say though, General, that when you invade you had better
win quickly." (CH. 10) The Texans manage to threaten the US ecomony, but there are very little
details of how that happens and what its effects are. Many other things are missing: the Internet is barly
mentioned, the air force is missing almost entirly from the book and there are
no nuclear weapons even threatened. Rottemeyer
does not sound like the type of person who would not nuke Texas if she thought
her power was fading. She had ample
opportunity to gain control – legally – of most of the US’s weapons and
the ability to use them. One
of the books major problems is that it features characters that would be
interesting in their own right – although how believable is another matter –
but stand as caricatures of American political figures.
Hilary Clinton is the one most reviewers have pointed at, but someone
called Janet Reno is also caricatured. Worse,
the good guys are mainly American patriots – it would be nice to see someone
who had other motives (escape from the feds for drug offences, perhaps?) on the
‘good’ side. The
author either dislikes lesbians or is seeking to shock people.
The subplot of the president’s relationship with her army commander
(also female) is unnecessary and adds little, not even a steamy scene, to the
plot. The
book does have some very dramatic scenes. The
president’s speech to the new constitutionals convention and her subsequent
death are very tense and uncertain. The
reader is reminded of the death of JFK, but few real heartstrings are pulled for
the reader – by the last pages everyone is convinced that she has as much
right to live as Hitler. Hitler, at
least, was fairly honest about his plans for the future.
I
am no expert in US politics, so I won’t comment on the likelihood of this
situation developing or the amendments made to the constitution at the end of
the book. What I will say is that
the president, Wilhelmina
Rottemeyer,
might well be right when she says, at the end, that no matter how they try,
they’ll fall back into the same trap again and again. The heroine responds that that might not be a bad thing –
America can handle a revolution once in a while.
I consider the first attitude to be defeatist and short-sighted and the
second to be irresponsible. Americans
may or may not disagree. From
me, the book gets three stars out of five.
Good points: interesting plot. Dramatic
Outcome. Good overall view.
Bad Points: Seriously bad
writing in places (and in the wrong place too).
Too short in places. No
international aspect beyond Chinese arms deliveries.
No really final resolution. Characters
caricatures instead of real people.
I recommend buying the electronic or the paperback copy.
The good bits of the book don’t make ignoring the bad bits worth the
extra money. Final
Note. A guy called Mathew White did
a WebPage speculating on the possibilities of a second American revolution.
Someone in the book refers to something very similar.
"Willi . . . I
am sorry but some of those states, especially those around Texas, hate you and
everything you stand for. If you push, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico and
Arizona . . . maybe the whole deep south and quite a bit of
the Midwest might 'just say no'." Remember that red and blue map from the
elections in 2000? Well, imagine the red portion in outright rebellion. It could
be that bad. If you push them into it we could face a real war, and we could
lose it. I can't answer for that. I won't.” (chapter 9) Mathew’s
AH is Perotista Revolution.
Nice touch for us AH writers.
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