[War] US 2013

[pentaj2 at Scranton.edu]

Leader: John Williams
Country: United States
Ruling Party/Coalition: Republican (House stalemated, Senate 50/50)

Political Landscape

"It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)" - REM

The United States has had its fair share of turmoil in the last few 
years. In 2008, Bill Richardson beat John McCain to win the Presidency 
in a narrow election; it was an undisputed win, but given that it took 
Alaska and Hawaii to push Richardson over the top, he could not be 
considered to have much of a mandate. The fact that the Democrats 
found their Congressional majorities sliced to a razor-thin margin 
after two fairly inconsequential years made the situation no better.

And so the country limped on for a few years, accomplishing only a 
pullout from Iraq (in January 2009) and Afghanistan (in June 2010).

Then, all hell broke loose.

The political instability globally made Americans nervous, and a 
massive child pornography scandal in September 2010 left both parties 
wounded. The actual discovery wasn't all that big; 10 House members, 
Democrats and Republicans alike, were caught with child pornography. 
The problem, as usual, was the coverup. The leadership in both parties 
quietly told them to knock it off and kept it quiet. It would have -
been- quiet, except that some pages overheard...and secretly tape 
recorded it...And went to the media with the tapes.

Both parties found themselves massacred in the ensuing outrage. In 
such a situation, so close to the elections, with there were -no- safe 
seats in the 2010 midterms, and more than half of the House's 
incumbent members standing for re-election were defeated. 9 freshman 
members even were elected as honest-to-God independents. Not just 
third-party members but independents, elected from small, compact 
districts where a shoestring campaign without party support was 
actually possible. They had nothing in common but for that fact, and 
the fact that, 2 weeks after the election, they announced that they 
would caucus with neither party.

The Speakership, -everything- was up for grabs. The House eventually 
settled into an uneasy calm, with the Republicans getting the 
Speaker's chair and Committee chairmanships distributed in complex 
deals. But, as might be expected, almost -nothing- substantive got 
done.

In the Senate, the situation was hardly much better. There wasn't the 
scandals in the House, but there was still a 50/50 split. With a 
Democratic Vice President, the advantage would seem to go to the 
Democrats.

That is, until Tom Vilsack died in a plane crash, after Air Force Two 
skidded off the runway at Midway Airport in Chicago during a blizzard. 
In the hard landing, Vilsack recieved injuries to the chest. This 
would have been minor, except that Vilsack had a previously 
undiagnosed 
heart condition. The shock of the hard landing and the chest impact 
fibrilated the heart, and the impact of the crash, otherwise minor, 
broke the onboard AED.

Thus, for the next 2 years, Congress was effectively paralyzed.

Some progress was made, through forced bipartisanship, aided and 
abetted by popular backlash against the partisan bickering of the 
1990s and 2000s, but the 2012 election only made things worse.

Republicans Joseph Halleck and Thomas Larkin rode the recession and 
the recent upsurge in religious belief and traditional values into 
election...But the 60-year-old Halleck died on January 5th of a heart 
attack, and Larkin died in a car accident January 6th, after his car 
hit a patch of black ice on Pennsylvania Avenue and rolled over. (It 
was the worst possible time, as he died after the electoral votes had 
officially been counted by Congress.)

Congress remained stalemated, but the young Congressman John Williams 
of New Jersey, a fairly purple Republican with only 6 years 
experience, was elected Speaker while Larkin's fate was still unknown. 
He was a consensus choice; the party system is seen by some observers 
to be breaking down, as Internet fundraising and organizing has begun 
to pull influence to more local concerns. The new Speaker has been as 
surprised as anyone else at suddenly being slated to become President 
on January 20th, with moderate Republican Senator Robert Stevens of 
Florida being approved by the Senate as Vice President-elect on 
January 10th, in a procedure designed by Senate "history geek" Robert 
Byrd of West Virginia. Republican Steven McCarty of Illinois is the 
new Speaker, and Ted Stevens is the President Pro Tem of the Senate, 
which now holds a 51-49 Republican majority.

Rumors that both men have suddenly seen their life insurance premiums 
skyrocket are met with silence, however, in a gesture of respect to 
the deceased President-elect and Vice President-elect, the new 
President-elect has cancelled all of the inaugural balls.

Defense

The pullout from Iraq occurred under better circumstances than might 
have been imagined even a year previous, as Coalition Forces managed 
to stabilize Iraq, now a shaky and fragile democracy, with violence 
increasingly calmed. In a reaction to abuses during the war, private 
military contractors deployed with US troops were brought under the 
Uniform Code of Military Justice. Afghanistan was s more unambiguous 
success, Richardson Administration pressure (including a White House 
address which, to the unambiguous surprise and fear of most of the 
planet, rather uncharacteristically included the words "I remind the 
Islamic Republic of Pakistan that if they do not exercise sovereignty 
and effective control over portions of their territory, they may be 
concluded to have abandoned that sovereignty") motivating Pakistan to 
crack down on Al Qaeda and Taliban activities along the Afghan-
Pskistani border, giving the Afghan government the breathing space to 
stabilize the situation and expand effective control throughout 
Afghanistan. Since 2010, the US military has undertaken an impressive 
effort to "reset", deploying new technologies such as the F35 and V-22 
in 2012, and commissioning the first ships of the CVX and DD-21 
(Zumwalt-class) programs in 2011 and 2012.

Additionally, in an Iraq backlash, the Army was increased by 10,000 in 
2010, and the Marine Corps was increased by 5,000, both on the active 
duty rolls, with equal increases in the Guard and Reserve. How 
affordable this will be in out-years is an open question, but Congress 
has been rather more short-term in its thinking.

Foreign Relations

The last few years have seen a steady improvement, generally speaking, 
in America's image in the world, aided by American withdrawal from 
Iraq and Afghanistan, and the subsequent calm in both countries. The 
fact that one of the few things Congress fully implemented in recent 
years was a relaxation of the more annoying aspects of security, as 
the national level of paranoia decreased from post-9/11 levels, has 
helped. US/UK relations have been strained, however, by the gaffes of 
the Liberal Democrat government and the political chaos in Britain 
producing wildly shifting policies.

Economy

The US economy chugged along in 2008 and 2009, innovative measures by 
the IRS (and a Congress in search of revenue without raising taxes or 
cutting programs, and thus willing to allow the IRS to be more 
proactive in enforcement) enabling a decrease in the "tax gap" to only 
about 5%, a rate that has managed to be maintained (to the surprise of 
academics) in the years since. This enabled the budget to reach 
surplus in FY 2010; the fact that Congress barely seemed able to do 
what it -had- to do, let alone tack pork onto the budget, contributed 
to a degree of stability in revenue needs that enabled the government 
to brush past the recession of 2010 and 2011 while keeping the budget 
balanced. Wags comment that this may prove that gridlock is good, but 
there are problems.

The recession of 2010 and 2011 hit North America less than it did 
Europe and Asia, but this is only relative; it still hurt, and the 
recovery has been slow. Unemployment, as of December 2012, stands at 
6%, the highest in years.

Social Issues

Like the rest of the world, America has been gripped by an upsurge in 
religious observance and traditional values; in America, this has 
manifested in a surge in traditional forms of Christianity and 
Judaism, with a drop in Buddhism and other "newer" forms of belief, in 
terms of the American milieu. Paradoxically, however, Evangelical 
Protestantism, despite its more conservative bent, has lost adherents 
to the "smells and bells" of Catholicism and Eastern 
Christianity; "Generation Y", as well as the current generation of 
youth, has shown a marked attraction to ritual, provided by 
Catholicism and Orthodoxy in abundance; this has shown itself in more 
secular ways as well, such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day 
observances. It's an open question as to how much of this will last, 
but for the moment the "Great Awakening" is having a political impact; 
there's an increasing compromise on abortion, for instance, 
with widespread access to contraception being balanced by increasing 
restrictions on abortion from twelve weeks (the end of the first 
trimester) onward (with court-mandated exceptions for health, rape, 
and incest) and mandatory waiting periods, now at least 48 hours in 
every state. Parental notification and consent laws are far less 
popular after publicized cases in which notification resulted 
in "honor killings" of pregnant teenagers by enraged parents, often 
immigrants from more traditional cultures. Drug laws have also 
undergone a shift; users are, in most states, likely to be referred to 
mandatory rehabilitation and detoxification programs, while producers 
and dealers recieve ever-harsher sentences. Medical marijuana is being 
allowed nationwide in only extremely restrictive circumstances, often 
only in hospice settings for terminal patients, from supplies grown 
and produced by closely-monitored operations, with every miligram 
accounted for from growth to use.

Oregon's experiment with assisted suicide ended in 2012, after a 
serial killer employed as a nurse practitioner killed 20 people before 
being caught in 2011, the ensuing furor ending the program in a 2012 
ballot initiative.

Immigration was one of the bright spots of the 111th Congress, with a 
guest worker program being matched by a very carefully designed 
amnesty program, and the completion of a border fence along the 
Mexican border; the Mexicans didn't like it, initially, but have 
gotten used to it. Illegal immigration has seemed to decrease, 
according to anecdotal reports, and the movement of immigrants from 
the underground economy to the visible economy has been a boon to 
border states.

Religious Affairs

As mentioned above, there has been a surge in religious observance; 
Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism are the major 
beneficiaries, as is Conservative Judaism, and the various flavors of 
Orthodox Judaism. 

More specifically:

The Episcopal Church, pushed by the furor over gay ordination, has 
tacked into a more conservative direction, and splintered as a result. 
More liberal parishes have affiliated to the Unitarians, and the 
ordination of gays has been ended since 2008. Female ordination is up 
for grabs. On the one hand, there's much debate about whether it could 
even -be- ended, as a practical matter; on the other hand, there's 
much debate as to whether it should be.

Catholicism worldwide, but most particularly in the United States, 
underwent a Vatican-led "cleansing campaign" from 2009 through 2011; 
while the revelations of impropriety and misconduct on the part of 
priests, religious, and lay personnel alike were painful, it also was 
quick and thorough, and given that it was done with the assistance and 
cajoling of Rome (aided and abetted by diocesean newspapers and 
websites very publicly featuring the Vatican rescripts defrocking 
guilty priests and religious), has done much to restore popular faith 
in the Church; at the very least, it's restored the credibility of 
Catholics. There's debate on whether it's related, but vocations have 
soared in recent years, easing substantially the priest shortage. 
Additionally, devotions such as the Rosary are spreading beyond 
Catholicism to Lutheranism and "high church" Anglicanism, and the use 
of icons is spreading from Eastern Orthodoxy to Catholicism and 
Anglicanism; popular piety, generally, is more apparent.

Eastern Orthodoxy has also enjoyed a boost, particularly from a unique 
segment: Converts from Buddhism. Many are from the ethnic communities 
from which American Orthodoxy has traditionally drawn adherents, but 
it isn't uncommon for those of other backgrounds to convert as well, 
drawn both by the rituals of the Orthodox rites, and the "exoticness" 
of such a little-known branch of Christianity.

Mainline Protestantism is the loser here; Neither liberal enough nor 
conservative enough for tastes, the mainline denominations continue to 
lose adherents.

Mormonism was supposed to gain from the traditional and religious 
swing in America, but for one problem: While it had not suffered from 
scandal earlier, it did in 2009 and 2010, with revelations of sexual 
and financial misconduct throughout the LDS Church. It still is 
undergoing the steady pain of revelations of scandal, and it seems 
unlikely to end soon.

Conservative and Orthodox Judaism are finally seeing outreach efforts 
to non-practicing Jews and non-Jewish partners in intermarriage gain 
fruit, and the Jewish population is on a strong rebound after decades 
of decline.

Islam in America is at a crossroads. On the one hand, the upsurge in 
more 'traditionally American' religions is taking a toll on the black 
Muslim population, as an increasing number of converts to Islam return 
to their ancestors' Christianity; meanwhile, on the other hand, the 
same factors are tending to increase the cohesiveness and piety of 
immigrants from Muslim populations.