The Old Man and Tomorrow....

November 23rd, 2039
Portland, Oregon, Pacific Northwest States


I’m an old man.

Perhaps that’s the thing – at age 85, I really never expected to see all this; the better part of me hoped I never would.  Regardless, here it is.  I’ve been writing for free for so long I thought, “What will one more long article hurt?”  Someone might even learn something.

I’ve often said that the worst things aren’t what we plan for – they’re the oddball stuff which happens on a random Tuesday.  In this case, it was a random Thursday – February 14^th, 2013.

That was the day California defaulted. 

I mean, really – anyone could have seen it coming; they were over $40 billion in the red, with no end in sight.   Virtually no one had paid property taxes, due to the collapse of real-estate prices; cities from Eureka to San Diego had to let go most of the city-services folks (fire, police, parks, etc.); not even the National Guard stipends were being paid. 

What triggered the whole event, really was Wall Street – they finally said ‘no’ to more bonds – with California’s rating at ‘junk’ status, it didn’t make sense to even try.  The governor finally threw in the sponge in a nationally-televised news-conference, and begged for Federal help – the speech is on the Holonet for anyone who’s still interested.  But the real problem happened a day later.

See, the state, as well as most municipalities, had been issuing I.O.U.’s to state employees for six months or more as the cash ran out.  Wal-Mart, Safeway, and Costco were the first to start taking I.O.U.’s dollar-for-dollar in an act of ‘solidarity’ with the government – I’m sure the huge tax-incentives signed off by the governor were also a determining factor – most small businesses from restaurants to nail-salons followed suit.  For six months or more, the banks didn’t do much private business at all with state employees – when those folks got ‘paid’, they went to the local watering-hole to ‘cash’ their I.O.U. – a de-facto chit-system developed, where chits were issued on note-paper; within a week, Kinko’s was offering pads of official-looking chits for sale; you could even download them and print them yourself. 

Counterfeiting was rampant, but watermarks soon took care of most of that problem; the system worked well enough, and the corporate offices of the chain-stores from Applebee’s to Costco were taking chits and issuing dollars in exchange.   California was, if not solvent, at least working.

The national government was as worthless as buckles on a dishrag by that point – the Feds were trying to figure out how they were going to deal with the twenty million-people-and-rising who were living on the streets by that point, thanks to various ‘austerity measures’ passed by Congress over the past couple of years;  President Romney wished California well, and admitted that there really weren’t any funds left for something as huge as a bailout of an entire state.  But, as I mentioned, the real problem happened the next day.

On the 15^th of February, every chain store in California cancelled the chit-system. 

“It was the ultimate vote of no-confidence”, California’s governor said later. “It was their way of telling us that we’d had it.”

By the 17^th, there wasn’t a sandwich-shop, gas-station or car-wash in California that accepted an I.O.U. or a chit, no matter how dire the need.

It was then that people in California – people who lived in barrios, and those who lived in mansions – began to wake up to the fact that they were really, truly on their own.

On February 18^th, the entire state of California, as well as most of the nation, had most of a weekend to think about what they were going to do.  The results were, in some cases, rather predictable – but in others, events unraveled at a speed which left everyone – myself included – in awe.

East Los Angeles literally came apart within a day.  Those of you old enough to remember the Rodney King incident in ’92 know that those days looked like normalcy by comparison.  Within hours, most of the east-side of town was on fire; there were over two thousand dead by the end of the first day (although most historians debate that figure, stating that with so many people being members of the ‘underground economy’ by that time and hence unreported, the truth will never be known to a certainty.)

The California National Guard ceased to answer to command by Day Three, and the police hadn’t bothered to show up at all, preferring to block access to the west side of town and let the locals sort each other out east of the freeway.  It didn’t take long before, at a nominal $42,000 a year and with real paychecks a thing of the past, the police simply refused to come to work.  The governor begged; then threatened – but it was as clear as the nose on his face that no one was going to work for free – not when the opposition had already raided most of the National Guard armories in the immediate area, and were better armed than the police.

Now, at the time, the population of the L.A. basin was around 10 million, with 4 million of those living in the city proper.  The usual ‘stay in your homes’ order was given by the governor’s office – but people from San Diego to Burbank began to pack up and hit the road.   Before anyone could really react, economic refugees were streaming into Arizona and Nevada.  The first arrivals in Las Vegas must have seen it as a paradise of sorts; there were thousands of empty houses thanks to the collapse of entertainment and real-estate; before the week was out, most of those houses were occupied with squatters from all walks of life.

By the first part of March, word began reaching us up here in Oregon that a large group of people had begun migrating north, buying gasoline and supplies with what little money they had, but mainly spreading out and taking what they needed from neighboring towns before hitting the freeway again.  I remember reading that the convoy stretched a good fifty miles or more, with no one in charge – they were more like a tribe of Huns, fleeing their failing crops and running headlong toward the Roman border.  They weren't bad - or good.  Just desperate.

Now, Oregon and the greater Northwest has never been what you’d call an ‘economic powerhouse’.  People who live here tend to do so because of the lifestyle – we like our rivers; our mountains; our farmer’s-markets and our funny way of dressing to go out (you’d see Birkenstock sandals and socks at the Oregon Symphony back then).  We didn’t have that far to fall in the first place, and while unemployment during that era was pretty high, we tended to weather such things well enough.

As a result, we were never in a position where the state was gonna default on its obligations – the folks in the state-house tended to squeeze a dollar until Ol’ George’s eyes bugged out – but that’s another story, I suppose.

Back then, half of our National Guard were in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting the wars which eventually bankrupted the U.S. government.  The other half were mainly construction battalions; the folks we called on when it rained too much and the rivers got too high – they were farmer’s sons who filled sandbags and ran bulldozers; mainly.

Governor Kitzhaber decided it was time to find out what was going on in California; he sent an Oregon Air Guard C-130 to take some photos – and when it returned, he saw the truth – there were nearly a million people in that caravan; by that time they’d spread out on some of the roads running parallel to the Interstate; a big group were moving north on the Pacific Coast Highway, while the bulk were still on Interstate-5 headed toward the Oregon border. 

He immediately asked for Federal assistance – and was told that it was not against the law to travel the interstate highway system, no matter what the cause.  It was then that the governor’s office issued its now-famous Closed Border Policy. 

The policy was strictly aimed at refugees, and echoed many of the closed-town policies enacted during the Great Depression (I wasn’t alive then, obviously, but I knew people who were, including my parents, who told me of such things.  “Drifters – Keep Moving.  There Are No Jobs Here.  You Will Be Arrested If You Stay”, said the signs, tacked either above or below state-highway signs reading, “Welcome to Everytown – a Friendly City – Pop. 5,240”, or suchlike.

Anyway, after issuing the Closed Border Policy, Governor Kitzhaber ordered the National Guard infantry to the southern border, and issued orders moving Air Guard fighters to southern airports.  He also made his now-famous ‘Article Ten Speech’:

“By the power vested in me by Article Ten of the Oregon Constitution, and by Oregon Revised Statute 399.065, I am hereby declaring a state of martial law in the State of Oregon.  Pursuant to that declaration, I am mobilizing all Oregon National Guard ground and air forces, and calling all members of the Oregon State Defence Force to active duty.  I have instructed the PBS affiliate radio and television stations around the state to continually broadcast the locations of each National Guard armory and recruiting installation.  All citizens between the ages of 18 and 45, preferably with military experience, are requested, but not required, to report to your nearest National Guard installation.

We sympathize with our fellow citizens to the south – but we are not in a position to deal with nearly a million refugees.  To that end, I am ordering our southern border closed to any and all traffic until further notice.

I realize this will place economic hardship on some of you.  Oregon purchases millions of dollars annually in agricultural products from California; many of the warehouses used to ship other goods are located in the Golden State.  While I realize the temporary economic difficulty this may cause, it is of greater importance that we avoid the turmoil which would be caused by the arrival of such a desperate group of people, the relocation in our state of whom would increase our total population by twenty five percent overnight.

Lastly, please remain calm.  I’ve every confidence that our existing forces can and will do the job required of them in this desperate time.

Thank you.  God bless you, and good luck.”

I remember turning the television off, and walking outside.  I looked at my bare garden patch.  I was glad I had tomato, pepper, cucumber, onion, and other ‘starts’ in my kitchen windows.  I looked up at the sky.  It was a light overcast.  I remember thinking, “Regardless of what happens tomorrow, everything has changed, and from now on out.”

It turns out I was right.  Less than 36 hours later, the first of the refugees arrived.

They’d shaken themselves out by that time; the ‘civilians’ were in the rear of the column, while the organized groups took the fore; they were all rather heavily armed, and in everything from Toyota pickups to HummVee’s stolen from the California National Guard. 

Oregon Guard troops and State Defense Force irregulars were still moving south when the first refugees arrived; an advance Oregon Guard construction-battalion had dynamited part of the rock-walls of the Siskiyou Pass down onto Interstate-5; they’d also dug up part of the freeway and built a natural barricade, while in the rear, they’d closed every road from Lakeview to Brookings and set up Defense Force firebases in the hills.  I saw the preparations on the news; everything from “American Idol” to “Martha Stewart” had been preempted for live coverage.  Vietnam might have been our first “TV war”; the invasion of Iraq might have been our first ‘continual coverage conflict’ – but this was gonna be the first live-action civil-war in history; the cameras would never stop rollin’.  All fighting; all the time.

I remember being damn sad during the month of March – the first group of armed refugees – all male – swarmed up the rocks at the Siskiyou Pass on March 4th; you probably saw the still-photo of the guy with the bullhorn, demanding that the freeway be rebuilt so they could continue moving north.

Thing is, we’d already seen the photos of civilians hanging from lampposts and under bridge-trestles in central California; the ones who wouldn’t ‘cooperate’.  We knew what they’d all do if they got into Oregon – more of the same.

I didn’t hate ‘em.  I really didn’t.  I just didn’t want ‘em doing to me and mine what they’d done to their own.

So, when the talk was finished; the answer was still ‘no’ and they started shooting, I really didn’t feel badly at all when a helicopter made a gun-run on the rocks and turned most of ‘em into what looked like cranberry sauce, right there on live-TV.    When the men in the pickups and HummVee’s in the rear started firing on the helicopter, that was all the invitation the Oregon Air Guard needed – within a few seconds, about fifty vehicles were flaming wrecks.

Yeah, President Romney almost had a stroke – he reminded the governor that almost 100% of the pay for the Oregon Guard came from the Federal treasury – Governor Kitzhaber reminded the President that help had been requested, and refused.  Romney tried to Federalize the Oregon Guard – and learned that, in the end, people tended to defend their homes first - that order was ignored.

Romney threatened to send in Federal troops – but realized that he’d have to Federalize other National Guard troops from around the country to do so, as the regular army was spoken-for, and in any event there was that nagging piece of legislation called the Posse Comitatus Act, even if they were not.

That was about the time that a Federal judge in Oregon agreed to hear a case brought by the Oregon Attorney General – and ruled that as what was happening was a de-facto invasion of Oregon by another state, the governor was legally justified in declaring martial law and defending the state’s borders.

Didn’t hurt that both those guys were neighbors.  Their daughters went to the same high-school.

There was a lot of talk and bluster as spring wore on – the bulk of the refugees were turned back; a handful made it over the border; I understand some had relatives up here, and assimilated without incident – others wound up underneath the aforementioned bridge-trestles after trying to form up into armed gangs; few made the attempt again.

The people in the northern part of California decided it was a good idea to side with Oregon – as summer wore on, the border was extended south; the freeway was repaired, and from a line roughly from Mendocino east and on north, that part of California considered itself if not part of, at least under the protection of, the Oregon Military Department and the Oregon National Guard.  Regular checkpoints went up, and by late summer, deliveries and transportation had resumed.  The governor’s office had sent troops to guard farms and production facilities south of that border; the trade-off was that the farmers were no longer looted and knew they’d not have their necks stretched by gangs of armed, roaming thugs.   Transport-convoys flying the Oregon flag headed north every day; while roadside-bombs and IED’s were a problem then as now, most of everything got through.

A lot of manufactured goods came from California – but we quickly found substitutes in the Far East.  By the end of 2014, while we were still importing food from California, that was a dwindling market.  Some enterprising folks had capitalized on the fact that the eastern part of Oregon gets a lot of sunshine – and huge factory greenhouses began springing up in the wheatfields of eastern Oregon.   There are a few things we don’t get like we used to – but no one seems to really notice.

The rest of the nation didn’t take kindly to our actions – but our neighbors to the north in the state of Washington did, and so did the folks in Idaho and Montana – even though our politics were quite different, our motivations were the same – we wanted to live in peace and not be tied to the broke-dick-dog that the Federal government had become.

By early 2015, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and that part of northern California which we’d more or less ‘liberated’ from the roving bands of armed hooligans out of the Southland decided to up and form a new country.  President Romney invoked Lincoln and tried to put together enough of a coalition in Congress to 'reclaim' the new country – but by that time, the American people were well and truly sick of war, and didn’t have a reason to try to keep the Pacific Northwest in the Federal union if we didn’t want to stay. 

When that Federal resolution failed, the new government of the Northwest hadn’t even designed a flag, picked a name, or considered any of the other niceties of nationhood – but the four governors involved, plus the newly-elected representative from Northern California all signed the Pacific Northwest Declaration – there were a lot of fancy words, but it came down to this – leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone – and please to remember that while half the personnel at the Bremerton Naval Yard were repatriated to their home-states, half of ‘em stayed on to become part of the new Navy – and please to also remember that we have a nuclear aircraft carrier battle-group, two Trident boats and a half-dozen fast-attack submarines in the yard, as well as the Air Force bases at Mountain Home and Fairchild, complete with their bomber and tactical-fighter wings.

It was hard for a while; I won’t say it wasn’t.  Work and die was the watchword for most people; there was no Social Security, but the next generation will have something similar, thanks to the government in Spokane.   In the end, we settled on the name “Pacific Northwest States” as the name of our country; we traded in Federal dollars for over a year until we could print a new currency; the flag is an agglomeration of things; I’ll give it this – it’s a lot brighter than most; it looks more like a Canadian provincial-flag than anything else.

Speaking of Canada, they were the first nation to recognize us; Japan followed suit within days, and the People’s Republic of China were only too happy to jump on board a day later.  Over 85% of our trade is done with these three countries; the Chinese have purchased options on Oregon and Washington wheat, and our burgeoning natural-gas industry began creating energy for export by 2025.  Today, we’re more or less self-sufficient, with a positive balance-sheet; the interior of the country represents exports as diverse as industrial gems and craft beer.

The rest of the U.S.?  Hell, it broke up years ago.  The deep South is back to Jim Crow and all that nonsense; they’ve been fighting each other for a good twenty-five years now – hate is a bad basis for a nation.  The Northeast is what’s left of the old U.S.; they still fly the old flag.  They even have elections based on “Republicans” and “Democrats”, if you can believe it.

The sponsorship-program worked pretty well here in the PNS; each citizen was allowed to sponsor someone they knew well enough to let live with them; if they got a job and behaved themselves, they could apply for citizenship.  This served to pull anyone who was worth anything out of California as well as some of the other states, and bring both they and their talent north; it also served to leave the troublemakers put – they’ve destroyed most of southern California by now, or so I’ve read.  The central part of the state has asked for admission to the PNS; I suppose Spokane will act on it, especially since we have military bases there to protect what's left of our agricultural interests.

The central part of the country formed up more or less in a line from the Dakotas to Texas; their capital is in Dallas – they’ve got oil for export; at least until it runs out – but the real value there is in wheat, corn, soybeans and cattle – Europe can’t seem to get enough; Houston’s a good deepwater-port, and I understand the balance-sheet is positive for those folks.

Arizona and New Mexico followed California into decline – they got together to form a ‘country’ based on shooting Mexicans and outlawing everything they didn’t agree with.  Last I’d read, they’d petitioned Dallas to join the Midwestern States, but it’s up in the air whether or not they’ll be allowed to join.

Utah belongs to the Mormons.  With few resources, they’ve done a good job of turning the clock back to the 19th century – no oil means no cars; it’s funny to see the wagons on North Temple and State Streets, but that’s how they’ve put things back together, and it works for them.

Nevada’s a wasteland.  Whole place was full of grifters anyway; I suppose when you run out of people to con and resources to do it with, there’s nothing left but to leave.  I don’t know where the initial refugees went; I suppose they went somewhere.  All I know is that there’s sagebrush growing in the middle of The Strip in downtown Vegas, and the lights went out on that place a long time ago.

As I said, I’m an old man.  I don’t have many more years left on the clock, but I’ve seen evil and greatness, as the poet said, and I know I’m the better for it.

I still grow my own food, and I also now keep chickens along with my neighbors.  I walk a lot more; drive a lot less; a lower birthrate means the population’s around 2/3rds of what it was around 2010 – but that’s all right, too.   People tend to mean more when there’s fewer of ‘em – at least, that’s my thought.

Tomorrow? 

Oh, hell.  Did I say I’m old?   Yep – I don’t much think about tomorrow.  Something an old philosopher once said – or maybe it was me:  Yesterday’s in the past; tomorrow will take care of itself.  Or something.


(Submitted for your approval; a view of one man's future; the Tomorrowland of a country no more or less 'exceptional' than its peers; a Cautionary Tale writ in the certain knowledge that It Can Happen Here....)