Just out of curiosity, does this book make it clear how much of the US is under control of the New Confederacy? The previous one was a bit impressionistic and gave me the impression that much of the US was no so much under the control of the Confederates as it was anarchic Bushwacker territory.
(This isn't a future I am particularly worried about: the notion that the liberals will reform things to the degree that the hard right will rise in revolt anytime soon seems overly optimistic at this point, while on the more positive side most of said hard right strikes me as too feckless to gin up a functional revolution).
The hard right loves the idea of rising in revolt against whatever presents itself. (Brown people. Foreigners. Socialism. Starbucks cups. Whatever.) Their ability to organize pretty much anything usually fails horribly. They love authoritarianism but have no defenses against grifters and con artists.
What's the difference between a grass-roots hard-right racist and a con-artist that presents thoroughly as one to gain and maintain power? Seems to me that they're equally "hard right", and thus demonstrably quite able to organize and mobilize thank you very much, as the current populist movements in North America and Europe are kind of demonstrating on a daily basis...
Organize politically, yes. But for the functional institutions and muscles of a modern state, they're parasitic on the achievements of previous less loony governments - and destructive parasites at that. (See, "Nazi science", not to mention Nazi economics)The book is describing a situation where the hard right has _lost_ the sort of control it currently has over the levers of government power, and are trying to get it back by armed revolt. You can't build a functional army largely from scratch on a basis of graft.
Lilith Saintcrow's excellent Afterwar, about the aftermath of Civil War II in the USA, contains a map showing what cities were nuked / hit with biological weapons in the closing months of the war.
(Although the book is supposed to take place late in the 21st century, I quickly head-canoned it to late 20th century. They had a big war, but no climate crisis yet.)
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2019-07-18 10:45 am
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(This isn't a future I am particularly worried about: the notion that the liberals will reform things to the degree that the hard right will rise in revolt anytime soon seems overly optimistic at this point, while on the more positive side most of said hard right strikes me as too feckless to gin up a functional revolution).
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(Although the book is supposed to take place late in the 21st century, I quickly head-canoned it to late 20th century. They had a big war, but no climate crisis yet.)