Curses! The plot is out!

[james_davis_nicoll]

(CNN) -- An elected county judge in Texas is warning that the nation could descend into civil war if President Barack Obama is re-elected, and is calling for a trained, well-equipped force to battle the United Nations troops he says Obama would bring in.

It's funny but while I can easily think of a Second Civil War novel that used a thinly disguised Hillary Clinton, I have yet to be send one featuring Obama in an analogous role.

In this classic SF novel



The Texans are motivated mainly by being Texan; their political police come across nearly as warm and lovable as the Stasi.

(This was one of the books that made me notice how often American Vice Presidents are presented as a villains, even administrations otherwise presented sympathetically; the Texans kidnapped the President with the aid of the VP, who has an eye on the top post for himself)

Comments

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

It's the pornography. Vice presidents are presidents of vice, and so they haft to look at lots of pornography, and so they either become serial killers or evil presidential kidnap enablers.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Joseph Goebbels Biden [*], the world's most evile man. That's why he likes TRAINS so much.

[*] There are only 61 hits on Google for the phrase. I think even the black helicopter people who are suddenly against CHAINS -- temporarily, I'm sure -- knows that won't fly.

[anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com]

Tom Clancy ought to be excited. There's a chance for a President Ryan. .1% chance, but a chance.

[michael a. davis (from livejournal.com)]

We could have gotten that a few years earlier if the Ryan marriage had been more sexually compatible, one way or another.

[(Anonymous)]

I have no idea what either the TRAINS or CHAINS references mean.

But that might just be the effects of a stroke or something. I've missed the anti-spam challenge six (seven,eight,nine,ten, eleven [is this getting obsessive?]. twelve) times now, while I usually get it the first time.

William Hyde

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Biden is a very big backer of Amtrak -- the train station in Wilmington is named after him, and he used to commute regularly to DC from his home in Delaware. As all goodthinkers know, however, trains are doubleplusungood unless Ayn Rand writes about them.

Recently, the goodthink machine has shrieked at Biden for using the word "chains" to describe goodthink policies to an black audience.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, thanks. My opinion of Biden rises, as I like trains myself for trips of a few hundred miles (for comfort and the fact that I've never had to wait three days for the next available train!).

Now that I think about it, I do recall the "chains" teapot tempest.

William Hye

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

It gets slightly worse. Tom Head, the loon at issue, isn't a judicial officer...he's an executive officer. "County Judge" is a term for the chief executive officer of a county in certain states, including Texas. Not unlike being a mayor of a city, but instead of a city, it's a county.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I don't comment on this sort of stuff on my blog, because I'd probably have to create a tag like your "MPR"; something like "Cue banjos".

-- Steve's seeing increased support for his "watery beer causes insanity" theory.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

"Small beer, small minds."

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

They tried that once. It didn't stick.

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

I'm surprised this isn't the tack they took for the Red Dawn remake.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

Nah, that's too believable. Or at least far more so than the alleged plot of the Red Dawn remake.

Apparently there is a paucity of original scripts out there, due to the number of remakes, sequels, prequels, rip-offs, and other derivative drek available to the movie-going public.

If Israel and Texas actually went to war, the Israelis would win, and the Texans would claim victory ever afterward.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Who are they putting up for the role of invaders in the remake? The Chinese? A Canadian-Mexican alliance?

[anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com]

North Koreans.

It was China, but the Chinese objected and they redid chunks of it

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

More along the lines of the studio realising "You know, China's a big market, with lot of potential ticket sales. Maybe we shouldn't piss them off, they might not let it be shown."

[(Anonymous)]

North Korea invades the US - I've heard of that for a while, but the sheer contempt for the viewer's intellect still is breathtaking. Are they perchance allied to Iran, Cuba, and, I dunno, an evil Mexico?

Bruce

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Quonster must be so happy.

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

An Evil Mexico would make the logistics...

well, "make sense" is a bit too strong, so let's say "move far too close to making sense to belong anywhere near this project"

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Apparently in the movie the NKs have some sort of sercret weapon that turns off technology. Frankly they might as well have given them anime style combat robots, it would be about as believeable. Even if you grant them the tech gimmick they wouldn't have the troop numbers or logistics capabilities to pull it off.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

In the Homefront video game (written by the same guy) the NKs launched a surprise EMP decapitation attack before the landings. So far as logistics go, the US had acted so egregiously-poorly on the world stage that other countries either turned their backs or gave the Koreans support in the hopes that they'd be less of a problem.

Thin as it is, apparently it was enough to hang a game upon.

-- Steve will point out that the game wasn't terribly well received by critics and players, for what that's worth.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

It does without saying that a lot of the comments to the linked article are what you'd expect.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Is that the book with Texas Governor Panoblanco?

[tandw.livejournal.com]

No, that was Gilliland's Rosinante Trilogy (which I still take down and reread every now and then, because it's Just That Good).

[(Anonymous)]

I suppose stories about black rapist muslim presidents planning to destroy the nation from within are still a bit strong meat save maybe for those who self-publish and Marvin Kaye.

Bruce

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

It's probably the lack of lead-time. I mean, Madam President Clinton was a plausible scenario for a good 16 years, whereas by the time anyone thought Obama could win, he practically already had.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I think they first have to convince themselves that it's happening, and after that, that it's not something that can be reversed.

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

Also, "Tom Clancy"[1]'s latest couple has a semi-Obamoid president in office. (The character started out as a thinly disguised Ted Kennedy analog, but his current purpose is to proxy Obama's drone-based anti-terrorism policies)

[1]: If the general rule for collaborations where two names occur on the cover with neither one sporting an apostrophe is that the ratio of the amount of writing done is the inverse of the ratio of the font size of the names, Clancy probably wrote the entire title. And possibly the political rants mentioned above.

[vass]

Fred Clark on Slacktivist is talking about this and how it ties in with the whole Left Behind-inspired fear of the UN.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Vice-presidents don't have enough to do.

Idle hands are tools of the devil, or something like that.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

So is advocating a private army to fight the legitimate government also advocating treason? I am certain the judge doesn't think that but I am not so certain that isn't what he is advocating. He probably thought Bush the Younger wasn't bad for a socialist president.

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

Now that I think about it, perhaps it's for the best that the US didn't turn over its nuclear arsenal to the UN back in the '40s. Not that, as far as I understand things, such a concept was ever on the table. If these people freak out about what they say now, imagine what they'd be doing if its words were backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

[(Anonymous)]

Given their normal relationship to authority figures, kissing its jackboots?

Bruce

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

I refuse to google my suspicion... but I'm willing to bet a lot that said stories exist, if nothing else as fanfic on websites like Stormfront.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Boy, "Stormfront" would be an unfortunate choice of name for a naive weather-controlling superhero. Maybe he could team up with that character I never got to run, the one who gets really huffy when people misinterpret the manji on his costume.

[rwpikul.livejournal.com]

Someone actually has oopsed into using Stormfront for a character name, (she is even involved in weather control[1]).

Luckily for her, any contact her world had with Earth was pre-web.


[1] Well, she does cloud delivery and distribution. The actual control is up to the local weather teams.

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

When it comes to villainous Vice Presidents, you can't improve on Richard Hawk from Metal Wolf Chaos.

Hell, you can't improve on Metal Wolf Chaos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Genl242_ZU8