Excerpt from Chapter 20
“… In the United States, the President saw the crisis and the fear in the population as an opportunity. His administration had been embroiled in heavy turmoil since November. He had won re-election, popular vote and Electoral College, by a crushing margin despite devastating late October polls and an approval rating in the low twenties, a level of dislike from the electorate never before seen.
His numbers had taken a steep dive toward the end of the summer as a result of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He had dismissed the virus at the onset as nothing but a hoax. When it became obvious it was indeed real, he promised it would all go away on its own, as if by magic. The rest of the world watched as time passed and the tally of victims skyrocketed in the US. Through it all, his supporters were more than willing to ignore reality. And why not, inside the media bubble where they all lived the weather was beautiful.
In September, six months into the pandemic, the death toll had surpassed two hundred thousand. On the very day this sad milestone was achieved the White House had announced a series of three Presidential Addresses to discuss the end of the pandemic and celebrate the millions of lives the President had saved with his swift, decisive and early actions.
These rallies, disguised as Presidential Addresses to force the networks to broadcast them, had been held inside arenas in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Tens of thousands of his supporters had shown up despite calls from local authorities to avoid such large indoor gatherings.
Given the President’s aversion to them, protective masks were forbidden.
The staggering number of hospitalizations and deaths among the people who had attended the events had finally managed to erode his popularity, especially within his base.
When the President himself was diagnosed with COVID-19, he insisted on remaining at the White House. The employees who had the temerity to voice concerns for their own safety were fired. Thirty-eight people on his staff were infected in the weeks after his diagnosis. Ten of them died, including two of his doctors.
Only then did his numbers hit rock bottom.
Still, he had won the November election. And since his party had also taken the House and the Senate, every attempt by his opponents to investigate these baffling, if impossible results, was dead on arrival.
A month before the situation in Antarctica, the President had tweeted he was firing his entire Cabinet. By then he was cured from the infection, though it was said he was highly unstable and reeling from the effects not only of the virus itself, but also from the potent experimental medication used to treat him.
Family members and shady individuals from his entourage and from the media filled the Cabinet positions a week later. His youngest son became Chief of Staff and his oldest daughter Secretary of State. A grossly unqualified TV host was appointed National Security Advisor. The new Secretary of Education had once said on the record that those who believed in evolution should either repent or be crucified. The new head of the EPA, a coal industry lobbyist, had sued the Agency he now controlled a dozen times to argue America’s God-given right to pollute in the name of profits.
There were no confirmation hearings. The appointees showed up for work one morning with armed security teams and took over.
The unraveling spiraled on the day the President arrived unannounced at an afternoon press briefing to rollout a slew of reforms in Education, Energy, Transportation and Defense. He walked to the podium and remained silent while journalists from most news organizations were forcefully, and in some cases violently, removed from the room leaving only friendly networks to broadcast the event and offer their undying praises afterward.
The reforms were a giant step back into the Dark Ages.
“The Word of the Christian God” would now be taught for two hours at the beginning of each day in every public and private school in the country. Fuel efficiency was a thing of the past since it had been implemented as a response to the hoax that was global warming. And because he now intended to make good use of it, the United States would triple its nuclear arsenal.
And so the country was already in chaos when the breakage in Antarctica was announced. Amidst the confusion and apprehension that followed the release of the images by NASA, the President paid a surprise visit to the hosts of his favorite live morning TV show. He proclaimed he had proof there was no truth to the reports from Antarctica. It was fake news, an elaborate mise en scène orchestrated by the crooked media and political opponents in an effort to distract from the good he was doing for the country, and thus for the entire world.
He would reveal his evidence at a later date, but in the meantime, he had signed an Executive Order suspending the licenses of almost all major networks in America. All but a few were to remain on the air. The others had proven they were “the enemy of humanity.” The announcement had rendered him so giddy, and he put such emphasis on the last two letters of the word “humanity,” that his top dentures had flown out of his mouth and landed on the lap of the already freaked out female anchor seated next to him on the couch.
When the head of the FCC refused to pull the plug on the networks, the President fired everybody at the agency, including the support staff. He was about to install a team of loyal followers in their stead when the virus first struck …”