Shane Bader.
"Well, the people in this country are basically a vacillating crowd of children. They're easy targets for the right message. We control them. We do it every day," comments Bob Cutter of Inter Continental.
"Glad I don't watch much news on TV," laughs Warren Table.
"Oh, we can get you in other ways. It's not just the news, we slip our message into the entertainment programs, the happy talk shows, you name it. It's called product placement. When we do a full campaign, everything you see or hear will be tuned to the message. Right now, our anchor, Dianne Frost, is nearly orgasmic, bubbling over about the glory of a new age dawning, the future of our nation, the selfless generosity of those that helped pull this historic event together, the usual crap. The other networks are saying pretty much the same thing. It's all coordinated. After five days of this, ending in the mass torchlight parade and outdoor rally on Saturday night, the Progressive Party will be firmly established. The next set of polls will show enormous support. Just wait and see."
"I like your enthusiasm Bob. It gives me confidence that we can really pull this off," says George Salazar.
"And now we simply sit, wait and watch. Whitman's days are numbered. Anything he attempts will fail. If we can't thwart him in the Senate, the courts or the bureaucracy, Admiral Black's people will help us. Now we wait," says DeWitt.
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Time: 1:00 AM
In a jubilant ballroom at the Vendome Hotel in Washington, the gathered Progressive Party faithful joyously celebrate a very good mid-term election night. While the House of Representatives is a reach too far, the party has scored several victories in the Senate.
Because of the concerted propaganda campaign on the part of the news media, the economic problems of the past two years of Republican administration, the lingering epidemic, now blamed on the Republicans, and holdover Democrats, now rebranded, the Progressive Party will retain its small but critical majority in the Senate and be a roadblock to any real solutions.
The confetti and balloons fly, the band blares away, the jubilant crowd claps in unison, a flack on stage futilely attempts to make an announcement. The media correspondents are having a collective wet dream. The party will go on all night.
Just as happy but with less noise, confetti and balloons, a group of insiders, the real rulers of the party, celebrate in the same luxury penthouse suite where only two years before the Democrat Party died and the Progressive Party was hatched.
The same group of people has reassembled but this time they are joined by former Maryland governor Robert Jennings, Art Goldberg, head of MegaMax Pictures, the large Hollywood entertainment conglomerate and owner of Continental Nationwide Broadcasting, Mike Bunker, former head of SWAT teams in Los Angeles and an expert in large scale police state tactics, Jane Shouter, chair of the Federal Reserve, Joe Bucci, head of the largest federal employee union, and Harry Rhodes of Massachusetts, majority leader in the Senate.
Governor Jennings is a red-faced, perpetually happy man, completely detached from reality. He smiles, jokes, slaps backs and does what he's told. He has the IQ of a gnat.
Mike Bunker's LA paramilitary squads were a gang of fun loving sadists, the secret police and occupying army envy of any regime. They were the street fighters who bullied, intimidated, terrorized, and groped the public. DeWitt looks forward to the day when she can employ his services at the national level.
Jane Shouter, chair of the Federal Reserve, is a small, nervous woman. She and her Open Market Committee do what they're told but she understands, all too well, the economic ruin the past ten years have caused. She knows, and is resigned to, a very bad place in economic history.
Senator Rhodes has the personality and ethics of a lizard. He's a cold blooded creature whose joys in life include padding his wallet and destroying the lives of others. With large, bug-like glasses, he seems more fitted to be an inmate at a place whose walls are padded and whose doors have coded exit locks.
On the large screen TV they watch the proceedings from the ballroom below. Ecstatically dancing about the room is Hillary DeWitt, one arm raised with a half full glass of scotch and soda and the other waiving an expensive, colorful scarf, the perfect image of an aging overweight drunk cheerleader. The rest clap in unison to her antics.
A moment later the TV coverage goes to commercial and she flops onto a couch, spilling about half of what's left of her drink.
"Oh naughty me, I've made a boo-boo," she mutters in a childlike voice. Harry Rhodes hands her a large table napkin, takes her drink, and places a fresh one on the table next to her.
"Thank you Harry. You always know I want more," she coos.
"Don't we all," quips George Salazar.
"Next stop, we take back the White House!" slurs DeWitt, holding her glass high.
They all burst into applause. She's their gal! Their ticket back to power.
Spring 2020
Once the Electoral College was fixed in favor of the Progressive Party, the presidential election of 2020 essentially became a one party affair. The only real contest is for the Progressive Party nomination.
The battle, stripped of its rhetoric, is essentially a welfare benefits bidding match, pandering to the consensus, shared by more than half the country, that the remainder owed them a living.
The campaign for the nomination, or more accurately, the auction, is couched in predictable airy, cloying slogans and focus group tested themes.
It is a crusade about sharing, working for the public good, villainizing the successful, class envy, racism, income inequality, the planet, and the children.
It is all swaddled in media consultant catch phrases. America’s voting age toddlers will swallow any euphemism in exchange for a bribe.
From a very limited field of contenders, the winning candidate is, not surprisingly, the progressive's progressive, Hillary DeWitt. Her campaign is based on an elaborate economic blueprint that calls for a comprehensive, collective public and private national economic policy, a partnership that will work for the true benefit of society, not just the few.
In her scheme, there will be systematic, scientific, central government coordination and management of the economy. The fruits of industry will be shared with the public in general and the dependent underclasses in particular.
In her progressive world view, the complexities of the modern economy require a unified, centralized coordinating hand rather than the wasteful, haphazard, unpredictable, free market based systems of the past.
Her campaign is a runaway success. Her opponents drop like flies.
It also helps that all her challengers' secret lives and affairs somehow leak to the press at just the right time, complements of Admiral Black.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Time: 10:00 AM
The crash of the gavel opening the 2020 Progressive Party Presidential Nominating Convention in Boston, Massachusetts barely causes a ripple among the chattering mobs milling about in excitement.
The gavel bangs three more times.
"The convention will please come to order," drawls the speaker repeatedly as he continues to bang the gavel.
After several minutes of futility, the chairman finally gives up and roars the over the speaker system, "All stand for the national anthem!"
Nothing will get a crowd of Progressives to sit faster than that. The hall erupts in jeers as the color guard troops down the central aisle to a booming, flourishing fanfare and march.
Once aligned across the front of the stage, the band breaks into the national anthem, the usual clenched fists appear. The few people still standing turn their backs to the stage.
When finished, the color guard marches smartly off and the chairman announces the invocation will be delivered by the Wiccan High Priestess of the New Haven Reformed Asmodean Coven, Her Unholiness Yama Shaitan.
The crowd jumps to it's feet and roars it's approval. The lights dim and a cloud of theatrical smoke erupts on the stage. A huge flaming
Wiccan pentagram flashes on the giant screen. Laser beams dart swiftly about the darkened hall.
Then a bright, thin green spot beam targets a diminutive black clad woman being carried to the podium on a sedan chair held aloft by six oiled, horned devil masked muscle men wearing nothing but tight leather jock straps. The band breaks into the Ave formosissima from the Carmina Burana. The crowd chants along in unison.
After a largely incoherent and difficult to hear address, the priestess looks up from her prepared notes and roars, "In the name of Lord Satan, I unbless this hall and declare these proceedings open."
The band beaks into a rhythmic Voodoo inspired dance number and the audience begins bouncing and gyrating uncontrollably. The priestess is hauled off and lights are turned back on. The smoke slowly clears.
In the VIP booth high above Warren Table says, "These people are fucking idiots!"
"Warren, honey, they're our people. We need them. And we don't want them to think very much," says DeWitt.
George Salazar comments, "They get nuttier every year. Are they all off their meds? This isn't going out over the air, is it?"
"No, the nets and cable went to a puff piece about the glorious history of the progressive movement right after the anthem. We knew this was coming. No sense letting anyone see it. Might raise questions. We have a lot of filler for the crazy parts yet to come. Don't worry, the public won't see any of it," says Bob Cutter.
"Well, that's a relief. So that means tomorrow's