Ah wuz mindin\u2019 mah own biznes, t\u2019uther day, sittin\u2019 on the porch, a\u2019swattin\u2019 flies and drinkin\u2019 peppermint tea (slightly amended), scratchin\u2019 the dog\u2019s head now and then when she put it in my lap (she\u2019s always lookin\u2019 for cornbread crumbs), and lettin\u2019 mah mind wander in the late afternoon sun.<\/p>\n
Thankin\u2019 back over the past few years, I settled into a reverie of the toomultoous events, and how thangs had changed.\u00a0 Twoudn\u2019t none of us believed it, if you\u2019da told us it was gonna turn out that way.<\/p>\n
We were havin\u2019 the normal protests by all sides of the political spektrum, which weren\u2019t all that unusual.\u00a0 But all of a sudden, three thangs happened the same week.<\/p>\n
First, the Chinese called in their debts and so crippled the US dollar that our economy collapsed, the stock market was shut down until further notice, and all the banks were closed.\u00a0 Those who got their life savings out of banks, soon found that the only thing those pieces of green paper were good for was startin\u2019 fires.\u00a0 Of course, the Chinese economy, and ever other country collapsed at the same time.<\/p>\n
The next thang wss the riots, and they were everwhere.\u00a0 They started as food riots in the cities, since most people didn\u2019t have a week\u2019s worth of food stored in their pantries.\u00a0 But those riots became race riots in the cities, and suddenly there were two hundred or more race wars ragin\u2019 in nearly every major city in America.\u00a0 It was a three-way war, and nobody was safe.\u00a0 Martial law was swift, and while often inadequate, restored order to most of the cities, with remainin\u2019 hot zones where nobody ventured.\u00a0 People demanded martial law, and they got it.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t always pretty, and books will be written on that subject.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The government was frantic.\u00a0 Everbody who was anybody headed to Washington to confer on what to do next.<\/p>\n
An\u2019 then the third thang happened, which wuz that somebody celebrated the 4th of July, while most of the guvmint leaders were conferring over the crisis, by popping off a nuclear firecracker in Lafayette Park, right across the street from 1600 Avenue K \u2013 the White House, for those of you who went to guvmint skools.\u00a0 They called it a \u201csuitcase bomb\u201d, whatever the heck that is.\u00a0 And we may never know who dunnit.<\/p>\n
Them were the three big thangs that changed the world, not just our country.\u00a0 It took about 48 hours to figure out who the president was gonna be, since so much of the line of succession wuz fairly well distributed across the District of Columbia (in small pieces).\u00a0 An\u2019 that\u2019s how the junior congressman from Tennessee, the Honorable Stonewall Forrest, became the President of the United States.\u00a0 If he hadn\u2019t been a-speakin\u2019 at a Civil War Reenactment, he would never have been president.\u00a0 (I\u2019ll bet there\u2019s a lesson to be learned in there somewhere.)<\/p>\n
Anyhow, they picked him up in a helicopter and got him to a military base and he set up shop from there.\u00a0 Seems the Pentagon and Congress had disappeared in the same display of fireworks, along with Congress and the Lincoln Museum, (so it weren\u2019t all bad).\u00a0 How many suitcases?\u00a0 We\u2019ll never know.\u00a0 Nobody has time to visit that zone, until it quits glowing in the dark.<\/p>\n
President Forrest wanted to know who dunnit, and his Intel told him it could have been the Russians, it could have been the Chinese, it could have been the Muzzies.\u00a0 So, being a man of action, he went ahead and had Moscow, Beijing and Mecca erased from the face of the earth, just for starters.\u00a0 A couple of generals objected on the grounds that it might start a war.\u00a0 President Forrest laughed so hard he couldn\u2019t breathe, then reduced them in rank to second lieutenants and sent them to Laredo, Texas.\u00a0 (He\u2019d spent a month there, one weekend, and it was the worst he could think of in a pinch.)\u00a0 It was amazin\u2019 how cooperative the military became after that.<\/p>\n
He then sent a message, another one, to Russia and China, offering peace.\u00a0 Of course they didn\u2019t trust him, but the remnants of their government were willing to accept a tenuous peace, if it really meant no more strikes from outer space.\u00a0 Immediately, the world calmed down.\u00a0 They trembled, but they stopped their petty wars and waited to see what would happen next.<\/p>\n
To stabilize the economy, President Forrest had his new Secretary of Labor, Pancho Rodriguez, call up the leading ten manufacturing companies and ask their CEO\u2019s if they would cooperate with the government and continue to operate on the credit of the new government.\u00a0 All ten said no.\u00a0 The next morning all ten were arrested, and three days later they were executed on public television.\u00a0 All manufacturing companies outdid one another to keep their production flowing.<\/p>\n
The burning question was how a company could pay its employees.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s simple,\u201d said the president.\u00a0 \u201cYou figure out what your products are worth, starting with what they were worth when this all started.\u00a0 You produce a widget worth a dollar (your wholesale price before the Collapse) and you write out deposit slip for one dollar, and you take it to your bank, which WILL accept it.\u00a0 You pay your employees from bank notes from that local bank.\u00a0 This is an interim solution.\u00a0 If no one buys widgets, then you will have to make something someone wants, or you will shut\u2019er down.\u00a0 If there\u2019s a huge demand for widgets, then you may allow your price to reach its level, as determined by Supply and Demand.\u201d<\/p>\n