Red and Blue (Short fiction)

 

I woke up to find Sheila Nellis, my old high school crush from decades ago, standing in my bedroom in a red sling bikini and six inch Lucite heels.

At first I thought I was dreaming because she still had her braces and her hair was in a Karen bob that nobody under 50 had anymore. And I would never admit even anonymously online that I found Karen bobs and braces to be as sexy as a bikini.

And Sheila was happily married and lived two states away.

She smiled with a mouth full of metal. "Do I have your attention, Seth?"

"Sure."

Suddenly she was wearing a black turtleneck and jeans.

"You already know that I'm not Sheila. But you aren't dreaming either. I'm more real than you are. Say My name."

"You're Satan."

She smiled. "For as long as I've known him, he has never admitted to anyone who he is. Try again."

"You're an angel."

"That's not a name, and you're way off. I'll give one hint, and one more guess. There is only one of Me."

The way she enunciated that first person pronoun was the final proof.

"You are God,’ I told Her.

She nodded.

“Sorry that I was an atheist since high school.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t need you to believe until now.”

“Why do you allow bad things to happen to good people?”

She wagged a finger, and Her voice reached a deep baritone, deeper than any man I’ve met “I decide what is good and what is bad. I decide what is right and what is wrong. And I decide who is good, who is evil, and all shades of grey in between. And I allow you all to have your own opinions based on the very limited information available to you. But now that I’ve established my identity, I have orders for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Of course. In one week, all humans with Internet access will be required to vote red or blue. Everyone who votes red will live. Everyone who votes blue will only live if more than 50% of all votes are for blue. You will have from noon to 1pm local time to decide. I’m going to spare indigenous tribes, coma patients, and infants, but anyone with their own email account must participate or die.”

“This has to be an elaborate prank, but it’s pretty dumb too. Nobody cares about that meme anymore.”

“I was inspired by the meme to impose the test. Eight billion people around the world are getting the same message as you, Seth. Good luck.”

She vanished. I assumed it was a dream until my mother called. I answered.

“You saw Him too, right?” she asked.

“I did,” I admitted.

“Good. I thought we were all losing our minds in the hospice. The staff saw Him too, but I thought they were just humoring us. What did He look like to you?”

“He looked like a woman.” I was never going to tell anyone about the bikini.

“Well He looked like that one actor who played Him in that movie. I can’t remember the movie but do you know the one I’m talking about?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Well my friends and I are all voting blue. We’re just about ready to go. God’s calling us all home, so we’re all getting on the bus. But you’re my only son, so promise me you’ll vote red, okay? You have a lot of years ahead of you.”

It was the most sense she made in decades. In a way, that was more miraculous than the divine revelation in my bedroom.

My phone made an irritating beep even though I always kept it set to vibrate.

IMPORTANT PRESIDENTIAL ANNOUNCEMENT, said the notification. Then a video started playing even though I didn’t click anything. The President was standing behind a podium. He was in his suit, but his hair was a mess and he was ghostly pale.

He sighed, then just started talking.

“Look, I saw Him, my Wife saw Him, so we need to talk about this. I’ve agreed to issue an executive order for the development of an official, divinely ordained voting app. All Americans and visiting foreign nationals will be strongly urged to use it to make their selection next Saturday.”

He swallowed hard, then went on “As your commander in chief, I fully support every American’s right to make their own choices…but I’m choosing blue. It’s pretty clear that I have a lot to answer for, so I’m just not going to make it worse for myself. “

I wrote my own post to my 655 followers. “The President is voting blue. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Let’s vote red and save ourselves.”

I scrolled down to find a video from a verified legacy media account. A pastor of a Texas megachurch declared that he and his followers would all voted blue in order to leave this wicked world behind.

My original post got flamed and ratioed. Three likes and 6K comments. I was declared to be a selfish baby killer, even though God had already said infants were exempt.

So I made a video.

“Folks, it comes down to this. You are NOT going to tell your kids to vote blue. And you shouldn’t want them to be orphans, so you’re going to vote red too. But you want to look like self-important martyrs. Like you’re so special because you want to die and the rest of us want to live.”

My video got taken down and my account got suspended. I shrugged. Soon either all those #VoteBlue clowns would either be dead or exposed as hypocrites.

The Pope issued a statement insisting that he personally would vote blue, but his designated successor would vote red. He also urged all pregnant women to vote red.

Nobody was talking about anything else beside Saturday’s vote. The weekly episode of World War Woke had a darker tone as Toxic Teddy interviewed B-list popstar Daisy Short. The interviewed was held remotely; both sat wearing headphones in their own personal studios  with YouTube plaques in the background.

“I’m still processing this whole existence of God thing,” said Toxic Teddy. “I think it says a lot about the way our culture is headed by His appearance. I think that He has had it with all these virtue signaling hypothetical questions. So what if you would take a bullet for the President or the Pope or Bernie Sanders. That isn’t your job. So what if you would give up your seat in a lifeboat for you wife. You never take her on a cruise anyway.”

“I think God wants us all to vote blue as a show of unity,” said Daisy Short.

“Toxic Teddy held up a hand. “Consider this. God gave us free will. He gave us the power to choose. If He just wanted us to die, He’d just kill us. But now He is giving us a choice. We can choose to live by voting red or choose to die by voting blue. People who are suffering will choose blue. If all these healthy do-gooders get what they say they want and most people choose blue, then they are denying a merciful end to thousands of terminally ill patients. On the hand, the results could be even more disastrous and billions of healthy people will die in one weekend.”

“Is that really a bad thing though?” asked Daisy.

“Excuse me?”

“Consider that our planet is dying. We won’t do the right thing and cut back on carbon emissions. It’s not even a matter of limited resources; we are choking to death on our own waste. So God is stepping in, and putting the solution in front of our faces. Everyone in the Global North should choose blue, and everyone in the Global South should choose red.”

Toxic Teddy snorted. “No! Look, the way the original red-blue question was framed, you had to make the choice instantly, without communicating with anyone else. But here, we’ve been given a whole week to talk it out and make the right choice. And the right choice is red! Folks, I apologize. I agreed to interview Daisy a month ago, before all this God thing happened.”

“Seriously, Teddy, people like YOU are what’s wrong with this world!”

“Okay, you’re all going to be dead after Saturday, so I don’t need to care about what you think. Goodbye.”

The next day, a #ChooseBlue activist posted a video of himself beheading Toxic Teddy with a machete. I couldn’t tell if it was AI or not, but the safety algorithms were allowing all sorts of content like that.

Finally, Saturday came along. I voted red. I went online and saw dozens videos of people filming themselves voting. There were way more people advertising their choice to vote blue, but there were still a few reassuring me that red was the right choice.

After the voting was done, my phone started playing a video.

It showed a glowing orb  hovering behind the president’s podium.

“Yeah, he died. You need to know that he lied about voting blue, and he actually voted red. And then he had a heart attack. I didn’t kill him. In fact, I’m not killing anyone, even thought the tally was 48% blue. This was just a test, like that time I told Abraham to kill Isaac. Yes, that really happened, but I just wanted to see what people would do. Please just be good to each other. See you in a few thousand years or so.”

 

We had a new President and we all moved on with our lives. After a couple days, the entire Internet had been scrubbed of content related to the red/blue vote. Nobody I’ve talked to seemed to acknowledge that it happened. There were numerous conspiracy theories about the old  President being poisoned, but people rarely about the glowing orb or the voting. When it is brought up, people will dismiss it at an elaborate prank.

But I KNOW it happened. Because it changed me. Because I now believe in God, and I know He hates hypothetical scenarios. And I am making this my entire personality from now on.

The TMI War

 

This war in Iran will be a way different experience for those watching at home. This would be the first major American conflict where the other country’s civilian population has smartphones. We are going to see things that Trump doesn’t want us to see, the Ayatollah doesn’t want us to see, and that we don’t want to see. If you are already opposed to this war, it’s okay to take a mental health break from the Internet. There will be violent images that will trickle past any filters that Zuck and Musk can put up.

A lot of people aren’t going to be ready for what they are about to see. I’m used to seeing gory pictures from EMT classes, and I still might not be ready. We might get HD quality images of atrocities in our timelines. You might want an image blocker extension for your browser if you have to use the Internet after the next ground invasion.

Still, many people will look at their phones and see pictures and videos of dead and dying soldiers and civilians. Trump will not be able to hide how hideous war is, and he never had any idea of the hideousness that he himself hid from. (He was right to hide from the Vietnam War, his participation would have served no purpose.)

We might reach a point where too much information about war makes it politically unthinkable. This will bother the kind of man who thinks of war as being good for a society. The kind of man who insists that “hard times create strong men; strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” As to prove their point, they elected the softest man ever to stand behind a podium and went on to create the hardest of times in the post Cold War era. Do they propose to break the cycle by ending prosperity forever to ensure that every generation of men will be hard?

Some of us have spent the past four years watching what Ukrainian drones can do to Russian soldiers and vehicles. No leader will be able to start a war again unless he’s willing to let his voters watch that happen to his soldiers. Maybe that will be what creates a new cycle of peace.

Seriously, the draft is dead.

So people who know me know that I voted for Harris, and I think that Trump and Hegseth should be impeached. They should have been impeached for blowing up Venezuelan boats last year, and they definitely should be impeached for blowing Iranian school girls this year.

 But I need you all to understand that you don't have to worry about a draft. You might WANT to worry about a draft, because that places everything out of your control. It won't be your fault if you end up in the military, it won't be your fault if you get killed, but if you survive this war you didn't want and have some cool scars to show to potential sex partners, well that's still way more fun to think about than how to pay your bills next month, isn't it?

Young people should be worried about things like school, employment, and the upcoming midterm election. You still have control over the small things like your grades, job performance and how clean your room is. I think you should get involved in the upcoming midterm elections, but even if you refuse to get involved, it would still benefit you to understand how politics works.

Trump can be unpredictable. We can't be sure what he'll do next, but he is still constrained by certain realities. He isn't Thanos or anything like that. Legally he needs Congress to reinstate conscription and actually start drafting people. Even if he tried just signing an executive order, he'd still need Congress to fund a draft unless he intended to pay for it out of his own pocket.

Here are all the reasons why you won't be drafted.

1. The Pentagon doesn't want to draft you. Sorry, but you just don't have any skills that they are looking for. Your Call of Duty K/D ratio isn't going to cut it. The military would happily teach you those skills, but how well are you going to learn them if you don't want to be there in the first place? Historically, conscripts just didn't perform as well as volunteers. A draft is only useful if a military wants lots of infantry and doesn't care about how good they'll be in the field. Modern militaries care more about quality than quantity.

2. Congress doesn't want to draft you. This is a midterm election year. All members of the House and one third of the Senate are up for re-election and they know this is an unpopular war. They are funding it anyway, and they hope that their voters will care about things other than the war. A draft will make the war a much more important issue. It will make it harder to ignore the war. That is a big reason why they are making registration automatic, so that you won't have to think about it. As an American civilian, you can potentially lead a prosperous life without thinking about the Iran war at all. You shouldn't do that, but Congress is committed to giving you that option.

3. Trump's base doesn't want a draft. Seriously, who wants to be drafted? If you want to be in the military, you talk to a recruiter. You don't sit around the house and wait for them to make you go. So there are Trump supporters in the military, Trump supporters who would join but can't, and Trump supporters who just would rather finish college and work for Daddy than go serve overseas. And they don't see this as hypocritical. See, you have a fire department in your town. Do you support your fire department? Why don't you sign up to be a firefighter? Or maybe you are a firefighter. Do you support curbside trash pickup? Why don't you become a garbage collector? Because even if you think a war is just, the reality is that most people won't have to fight, and won't even be allowed to go even if that's what they want. And hawks tend to grasp this more than my fellow doves.

I'm a Democrat today, but I was a Libertarian for a long time. I've posted multiple opinion pieces calling for an abolition of Selective Service. When I've done so, I've gotten more kudos from Republicans, and more pushback for other Democrats. Which is fine; I'm an old fart and this isn't a dealbreaker issue for me. For better or for worse, many Republicans don't have any problem supporting a war without participating directly. For them, it's like my point about the fire departments. Also, I think they grasp that a draft would result in lots of left wing young people receiving arms and military training, and I think they could do without that.

4. Trump's billionaire donors don't want a draft. Of course they are too old and rich to worry about themselves getting drafted, but they still don't want you getting drafted either. Of course they don't care about you as a person, but they want to be able to exploit your labor and sell you crap. Which is easier to do if you are in the US and not in the Middle East.

In fact, it was laissez faire economist Milton Friedman who convinced Nixon to end the draft in the 1970's. So any movement to bring back a draft is going to have a lot of right wing money fighting it.

The draft is dead.

 

The draft is dead. This death might be permanent.

By the end of this year, young men turning 18 will no longer have to register with Selective Service. Instead, registration will be automatic. Generation X had to register at the post office. Millenials and Gen Z could register online. Gen Alpha won’t have to do anything special, and many probably won’t know that they are registered.

Getting rid of Selective Service has been a pet issue of mine. On the one hand, I’m glad that young men won’t be penalized for noncompliance. On the other hand, conscription may be even less of a credible possibility for young men, so that’s one less of a reason for them to pay attention to politics.

It might seem like poetic justice for Nick Fuentes and Barron Trump to be drafted into the army and sent straight to the front. But that’s just now how the leopards choose which faces to eat. Fuel prices will go up, the economy will suck, and Iran might retaliate in ways we can’t predict. This war will suck for all of us and not just the people who voted for Trump. It’s not fair and it can’t be made fair, but that is how it is.

Conscription is an institution created by warmongers for the purpose of waging war. Peace activists should oppose the draft as a tool of war. We should refrain from saying “draft Barron Trump” because nobody should ever be drafted. No American should be forced to fight in Iran, because no American should be allowed to fight in Iran.

The draft and the current war have always been interconnected, but distinct issues. During the Iraq War, there were pro-war people who were anti-draft, and anti-war people who were pro-draft. Both sides understood the draft would make the war even more unpopular. But a young man who does not want to be drafted might be more motivated to support an anti-draft hawk candidate over a pro-draft dove. Because the issue of the war itself is more important than the draft in particular, we should resist the temptation to propose bringing back the draft. Yes, the thought of a drill instructor yelling at a squad of alt-right incels crawling through the mud is immensely gratifying. But fantasies often make for bad public policy.

For that matter, I refuse to call Donald Trump a “draft dodger”. He is a demented sexual predator who either belongs in a prison or a memory care ward, but at no point in his life did he belong in the Army. Avoiding military service was one of the best choices that he made.

The draft is dead, because not even warmongers have a use for it anymore. We can carry on the fight against dumb wars without it. We can talk about American military casualties, Iranian civilian casualties, higher gas prices, and higher inflation. We can even finally kill the blood-soaked myth that war is good for the economy. But let’s not get distracted by a draft that has no chance of happening.

History blindness.

 There are people who lack a sense of history. I'm not even talking about a lack of education: somebody who only watches TV can still grasp that there was a time before TV when people had to watch plays instead. I'm talking about people who don't seem to grasp that an era ended before a different era began.

Here are examples that I have observed from just talking to people. These are adults who are at least mentally sound enough to have gainful employment, and did not seem at all sarcastic when they said what they said.

1. I joked to a coworker that a different coworker was so old that she had a Confederate birth certificate. He looked at me and said "Really?" as if I was telling him a weird fact instead of a joke. A high school graduate should know when the Civil War happened and the limits of a human lifespan.

2. I was chatting with a coworker who was a Vietnam veteran. He told that he shook hands with a general and got rifle grease on his hands, and the general just laughed it off. I asked him if it was General Westmoreland. The vet confirmed that it was Westmoreland. Another coworker overhears this, looks at me, and asks "How old are you?" with a confused look on his face.

3. At a party, I was talking about a place that I used to work at. At that location, uranium was rolled into bars for the Manhattan Project, and workers had no idea that these bars were being used to develop the first atomic bombs. A woman asked "But you didn't have anything to do with that, right?"

4. A friend of mine was telling me about a guy in her gaming group. She said that he was in his 50's and had served in World War 2. This is especially egregious because I met her grandfather who raised her and had actually served in the Battle of the Bulge.

Ruthlessness doesn't work

 So I see a lot of posts on Threads where MAGAhadeen are celebrating the destruction of boats. A couple thoughts. 

1. The war on drugs is an expensive mistake. If you actually care about saving addicts from themselves, focus on treatment and harm reduction, not incarceration.

2. Sinking a boat is only justified if that boat shoots at our people. Boats that try to run can be incapacitated by shooting the engine.

3. The only way to tell if a boat is a drug boat or a fishing boat is to board and inspect it. Because any commercially produced boat can carry both drugs and fishing gear. If you think a boat has illegal goods, you can signal it to stop, shoot the engine if it tries to run, arrest the crew, and seize the boat and its cargo.

4. Ruthlessness is a bad strategy in general. Imagine if a future Democratic president issued an executive order that required police to shoot anyone flying a Confederate flag or wearing a swastika. Most of these people cheering for exploding boats might squawk at the idea of 21st century Nazis being shot in the street. Because they already know where that slippery slope is headed: if I say that all fascists should be shot and I get to decide who is a fascist, then I can just say that anyone who says negative things about me is a fascist.

There are real world examples that prove my point. Germans who surrendered to the Soviets could expect to be sent to a gulag and possibly freeze or starve to death. Germans who surrendered to Americans could expect to sent to a camp in the US and get fed and even take correspondence courses for credit with German universities. So of course they fought hardest against the Red Army, and that's a huge reason why the USSR suffered more military casualties than all of the Axis powers combined. So even when you are fighting the most evil regime in history, it still pays to show compassion to men who can't fight back anymore.

My theory on Trump's endgame

One of the most famous line from Game of Thrones is "Tell Cersei I want her to know it was me."

If you haven't watched the show, Lady Olenna knows she's going to die anyway, so she admits to killing King Joffery, the least popular character on the show. This is relevant, because there are things that people do that they have to keep a secret, but still really want to brag about. They want for a time that is right, even if they have to wait for their deathbed.

My theory is that not only is Donald Trump a pedophile, he is proud of it and want to tell everyone about it.

Remember the 80's and 90's? Donald Trump used to. Back then, if you were gay, you often had to hide it, depending on where you live and the people around you. There were states where two men having sex could be charged with sodomy if they got caught. As a straight person, I would speak out against this injustice and people would accuse me of being gay. Other straight people probably felt the same way, but they didn't speak out because they feared risking their reputations and livelihoods. 

One argument against LGBTQ acceptance was that it would lead to a slippery slope: if gay people were accepted by society, why not accept adults who molest kids? Today, most of us believe that what consenting adult do is their own business, but children cannot consent to sexual acts.

But if a pedophile doesn't view his actions as wrong, then he might hope that his lifestyle might gain mainstream acceptance. He might test to see how other people feel about it by dropping hints. For example, he might talk about pardoning another pedophile, like Ghislaine Maxwell, and seeing how people would react to that.

And if people still don't like it, what could they do about it? Donald Trump could take a gun and sex with a little girl on Fifth Avenue and there is nothing we could about it besides impeach him again. Still, we should impeach him again.