The Gun Games
By: Duke Kell
The Gun Games, By Duke Kell
Copyright © 2016 by Two Ton Productions.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
***
Freedom Files
Dax and Abby, 2091
I woke up in the morning with the book on my face. I re-read the letter and decided to give it a few days before trying to come up with a good set of talking points for my date with Abby. Friday came faster than I expected and the workload in my other classes was very heavy that week, so I decided to head into the date blind. I had never done anything in my life without planning it out first. A whole life, days, future all planned, until that week when it finally hit me, I was free.
There was a strange calm I felt as I walked down the street toward the café. The people walking by danced in bubbles of their own worlds, some lost in thought, some smiling, and a couple holding hands. A group of four men on the corner sang an echoing song that pierced my soul and made my body want to wiggle. I entered the café and saw Abby sitting in our same booth, so I hurried over and slid into the bench seat.
“Good afternoon.” I said.
She smiled, saying, “I got here a little early and saw the same booth, so I went ahead and sat. I hope you don’t mind.”
We talked about our week, ordered some lunch and dove headfirst into The Surveillance State. We talked, laughed, and ate an appetizer, lunch and a small desert, before the waiter came over and told us that there were two open seats at the bar. Apparently three hours is the longest they let one party stay at a table. We decided to move across the street, to the park where we found a bench under a large canopy of a tree.
“I don’t know, but I think they stopped teaching philosophy a as construct of understanding how we interact with each other,” I said.
She shook her head, saying, “I just don’t understand how the people who called themselves Christian could let themselves and their religion be used to destroy the only country that allowed them to flourish. I don’t care what they were taught at school, but if you read the words of their savior Jesus Christ, it is pretty clear that nearly everything the twenty first century Christians voted for was in direct conflict with his views.” She shook her head.
“Have you heard the term ‘Dominionism’?” I asked.
“No.”
“‘Dominionism’ was a theocratic theory that heterosexual men had been given the duty by god to have dominion (control) over secular society by controlling both political and cultural institutions,” I said.
She shrugged her shoulders, “So.”
“So, when Christians gave up on Christianity and began believing in a new religion called Dominionism they were no longer Christians. Dominionists began pushing a revised history to suit only their very narrow view of the world. They gave up on reason which was and is the backbone of freedom. They denied the things around them in the natural world in favor of dogma, because it was easier to trust the silver-tongued politicians than their own eyes. This is why Christianity was tied to the corrupt state that arose behind their blind allegiance and why they didn’t realize it till it was too late.”
“Hun, I never thought about it that way.”
“I’d like to take credit for it, but actually President Verdusco said something similar in an article a couple of years ago. She was under attack for practicing a form of Christianity that had been passed down in her family for generations.”
She nodded, “I do remember that. She said her family used a Jeffersonian Bible and that she was Unitarian/Deist like many of the founding fathers, including Jefferson and Franklin.”
“Yes, that’s the one, she quoted Jefferson and Franklin in defense of her position. I find it interesting that the president was using the same defences as the founders, but against an overwhelming belief in atheism, while both founders were defending their position against an overwhelming belief in an orthodox view of Christianity.”
“Hold on, let’s find those quotes.”
She pressed a button on her wrist watch and began to type in midair. When she stopped a hologram with the Google search engine popped up with hundreds of links to the quotes.
“Here is the quote she used for Jefferson,” she said, pointing at a letter Jefferson wrote to William Short, then reading it out loud, “The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, (the immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy.) Invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him.”
I jumped right in, stating, “She’s hinting that the form of Christianity she follows is one of reverence for the revolutionary moralist, not the one of divinity that was used to justify the twenty-first century executions of the homosexuals, illegal immigrants, Muslims, and in the end African Americans.”
“Let’s look at the Franklin quote before we jump to any conclusions.” She said.
She moved her fingers and a new list popped up. She began to read a 1790s letter to Ezra Stiles, “"You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall endeavor in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His providence. That He ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render Him is doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity.”
She stopped to look up at me, “It sounds like you’re right. She is explaining that what she is following is based on reason and she won’t let superstition control her policies.”
“How did we get on this subject?” I asked.
She laughed, placed her hand on my knee and said, “To be honest, I have no idea. It’s just so addictive, critically thinking about life, existence, everything. Do you remember what it was like in the corporate days? I never dared utter a word to anyone about the past, religion, any of this, but now, here with you, it’s as if, I don’t know.”
She blushed, leaned in and kissed me on the cheek pulled back and said. “I’m so glad I have someone to experience this with.”
We finished up the night with a walk to her door and another kiss, and we talked on the phone every day between then and class.
***
Freedom Files
Class 4
University of California, Berkeley, 2091
When President Verdusco began to speak, Abby squeezed my hand, gave me a smile, and whispered, “Good luck.”
We made a bet to see who could get called on the most for today’s class. I was prepared, but in all honesty I wasn’t sure I wanted to win because the winner had to make dinner for the other and let’s face it I’m not
a whiz in the kitchen.
“Good afternoon,” the President said.
Everyone in the room repeated, “Good afternoon,” as if they had been coached to do so, but I assure you we hadn’t.
“The Surveillance State, hit the second Constitutional Congress in the face of what they thought they could do. A large group of people were adamant that we keep intact the surveillance we had become accustomed to under corporate control, but this book,” she held it up, “turned the tide. Who can tell me why?”
Abby got the first point when she was called on. “The book illustrates the dangers inherent to any system that doesn’t protect the privacy of citizens. Lincoln said, ‘If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.’ His words are still applicable today. There can be no half measure in a country where freedom is its creed. When we decided to revisit the original constitution, it was clear that the erosion of its promise had been systematically legislating away by people wanting to protect us from ourselves. In the early twenty first century, the passing of the Patriot Act and the infiltration of the military industrial complex into all aspects of the politics led directly to WWIII in the Middle East and was ultimately the last straw that allowed the corporations to finish their takeover of the world,” Abby said, then sat down.
“Excellent. Anyone else?” President Verduzco asked.
She called on me. I explained, “Yes, Samuel Adams said, ‘Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.’ Those of us who lived during the corporate years know all too well what happens when the erosion of privacy is complete and that is tyranny. I for instance have always wanted to study political science but because I did poorly on a test at age eleven, I was relegated to a world where verbalizing anything other than complete compliance was considered an act of treason punishable by death.”
I sat down and I could hear the whispers and gasps as the students who never had to live in such a divisive world.
“I remember those days very well,” the President said. “And let me tell you, you are both right. The Surveillance State was the last work of a man who should get a great deal of credit for stoking the flames of resistance that eventually would become the army that took back America, Michael de Garcia. As you know, he was also part of The Weed War and The Cancer Culture. His maturation demonstrated to us that despite what we were told by the corporation, the people of the United States didn’t all go willingly. In fact the more we dug, the more we realized that the way de Garcia was treated was far from an isolated incident. The mountains of information the citizens allowed the government to collect became the evidence used to carry out the great purges that wiped out fifty percent of the population. That was genocide.”
She paused, looked out into the eyes of crowd with a cold, steely stare, and then continued.
“Think about the fact that they killed nearly five billion people. They used the people against themselves, and a systematic failure of nearly every institution can be directly linked to corruption through greed. The 9-11 terrorist attack on the United States brought forth a new religion of sorts, American exceptionalism, Dominionism, Christianity and capitalism became one entity. The power-hungry politicians and money-hungry news profiteers wove this new tapestry of belief. They used fear to coerce the followers of this new belief to vehemently defend the takeover of their own country and ultimately genocide. The Muslims of the Middle East were the first to feel the wrath, after the 2016 election handed another corporatist the reins to the country. The invasion of Iran in 2018 sparked WWIII which gave the eugenicists their war. Can anyone expand on the role eugenics played on the destruction of the United States and how it pertains to The Surveillance State?”
Abby and I both shot our hands up, but someone behind us was called on.
A young man I had never noticed before stood tall and said, “The same moneyed interests that financed all sides in WWII also funded WWIII and the evidence points that they were an elite group of bankers and industrialists who believed in eugenics. They also believed that in order to keep their way of life viable the earth’s population should be managed to never exceed 500,000,000, which can be seen on the Georgia guide stones. They duped the world’s population into killing those who didn’t fall into their narrow view of an acceptable consumer citizen. Independence from the global market was seen as a direct violation punishable by death. The surveillance state gave them the ability to find and destroy all who didn’t agree. We now know that they were wrong. It wasn’t the size of the population that caused the problem. It was a failure to use the science they had available to them, improper use of our natural resources, and a basic breakdown of the understanding of self-reliance and local production. We now understand that sustainable energy and responsible living that creates a positive footprint on our environment is attainable. We also have the technology that has broken our dependence on big agriculture, livestock production, and food transportation. Those in the most barren of locations can now enjoy a fruitful existence thanks largely to early twenty first century NASA developments of eco-domes to be used on the moon and Mars where there is no viable natural habitat. So why didn’t they use those then? Because the eugenicists couldn’t figure out a way to keep the power over the world if the economic model they followed was disrupted. They were right! Our new system gives all the advantage to small local business and has shifted the power back to the people.”
“Excellent answer, Mr. Nielson,” President Verduzco said. “Now can anyone tell me why the people didn’t revolt when they learned about the surveillance?”
Abby and I were skipped over again this time.
A young man in the front stood up and began, “Edmund Burke said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ That’s why.”
He sat down very full of himself.
“That’s definitely part of it, but this is a complicated matter. Does anyone want to further his thought?”
Again we were skipped, and in all fairness we had rarely seen her address any student more than once in a class as she seemed to enjoy spreading out to and engaging each student in the room. This time it was a girl standing in the back.
The girl stepped out of the darkness and said, “Some of the people were duped, some were accomplices, and some were rebels. I could go on. The point is, on the eve of the biggest election in world history the two parties produced candidates who were closely tied to the banks and to the military industrial complex. Call them corporatists, fascists, elite, plutocrats, whatever the meme, and you’ll still find that the differences between the two parties were negligible to the men in charge as long as they all agreed to policing the world so banks and corporations could exploit it. At least some of the fault should be placed on the party system that was employed at that time.”
The President added, “Yes, this is why we added the banning of political parties section to the anti-corruption amendment which has also been called the ‘Money out of politics’ amendment. Section 2 of the 29th amendment states, ‘The history of political parties have shown us that they have no obligation to anything more than political ideology and therefore often act in the interest of the party over the interest of the people and are no longer a viable part of our democracy.’ Good, we have apathy, corrupt political parties, and what else?
I was skipped over for the person right next to me, which stung a little because for a moment I thought it was me, before the young man spoke.
“A populous of disengaged materialists who only cared about themselves, justified their actions in all kinds of ways, but it would be disingenuous to suggest that they weren’t somehow complicit in not only the genocide of nearly every culture in the world, but they nearly destroyed the planet,” he said.
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“Apathy, corruption, selfishness, what else?” asked the president.
This time she called on Abby, who smiled at me, then turned her gaze toward the President and said, “Lack of civic virtue. In fact in the late twentieth century, one of the party’s whole political platform was built on dismantling the government. Phillip E Johnson wrote 'a constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.’ And John Adams wrote ‘When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled… the republic is lost in essence. Though it may still exist in form.’ It’s pretty clear that they failed to cultivate an educated citizenry that was capable of understanding civic virtue.”
“Well put,” The president said. “Apathy, corruption, selfishness, lack of civic virtue and education, and I’ll add greed, were the main excuses and problems of the time. The people didn’t revolt because they were comfortable and it was easier not to. Each had a reason to stay silent. Despite the founders calling for revolt if the government ever went beyond the will of the people, they sat back and allowed it to happen. In the case of the surveillance state, they voted for it and defended it to the death.
“We added three sections to the new amendments of constitution based on this book. We discussed the banning of political parties in section 2 of 29 already. We also discussed the privacy issues in Section 2 and 3 of the 30thamendment after we read The Weed War. Section 2 prohibits the government from spying on its citizens and Section 3 prohibits corporations and individuals from spying on other people.”
She looked up, and said, “Looks like we’re out of time. Please read The Gun Games for the next session and be prepared for a lively debate as I can tell you the 2nd amendment was the only original amendment that got all the attention. We spent nearly a month debating its validity. The next class will clear up some of the misconceptions on my stance as well.”
We stayed after class to discuss the arrangements of the dinner I was supposed to cook for her, but Abby informed me that she had cooked me dinner already and didn’t care about the bet. I was so relieved not to have to cook that I gave her a huge hug. We packed up quickly and headed to her house where she said she had a crockpot of chile waiting.