299 Days: The Preparation

Chapter 33 Conditions Worsen

That summer, things changed quickly. In just a few days, everything that had been building suddenly erupted.

As bad as things were in Washington State, they were worse in California. Their spending was totally out of control. The state had so much debt that it couldn’t possibly pay it back.

Finally, reality caught up with the utopians running California. When their latest bond issue didn’t sell, it was time, finally, to make cuts.

A third of state employees were laid off. Half of the prisoners were released. They tried to limit the releases to “non-violent” criminals. But many of them went on horrific rampages. Of course, gun ownership was restricted in California, so the criminals didn’t have to worry much about decent people stopping them. Too many Californians found out that the ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds was a real problem when four gang bangers were busting down their front door. Those extra few rounds would have come in handy.

There weren’t many police around, either. Many had been laid off. It was a summer of crime and disbelief in California. Most people were so oblivious in California that they had no idea what was coming.

One of the biggest shocks was when the welfare payments stopped coming. With the massive budget cuts, many people lost welfare all together and those who still got it had much less on their prepaid debit cards. The well-organized welfare groups started massive protests, and many turned violent. Push-and-shoving kind of violence, maybe a few broken windows at government buildings. That was all (in the beginning).

Grant was glued to the TV watching the California protests. Everything was playing out exactly like he thought it would, which scared him because that meant he knew what else was coming.

It was happening so fast and people were so glued to the TV. Many went to work one day and so much happened by the time they got home that they felt like they couldn’t keep up with the all the new events.

Grant didn’t even try to talk to Lisa about all this. She might get mad at him again for being an alarmist. Besides, he didn’t want to “overreact” and lose credibility with her. The California crisis was the elephant in the room in the Matson household. Grant would turn off the TV when Lisa was around. He didn’t want her to know how closely he was following it.

He could watch all the TV he wanted at WAB. No one was getting any work done there. People at the office just stood in front of the TV in Tom’s office. They were in shock. While they knew the spending was unsustainable, they still couldn’t believe a collapse appeared to be happening. WAB people didn’t want to say out loud what they feared. It was weird. It was the biggest news since 9/11, but no one was talking about it much. They were trying to appear calm. They weren’t doing anything to prepare; they were just sitting there in shock.

Watching the news at WAB, Grant looked at crowds of welfare protestors on TV. Quite a few of the protesters were minorities. Many of them seemed to be here illegally. Some people were tempted to make this a racial thing.

But the racists were wrong. Grant thought about the whole country, not just California. He realized that just about everyone, including whites was dependent on the government one way or the other. Contractors needed government projects. People of all colors were on “disability” and didn’t work. Accountants, most of whom were white, made a living by navigating clients through the bizarre maze of the state tax laws. Engineers were hired to prepare useless environmental impact statements for every little construction or home remodeling project. Farmers collected subsidies. And on, and on, and on.

Not only were the racists wrong, they were part of the problem. The government benefitted by having everyone divided. It wasn’t a conspiracy; it was simple politics. Racists, of all colors, fit right into the agenda of dividing people. When the Mexicans were mad at the whites, and the whites were mad at the blacks, who hated the Asians, everyone became distracted by their racial grievances. The color of a person’s skin was so much easier to focus on rather than complex things like baseline budgeting or unfunded pension liabilities. It was much easier for one group to say to their people, “Hate those other people.” Politicians and fear mongers could use hate to motivate people to keep fighting each other. It wasn’t just white racists, of course. Mexican and black racists very effectively stirred up hate against whites. By fighting each other, people weren’t looking at the big picture. They were overlooking the out-of-control spending and taking the easy way out of everything. When things got hard, there were new government programs, and new cushy government jobs. People were taking the easy way out so much that they nearly quit being Americans. It was almost like the country decided it didn’t want to be America anymore.

Some portion of the population wanted America back. They wanted to work hard and keep most of what they earned. They wanted to be free and were willing to take the bumps in life that came from being free. They wanted to be self-reliant and live honorably. They were the Patriots.

Patriots all across the country were coming out of their shells.

Normally, they were a very quiet group of hard-working people who were busy raising families; however the Patriots realized their country was very close to disappearing. They woke up. Fast.

One of the things that woke them up was the fact that Mexico was starting up a full-scale civil war. The drug lords who had been effectively running the border areas of Mexico decided to take over the whole corrupt country. It was bloody. Thousands of killings; many of them beheadings. The drug gangs were extremely sophisticated armies. They were better armed than the Mexican Army (actually, the Mexican Army sold most of its arms to the drug lords so they had the same weaponry). The drug gangs were ruthless and had something the Mexican Army did not: sacks of money. By selling their product in the U.S., the drug gangs could raise billions of dollars, which buys a lot of friends, such as entire Mexican Army units that would defect.

The drug gang leaders were well read. They knew from Mao’s writings on guerilla warfare that they had to effectively administer the areas they took over. The Mexican government was a corrupt joke. It couldn’t keep the electricity and water running. The drug gangs did. They would behead anyone who got in their way. If they ordered that the people would have electricity and water, and heads would literally roll if that didn’t happen.

Taking care of basic government services like utilities didn’t mean the drug gangs were nice. They were vicious animals, pure evil. But, they were effective at governing and they had a lot of support from the population. Whether it was fear or genuine loyalty, it was still support. The gangs would provide the government services that a corrupt government could not.

The horrific violence sent a flood of refugees into the U.S. Many went right into California, which was essentially shut down with all the protests and crime waves. Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas were also hit hard by the human tidal wave coming into their states. Grant thought of “human tidal wave” as a cliché until he saw a satellite image on the news showing a literal wave of human beings flooding the U.S. border. They were hungry and needed shelter. They were human beings and had to be helped.

The U.S. Government and a few private organizations set up refugee centers in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. With so many Hispanics in the U.S., many Americans had a personal connection to the refugees and everyone was trying to help. There were still plenty of decent people in this country.

The images on TV were unbelievable. It reminded Grant of the Albanian refugees in the Balkan War of the 1990s — except it was here in America. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican women, children, and elderly were dying of thirst, starvation, exhaustion, and cholera. It made Katrina look like a mild rainstorm.

Of course, the government screwed it up. It could not act quickly enough. In Texas, FEMA spent time trying to get environmental approvals for shelters while children were dying. A particularly powerful photograph that became famous showed a middle-aged white man in a FEMA truck on a cell phone with a dead child lying on the ground near him. He was apparently on the phone with the EPA trying to get a waiver to locate the food, water, and medical supplies for that child and about two million more people.

People were outraged. How could the government, that supposedly was the solution to every problem, not have a plan for this? The Mexican drug wars had been going on strong for years; the fall of the Mexican government could not have been a surprise. Why didn’t the government have a plan for the inevitable wave of refugees? The U.S. was the richest nation in the world, but it didn’t have bottled water and tents for people? People paid almost half their money to the government in taxes, but FEMA didn’t have money for bottled water? Everyone saw, very graphically, that the government was absolutely incapable of taking care of them in a disaster. It was just like in Katrina, but on a much bigger scale. And, just like Katrina, the government’s response to this crisis woke up some people about their incompetence. The Mexican refugee crisis woke up even more people than Katrina did, however.

Hispanics were even more outraged. What they saw was a bunch of white people who weren’t helping a bunch of brown people. Hispanic groups charged the government with racism, which was preposterous. It wasn’t racism; it was incompetence. Now several million Hispanics in America were convinced that the U.S. Government and all Americans hated them and wanted them dead. Membership in anti-white Hispanic race groups like La Raza, which was Spanish for “the Race,” surged. This was exactly how racists of all colors used race and hatred for their political agendas.

Not all the refugees were children, women, and old people. Some were hardened criminals. Some of the Mexican gang members not fit for combat, like young boys and older men went up north with the waves of refugees. There was no better opportunity to transport gang members into the U.S. than by riding the human wave across the border. The criminals preyed on the refugees, raping women and children and stealing supplies. This was captured on TV, too. With the government incapable of doing anything about it.

Not only was the U.S. Government incapable of helping refugees, it was also incapable of protecting its own citizens from some very nasty people. Many of the gang members coming across the border linked up with their brethren who had just been released from the jails. They created “super gangs,” which were very large, well- armed, and highly sophisticated criminal enterprises. They were closer to a military unit than a traditional street gang.

In the span of a few days, most people in America realized that they were helpless if something like that happened in their area. But, after decades of thinking nothing bad could ever happen in America, most Americans still could not bring themselves to believe that it would happen to them. The refugee crisis and violence was still far away in California and Texas; not their neighborhoods.

Despite everything going on, many people still did not recognize how dependent and vulnerable they were. Instead, many of them became paralyzed by fear and did nothing. Very few Americans started preparing like they knew they should. They sat around their TVs stunned and helpless.

Texas responded to the crisis differently than California. Texas took its status as a formerly independent republic very seriously. About two days into the mess, the Governor of Texas held a press conference and said what would become famous words, “If the Federal Government can’t restore law and order to Texas, then Texas will. We entered this union of states voluntarily and we can voluntarily leave it.

And from what I’ve seen, the Federal Government can’t do much of anything right, so we don’t think they can stop us. Texas will take care of Texans. Period.”

This secessionist passion had been slowly building for years in Texas, but now, with the Feds screwing up so clearly, it was finally coming to the surface for many people.

One of them was Bill Owens, Grant’s friend from law school who lived in San Antonio. He had settled there at a nice law firm and served in the Texas National Guard as a Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer, which is a military lawyer.

Before the Mexican crisis, Bill called Grant periodically and told him how people down there were sick of the federal mandates and the federal taxes; basically, the federal everything. Entrepreneurs and freedom-loving people from all over America were moving to Texas. The taxes were far lower and the business climate was markedly better than anywhere else in the U.S., especially on the East Coast and California where small business was almost impossible. Texas welcomed businesses.

Crime was astonishingly lower in Texas, too. That was because Texas gun laws allowed, even encouraged, citizens to carry concealed handguns. Very often, an armed robber would enter a store in Texas only to be stopped by armed customers and store clerks. The same was true of burglars breaking into homes. Killing one burglar led to dozens of fewer crimes that burglar would have committed. It also led to fewer people who wanted to be burglars.

How did the progressives in the North react? By calling the Texans “cowboys” and Texas the “shoot-em-up wild West.” They referred to the armed robbers as “victims of gun violence.” It was like there two versions of America: Texas and the North.

Southern and western mountain states were moving in varying degrees toward the Texas model because it worked. Northeastern and upper Midwest states and the West Coast (including Washington State) were moving toward the Northern model. There was a split, which was widening. Confederate flags started popping up everywhere.

Grant never liked the Confederate flag. He respected Southerners’ right to fly it and be proud of the many Southerners who served bravely in the Civil War. He knew that the Union Army and the Federal Government during Reconstruction were not exactly the angels that they had been portrayed as in the history books. He knew that Southerners were not all racists. In fact, Grant knew that most Southern whites were generally fine with minorities because they lived among them. Many Southerners (of all colors) were Christians who believed that people of every race were the children of God and should be respected as such. Sure, there was still some racism in the South, but it was nothing like the stereotypes of racist Southerners portrayed by the North.

Grant had never known or even heard of a Southerner who thought slavery was a good idea. But the Confederate flag said something nasty to Grant. That symbol had become a symbol of racism. Try as he might, he couldn’t get past the negative image he had of that flag.

The yellow Revolutionary War “Don’t Tread on Me” flag was far better. Sometimes called the “Gadsden flag,” the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag communicated the liberty of the Revolutionary War without any of the racial baggage. The Tea Party had successfully adopted “Don’t Tread on Me” as its symbol. Of course, the progressive media tried to make “Don’t Tread on Me” into the new Confederate flag and imply that only racists flew the Gadsden.

Bill Owens called Grant from Texas during the refugee crisis.

“Things are getting dicey down here, man,” Bill said. “Mexican gangs are doing some pretty bold stuff. People are on edge. I’ve got all my mags loaded. I sleep with my 12 gauge nearby. People are starting to openly carry handguns and even long guns. All people can talk about is how much the Feds suck. If I need to get out of here, can I come up to you?” Bill was an officer in the Texas Guard so he should probably stay in Texas, but it never hurt to have a backup plan.

“Of course, man,” Grant said, trying to take in all this news. It’s really happening, he thought. “But I think things will be difficult up here, too. Soon,” Grant said to Bill. Then they talked about the logistics of keeping in contact and deciding if Bill’s family should come up or if the Matsons should come down. Grant kept thinking about what a hard sell he would have with Lisa. “Hey,” Grant would have to say to Lisa, “Let’s evacuate to the Free Republic of Texas.”

“Have you lost your mind?” she would scream. Oh, what fun times they were in.

Grant had one of those moments when he didn’t know if he was in the present or the future. Things were happening exactly as he thought they would. Was it happening now or was he seeing the future? He couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was both.

“Who were you talking to?” Lisa asked him.

“Oh, Bill in San Antonio,” Grant said as if nothing were wrong. “Sandy says ‘hi.’” Bill’s wife and Lisa were friends back when Grant and Bill were in law school.

“Are things OK for them down there?” she asked, in her first mention of the Mexican crisis. She must have seen something on TV about it.

“They’re taking some precautions,” Grant said casually. “I told them they could come up here if need be,” he said, wondering what her reaction would be.

“Sure. If they want to,” Lisa said. To her, the issue was a visit with old friends instead of people fleeing chaos and violence.

Bill and Sandy fleeing Texas wasn’t a visit with old friends to Grant. It was proof that a collapse was happening. Grant wondered if he was overreacting.