The South American Union and all its colonies are rather more rough and tumble than most other nations. For one thing, it should be no surprise that they are rabidly anti-Communist given their history. The Communists killed far too many South Americans for them to forget. They don’t even trust the milder Socialists that have taken over some parts of North America, and South America will join no alliance that accepts them. Wherever they go, every colony maintains honor guard helicopters maintained specifically to deal with Communists, and those helicopters fly in every national independence celebration. They even shoot showers of confetti, to the cheering amusement of children everywhere. Converting bad Communists into good Communists is fun for the whole family.
The South American Union arose out of the fires of the violence accompanying the Second Great Depression to become a major world power. They may not have been one of the Big Three, but they had no wish to survive under the benign, at best, neglect of anyone else. They move into space on their own, built their own orbital elevator, and planted their own colonies on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. They even went to the stars on their own terms and colonized worlds and systems as they could. Though they did cooperate with the Western Alliance when it came to colonizing some of the open worlds like Pacifica, Paradisia, and Serenity. They had no reason to antagonize the Alliance after all. Playing nice rarely hurt anyone.
The twin fires of drug cartels and Communist movements burned South America after the Second Great Depression brought down the Western World. The drug cartels saw the chance to rule on their own terms without any of the last vestiges of American power stopping them, while the Communists did what the Communists always do once their glorious revolutions are complete. They killed everyone who wasn’t a good Communist. Millions died in a few short years, but the nations that formed the South American Union fought back against both the drug cartels and the Communists. And they took a lesson from previous wars against both. People had to see the dead. So the helicopters flew over South America and the drug dealers and the Communists did not have wings to follow.
Tiktok is a platform run by the Chinese Communist Party via golden shares that give them control over it. I absolutely support methods of either banning the app or divesting it from the CCP. But I do not like the current law that suddenly went through the House like a wildfire. For one, I am always suspicious when both sides of the Uniparty in Washington suddenly go all gungho for any bill. For two, I remember when we passed the Patriot Act, and we now live in a world where it is aimed at parents who disagree with school boards over pornography in school libraries. For three, does anybody remember when the Democrats and their tame news media claimed anybody who disagreed with them was controlled by Russia? I do. So I wonder who this bill will be aimed at next.
Four years ago today, there were a few thousand confirmed cases of the China virus in America. The vast majority were in China and, oddly, Italy where a major focus had hit one of their regions. President Trump told everybody to go home for 15 days to slow the spread. Just to flatten the curve so the hospitals wouldn’t be overrun by cases when the peak hit. A few crazy conspiracy theorists told Americans not to cooperate. That if we let the government lock us down for 15 days, they would keep us locked down for months or years or longer. Most people disregarded them. What right-minded American would believe the government was even capable of anything like that? It was just those crazy conspiracy theorists spouting off. Right?