Jack of Harts

Richmond Virginia and the eastern counties near Washington D.C. soon began practicing “Total War” with the rebellious counties of western, central, and southern Virginia. But they did not have enough military power answering them to retake those counties, and so they followed the tried and true tactics of the decades-long culture war. Any Virginian who did not sufficiently and publicly voice their support for the Richmond government soon found themselves cancelled. Social network accounts silenced and banned. Businesses and homes protested, invaded, and burned down. Children named, shamed, and harassed in school. Public protests chased cancelled Virginians through the streets with baseball bats and firearms, and any who defended themselves were quickly arrested for assault, attempted murder, or whatever other charges the government deemed appropriate.

Most of the Virginia General Assembly left Richmond after their eviction from the Assembly chambers. A few were arrested, but soldiers from Fort Lee helped many of the others make it out of the city and escorted them to nearby Petersburg. They actually managed to assemble a bare quorum of both legislative houses there, and quickly went to work. One of their first official announcements was the Impeachment of Virginia’s Governor and Lieutenant Governor for supporting the Federal actions. They followed that with a vote to declare former Vice President John Jefferson Freemon the interim governor until a new election was called. You may imagine that the rump Assembly in Richmond did not support these announcements.

Many people all over America still believe that nuclear missiles flying over America during the Second Great Depression is a myth. Many networks refused to air the footage, declaring it fake news and not worthy of broadcast. The Federal government declared any network that aired the footage to be acting on the behalf of foreign agents and ordered them shut down. But the Virginians never doubted it. They watched the missiles rise up out of the water. They watched the missiles come down. They watched the missiles impact with the ground. They were there when the recovery teams pulled the nuclear warheads out of the impact craters. They do not know why none of the warheads detonated. No public record has ever answered that question. But the missiles clarified the situation to everyone in and around Virginia. And Virginia has never forgotten it.