Jack of Harts

One interesting difference between our United States and the one Jack grew up in is that Senators are not popularly elected. The original Constitution had them voted on and sent to the Senate by the State Governments, but that was changed back in the early 1900s to allow for popular elections. The argument was that they would better represent their States if they were beholden to the people at large, through a direct vote. But the end result was that by the time of the Second Great Depression the Senator candidates who promised the most free stuff to the people were those who usually won. Which contributed greatly to the eventual collapse of the American economy. So when the States reformed the Federal Government, they repealed the Amendment allowing for direct elections and reassumed their natural right to appoint those they wanted in the Senate. Senators who would be properly deferential to the wishes of the State governments. It was the States’ not-so-subtle way of telling the Feds that the tables had turned and the States were going to do the telling of what was going to be done in the future.

This part of the commentary requires a really brief civics lesson. We have three equal    branches of government in our Constitution. Executive. Legislative. Judicial. But there’s an unofficial Fourth Branch of the American Federal Government that has grown up over time. Some call it the Administrative Branch, or State. Others the Bureaucracy. The Regulatory State. Conspiracy theorists often name it the Deep State. Whatever name you give it, it’s a non-elected body of Federal workers who clarify and Execute the laws written by Congress. It’s officially part of the Executive Branch of government. The issue is that Congress often writes laws that are not fully clear and leaves it to the Bureaucracy to figure out how to make them work. Or they just have the Bureaucracy write the laws for them and then vote on the text without reading it. The old “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” syndrome. Which has made for some interesting laws and regulations. One reason many consider it a fourth branch is because various rules make it difficult for the Chief Executive to manage and control the Bureaucracy. The point of this commentary is to state that the whole thing is gone in Jack of Harts. It basically disappeared during the Second Great Depression when the Federal Government collapsed. The States did not like it and did not reform it with the rest of the Federal Government. And though it had made some form of comeback by Jack’s time, the Shang literally pulverized it into ash when they dropped a missile storm all over Washington DC. As I’ve often joked, the American people actually didn’t mind losing DC that much. They were only politicians and government workers after all. No one much missed them. It was the millions of other Americans who died that pissed America off. Or so the joke goes.

The United States of America in Jack’s time is not the one we live in now. One important difference is that they have lived through the Second Great Depression. My background has it happening when the Federal Government proved incapable of making payments on the debt. I have a detailed timeline, but don’t tend to put those dates in my stories. I’d prefer the march of time not wipe my stories out too soon, you know. 😉 One of the primary effects of the Second Great Depression in America was that it basically erased any lingering trust in the Feds for most Americans, which is why the various State governments became the powers they are in Jack’s time. The States stepped up, the States brought order back, and the States resurrected the Federal Government in a far more manageable form. One that wouldn’t get out of their control again. Or so they hoped.