Jack of Harts

Many of the States had issues with their biggest cities passing onerous laws and forcing the rest of their States to live by them. What could they do? Leave? The New States Clause of the American Constitution made it illegal to do that unless the State agreed. So the outer counties were captives to capital cities that had no interesting in letting them leave, and could force them to follow big city laws. Or so they thought. What the people of Jack’s time call Old California is still famous for having been home to a Sanctuary Movement where individual cities or counties simply refused to follow particular Federal or State laws. The first were created due to political disagreements on how to deal with illegal aliens or civilian ownership of firearms, but many other Sanctuaries sprouted up over the decades until you could find Sanctuary from just about any law or regulation you didn’t like. That made policing in America rather complicated in the decades leading up to the Second Great Depression.

Those of you who know me, know that I keep track of politics and am not shy about saying what I think. But I write stories that I want everybody to enjoy reading, so I don’t use political party names related to those of our current day. That is on purpose. The old political parties effectively died during the Second Great Depression, and those of Jack’s childhood are all new or radically transformed from those we know. I will note that the United States of America had over a dozen major political parties, and at least that many minor parties. Most of them came from individual States or State coalitions, though many were loosely affiliated into national power blocs. There were conservatives, liberals, and moderates, as well as socialists and capitalist parties. There were environmentalist parties and low tax parties. I haven’t named most of them, and I probably never will. And besides, most of even those political parties disappeared or radically changed once more on the day the Shang bombarded Washington DC and brought Yosemite Station down over most of the western United States. That changed politics in Jack’s day just a little bit.

Every State maintained some form of Army in Jack’s day. Mostly the descendents of the old National Guard, Reserves, or State Guards from before the Second Great Depression, they defended each State from outside threats. Officially. Some were little more than vanity platoons, good for parades and maybe occupying a local bar when times got rough. Others were true combat field commands that could face off against any Federal unit ever assembled. Some even took up the duties of the State Space Forces in the same way that the older American Army of World War II included the Army Air Force. That could make for some interesting communications difficulties when working with the Feds or other States. Now there were far, far more of the State Armies than the Federal government could field. They become the bulk of the American Army when the Feds requested reinforcements to take The War to the Shang and their Chinese allies. Individual State battalions or brigades often served in amalgamated units under the command of a Federal division commander, though some States fielded entire corps or field armies under the Federal banner. Under their own State flag of course. The Feds needed to be kept in their place, don’t you know.