The United States of America when Jack grew up was different from the nation we live in now. Three centuries had passed. Political alliances like the Republic of California, Republic of Texas, the Indian Nations, and the Confederation of Dixie had arisen. Those pseudo-sovereign alliances of States maintained many of their own policies and generally ignored the Federal Government\u2019s wishes as long as it didn\u2019t try to interfere with them. I draw much inspiration from Pre-Civil War America in that way, where people were Minnesotans or Texans first, and Americans second. Jack was proud to grow up a Minnesotan on the wilderness border with Canada, acting as a tour guide for rich city slickers. America was a highly divided nation in many ways, but when the Shang attacked and killed millions of Americans all over the Western half of the nation, they united the United States of America in a way that only an outside threat can. Much like after our own 9\/11, America stood back up and challenged all comers to come get some. That is the America Jack grew up in, and the America he volunteered to defend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States of America when Jack grew up was different from the nation we live in now. Three centuries had passed. Political alliances like the Republic of California, Republic of Texas, the Indian Nations, and the Confederation of Dixie[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diaries","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-medron-pryde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8560"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8564,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560\/revisions\/8564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}