The Start of the Second American Civil War (Part One)

 

Fan fiction loosely based on Our War by Craig DiLouie

 This story is the sum of all my fears. It's not a prediction but I honestly do not believe Trump will leave office peacefully. He and his sycophants show no hint that they believe their criminal actions will ever be brought to justice.

 The main reason the Red State factions finally agreed to an armistice was because the nation was economically destroyed. The billionaires that had funded what they called the “Righteous Uprising” had become strapped for cash. Not for the deaths of over two million Americans, with three-times that displaced from their homes because of the violence. And certainly not because the specter of widespread famine was a growing possibility. 

But because the United Nations and European Union sanctions had dried up the American billionaires streams of revenue. 

It also helped that with civil war in the United States the global power vacuum it created resulted in China invading Siberia. Ever since China emerged from its self-imposed isolation in the 1980s, it had been silently lusting after the resource rich and thinly populated region of Russian Siberia. Despite years of the two nations pledging solidarity in the struggle against American overreach, with the main enemy absent, the Chinese leadership couldn’t ignore the untapped mineral wealth and oil Russia didn’t have the technology to exploit.  

For the Russians, the de facto collapse of the United States as a world power was, to them, a true gift from God. Every report of mass death and destruction out of America was a cause for jubilation. In fact the Russians had readily supplied weapons to the multitude of militias, both Blue and Red State, in what most people around the world called the Second American Civil War.   

But the Chinese invasion of Siberia was a huge knife in the back of Russia and all the weapons being smuggled into the U.S. were now needed at home. European Russia had gone total national war mobilization and had kids as young as fifteen fighting in the land east of the Ural Mountains. The Russian government now understood all too well that its mid-2020s conquest of Ukraine had depleted manpower to the point they were just trying to force China to negotiate over Siberia. China on the other hand smelled the blood of a sick and dying Russia and wasn’t going to stop their advance till they reached the eastern foothills of The Ural Mountains. 

At first the Red States’ Righteous Uprising took the upper-hand in the conflict. Red militias controlled almost the entirety of rural America and had overrun several areas where the population was staunchly Blue.

The problem was that there were far more Blue-leaning Americans than Red. It took time, especially since in the initial stages of the conflict the Reds had the majority of weapons. But once Blue forces were equipped and organized, they rolled across the country with a rage that the Reds had grossly underestimated. Many on the Blue side made a point of enacting revenge on every Red they could find, both active combatant and unfortunately, civilian.

The causes for the Second American Civil War were many and had been simmering just on the edge of boiling over for decades. But what finally pushed the country over the edge was the Impeachment and conviction of President Daniel Marsh. 

Marsh’s first term as president was only an electoral college victory. He lost the popular vote by almost four million votes to his Democratic opponent who, like others before in similar circumstances, accepted defeat and pledged support to the President-elect.

The corruption and incompetence of the first Marsh Administration was never concealed. Marsh and his billionaire supporters flaunted their behavior during that time with their media support structure defending every action. Given Marsh’s overwhelming support with the Republican base, any politician that spoke against him was immediately kicked out of the party.

The overwhelming consensus among political analysts and media pundits was that Marsh would lose reelection in a landslide. However when the campaign began for the general election, polls showed what appeared to be an ambivalence to both candidates. This indifference wasn’t reflected at the campaign rallies and in terms of donations.

The Democratic nominee was young, an accomplished federal prosecutor who went on to become the Attorney General of California, before being elected to the United States Senate.

While polls had always suggested the race would be close, her defeat to Marsh was still thought of as odd to her supporters. However, she accepted the defeat for the good of the country and returned to private life. The problem was that Marsh spun his victory as a mandate and began overhauling the Federal government.

Using his billionaire friends as unofficial government agents, every level of the federal government had their budget and personnel cut. The ones that replaced the fired employees were all loyalty tested to be Marsh supporters. 

These actions quickly escalated and even affected the FBI and the Defense Department. Marsh loyalists were soon running key positions in those organizations and instituting authoritarian measures. The administration began wholesale round-ups of not just illegal immigrants but people with visas and green cards. The situation got worse when American citizens, including judges and elected officials, were then arrested for allegedly interfering with the deportations.

On another front, Marsh raised tariffs on the majority of imported goods resulting in a massive increase of inflation. The stated reasoning behind these tariffs, the man-child president believed, would bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Instead Marsh crashed the U.S. economy and destroyed our relationships with long-time trading partners.

More puzzling was that Marsh was shocked when the countries affected by his tariffs retaliated. He somehow assumed that other countries would just endure the tariffs and rush to personally placate him to win back American markets. Less than a year after taking office the United States went into a recession that was worse than the one following the 2008 housing crisis.   

These actions didn’t largely turn Marsh’s base against him. They accepted his explanation that things would be tough economically for a short time, even though financial experts across the spectrum of political opinion clearly stated his actions would not bring jobs back.  But political independents and Democrats were scared into action organizing protests across the nation. But for Marsh, public opinion outside his base was completely ignored.

It was the 2026 midterms where the collapse of the United States began. The Democrats won a huge majority in the House. In the U.S. Senate, Democrats gained 58 of the seats to convict Marsh and remove him from office. Even though the midterms were a disaster for the Marsh Administration, the president and his supporters believed they were safe from an impeachment conviction. Marsh was sure no Republican senators would defect to the Democrats.

What Marsh didn’t count on was the corrosive nature an economic recession would have on even his loyal supporters. When the Articles of Impeachment were sent to the senate, two Republicans voted yes giving the Democrats the 60 needed for conviction. Per the United States Constitution, Marsh was supposed to be stripped of power and removed from office. But that is not what happened. 

Marsh went on television just minutes after the senate conviction saying the actions of Congress were unconstitutional. More damning was that Marsh stated that he was not stepping down and that Congress would need the military to drag him out of the White House. Just to add the icing to the Constitutional crisis, Marsh’s vice president gave his total support to his boss saying he would not push to assume the office.

Where things went from nightmarish to horrific, Marsh’s Secretary of Defence had eliminated numerous high ranking officers that he felt were not politically reliable. Along with that he had the Republican-controlled congress promoted dozens of politically reliable officers in their place. 

The Marsh appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs then released a statement saying that the impeachment and conviction of the president was a political and judicial problem. That the military would not become involved with the growing crisis. In the ultimate display of cowardice and betrayal the Republican majority Supreme Court refused to rule on the legality of Marsh’s conviction.

Congress found itself stymied with Marsh firmly in control of all the levels of executive power. That’s when the country erupted in protest leading up to two-million people gathering in Washington DC demanding Marsh and his vice president leave office. 

None of the protesters had any idea that right-wing militias, directed by allies of Marsh, would be gathering on the outskirts of DC who, in their words, “would put the fear of God back into the libs.”

Just two hours into the formal beginning of the protest right-wing terrorists attacked those that had gathered. Automatic weapons fire poured into the crowd from multiple locations, along with snipers that had taken positions in nearby buildings. The real horror began when the militias began firing home-made rocket grenades into the crowd.

When the attack finally ended, over twenty-thousand people had been directly killed with many thousand more wounded or injured trying to flee. With local medical services completely overwhelmed an unknown number of others died from the attack because there was no one to treat their wounds.

Marsh and his media allies immediately claimed the attack was perpetrated by foreign terrorists. But numerous members of right-wing militias had posted videos of the attack on social media proudly proclaiming who they were and that they were supporting President Marsh. 

The Second American Civil War had begun.