BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

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When People Like Bush Come into Power

A short science fiction story....

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Angry Girl

In the not-so-distant future . . . .

A state of war-time emergency is declared and therefore no presidential elections are held. The president may thus remain in power as long as the war continues.

In the name of national security, the government requires tracking chips in everyone's passports such that satellites (and other eavesdropping hackers) can track it and use the information within.

In the name of national security, national identification papers become required for train, boat, or plane ticket purchases. All persons must present their ID papers when requested by the authorities. Any person caught without national ID papers will be brought in for questioning, in the name of national security.

Children are taught to snitch on each other for unpatriotic and dissenting behavior. Books are banned, musicians blacklisted, and artwork destroyed in the name of morality. Television will broadcast only happy movies and nothing about the raging war and rising poverty.

In the name of national security, the police, all intelligence agencies, and the military are consolidated and given legal jurisdiction over all residents and visitors. To control anti-administration demonstrations they are given crowd tasers and hypersound technology.

The country's media are consolidated to the point where they are all owned by corporations with ties to the government. There are no dissenting news channels or radio stations.

The government's declares the Internet to be its property and shuts down all anti- government websites, blogs, and independent news sources.

Government education programs are cut. College becomes affordable only to the rich. High school dropout rates soar. The country's literacy rate plummets.

More jobs are exported abroad. Most small businesses are taken over by huge corporations, which become the only stores in town. Self-service checkouts and other automation solutions take over most of the jobs.

Sex education is banned and only government-sanctioned abstinence-only classes are offered. Abortion becomes illegal, as does the sale of most forms of contraception. Hundreds of thousands end up with unwanted children and without the means to raise them. Back-alley abortions kill and maim thousands.

Viagra and Levitra sales sky-rocket. Couples have increasing numbers of multiple births due to fertility drugs. In-vitro fertilization clinics make a booming business.

In the name of national security, in order to be employed all persons must submit to drug testing, fingerprinting, and background checks.

Draconian drug and morality laws get passed and the prison population growth accelerates. The children of the rising numbers of female prisoners become wards of the state.

The growth in prison population creates prison farms in rural areas where farmers have been run out of business.

The middle class disappears. Welfare programs are abolished. Millions of the poor, sick, and elderly lose their homes. Millions more are without health insurance. Poverty soars. Shanty towns mushroom.

In the name of national security, all electronic circuitry, from cell phones to the tracking devices in your car, is tracked and monitored.

In the name of national security, every traffic light in the country doubles as a surveillance camera that feeds the data into centralized depositories for pattern filtering and analysis.

In the name of national security, each U.S. resident has a file, complete with their education, grocery purchases, travel patterns, medical history, tax history, and police record.

In the name of national security, all borders are shut down so that very few people can leave or enter the country. If records show that you owe taxes or have an unpaid parking ticket, you will not be allowed to leave the country.

In the name of national security, human rights are discarded. Torture is allowed by the government, to be used against enemy combatants as well as in civilian criminal cases.

In the name of national security, internment camps are set up to confine persons considered possible security risks. All such people lose their jobs and their property.

The country becomes increasingly populated and increasingly poverty stricken such that the government and insurance companies begin rewarding the food makers and suppliers for shortening people's life spans.

Pesticide, pharmaceutical, and nutrition companies dump increasing amounts of poisons into the food and water supply with the government's blessing.

Cloning is used to create meat and other forms of proteins to feed the masses.

Throughout the world, over-irrigation creates deserts where none were. Once thriving regions die as a result, leaving millions hungry and homeless.

Water becomes increasing polluted and expensive and in many areas drinking water becomes unavailable. The water corporations become more powerful than oil and pharmaceutical companies.

Poorer, landlocked nations wage wars over water. Tens of millions die.

No more fish are available to farm from the sea. The ecology of the oceans breaks down quickly and the seas become stagnant swamps into which industrial polluters continue dumping their wastes. Tens of thousands of species go extinct. Coastline inhabitants throughout the world go hungry and sick.

Genetically engineered crops take over natural strains, creating pollution problems, and killing viable farmland. Fungus originally introduced to South America to kill coca bushes in the "drug war" attacks the native ecosystem, destroying most of the Amazon and spreading in all directions. Tens of thousands of species go extinct.

Global disease epidemics run rampant. Entire countries are decimated by AIDS and new man-made super-diseases. Areas rich in minerals are taken over by mining corporations.

And all this in the name of greed.....

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Also from Angry Girl: 20 Amazing Facts about Voting in the USA