Client Kings

----------- Letters from the Future ------ Letter 2 of 4 --------------------
If you haven't done so already, please read first --- Letter 1 of 4   Birth of a Banana Republic


Just before noon today I heard a dim humming in the air. At least I thought I heard it. Because it was so faint it could have been the blood pulsating in my ears. When there is no wind, it is very quiet these days. No birds, no insects, absolute silence. Which is why you can hear the faintest sound even when it is far away. I shook my head and closed the eyes to concentrate and listen. Then I heard it again.

It was the sound of an engine many miles away. I have heard this sound before. It was them, there is no doubt. Nobody except the Lords have aircraft these days. They use drones to survey the land and search for enemies. And for booty. Often this will be followed by a raid. They send out their Bandits to do the dirty work for them. The last time they came was two years ago. After the raid nothing much of the settlement below was left. Only the women and the old survived. And a couple of young ones who were able to keep out of sight. I told them that in order to stay alive in the future they must disperse and hide when I warn them. I also urged them to disguise their huts and break up their fields into many small patches spread out over a large area. So that from high up nothing is seen but empty, barren land. Being invisible is the best protection.

At noon I stood on the hilltop with my big mirror, waiting for their call. After a while three short bursts of light flickered up from the valley as they do every day at this time. The signal means “Hi there, any news ?”. Usually I would respond with three burst of light from my mirror meaning “All is fine.”. But today my answer was “Be aware, a drone has been heard. Wait for more signals from me.”. This is to prepare for a full alarm when the drone is closing in or the Bandits are approaching in their rumbling armoured trucks.

The hum of the engine became louder. Turning my head slowly from left to right and back again I tried to determine the direction and start looking for it. It is very hard to locate a small drone high up in the bright sky. The eyes hurt after a short while, so I close them for a few minutes every now and then. If the buzz of the drone increases, it is coming this way and sooner or later I will see it. After the third attempt I saw it. In the north west, a mile away. I raised the full alarm. Immediately I heard the foghorn down in the valley warning the settlers where ever they were working. They would grab some food and water and run to hide below rocks, underneath bushes and in the caves. The drone passed overhead and continued towards the south east. This is a good sign. For if it had noticed anything, it would have turned around to take a closer look. The humming waned. I waited for another hour, then gave the all clear. It had worked. However, I will remain on heightened alert for a couple of days in case the Lords found anything on the video record and decided to send the Bandits.

Once a week one of the settlers comes up the hill to bring me some food. What I can grow myself is not enough to keep me alive. Most of the time its one of the elders coming to talk and share news from other settlements. They also discuss their problems with me and want to know where things will be going in the future. Today a young woman, Elsa, came. Her brother had broken his arm and was in pain. I am not a doctor. And there is no medicine. I told her to make a brace from sticks. Then wrap the arm with some fabric and pour water over it. The evaporating water will cool the arm and alleviate the pain. I told her to come back if it got worse. When Elsa left she said how grateful they all were for my warnings and how they appreciated my advice. I felt good that night.

 Client Kings

 The period from 2035 to 2060 AD

The generals ran a garrison state. This was natural for them. But it was also necessary because they had to govern the country and, at the same time, fight on two fronts: The gangs on the one hand and the rebellious states on the other. In addition they had to produce food for their troops, food to pay for fuel and weapons, and food to deliver as debt repayment to the Chinese overlords. To achieve this they ran gigantic plantations using slave labour. The generals were not good at managing all this. For their structure was hierarchical and rigid and their decision making slow. Fighting wars they had learned, but not managing a business, let alone an economy or a country. For that they had to rely on administrators which the oligarchs were more than happy to provide. So, while the military governed, the oligarchs ruled behind the scenes. The other divide was between central government, represented by the military, and state governments in some of the bigger states like California and Texas. Those states governed their territory using the remnants of the National Guard – and using the help of gangs. Which in the meantime had morphed into small armies headed by warlords.

As a consequence law and order had disappeared. Or more accurately, it had been replaced by the rule of self-appointed state governors, warlords, security services, and the military. You see, when there is no money to pay a lawyer or a judge, justice can not be done. Even if it were, what would you do with those found guilty ? You can’t imprison them, because there are no prison guards. You can’t hang them, because there is no hangman. The new rule, if you can call it that, was simple: Do what those in power tell you to do, otherwise you’ll be dead. On second thought this is not a new rule at all. You always had to do what you where told, except you were not instantly killed for disobeying. The trouble during these years was, nobody was quite sure who was actually “in power”, because it depended on where you were and it seemed to change all the time.

People died from violence and disease, but most died from hunger. For ordinary people there was no food. Valuable agricultural land was being lost through rising sea levels and violent hurricanes which devastated low-lying areas and river deltas. This was the most fertile land you can imagine, supporting billions of people, almost a quarter of mankind. Even where food was still grown, you couldn’t get it because there was no transport, no fuel, no distribution. And ordinary people had no money to buy it. For people to survive there were only three options: Join the army, become a gang member, or get into a labour camp. In practice none of these organisations would let you in, because they all had too many people and all those people had to be fed. My father, then in his mid-twenties, tried all the options many times unsuccessfully until, finally, he was accepted into a big new labour camp in the Midwest. This camp had been built to supply plantations, adjacent food factories and a new military base with cheap labour. The military base, as it turned out, had been quietly established by the Chinese. The base, they said, was to help the generals in their various battles. It was not the only base they created on American soil.

Worldwide economic collapse was followed by the breakdown of political and social systems. This means civil society as we know it was disintegrating. Rapid changes were occurring throughout the world.

In the south the Latin American drug cartels had diversified away from drugs long ago. There was no more money in drugs as people couldn’t pay. But they retained their great paramilitary power base, especially the Colombian and Honduran mercenaries who had once been trained in the US, at the School of the Americas. The drug barons, being guided by their financial advisors, had invested their capital wisely, just before the economy crashed. They emerged as the new owners of large parts of the land, including giant plantations and agribusinesses some of which had earlier belonged to United Fruit and other US companies. The barons practically owned most Latin American governments and their armed forces. They were now looking for new ventures.

In the US a guerilla war had been going on amongst the many warlords and their gangs. Although tens of thousands died every month, those remaining fought with ever increasing resolve, force, and violence. In the end the surviving warlords and gangs merged, becoming bigger and stronger. They were trying to establish themselves as the new ruling class. But they needed someone to help them do that. The Latin Americans seemed to be the right people. It was the ideal time for the two parties to join forces as it was bound to benefit both sides, a true win-win solution. The new body was called the Southern Syndicate, with mutual support and trade being its main aim. And they could see how barter trade would flourish. It would be controlled by the warlords and their southern masters, but administered by the oligarchs who had experience in the barter trade. In the absence of any trustworthy currency they would trade oil for food, water for weapons, slaves for spare parts.

Elsewhere big power blocs were developing. China, Japan and Korea formed the Asia Bloc. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran joined in the Middle Empire. Russia convinced its reluctant former satellites to team up in the Northern Bloc. Having lost the financial and military support of the US, Israel suddenly found itself on its own, facing the Middle Empire plus the Asia and the Northern blocs. These blocs felt threatened by the uncontrolled Israeli war machine. It took a long series of tense negotiations to eventually “persuade” Israel to reduce its nuclear arsenal and give up its medium and long range missiles – to avoid “preemptive annihilation”. This had become common terminology after the US had waged several preemptive wars and thereby started a trend. Israel survived economically by exporting its surveillance and killer drones, its advanced interrogation techniques, and the know-how of the world’s most effective secret service, the Mossad.

In a cruel twist of history expatriate Cubans from Florida invaded their former homeland and overthrew the communist regime – using considerable fire power borrowed from the US army. They duly returned property and landholdings to their former owners and restored everything to pre-Castro conditions including drug dealing, gambling and prostitution. In addition they kept their foothold in Florida, expanding it into a first-class crime centre, offering blackmail, extortion, hit services and the like in competition to the leftovers of the Mafia and the CIA. Warlords and oligarch were both pleased with these services as they offered an easy and discrete way to get rid of unwelcome rivals. The Cubans were so successful that the Southern Syndicate offered them a prominent place at their table.


The factory where my father worked made food from soybeans, artificial bread for humans and animal feed for chicken and pigs. The workers didn’t get any wages, but they got food and shelter. In return they worked 14-hour shifts, seven days a week. They slept in large bunk rooms, each holding 300 men. Effectively they were slaves. There was a lot of fighting amongst them, mostly about food. When they got their piece of soy bread before and after work, they wolfed it down quickly so it couldn’t be taken from them. Yet often a few would gang up on someone, knock him to the ground and take his food. My father would intervene to stop these attacks and calm down the men. It was bad enough as it was, he would say. And if anyone didn’t like it here, they could go. There were thousands outside the gate who would love to take their place, he said. A supervisor overheard this and told my father he liked it. Because it made his life easier. My father was made assistant supervisor and was quickly promoted through the ranks. He became the General Manager of the factory in 2049. This brought great privileges. He was even allowed to have, and keep, a female partner. I was born a year later.

Throughout the world central government authority and democracy, where it had existed, disappeared. This is the inevitable consequence of any large economic disaster. The more successful the economy had been and the higher its associated living standards, the more spectacular the fall into chaos. Fierce battles between roving gangs, self-appointed rulers and remnants of the old order were raging worldwide and they were increasingly won by the gangs. The same, of course, had been happening in the former USA all along. I call it “former” because by now it was on the verge of disintegrating.

The central military command fought in Texas, in California, in Washington state, against many small armies, guerillas, insurgents, saboteurs. This is the type of warfare the military can’t win. They call it “asymmetric” as if complaining how unfair it all is. The mighty “defense” forces are the ones, after all, that have all the shiny new armour, latest high-tech weaponry, expensive laser-guided mega bombs capable of destroying whole cities and small countries in one hit. They ought to win, not this rag-tag crowd of amateurs using decades old AK47s, home-made bombs, and machetes. You could almost hear the generals whining. What an injustice was being done to them ! However, they still managed to annihilate large numbers of enemies, although one can’t be sure who all those dead bodies really were. Because they were pulverised, burnt to ashes, dismembered beyond recognition and beyond count. It is the old problem: If you detonate large bombs in populated areas, you will kill a few dozen “terrorists”, but also hundreds of thousands of civilians. This is collateral damage. And while they claim to regret it, politicians will always say that “it was worth it.”

In spite of the mega-deaths they caused, the military kept losing. In the end the Chinese overlords lost their patience. And their composure. There were shouting matches in the Pentagon, can you believe it. The Chinese are well known for keeping a straight face in adversity. But they could not take the excuses any more. In the end they stopped talking to the generals and instead made deals with some of the rebellious states and their warlords saying “Get your act together, elect a ruling committee and a leader, then in return we’ll drop our support for the army and look after you instead.”

This created, virtually overnight, a number of self-declared “independent” territories, each headed by a council, consisting of oligarchs and warlords, and a president, called Supremo or Leader or even Great Leader. Eventually it became fashionable to call yourself “King”. So it was that King Zhang-Ho ruled in the Northwest territory, King Fernando II in the South, and King Edward The Younger on the East Coast. There were many more kings, running smaller kingdoms. And they all looked for a sponsor, be it the Asia Bloc (the Chinese), the Southern Syndicate, or the Northerners (the Russians). A few prospered and grew. Most shriveled and died and their little empire with them. Their land and “property” changed hands behind closed doors. King Zhang-Ho became the favourite king of the Asia Bloc. He was a Chinese-American, of course, but more importantly he could deliver aircraft, advanced weapons, and computer technology in return for food and oil. His territory comprised, after all, manufacturers of aircraft, missiles, and drones, and the former Silicon Valley. There were regular food transports from the Chinese owned Midwest plantations and factories to Zhang-Ho-City (the former San Francisco). After some of those transports had been intercepted and looted by insurgents from smaller kingdoms, my father was appointed to head a new transport, this time a convoy reinforced and protected by heavily armed soldiers from the Northwest territory. The convoy arrived unharmed and was officially welcomed by King Zhang-Ho. The king took a liking to my father and offered him the position of Logistics Minister of the Kingdom, reporting directly to the Crown, that is to him. After this was approved by the overlords my father and his female partner (and I) moved to Zhang-Ho-City.

By the end of 2060 the US military had finally collapsed. And with it any trace of central authority. And of the USA as a sovereign country. This was the result of the external power blocs nurturing the emerging kingdoms and withdrawing their support from the generals. Some of the troops, smelling the decay, jumped ship and joined the nearest king who would have them. The military arsenals, laboratories, and warehouses, having been looted many times before, were now being cleaned out for good, with some disastrous consequences in later years.

Thus came to an end the era of the much-decorated generals and their Banana Republic. In its place a new type of regime had emerged: That of the Client Kings. A new type of regime ? Not really. There had been very similar kings, thousands of years ago, who were totally dependent on the umbilical cord of some benevolent empire. History does repeat itself.

---------------------------- continues with Letter 3 of 4   Apocalypse          © Rolf Brandt 2009

Birth of a Banana Republic

--------- Letters from the Future -------- Letter 1 of 4 ---------

These days it is very rare to get old. Being sixty and still alive when most people die before they turn forty makes you feel like a dinosaur. A fossil. There is only one advantage. I have seen a lot over a long period of time and I can see how we have arrived at what we are today. And I can anticipate, from experience, where this will lead. Therefore I feel I should write down what happened over the last few decades and why it happened. I am writing this in the year 2110 AD.

This letter is for You in case you are still there. I’m writing because You may find it useful for your own future. But I must admit: I have learned from history that nobody ever learns from history.

I hope You can still read. For today very few people can read. You see, there is no school. And most parents can’t read. Therefore nobody teaches the kids.

We settlers are called Barbarians by our enemies. That is because in their eyes we are nothing and we have nothing except a little food. When the Bandits come to raid our settlements, they steal the food, kill the men and rape the women. Then they take away our young and sell them to the Lords.

My great-grandfather Rolf died hundred years ago, in 2010. He told his son Jonathan stories about the world and how things had happened. Jonathan lived through the years of the “Banana Republic” and wrote it all down for my father who was a serf under the “Client Kings”. My father did not survive the terrible “Apocalypse”. He called me Rolf in memory of his ancestor. He should not have produced me. However, you can not undo the past. Here I am on the “Quiet Earth”, one hundred years on from the earlier Rolf.

I’ll be writing those letters to You at night. That is because I am on the lookout all day up on the hill. In the evenings I tend to the plants. It is hard work keeping them alive, because I need to fetch the water from a hidden spring and carry it back over rough terrain. Up here where I live there is no water and almost no soil, just rocks and rubble. The settlers in the valley below rely on me for early warnings. But I’ll tell you more about that later. Bear with me if my letters don’t arrive on time. I am living a precarious life and it could well be that my next letter will never be written. Here is the first one:

     Birth Of A Banana Republic        
The Years from 2010 to 2035 AD

The year when General Motors collapsed and went on life support was a turning point in more ways than one.

General Motors produced cars. Today, you wouldn’t understand why this was such a big deal. But then cars were the most important thing in life. After money, of course. Why was it so important ? Because it got you to places very fast without having to walk there. We measure distances in “x days of walking” which is about ten miles per day. They talked about “miles per hour” meaning they could zip to a place in an hour where we would need six days. Why was it so important to get there quickly ? It wasn’t. But they did it anyway. For a hundred years General Motors was a beacon of the American industry - and of the rest of the world. What was good for the firm was good for America – and for the rest of the world. “Freedom for the individual”, i.e. personal mobility, was the slogan. Public transport would have been miles cheaper. But the car industry promoted cars, not public transport. The whole country and the life of the individual were designed and built around the car. As a consequence, of course, with almost no public transport available, the car became an absolute, essential necessity of life. Hence the importance of General Motors and other car makers. Without a car you were a nobody, probably a criminal. People even got arrested for walking. But back to the year 2010.

Most manufacturing had been shipped overseas years ago. To lower-cost countries. Because “they are more cost-effective and that benefits our consumers” they said. It was called “outsourcing” and “globalisation” and “free trade” in a “free market” economy and after all we were the “land of the free”. And the leader of the “free world”. Well, you better delete “free” from all of this because

- In reality “cost-effective” was a euphemism for a race to the bottom, a reverse auction where those got the deal who paid the lowest wages; slave wages for desperate people who would do anything just to survive. Most jobs went to China and other low-wage countries.

- In reality trade and the markets were anything but free. Both were highly regulated, restricted, barricaded by procedures designed to obstruct free trade and protect local and international cartels. Rigged. In case you didn’t know: Real capitalists hate competition. Countries and people weren’t free either: “Freedom”, the most abused word in the dictionary, justified oppression, war, death and carnage. “Freedom” and “capitalism” were the shackles that kept the world in bondage.

- In reality my great-grandfather died that year. His son had been fired, he had lost his life savings, his home had been forcibly auctioned off from under him. He had been looking after his father but now he could not do so any longer. So, my great-grandfather decided to die. He committed suicide.


This year was a turning point for the whole world. The world would no longer accept America as the “sole superpower”, the “beacon of hope ... the leader of the free world...” and similar endlessly repeated humbug. The world had seen what happened when America invaded countries “to bring them our values, our freedom, the rule of law ...”. Not that other governments were much better. They all lied to their people. But a few people didn’t believe it any more. They saw how very different reality was from the propaganda:

- In reality there were unlawful arrests, torture, incarceration without trial and without end. There were murders via remote controlled robots, kidnappings, deportations. The word “freedom” was used to justify oppression, carnage, war. For it helped us to “remain a free country” and to ”preserve our values”. This was just in the western world.

- In reality there were arbitrary executions, human trafficking, killing of dissidents, caning, cutting off of limbs, stoning to death of women and children, organ harvesting. This was in the name of “fighting the oppressor and regaining our freedom” and “preserving our values”.  That was in the rest of the world.

- In reality all this was done not by criminals, but by the state. By all states. In the name of law and order, security, protection of citizens against enemies that didn’t exist. When it got too dirty or some local laws were in the way, victims were deported to countries without laws. Those client countries were only too happy to oblige. They got “development loans” and big bribes for the local tyrant. The famous battle between Capitalism and Communism never happened. They both did the same. Killing opponents, dissidents, revolutionaries, insurgents, terrorists, in short: killing the bastards.

Did the people rise to protest, to object, to demand change ? Very few. They were ignored or wiped out. The rest didn’t. They couldn’t see the reality because they were glued to their TV which flooded them with fake reality shows, beauty contests, gratuitous violence. Don’t ask me why they didn’t see beyond the smoke screen. I don’t know. It was like they didn’t want to see the reality. Like sleep walking towards the cliff, blind and deaf.

You would have thought TV would be a powerful medium to enlighten people, to voice disagreement, to rally support for the good cause. This and much more had been promised when TV was first introduced. Old Rolf remembered how the inventors back in the late 1950s enthused about “the new age were there is free education for all through this wonderful medium which is available everywhere, instantly, at no cost. No one will be missing out. We’ll all be equals.” Well, look at it now. Later on people were equally ecstatic about the potential of computers and the internet. What became of it ? Shoot’em-up games and pornography. They called this progress. Fantastic technologies opening up truly fantastic opportunities only to degenerate into fantastic drivel, uninterrupted entertainment and mental masturbation.

The year 2010 was a turning point for the economy and for democracy. In America and the rest of the world. The experts claimed that the current depression would soon be over, that economic recovery was just around the corner. Share prices, profits, sales and consumption would rebound. The good old days would return they said. “Our Way of Life” will prevail.

- In reality there was rising unemployment, soaring credit defaults, repossessions, home foreclosures, destitution, tent cities. Bankruptcies mushroomed producing yet more redundancies, more foreclosures, more misery. Yet economists boasted that “ we have now become more effective, more productive, more profitable” quoting as example big-box hyper markets growing from four acres to twenty acres. They didn’t mention that all the smaller ones died and that distances to get to the new ones had quadrupled. They didn’t mention that to take advantage of the “cheaper” prices people had to spend more on petrol (gasoline in US speak). They didn’t mention that those new hyper markets employed fewer people working longer hours for less money. Which is why they were more profitable.

- In reality the super-rich 0.03 percent of the population made heaps of additional money at the expense of taxpayers. Taxes are always paid by the lower classes. The rich don’t pay taxes. They get “incentives”. Trillions of dollars were spent to bail out moribund industries (banks, insurance companies, car manufacturers) at taxpayers’ expense. Good money thrown after bad. Why ? Because the speculators wanted some reward for the terrible risks they had taken. Because industry tycoons and their friends in government said so. Because the rich demanded to get richer.

- In reality bankruptcy specialists were burying dead or dying firms. Understandably, they were not popular. Understandably, they didn’t like being called “vultures”. But somebody had to do it. It is “an essential part of capitalism. The weak die. The strong feast on their carcasses. Little is wasted.” This is what a leading economist said at the time. My great-grandfather wasn’t weak. He died rather than being plowed under. And my grandfather was doomed to live in squalor.

- In reality trillions of dollars, not available for health or education, were spent on the armed forces and their various invasions and wars of aggression. Funny isn’t it that they call themselves Department of “Defense”, while attacking other countries. This is because they are actually defending us there, so we don’t have to do it here. Geez, all this money being spent on our protection ! Don’t we feel a lot safer when so many others are being killed on our behalf ? The money spent on “protection” fed our only remaining industry, the weapons manufacturers. If they weren’t too hot to outsource we would have done it. Which leads us to the last of the “realities”.


The American Empire was in terminal decline. Printing money to pay for all above is a surefire recipe for undermining your own currency. And boy, did they print. Their biggest creditor, the Chinese, got very worried about the value of the US Treasury bonds they held. After all the Chinese had bought these bonds with the money America paid them for their cheap products. It was their reward for years of relentless exploitation of their own people. They couldn’t dump those bonds on the world market, because that would have crashed the US dollar straight away. So instead they sold them little by little and they refused to buy more at auction. The dollar value sank. Slowly at first, but when some of the creditors started talking about a new world currency to replace the Dollar, the speed of the sinking increased. The creditors got together in Russia, in a place called Yekaterinburg. It was the same place where some hundred years earlier the last rulers of Imperial Russia had been killed. This time it was about breaking the dollar, but implicitly of course about breaking America’s military world domination. What the world saw, and Americans didn’t, was that their military spending could not be sustained without endless heavy borrowing. Finally, the speculators caught on. They did what all speculators do when they smell a dying corpse. They sold the Dollar short. This is a piece of financial trickery which boils down to a bet. Those bets, when placed in large numbers and with big sums, become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was the last nail in the coffin of the US dollar and the whole financial industry. It was the end of the age of paper money which had allegedly been the “basis of all economic activity”.

The US dollar went into free fall. Imports became dearer. Exports got cheaper but there wasn’t much to export (apart from weapons). So, prices increased. As did interest rates. Because the creditworthiness of government debt was downgraded, Treasury found it almost impossible to sell US bonds on the world market. People preferred to buy other countries’ bonds, in more trustworthy currencies. Ordinary Americans carried plastic bags full of dollars just to pay for their groceries. To cut a long story short:

The US of A became insolvent in 2013. Couldn’t pay the interest on bonds to overseas holders, couldn’t repay debts falling due, couldn’t pay for imports. Couldn’t pay teachers, prison wardens, nurses, security staff, congressmen, doctors, CIA agents, pensioners, judges, senators, secretaries, policemen. In 2014 some still got paid a little. But over the next couple of years fewer and fewer saw any money. Staff at the more than 600 overseas bases - the military cornerstones of the Empire - were left high and dry. Didn’t get any money from home. Couldn’t pay the bills of their host countries. Had plenty of firepower to destroy the world hundred times over, but had no money to buy a hamburger. Some were flown home. Others had to trade in their rockets, guns and ammunition to pay for a ticket home. A few got jobs as security contractors with the host country to help protect the citizens of those countries. Against unspecified “terrorists”.

Throughout the following years there were riots almost everywhere in the world. People were going hungry and demanded help. They looted warehouses and stores. Anarchy broke out. Governments went into hiding. The army declared a state of emergency and martial law. California, Texas, and a few other American states used the National Guard to control the riots and to put the protesters, now called terrorists, into detention camps. They defied the Federal Government and the army saying they would not tolerate interference in their internal affairs. This was to become the root cause of some massive problems later on, leading to the “Client Kings” and the “Apocalypse”.

People couldn’t get to the supermarket because they had no petrol and there was no public transport. Which didn’t matter in the end because the supermarket shelves were empty anyway. The fast-food outlets were all closed. Initially the churches provided some food but the soup kitchens soon ran out of supplies. People died from hunger. Others died from not getting medical care or the medication they depended on. Pills were still available, but people didn’t have the money to buy them. So they died.

Armed gangs roamed the inner cities robbing, looting, killing. There was no police to confront them. The army didn’t interfere hoping the gangsters would exterminate each other. The gangs fought for control of streets, then suburbs, then whole cities. An inexhaustible supply of weapons made them almost unbeatable. Where did all the guns come from ? Arms manufacturers had for decades lobbied government to dismantle all controls on arms sales, in the name of – you guessed it - freedom. The result was an enormous glut of weapons. Many gang members were massacred and many gangs disappeared. However, the remaining ones became bigger and more powerful. In all of this innocent citizens were the main victims, being killed by the hundreds of thousands. There was no law, no justice system, no prisons. The military, being judge, jury and executioner, put to death “offenders” or, if they were young, put them in labour camps to be worked to death. The death penalty became known as the “soft option”.

Winters became harder to survive. There was little shelter and no energy for heating. Firewood, furniture, fence posts, anything that would give warmth, had been burnt long ago. The winter of 2033 was particularly harsh. People had been without heating for years and had toughened up. But now many froze to death, first the old and sick, then the very young. Nobody counted the dead. My grandfather survived and he thought that around a third of all people had died by 2034. Not just in the US but everywhere.


Meantime the creditors had moved in. The Chinese were first. They came to meet their debtors in Washington and on Wall Street. This turned out to be fruitless. With no hope of getting their money back, they looked at the leftovers and pondered how to get redress. Remember “the weak die, the strong feast on their carcasses“ ? Nobody dared to call the Chinese “vultures”. They were in fact quite reasonable. As there was nothing of any value to take away, they decided to empower some US generals to “govern” the population in order to make Americans work and pay off their debt over time. They left a few advisors behind to assist the generals. And to oversee the weapons manufacturers.

Those generals were highly decorated of course, having fought America’s wars against many foreign countries for decades. Evidence of their past successes was the battery of medals on their chests. However, this was the first time the enemy was within. It appears my grandfather Jonathan was one of them - that is, an enemy. By 2035 he found himself in an internment camp, sentenced to lifelong hard labour. He was not alone. There were tens of thousands of “undesirables” in the camp, half of which died every year. They were quickly replaced in order to fill the work quota imposed by the Chinese advisors.

Before he died my grandfather told his son the story of how America, the Land of the Free, the shining City on the Hill, became a slave to her creditors. How America, the Exceptional, the world’s number one arms dealer, once the most dangerous rogue state ever, became the world’s biggest debtor.

How it was. Why it happened. When America became a Banana Republic.


----------------------------------------------  continues with Letter 2 of 4 : Client Kings
© Rolf Brandt 2009