In the Late American Republic, Congress became a vestigial organ. While legislative power was still nominally vested in this body, the high degree of consensus required to pass any legislation, combined with the roughly even and increasingly hostile division of the populace into the Reds and the Blues, prevented any major reforms from being enacted. The only true power remaining in the body rested in its ability to veto the President's military expenditures as well as his choice of ministers. To keep the government from failing completely, exceptions to the usual high vote threshold were carved out for the appointment of ministers. But the veto power over military expenditures was increasingly exercised. For historical reasons, military expenditures had to be approved by Congress yearly. This was in marked contrast to the vast majority of the government's actual expenditures (cash, food, and other in-kind payments to the poor and elderly), which were funded in perpetuity and thus elevated above the annual machinations of this fickle body. The controversy around military expenditures typically centered around the border troops and internal security forces. The Blues enjoyed marked support from the Mesoamericans who had recently migrated into the empire, and thus wished to minimize the number and efficacy of these troops in order to allow more such foreigners to slip through the empire's porous borders. Meanwhile, in public, the Reds supported drastically increasing spending on these border guards. But privately, many were beholden to the large landowners who employed these new arrivals on their plantations. Because of this dynamic, by the end of the 2020s, between 1 in 10 and 1 in 5 Americans were descended from ancestors who had managed to evade these border guards (their descendants were granted full citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil). This dynamic continued until tensions between the Blues and the Reds boiled over. The power base of the Blues consisted of recently arrived Mesoamericans (as stated previously), but also the learned class of Europeans that constituted the administrative layers of the governmental and corporate bureaucracies, in addition to the descendants of freed African slaves. All of these groups were overwhelmingly urban. In contrast, the power base of the Reds consisted of the vast European rural peasantry that still constituted the plurality of Late Republican society, in addition to the commercially-minded merchants, traders, and plantation owners who were wary of the growing tax power of the administrative class. There was also a marked sex divide: women tended to favor the Blues, while men favored the Reds. The Blues were reformists and revolutionaries, the Reds conservatives and traditionalists. The aim of the Blues was the creation of a powerful state with wide-sweeping powers to tax the commerce of rich Reds in order to fund the distribution of food, shelter, medicine, and cash payments to their core base of poor urban Mesoamericans and Africans. This state was (of course) to be administered by the learned class of Blue bureaucrats. The aim of the Reds was divided. Their core rural base wished to return to the social and political arrangements of the Middle Republic. They especially harkening back to what they saw as the era of America's greatest prosperity, the 1950s (when America had emerged as the only major power whose lands were largely unscathed from the Second European War). Meanwhile the rich Reds sought primarily to tighten their monopoly on the Late Republic's land and commerce, and resist the encroachments of the Blue-backed administrative state. Demographic momentum was on the side of the Blues. However, in the mid-2020s, the Reds swept to power across all government bodies, riding a wave of anti-Blue sentiment. Yet, due to the aforementioned Red divide and the previously stated high vote threshold required to enact major reform, the Reds only managed to stall the momentum of the Blues, not reverse it. The porous border was closed, many migrants were rounded up in the interior of the republic, but no major laws were enacted that could've consolidated the Reds' power. And the rich Reds undermined their own power base by continuing to push for more migrants to be allowed into the republic to serve as cheap labor in their enterprises. A dissatisfied and fickle populace swept the Blues back into power. The tactics the Reds had used to round up migrants in the interior of the republic had shocked the power base of the Blues, and even many of those who normally supported the Reds came out against it. This became the Blue's pretense for doing away with the high vote threshold required to enact major reform (the threshold had only ever been a technicality based on governing norms, and was easily dispensed with once those norms were no longer seen as sacred). Suddenly Congress became not only powerful, but nearly all-powerful. The number of judges in the highest court was increased. The new appointees were all Blues, they served for life, and could not be removed. This ensured perpetual Blue control of judicial functions. A Mesoamerican protectorate was elevated into a State and given representation in Congress. The capital city, highly urban and Blue, was also turned into a State and given representation. This ensured perpetual Blue control of the legislative functions. And the Blue legislative majority then enacted voting reforms that heavily favored Blue Presidential candidates. These reforms were rubber-stamped by the Blue judiciary, ensuring perpetual Blue control of the executive function as well.

Being American just requires accepting a set of principles. One of those principles is that if you reject all those principles, you’re still American. Therefore being American requires nothing.

I just want everyone to understand that America has not been trying. We bully our smart kids. We spend 1000 times more on special education than gifted and talented programs. We eliminated honors classes in the name of equality. We even came up with a replacement for phonics so stupid that half our kids can’t read. Then we take the smartest kids that survive this system, and we racially and sexually discriminate against them for entry into college. Then we do that again when they apply for their first job. And again for every job after that. Then we undercut them in favor of foreign labor that’ll do worse work for cheaper. Most kids see this and just say “fuck it” and focus on sports, or trying to be an influencer, or just give up on trying altogether. Meanwhile in places like China every kid spends 16 hours a day studying trig tables or gets the belt. Yet America is still number one. In everything. There is so much latent potential in the American people. We have tried before. We crossed a continent and carved this country out of clay. We recrossed the oceans and conquered the world by accident as a favor to our friends. One day (hopefully soon), we are going to start trying again. America will wake up. Don’t be on the wrong side when it does.