It is August 29, 2032. It's been twenty years since Mitt Romney, with the help of more than a billion dollars in anonymous corporate cash, defeated Barack Obama in a hard fought campaign to become the 45th President of the United States. That same year Republicans took control of the United States Senate; they would have a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress by 2021, when the election of Senators was put back in the hands of state legislatures by Constitutional amendment.
There has been no federal support for public education since the Bachmann/Paul budget act abolished the Department of Education in 2017. Many universities have closed their doors, as there are no longer enough students to support them. Manufacturers continue to move jobs overseas; the last automobile assembly plant in the U.S. closed in 2024. Americans don't buy very many cars these days, which is just as well because highways in most of the country are in poor shape except for private roads whose owners hire Chinese or Indian companies to maintain and police them.
The long Midwest drought that began in 2012 still goes on; millions of people have relocated, either to the northeastern or Pacific northwestern states, where water is still abundant. The bread-basket of the world is no more, and food, especially meat, is a major expense to many Americans.
Major corporations, many of them bearing familiar American names, no longer see America as an important market, and most have their headquarters in Europe or Asia. Since Medicare was abolished in 2019, health care is a luxury; few Americans see a doctor very often. Doctors themselves are something of a rarity these days.
The gold dollar, often called the "Rand" after the person depicted on its face, has been legal tender since 2017; it is worth approximately 450 old "Washingtons".
The United States military is still dominant in the world, although it has grown more and more dependent on advanced technology. It owns a massive stockpile of weapons ranging from aircraft carriers and nuclear missiles to drones the size of bumblebees.
Homeland Security has cleared a mile-wide strip all along the northern and southern borders, marked by barbed-wire fences and signs declaring that anyone found within the forbidden zone without authorization will be shot. Those signs are, of course, in English, the official language of the United States since 2013.
People stay off coastal beaches after dark; no one wants to be taken for a smuggler, spy, or terrorist.
As they have long done, the American media report mostly the stories that attract the greatest number of listeners, viewers, and readers, with scant regard for fact. All agree that the United States is the most powerful, most prosperous, most munificent power in human history, the natural leader of the Free World and defender of human liberty on whose flag billions look with hope and admiration.
In our next episode, an ambitious Asian power moves to challenge U.S. dominance in the Pacific, much as Japan did in 1941, drawing the United States into its first major war in nine decades.