Rosella Tolfree's World
A series set in a politically dark and dystopian future of the U.S.A.
Featuring blogs that explains Rosella's World
Rosella Tolfree's World is a fictional world.
Back in 1979, Laakso and Taageper introduced a mathematical formula that predicted the effective number of political parties in a parliamentary, or similar political system.
As an author, it was easy enough to split up the seats of both houses of Congress and the Presidency into multiple parties. It’s harder to come up with the "how we got there". See my Medium series on it here. For most of its political life the U.S. has been a two-party system, this has not always been the case based on this formula. Between the years of 1805 to 1809 and again in 1819 to 1825 the U.S. had effectively only one political party, namely the Democrat-Republicans. Then during 1855 to 1857 we see three parties as the Whigs collapse and the Republicans are formed. By Rosella’s time the Green Party now controls 26% of the seats, Libertarian Party 18%, Democratic Party 15%, Republican Party 12%, Sanford Party 12%, American Solidarity Party 10%, The Workers Freedom Party 5%, and the Reformed Torres Party 2%. But where the President is concerned, Congress has only elected either a Democrat or Republican during Rosella’s time. Thus, showing the historical sway of both parties have over the other parties in Congress. Allowing the Democrats and Republicans to maintain the airs of the keepers of political tradition. While we know most of the parties I’ve listed, three are new. A group of unnamed individuals created the Sandford Party (sometimes misspelled as Sanford to hide its origins) as a reaction to the ever-increasing use of androids as a substitute for human labor. This party is actively seeking the adoption of a Constitutional amendment to institute corporate human slavery to ensure the priority of human work in society. The Workers Freedom Party are American communists. This group came into power in the late 21st century because of extreme socialist activity in the nation. They are constantly seeking to hold a new constitutional convention to reshape America’s democracy. The Reformed Torres Party is a latecomer to the U.S. political scene. Some political scientists say they are a knee jerk reaction to both the Sanford Party and Workers Freedom Party. The party is a radical group of Americans, which many of its members can trace their ancestry back to the original founding of the nation. This party is seeking America to rejoin the British crown. They are constantly trying to push for Articles of Dissolution and adopting the Declaration of Allegiance to the Crown of England. There are also lesser parties in society that control the local and state level of American politics. This is where you find groups like the Neo Obliteration Movement and the National Socialist Movement. These groups are politically active in small towns and cities across the U.S. You find these two groups only being able to control two seats on a city council or some other elected position. Rarely you’ll find them in a state legislative position, but it’s not unheard of depending upon the state. As you can tell, Rosella’s political world for the U.S. has fallen into a multiparty reality. America has never truly had such party chaos before, but then again Rosella’s future is filled with major ecological disasters. The two realities are more interconnected socially than many realize. Take today and the pandemic. We see the rise in social activism despite a deadly disease being present. Why would Rosella’s future be any different? Author Note- My use of the word illuminati in reference to politics is a reference to the card game by Steve Jackson Games called Illuminati. ##### Image- George Floyd Protest, By Mike Von, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License. (Processed using Adobe Spark) Image- Rosella Tolfree Political Illuminati, AEM Services. CategoriesAll
An Excerpt from the USRM-ISB Installment J4- Marineth Pugh
Marineth was standing on the small balcony overlooking the central courtyard of their co housing apartment in the Buffalo Creek Apartments. The apartments were located southeast of the flooded area of Sacramento California. Her husband, Martin, was off on business again this week. Marineth hated being by herself. When the two got married a year ago, she joined Martin to live in his co housing apartment. She gave up a career in Social Media Net advertising to be a stay at home mother. A trend that was becoming popularized since President Veronica Simmons had recently taken power at the White House. Women across the country were embracing President Simmons’ fundamentalist views on raising children and becoming stay at home mothers once more. Marineth knew she was an Eukaryotic clone, and unable to have children. Even though Marineth came from a traditional clone family of seven girls, she was agreeable to try Martin’s desire for the fundamentalist plan. The plan was the two would use a surrogate android to birth their child, and Marineth would then care and raise the child. But that all changed when the android told her that her DNA had uncorrectable errors and it could not complete the cloning process.
When President Veronica Simmons took the office from Rick Garrett, she continued to push parts of his populist agenda. Like having mothers stay at home to raise children, and people living in communal communities. The people who filled these communities were those who had inherited the economic prosperity after the twin ecological disasters that befell the U.S. years earlier.
The Three Classes in America While America has had the traditional three classes of people, except for a fourth until 1862 (and this could be debated under the Jim Crow years)*, each economic class has had different social and economic benefits (slavery being a class afforded the least of these). The various disparities between the haves and have nots by Rosella’s point in history had become three separate homogeneous communities. Those of the ultra rich, the middle working class, and the poor and displaced. The ultra rich were set apart from most everyone. They controlled the remains of the world economy and corporations. They had their fingers in politics around the world. They were the only people able to still travel globally by Rosella’s time. They also were the few who could afford to travel off world to Mars or the Moon. Because of social programs that had been instituted in the U.S., these programs had minimized any problems caused by income inequalities for those in the middle class. This resulted in a working middle class where everyone was homogeneously similar despite the unique work done. The social pressures to always achieve increasing wealth to survive were removed, allowing these people to pursue excellence in their work. Some could travel off world for work, but most stayed on Earth. This was the primary group by Rosella’s time that were using A-4 androids for making and caring for families. The issue with the poor and displaced was that they saw the most amount of social inequalities and lack of rights. Both Rick Garrett, and later Veronica Simmons, were herding the poor, displaced, and immigrants into more and more shipping container housing (nicknamed ‘the stacks’ or ‘stackvillas’ by many). When the Great Melt and volcanic traps of New Madrid occurred years earlier, Congress provided funding for emergency housing by using an available stockpile of shipping containers. But this form of housing was not meant to be long term. Once President Veronica Simmons got into power, she was moving these peoples around the nation like cattle to be the reconstruction labor force. Veronica Simmons would assign them projects ran by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers trying to deal with the ongoing reconstruction efforts after the ecological disasters, in exchange for their housing, and meal rations. Universal medical services fees were auto deducted from any UBI owed to these individuals. While these poor individuals were visible too many, they became socially invisible. So invisible, that any advocacy had fallen by the wayside because most of the people cared more about their own needs than that of others. It was bad enough that the ecological disasters that had befallen America disrupted life, but by the time of the Rick Garrett presidency the lack of policy enforcement now disenfranchised those American citizens living in the stacks will both from voting and the Constitutional census. These three separate economic social classes continued in America through the years of the U.S. presidential cycles elected by Congress. ADDENDUM (*) While America used indentured servants, which were typically white and poor, by the start of the Revolutionary War the U.S. labor market is estimated to be only 2 to 3 percent indentured. By the passing of the 13th Amendment in 1865, this kind of contract servitude was now illegal. While restricted by a contract, these people still enjoyed some socio-economic benefits similar to other non-indentured poor. Therefore, I don’t classify them as a fifth economic social class. Nor should we think of them as equal to slaves, because that would technically be incorrect. ##### Combined Image- minneapolis cityscape at night, By Donny Jiang, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License; Shipping Containers at Docks, By Caleb Russell, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License; untitled image, By Noble Mitchell, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (All processed using Adobe Spark).
In various short stories I’ve written, I keep mentioning this thing called the “Social Media Net”.
I know it sounds like some future internet, and it is. Experts have been talking about Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and even Web 3.0. But such things refer to a process to which information is handled on the internet and given to end users more so than society’s image of the technology. The Infopad and Tactical Infopad Today we have apps that do different things. One for email, one for a social media program, and one to watch shows. The devices that can use them vary, but most are using smartphones. In my future America, the smartphone is still around, but many people use what’s called an infopad, which is a cross between a tablet and smartphone. Like today, people will use the social media net for productivity for work and still call these features “apps”. The most common workhorse for productivity is the much larger and technologically robust “tactical infopad”. We commonly find these infopads in military and police work, along with any industry demanding on site robust computer power, like a construction site. These machines are the equivalent of what people used to use laptops of old. Except college students now just use a regular infopad for their schoolwork. As for PCs, these machines exist but are only found in offices and are networked into dumb A.I. machines. The actual PC box is a lot smaller and acts more like an interface for I/O devices. If you turned on an infopad or tactical infopad, it automatically places you into the social media net. An array of mini screens is in front of you, like app icons of old. Each showing some live or recorded broadcast, a prerecorded message about a program you have loaded, a video of a new game uploaded to your game account, and so forth. You can swipe your finger across the screen to access other panels of vid icons. Think of it like YouTube on a combination of a megadose of steroids and growth hormones. There are network shows you can watch, private videos to subscribe to, video phone calls you can send and receive. All this happening across a massive Wi-Fi infrastructure that’s been improved to levels way beyond our current technology. The Social Feel of the Social Media Net While most people enjoy the social media net passively, like how television used to be watched, there’s still some interaction with viewers. News shows are notorious for doing viewer polls people can take part in. Then there are the various gambling apps that can show participants for card games, or you can watch a live sporting event only to pull up the bookie on the same screen to place a bet on the game. What’s missing from the Social Media Net is the toxicity and rage that typically happens today on mediums like Twitter or YouTube. Gone is the ability to post comments, feedback, likes or dislikes about shows and products. The artificial intelligence of Web 3.0 takes care of these features based on user interactions. Gone are the days where every person could be their own pop-up journalist who could post an image that could go viral. Because of advance Web 3.0 structure, this kind of stuff is inherently controlled to keep society in a peaceful and orderly way. So, that would mean videos showing cops killing people would only be seen through vetted news sources. And some news outlets pay bounties for vid clips for them to build stories. Again, because of advance Web 3.0 technology, you get news and information fed to you, the social media net end user, based on your viewing usage. If you are gravitating more towards stories about violence, then you’ll be fed more stories about it. If you like news about finance, then its more financial networks. Start playing certain games, then it targets those games for you until you get bored and start looking for some other game to play. The whole social media net is reactive to the end user. Meanwhile, covert attempts to plant false and/or deceptive information into the social media net by individuals, governments, or companies are typically scrubbed by A.I. systems that are routinely scouring the whole of the net. With authorities being alerted for prosecution later. This one aspect killed off the meme culture of the 21st century. All this A.I. net scouring doesn’t mean politically radical groups can’t use alternative tech to communicate between members, but governments have ways of monitoring such electronic traffic. Therefore, many groups by Rosella’s time resorted to old fashion pen and paper with a courier to deliver messages between members. Thus, by Rosella’s time, the internet as we understand it has evolved into an A.I. monitored and controlled passive version of social media. While it was true humans controlled the input and output of the information on the social media net, society kept the term social media. This was to remove the fear factor that their lives were now being fed a diet of information by autonomous machines. ADDENDUM What about Virtual Reality? It’s present. But typically requires cybernetics to fully appreciate it. There are some sleek gaming glasses that simulate a V.R. experience, but it’s not the same. What really killed the V.R. industry was the L.A. cyber riots where some A.I. brain enhanced actors went on a killing rampage. After that, nations around the world passed laws restricting cybernetic applications in humans. By Rosella’s time, the technology is too expensive for common people to own. So it’s not that ubiquitous. #### Image: Hacker binary attack code. Made with Canon 5d Mark III and analog vintage lens, Leica APO Macro Elmarit-R 2.8 100mm (Year: 1993), By Markus Spiske. Source Unsplash. Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Splash) In the early 2nd Age of Humanity, a Dutch spiritualist by the name of Gudo Muurling attracted many very wealthy individuals to his daily readings.
They initially started in Europe, but they found a better home in the U.S. where it attracted more members, especially those who were associated with politics such as politicians and high level government workers. Once in the U.S. the members organized under the name of The Church of the Ember Coalition. There are several levels or “rings” to the Ember Coalition, so members have ranks. Each ring doesn’t know the workings of the next higher ring. There are tests to know the next ring level when one is ready. Gudo’s mixed Judeo-Christianity with standard occultism and gnosis to come up with a hodgepodge techno-religion with a focus on immortality and godhood. The irony is his religion couldn’t really save himself and he died of lung cancer. Conspiracy theories have speculated that Gudo uploaded his brain into some super AI system and is controlling the Ember Coalition in a virtual A.I. manner. Others think he has cheated death, and he is living through cybernetic technologies. No one really knows because no one has ever found his body. His death was just mentioned in a brief social media posting on the Social Media Net stating he died of lung cancer at a hospital in upstate New York. But his followers carried on, and now the main tenants have shifted towards absolute power and domination in the here and now to free oneself spiritually of the material domain and become absolute spiritual beings. They work day and night in gathering technology, resources, and power to become humanity’s spiritual gods. Unknown today is really who is in control of the Ember Coalition. Common Sayings Attributed Gudo “The dough of tomorrow will be the yeast of today.” “Into the light of the setting sun shall the children of manna go forth to become humanity’s gods.” “The heads of mankind shall burn with a thousand suns.” “The material darkness of this world shall be pierced by the light of the children of manna.” “The material world binds all who live upon it. Only the children of mana can set themselves free of it.” #### Image: Artwork done by Matthew Childers (Processed using Adobe Splash). T-Shirts with Matthew Childers artwork on it available here. Is Racism is TribalisticIt's Hard to EliminateAs a writer, it would be simple for me to say that America was a utopia of brotherly and sisterly love. A place where racism is no more. But, Rosella Tolfree’s world is a dystopia filled with serious ecological disasters pushing the limits of human civilization. Under such circumstances, it’s not abnormal for humans to resort to tribalistic behaviors to protect what little resources remain. Here, globalization has completely collapsed and nations have become completely isolationists. This alone doesn’t explain the persistent racism in Rosella’s America. To understand why this problem persists, as a reader you need to understand the complex legal tradition of hate speech in America. It’s been my observation, for all it’s good intentions, that since the creation of hate crime laws back in 1968, based on the same protections afforded to anti-discrimination, there’s been a social attempt to identify, label, show, and expand the definitions of hate and racism. Meanwhile, there are Supreme Court decisions on hate speech. So while today there are many trying to stamp out hate speech, the truth is even the FBI recognizes the right of people to express hate speech within specified limits. The Supreme Court has continued to allow what many (and myself included) would consider as evil to persist in America. It’s because of these decisions I’ve kept this evil in Rosella’s world since it would be consistent with the ecological dystopian realities. To make matters worse, in Rosella’s America the US party system has splintered (more on this later). Thus classic hate groups have gained political footholds. All of this adding tension to a tense future filled with technological wonders and ecological disasters. With all this being said, not that there haven’t been changes in Rosella’s America concerning racial issues. Case in point, the Vilmme Genocide Reparations Trails resulting in the passing of the Tyler-Hinton Slave Reparations Act. Further, because of the changes in weather patterns, people globally started to include genes to produce higher concentrations of melanin in their cloned children to protect them from higher concentrations of ultraviolet radiation. As a result, more people in Rosella’s America were actually “browner”. Socially blurring race ideologies based on skin color. Finally, many people have tried to control free speech for a long time in the U.S., and they persist even in Rosella’s world. I consider the best science fiction story of our times on this subject is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I like the 2018 movie version featuring Micheal B. Jordan. #### Image: London Black Lives Matter Peaceful Protest from Vauxhall to Westminster. By Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Splash). |
AuthorSeth Underwood writes adult science fiction and political dystopian science fiction. His future political dystopian U.S. world features decades of despot presidents, a flooded world, and new para-military force known as the Ranger Marshals. He has freemium stories at www. sethunderwoodstories.com Archives
June 2023
Categories
All
|