Rosella Tolfree Installment Stories
A series set in the politically dystopian future of the U.S.A.
Featuring blogs that explains Rosella's World
Rosella Tolfree's World is a fictional world.
 Section 2 of Amendment XXV reads “Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.” During Rick Garrett’s second run as President, his original Vice President, Athena Saunders, had died shortly before the convention for his party. Veronica Simmons was selected because she helped to persuade Congress to elect Rick Garrett to President in his first term. Ms. Simmons did this by leveraging her massive social media net following into a full court press lobbying effort against Congress. Congress relented and gave Rick Garret and his V.P. the office for his first term. While Veronica Simmons accepted the position, she made it publicly known she disliked playing second fiddle. She would put up with it so long as she could keep doing her show and it didn’t hurt her numbers. All parties, including Congress, were in agreement and she became the first V.P. to have a live social media net show from the White House. When Rick Garrett was impeached and Veronica Simmons elevated to President normally the succession of power would have the Speaker of the House become the Vice President. But over 90% of Congress was fearful of Veronica Simmons and her social media net following. Few dared to cross her. Since she broke the whole Garrett scandal from day one, the rumor mill on the Hill was she might have had a hand in it, but no Committee dared to go down that rabbit hole during the impeachment process. The heads of Congress asked her who her Vice President would be? She told them, “I’ll get back to you on that.” For Garrett’s remaining term, and Simmons’ second term, she kept giving Congress that single answer over and over. During her entire presidency, she had no vice president under her. She preferred it this way. As a final note, Simmons didn’t win the popular vote. In fact, during that election cycle eligible voters didn’t cast enough votes in so many states that ties or multiple splits among several candidates were common. This resulted with no single candidate capturing even half of the plurality needed to win. But Simmons used her massive following once more to secure her place as president with Congress, just as she did with Rick Garrett. ##### Image- Statue Of Liberty, a rusting gift. By Vinayak Sharma, Source Unsplash. Unsplash License. (Processed using Adobe Splash). Categories Please note that when it reads "elected" it doesn't mean by the people through voting and the electoral college. It means the election was decided by Congress. See here for the full list of Presidents elected by Congress.
Rick Garrett Served nearly two terms but was impeached during his second term for running a sex affair ring involving androids, Congress, embassies, and bribery. Deceased by the time of the stories. Veronica Simmons She replaced Rick Garrett’s original VP who died at the end of Garrett’s first term. She finished Garrett’s second term. Congress elected Simmons to President after that term. During her second term she provided notice to Congress that she was “unable to discharge the powers and duties of their office” (see Amend. 25 Section 3). Gilbert Sheppard, Speaker of the House, finished as President because of a constitutional crisis caused when Veronica Simmons became President initially after Garrett’s impeachment (more on this later). Whereabouts unknown by the time of the stories. Gilbert Sheppard Was successfully elected to office for another term but resigned a day after being sworn into office. Later it was revealed that doctors diagnosed him with an aggressive form of Alzheimer’s during the election campaign, but his campaign kept this information hidden from the public to ensure a victory. The VP did most of the campaigning, and the campaign made excuses for Sheppard’s absence from the campaign trail. Deceased by the time of the stories. Carmela Cordano Finished Sheppard’s term and successfully won a second term. Only to be impeached five months near the end of her second term on federal money laundering charges and running a drug cartel out of the White House. Evidence came to Congress and the authorities from her VP, Jane Barker. Whereabouts unknown by the time of the stories. Jane Barker After finishing Carmela Cardano’s term, she was successful to hold two additional terms. Jane Barker could hold the office of president for eight years because she only held the office for five months (see Amend. 22, Sec. 1). Rosella Tolfree’s stories chiefly take place in Jane Barker’s second term of Presidency. There are technically three additional US Presidents after Jane Barker, but that’s for later. ##### Image- White House circa 2012. By René DeAnda, Source Unsplash (image processed with Adobe Spark) 
President Veronica Simmons was unique as US Presidents go. Unlike her predecessors, she abolished the White House press corps and had no office or staff for the White House press relations. Instead, coming from a social media net background, she would run every national address, meeting, or dignitary greeting from the Oval Office or on location. She saw this as an extension of her original talk show. She would even sell audience tickets, which became a popular national lottery. During her presidency, the U.S. was ratifying the Immigration Amendment to the Constitution. She would also personally oversee one of the bloodiest battles on U.S. soil since the Civil War of the late 1800s. It would be months prior to this bloody event that stories were circulating of how Congress was planning to amend the Second Amendment. These stories talked about the removal of individual arms ownership and to reserve it to only the police and armed forces. This rallied up groups like John Elliott’s Democratic National Militia, the successor to the NRA. In response to these stories, small protests took place across the nation by gun rights enthusiasts. President Simmons using her White House platform ramped this issue up by making up fake accusations about key congressional leaders who may be responsible. Then on a fateful day in June, gun rights activists assembled south of Warrenton Virginia to prepare for a march into the nation’s capital. Some of them had brought heavy armored vehicles and old tanks they had refurbished. They carried flags and banners from years past of different US military units. They dressed for a confrontation with body armor and gas masks. A panicking Governor of Virginia called President Simmons for help. The President promised to send both the National Guard and the Ranger Marshals, but in exchange for exclusive coverage rights and a complete media blackout of the event by any other organization. The Governor agreed to her demands. Thus, it came to be that the battle at Warrenton was completely covered and given a blow by blow commentary by the President of the United States for the entire world to see. Losses were heavy on both sides, but the civilian forces surrendered. As a result, some saw President Veronica Simmons as a forceful leader, and by others as nothing more than a ratings hog since she interrupted many shows for the live coverage. ##### Artwork drawn by comic book artist, Matthew Childers. Categories In Rosella’s world there is a group called the Neo-Obliteration Movement which goes around trying to erase all symbols, words, and cultural concepts of hate. They are extremist in their ideologies and protest national Civil War parks, monuments to various figures of history, war monuments, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as symbols of hate to be removed from society. They want nothing more than to expunge from society every reference to hate so we have a culture that knows of no wars, racial hatred, no genocides or any other form of hate as if these things never happened. They do so to the point of even killing people and property destruction. This story bit is part of this group’s history.
The NOM Dictionary The Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles heard a civil case involving hate speech brought forth by the Neo-Obliteration Movement of Southern California, LLC in the hopes to overturn decades of court cases, such as the famous Beauharnais v. Illinois permitting hate speech. The Neo-Obliteration Movement was trying to get the County of Lost Angeles to approve a list of non-offensive words and to ban a specified list of words. Called the NOM Dictionary, this was an attempt to clean up the hate speech in society. The case won at the Superior Court level but was later overturned in subsequent courts due to the Federal Supreme Court precedent on this issue. President Veronica Simmons took note and created the Agency of Morally Correct Speech which went around trying to promote the NOM Dictionary. This move just inflamed hate groups like the KKK and the Alt-Right who launched lawsuit after lawsuit in each jurisdiction the Agency pushed its agenda. In the most unlikely team up was when the Agency pushed to remove the Federal land donation to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as an appeasement to the NOM base. Aside from Jewish groups who came to protest this move, U.S. Neo-Nazis groups joined against the move because they considered NOM a threat to their Nazi hateful heritage. President Simmons washed her hands of the whole affair blaming a Congressman for the Agency idea to gather votes.  For 40 years, there are eight individuals who become President of the United States through a failure of the Electoral College determining a winner. No more are there just two parties seeking the highest office of the land, but a host of multiple smaller parties dividing up the vote across the country. There are no more blue and red states. Now each state is a quilt of mixed up colors. Both Republicans and Democrats try coalitions with the smaller factions but all attempts fail. Politically we are more divided than ever.
The list of Presidents are as follows Rick Garrett (two terms) Veronica Simmons Gilbert Sheppard Carmela Cordano Jane Barker (two terms) Anne Bryan Naomi Ward Latoya Griffith |
AuthorSeth Underwood writes hard 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
December 2020
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