ie:missional teaching. glocalizing. living. serving. repenting. incarnating. loving. repeating.

Also posted as a note of my Facebook

This excerpt is from A Brief History of the North American Nations, summary boxes on pages 213, 214, Copyright 2075
For use in seventh grade classrooms in Pacifica

Most historians are now agreed that the breakup of the United States began in the early years of the 20th century with a series of Presidential Directives and Executive Orders aimed at consolidating power in the executive branch of the government. Still operating under the fear following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the sudden collapse of United States and world economies, the legislative branch increasingly allowed its power to be absorbed into various cabinet and â??czarâ? positions at the former White House. Slowly the presidents, beginning with George W. Bush and followed by Barack Obama, assumed the authority to declare martial law for any perceived threat, to suspend elections (which had the effect of creating a dictatorship, as happened under President Jones), to shut down communications and to withhold federal funds from states that protested such expansions and controls.

Though civil libertarian groups had been raising â??red flagsâ? since before the passage of the Patriot Act following 9/11, the initially incremental loss of freedoms followed by the massive erosion of personal liberty in the 2010â??s finally awakened even the social conservatives, but by then it was too late. When President Jones signed into law the Patriotism Compliance Act forbidding any criticism of the federal government, public or private, the states now known as The Southwestern Alliance began their initial moves toward secession. Following the lead of TX in 2013, the state houses of AZ, UT, NM and CO voted in 2014, by margins exceeding 85%, to leave the United States and form a new country. The response of Washington, DC, as at the beginning of the Civil War, was open discussion about repositioning troops of the United States Army to the borders of the Alliance states.

Emboldened by their southwestern brethren, the governors of the states that now form Southland (GA, AL, TN, NC, SC, MS, LA, FL, KY and AR) met at Savannah, GA for secession talks, as did the governors of CA, OR, WA, and NV, all in the fall of 2015. In December of the same year, when the president, over the objections of the congress, authorized military action against the Southwestern Alliance, troops from all of the states threatening secession went AWOL as did most of the troops from the Midwestern states. Given that many of these states were home to US airbases with trained pilots on hand, the joint chiefs advised the president to stand down. A strong warning was issued to these states as to the difficulty and tenuous nature of any future political relationship with the United States, with the secretary of state going so far as to label the Southwestern Alliance a â??rogue state,â? a label previously reserved for nations like North Korea and Iran.

The spring of 2016 saw more conflict and more moves toward dissolution. The Southwestern Alliance continued to meet, furthering plans for a new union. As a follow-up to Savannah, representatives from those states met again and drew up a draft constitution based on the Bible. CA, OR, WA, and NV, now with ID as a partner, founded Pacifica and began to explore secession options. In short order, HI and AK joined Pacifica, Alaska bringing its vast energy reserves to the table, while HI continued to debate whether to officially join or revert and declare independence.

Responding to these quickly changing scenarios, several Midwestern states for a loose affiliation (primarily for bargaining power), while the northern and plains states of SD, ND, MN, WI, MO, NE and WY held preliminary meetings. Unknown at the time, but later revealed through official meeting minutes, the governors and congressional leaders of the former â??New Englandâ? states met for a weekend in Portland, ME for discussions surrounding their futures. This series of meetings took place in the summer of 2016.

Since many states had recalled their representatives and senators, Washington, reticent to declare force and losing the power to do so, used the only weapon that it had left-money. On Tuesday, Sept ____, the day after Labor Day 2016, the president signed into law the States Assistance Compliance Act which restricted federal government funds to those states who were not in secession talks (though some of them were not meeting openly at the time). The states of Pacifica, having been authorized by their citizenry in a special referendum, wasted no time. One week to the day after the passage of SACA, the six states voted to secede from the United States of America. Five days later The Southwestern Alliance did the same. The following week Southland was officially formed at a constitutional convention in Atlanta, while SD, ND, MN, WI, MO, NE and WY stopping short of nationalizing, each voted to secede on the last day of September 2016.

On October 3, 2016, at 2:00 pm, the states now known as â??New Americaâ? (all the New England states plus MI, IL, OH, IN, VA, WV and PA) voted secession and signed a new constitution in Boston, effectively dissolving the federal government and the United States. Since each and every seceding state had agreed to hold harmless any of their citizens that refused to pay United States income tax, it’s government was bankrupted. At noon on October 5, 2016, the president dissolved his cabinet and, along with the vice-president, resigned posts in a country that, technically at least, no longer existed. The remaining senators and representatives left for home and did all members of the Supreme Court.

The states that had not formally affiliated did so in rapid form. The states of SD, ND, MN, WI, MO, NE, WY and IO, calling themselves â??The States of the Northâ? attempted to maintain independence for a couple of decades, but eventually joined their neighbors to the north and are now known as the province of South Canada. Owing to their memory and spirit they are sometimes called American Canada. After years of wrangling the in the former Midwest, Kansas joined the Southwester alliance though Oklahoma was ultimately taken by force in the Plains War of 2027-2028.

For the next three decades, Pacifica became known as â??the North American Middle East,â? as the extensive Alaskan oil and natural gas fields were finally tapped. Interestingly, much of the oil money was used to fund renewable energy research so that Pacifica, as one and the same time, was the North American leader in fossil fuel production and the world leader in renewable energy research and production. Rumors of â??broadcast energyâ? or â??atmosphere energyâ? never bore fruit.

As of this writing, there is relative peace among the many nations of North America, though the religious factionalism of Southland led to three coup attempts over its nearly fifty year existence, only one was successful and that in 2052.