The pressure on President Love to inflict greater violence on American citizens, to begin arming our borders with yet more weaponry and lethal force, to shred the Constitution and begin imprisoning people in droves, is more real than his progressive detractors can imagine. While serving in his administration I was disturbed to see this pressure coming not just from the media but from within his own party and from the lobbying class who see our nation as becoming ungovernable and unfit for business.
I resigned because my conscience would not allow me to continue to serve President Love, and perhaps I will live to regret that if he goes unchallenged for the nomination in 2036. For so many of us in leadership roles, there seems to be no right answer anymore. My faith has kept me from despair, but my conscience is far from clear. I agreed to serve as Victor Love’s running mate despite rumors and misgivings about his character. We make compromises with ourselves all the time because we believe the ends will justify the means. When I met with him for a conversation about the vice presidency, he assured me my priorities were his priorities. I set my concerns aside because power and ambition beckoned—but so did the chance to improve the lives of the American people.
When I chose to write a letter of resignation, I found my voice, if belatedly. When asked to write my opinion of the sad conclusion of the Senate committee empowered to investigate the actions of August 1, 2034, I still find myself at a loss for words. The committee’s work can be summed up by one cold sentence in its report: “Though the president acted rashly, he did so within the bounds of the law given the circumstances.” And that is that.
There is little doubt that political deals have been cut. Those arrested on August 1 are free, including Kate Morris. Many of those detained illegally under the law enforcement statutes of the Pollution Reduction, Infrastructure, and Research Act were released just after Christmas of this past year, including Dr. Anthony Pietrus. As many legal scholars have argued, PRIRA makes a joke of due process for those dubiously accused of domestic terrorism.
Dr. Pietrus appeared in a photo in a public setting with a Weathermen suspect, and because of that photograph spent seventeen months in prison without access to a lawyer. He was released only because the Justice Department could produce no further evidence that he was complicit in any terrorist activity. PRIRA allows the detention of terror suspects to last as long as three years. American citizens are still being held in unconstitutional black-site facilities across the Southwest while the Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge. Even worse, by taking his boot off the neck of his most high-profile opponents, Victor Love has been allowed to escape any reckoning for his horrific actions. The standard line by apologists in my own party is that he “mismanaged an impossible situation.”
Do not be lured in by such a ludicrous line of thinking. The truth is simple. Victor Love committed the worst atrocity on American soil since the attacks of September 11, 2001. For all his tough talk about hunting and ending terrorists, he is the one with by far the most blood on his hands.
I can assure you President Love is dangerous. He has not been reined in, he has not learned any lesson, and he continues to dodge both culpability and the law. If Democrats fail to mount a challenge to him in the coming year, and he wins, I mourn to think of what another four-year term could bring. Yet support for the Far Right Republican Party, which continues its alliance with white nationalists like Jennifer Braden, is a nonstarter. People of conscience have this one chance to replace Victor Love with a candidate who has not brought terror and shame to our country.
I will not skirt my complicity with what happened on the National Mall and in the halls of the Capitol. The images of the bloodshed and the names of the dead will haunt me for the rest of my life. Many have wondered if I resigned out of ambition to run against President Love in the upcoming primary, while other Democrats have begged me to do just that. But I cannot because I do not deserve the office. Not after failing to stop what happened. I have no moral authority to challenge President Love, but there are many brave public servants who do.
The legacy of August 1 will not be decided by a feckless and rigged Senate committee. It will be decided by what voters and citizens do, as we fight to hold our nation together in these hungry and perilous times.
G
UNS
, W
ALLS, AND
S
ULFUR
D
IOXIDE
2035
I tried to just say the truth, as plainly as I could.
“I don’t know if I’d call them nightmares, but it’s in my dreams, certainly. Coming into the house and finding her. It was… truly awful. Shocking and, this is a pedestrian word but, disgusting…” I tried to find a way to admit what I wanted to admit. “I find I have more guilt not that she did it, but that I…”
I paused too long, my eye wandering over a slab of obsidian hanging on the wall. Expensive art was a staple of these high-priced therapists. As if office decor could signal one’s competence as a mechanic of souls. Maria’s knuckles left her chin so she could urge me on.
“I feel guilty because I’m glad she’s gone.” I wanted her to say something then, but she only waited. “I miss her, of course, but I miss the woman who raised me. Not the one at the end. She was so bitter and unhappy and cruel—especially to me. I couldn’t bear to be around her anymore.” I plucked a piece of lint from my pants. “Anyway, I know we talk about this all the time…”
“We talk about whatever you want to talk about,” said Maria, her eyes always eager behind her ARs. She never took a note, but she seemed to remember everything, and furthermore, care. Not in the sense that she empathized, but like she was an alien who just found humans fascinating. “Finding a loved one after a suicide is an incredible life event, Jacquelyn. The emotions that come with it are complicated. Do you talk to your partner about it?”
“I have. I don’t anymore really.”
“Why not?”
“He has his own things going on. Sometimes I talk to Allie.”
“But not your brother?”
I rolled my eyes. “Erik wouldn’t talk about it if Xuritas cuffed him to a chair and hooked him up to a car battery.”
“He’s closed off.”
“That’s one way of putting it. He’s divorced, estranged from his kids, drinks heavily.”
“What does he do for work again?”
“Mostly I give him money.”
“How much?”
“A lot. Same with Allie.”
“I thought she had the doctor husband?”
“She does, but they’re overleveraged. You’ve never met two more irresponsible people, and he’s retired now. Almost in his seventies and he’s asking his wife to hit up her sister for ‘loans’ every six months.”
Now that most of my social circle consisted of people who’d gone from elite prep schools to Princeton to making small fortunes, I had an imposter’s anxiety and avoided talk that could lead to my family’s pinched, unhappy lives. I had unnerving fears of my siblings coming to visit me in New York and having to introduce them at a dinner party: Erik with his dead front tooth or Allie and her Real Housewives of St. Louis life. Fred hypothesized that our extravagantly successful peers were in fact jealous of my background. The rich couldn’t wait to tell you about whatever humble beginnings they could dredge up. “Growing up, our summer house was such a dump, it didn’t even have a dock!” he joked.