Short Story: Fly away to Jesus

Fly away to Jesus by Manu Herbstein ©

On Christmas Eve, 2011, President Barrack Obama addressed the nation.

He did not speak from the Oval Office, nor from the lawn of the White House. There were no flags behind him. The President stood alone, backed by a plain white wall. He was dressed casually, in jeans and a dark pullover; on his head a plain black baseball cap. The low winter sun threw his shadow on the concrete paving and then up the wall. He read from a document which lay on a simple wooden lectern. There was only one microphone and, it seems, just one static camera. The transmission had clearly been pre-recorded and there were indications that it had been edited.

“My dear fellow Americans, fellow citizens of this great nation,” he began, “my dear countrymen and women, today I should be doing no more than conveying to you my warm festive greetings and those of my dear wife Michelle and our beloved daughters Malia and Sasha, for Christmas, Chanukah and Kwaanza.

“Sadly, I have a different task.”

He paused, took a folded handkerchief from his pocket and wiped each eye. An almost imperceptible movement of his head from side to side signalled his mood.

Then he pulled himself together.

“Just under three years ago,” he said, speaking directly to the camera, “I was sworn in as your President.”

“Immediately after taking the oath of office, I addressed you. After thanking you for the trust you had invested in me, I told you at once, frankly, what I then knew about the state of our nation and the serious problems that we all faced – including two wars, threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, a falling economy, chronic health care and housing crises and potentially devastating climate change.

“I undertook, as your elected leader, to address those problems, expeditiously and with all the vigour I could command, and to let no day pass without recalling my campaign promise of change, change for the better.

“I reminded you of words I had spoken before: ‘hope is the bedrock of this nation.’ I reiterated my belief that our destiny would be written not for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be. I called upon people of all parties and ages, of all national origins, of all faiths, to rally to that common cause.
“I offered no magic solutions to our problems; but I did undertake to be a president who would be honest with you, who would listen to you and learn from you, even when we disagree; and who wouldn’t just tell you what you wanted to hear, but what you needed to know. I promised to play it straight with you and, in making the tough choices demanded by the challenges of our times, to bear always in mind the needs and dreams of ordinary American citizens like you and me and our families.

“During the election campaign I had placed squarely upon the shoulders of my predecessor in office, President George W. Bush, full responsibility for a war that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged, for our crumbling schools and collapsing bridges, for the shuttered mills where once Americans had worked and for the shuttered homes where once American families had lived.

“On assuming office I appointed without delay the officers of state, the members of my cabinet, whose task it would be to advise and guide me during my term of office. They were, and are, all of them, men and women of unimpeachable integrity, of undoubted ability and of great experience. They all share with me a deep commitment to our common goals. I charged them to debrief their predecessors in office and their principal assistants and to present to the first meeting of my cabinet, a succinct assessment of our present condition and the immediate and long-term tasks ahead.”

He paused and took a drink of water.

“What we heard that day was deeply disturbing, so disturbing in fact that I was constrained to break my pledge to you, at least temporarily, and to insist that the proceedings of that meeting be treated as top secret. My fear was that public disclosure of the facts would cause widespread panic. In truth, the situation on most fronts, but particularly on the economic front, was much more serious than the previous government had permitted us to know. We were up to our necks in debt. If the facts had been made public, there might well have been a serious run on the dollar, with disastrous consequences for both the national and the world economy.

“In the short run we had no choice but to apply to our friends for aid. The government of the Peoples Republic of China offered us a generous bridging loan, which I accepted. They agreed to my insistence on total confidentiality. However, as a condition for their aid, they demanded that I implement painful structural changes in our economy. These boiled down to a choice between a substantial increase in taxation, across the board, or a drastic reduction in expenditure, principally in the military sector but also in health, education and the social services. Or both. It seemed that I had no choice but to break practically every one of my election promises. I called for an immediate, urgent review of income and expenditure in every single department of government.

“While this was underway, I called former President George W. Bush to a meeting in the Oval Office. I confronted him with the harsh reality of the situation, a situation that was almost entirely of his making. I gave him an opportunity to deny the facts. He could not. I explained to him, in simple words, the choices which faced me, as President, and asked him what he would do in the circumstances. He was silent. I sent him packing. He is a broken man, without doubt the worst President this country has ever seen.

“In the midst of all this gloom, we had a stroke of luck. We received news, confirmed by our Intelligence Services, of the death, by natural causes, of our arch enemy, Osama bin Laden. That event provided me with the opportunity to justify an order for the immediate and total withdrawal of all our troops, combat and non-combat, from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

He covered his notes with his right hand and continued speaking, off the cuff.

“Our generals were not happy . . . ” he began.

At this stage it became evident that he was wearing an earpiece. It appeared that someone had interrupted him. He fiddled with the thing to improve the fit, listened to what could not have been more than two or three sentences and then mumbled a reply, “Yes, yes.”

“I need to fast forward,” he said. “There is no time to review all the events of the past three years. You will all have lived through them and there is little I can add to your experience.”

He shuffled the pages of his speech, searching for the place to resume reading.

Then he continued, “The past six months have seen a widespread breakdown of law and order. I fully understand the great and increasing hardship which many of you have been suffering. I have done my utmost to stem the continuing collapse of our economy but no initiative I have taken, no palliative legislation passed by Congress, seems to have worked.

“Some of our countrymen and women have seen fit to take the law into their own hands. Stores and warehouses have been looted. When it became clear that the situation was beyond the capacity of our police to handle, I called out the National Guard. Sadly, they did not receive the degree of support and cooperation which their patriotism, devotion to duty and courage merited. A few of them disgraced their colleagues, rebelling against their officers, refusing to take orders and even joining the ranks of the anarchist insurgents. Some of our guardsmen became victims of ambush and assassination. This led to a dangerous loss of morale.

“The leaders of the trades unions, ignoring my appeals and promises, called an indefinite national strike, closing down farms, factories and other businesses, large and small, throughout the country. Many of them may never open their doors again.

“Arson has been widespread. Schools and hospitals have been burned, railroads bombed.”

He paused again to listen to the prompt delivered to his ear-plug, nodded and turned to the last page of his speech. He read the script in silence and then spoke directly to the camera.

“This morning,” he said, “the Joint Chiefs of Staff called me to a meeting to discuss the situation. They presented me with a series of demands, leaving me with no option but to accept.

“In the past hour I have signed three Executive Orders.

“In the first I used powers vested in me by the Constitution to declare a countrywide State of Emergency, coming into force with immediate effect.

“In the second I declared a State of Martial Law.

“In the third, for the duration of the State of Emergency, I delegated my powers as President and Commander in Chief to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Powers.”

He took another look at the paper and, without raising his head read the words there in a quiet voice.

“My dear fellow Americans,” he said, “my dear countrymen and women. I urge you to give your utmost support to General Powers and the armed forces under his command.

“God bless you all.”

Cut to a blank screen and then to the Oval Office.

* * *

General Powers’ address was quickly beamed around the world. He might have chosen an African coup-maker of old as his speech-writer. He accused the political class of corruption and bad governance. He promised the immediate restoration of law and order, to be followed by a thorough cleansing of Washington’s Augean stables. He promised to restore constitutional government at some carefully unstated future date.

He announced censorship of all media and an indefinite dusk to dawn curfew. A week later he banned meetings of more than five persons, except for purposes of worship, and authorized his forces to shoot curfew-breakers on sight.

His coup drew universal condemnation by politicians and the media beyond the borders of the United States. But their countries, too, had been infected by the American malaise. In Britain the armed forces toppled the Prime Minister but left the aged Queen to her Corgis. Coups followed in one European country after another and, after them, in Asia and Africa and South America. Of the members of the G8 club, only the Russian government survived.

With soldiers in power almost everywhere, small wars erupted and spread like a pox. Populations were conscripted. Underground resistance grew. Some despairing souls adopting suicide bombing. Trade collapsed. Famine and epidemics stalked the land. The populace fled the cities. The highways were full of refugees and abandoned vehicles.

* * *

In the year of Our Lord 2012, as Maundy Thursday slipped into Good Friday, power failures swept across the globe, starting at the International Date Line and racing ahead like a Mexican Wave at a soccer match.

The world returned to its pre-Edison, pre-Marconi state. Such telecommunications as had survived the economic and political crisis, ceased to function. Generals sat in darkness, incommunicado, their laptop batteries dead. The sun and the moon and the stars were the only sources of light. And candles, while they lasted.

Scientists were unable to explain the phenomenon. Only the Chosen, the Elect, knew what was going on. They had waited out their three and half years (more or less) with increasing impatience and now they had just three more days of joyous anticipation ahead of them.

Do you see? Sarah was right all along.