Dear Reader,

Many of you have known me as a local politician or an attorney. Others may know me through my first book "Citizen Cohn: Memoir of Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn" which was published in October 2016. After the shock of the 2016 election, I spent the better part of the last two years writing and rewriting a novel. Although I have written many legal and political advocacy pieces over the years, fiction has proven to be my voice of choice in this new era of "fake news" and "alternative facts".

Indeed, I was inspired to write The Blue Sky Rebellion because the 2016 election and its aftermath have been as unexpected and strange as fiction. Setting the novel in the near future provided me the perspective and freedom to write a story that challenges the reader to think beyond current events and reimagine the American dream under a new social compact that better harmonizes individual liberty with social responsibility. I hope you will come away from this novel motivated to change the world in a positive way, starting with your own life and your community.

Please enjoy the opening chapter of this fast-paced novel inspired by political works such as “It Can’t Happen Here”, The Manchurian Candidate”, “The Man in the High Castle”, “Primary Colors” and the Norwegian Netflix series “Occupied". Let me know what you think of this story of ordinary citizens who lead an extraordinary revolution to stop America’s slide into fascism and save the planet from the ravages of climate change.

Steve Cohn, November 2, 2019

“The Blue Sky Rebellion”

Chapter 1. The Campaign

It was a time of unlimited opportunity and unprecedented peril. America had weathered recessions and terrorist attacks, floods and droughts, hurricanes and fires. Yet many Americans remained optimistic about the future, choosing to believe that America could master its inner demons and overcome racism, injustice, and violence. They believed that America could harness renewable energy and embrace electric cars. They believed that America could lead the world in reducing carbon emissions and slowing the pace of climate change, allowing more time for the planet to adapt to extreme weather, overcome natural disasters, and follow a sustainable path to peace and prosperity.

As hopeful people, they fully expected California Senator Pamela Wong to become the first woman president of the United States and preside over a budding ecotopia. Some of Senator Wong’s supporters even believed it her due, but not Alex Cline. Even while stumping for his longtime friend and ally, Alex did double duty, walking precincts and campaigning just as hard for his own reelection as he had when he won his first city council election ten years before. Although most folks considered his reelection a fait accompli, Alex learned long ago never to take a win for granted, even when the front-page headline of the Sacramento Bee trumpeted “MAYOR ALEX CLINE AHEAD BY 30% IN LATEST POLL.” He expected Pamela to show similar resolve.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Pamela had the right pedigree, starting with a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Stanford and ending with a law degree from Yale, top of her class. She appealed to voters across the racial and ethnic spectrum. Young voters shared her passion on environmental and economic justice issues, while older voters appreciated her quiet, contemplative manner.

As a young deputy district attorney with far less experience than her competitors, she won the San Francisco DA’s race, whereupon the media anointed her a rising star in California’s political firmament. She rose quickly from there to win elections for lieutenant governor and US senator before running for president.

The ineffectual lame duck president, Joaquin Mejia, confirmed what most people already knew. He would not run for reelection. He recognized that he was not even popular among his own party or the Latino community. By ceding early, he strengthened Pamela’s position as the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination.

She consistently maintained a big lead in the polls, reflecting a clear advantage over her opponent in terms of endorsements, experience, policy expertise, and temperament. Friend and foe alike viewed her as intelligent and principled, two adjectives rarely applied to Von Bridge, the egocentric chairman of the board of the largest oil and gas conglomerate in the world. Bridge had the audacity to run for president as the populist champion of the workingman. “Cunning” was the least insulting term critics used to describe Bridge.

Bridge inherited both his formal name (Baron von Brucke II) and an independent oil exploration company (Brucke Oil) from his German immigrant father. Nicknamed “Von” as a boy, Bridge later decided to change his legal name to Vaughn Bridge and the company name to Vonbridge Oil. He figured a more Anglo-sounding name would give him a competitive edge, particularly since the von Brucke family history harbored Nazi sympathizers.

Through a series of shrewd and timely mergers and acquisitions, Von Bridge managed to grow his father’s company, landing one whale after another, until Vonbridge Oil became the largest whale of them all. Skeptics noted that he also benefited from an aggressive guardian angel in the form of the Russian oil giant Gaznost.

Whereas Pamela’s supporters believed in science and technology and saw opportunity in the economy’s transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy, Bridge’s supporters bristled at change and clung to romantic dreams of restoring thousands of heroic jobs mining coal and digging for oil. Bridge also recognized that beneath the outward signs of prosperity, progress, and optimism in the blue states, troubling signs of economic distress, social disaffection, political dysfunction, and fear of change permeated much of red state America.

Politicians skilled at playing upon voters’ worst instincts had learned long ago to manipulate a dysfunctional political system straining at its limits to govern a diverse twenty-first century population of nearly 400 million people spread across the continent under a Constitution they believed should be strictly interpreted by eighteenth century standards—when four million mostly English descendants plus slaves lived along the east coast and only white men voted.

The failure of the Republican Party to develop a serious, conservative platform to counter the Democratic Party’s liberal one left the country in constant turmoil, fighting unnecessary cultural battles while leaving larger economic, infrastructure, and environmental problems to simmer on the back burner. Politicians who should have known better tolerated intolerance, nurtured nativism, and sided with special interests and religious zealots. As long as they could pass legislation to cut taxes on the wealthy and favored political contributors and reduce government regulation of big business, they were ready and willing to court the Far Right extremes of their constituencies. Both parties resorted to culture wars, forcing Democrats to veer more sharply to the left than was comfortable for Middle America.

More than any time in America’s history since the Civil War, the country divided into a series of warring nations. Blue state and red state, urban and rural, science and religion, climate change believers and deniers, whites and nonwhites, and so on down the line. Technological, socioeconomic, and climate changes on a global scale had magnified and transformed these differences into increasingly stark economic and environmental disparities between regions of the country.

Many of the west and east coast states and a handful of states in the middle were called “blue” states because they typically voted Democratic. They often followed California’s lead on climate change and environmental and energy policy. They breathed cleaner air and enjoyed bluer skies as a result.

The economies and job growth in the red states of the Midwest and the rural areas of the Southeast had lagged many of the blue states. Their leaders bet on oil instead of shifting to renewable energy and electric cars. They dragged their heels on global efforts to reduce carbon and mitigate the effects of climate change, applauding when the United States pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and refusing to institute even market-oriented reforms like cap-and-trade or participate in the federal infrastructure program for political or ideological reasons, just as they had earlier refused Medicaid expansion and universal healthcare. Their highways and bridges started crumbling even before bad luck and vicious weather compounded their misery. They hid their heads in the sand and suffered the consequences. Monster storms dropping up to eighty inches of rain in a week along the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts became more frequent, drowning entire cities in rising waters.

Into this whirlwind stepped a sinister and alien force. The Russian government executed a strategy of espionage and political disinformation into American and Western European politics at a level not seen since Nazi Germany. Orchestrated by the Russian president himself, Russia infiltrated right-wing political groups and mastered social media with two objectives in mind: to divide America further along racial, ethnic, and cultural lines and to weaponize those divisions to undermine Western democracy and institutions.

Using Von Bridge as their weapon of choice, the Russians effectively fused American right-wing propaganda with their own brand of fascism in opposition to Western-style democracy and liberalism, propagating a false equivalence between totalitarian Russia and the fraying American republic.

Bridge had talked often before about running for president, but few took him seriously. However, this time he rose on a populist wave of anger against the establishment in Washington and Wall Street, never mind that he was a billionaire who rose to power within the establishment. Many voters preferred to be entertained and distracted by a charlatan they saw as their populist strongman who would “tell it like it is.” Too many voters never figured out what “it” was . . . that “it” was Russian to the core.

Despite a complete lack of political experience and a checkered personal and professional life, Bridge managed to insult and bully his way through the Republican Party’s nominating process. While establishment Republicans tried to maintain a veneer of civility and patriotism despite their policy differences with Democrats, Bridge didn’t mince words or try to sugarcoat his beliefs. Instead, he doubled down on the most extreme of these marginal views and dragged them into the mainstream. Projecting strength and conviction, Bridge took down each of his mainstream Republican primary opponents one by one, exposing them for the weak, compromised shells of their former principled selves they had become.

Once he became the Republican nominee, Bridge did whatever he could to knock Pamela down to his level and drag her into a mud-wrestling match. For an oilman, he knew how to entertain, but for most Americans the presidential contest turned into a travesty and the end could not come soon enough.