Shanghaied - 2ACW

SHANGHAIED


Prelude – Shanghaied

Shanghaied: the name of a film released by the Hollywood studio Paramount in 2028.

The film wasn’t a commercial success and just about broke even for Paramount. It’s title was the subject of controversy in the United States, just one of the many, varied political disputes during the turbulent years of the Twenties. The plot concerned the stories of several fictional characters in early Twentieth Century San Francisco who interacted in a murder mystery. The principal lead was a ‘crimper’, a man who used guile and deception to supply crews to naval merchantmen making the run to China’s coastal city. This practice was known at the time as ‘Shanghaiing’ and was legal (just) as well as highly profitable for those involved in crimping.

Using such a title was said to be not politically correct and allegations were made of anti-Chinese bias and xenophobia. Paramount disputed such wild claims though studio executives did plan to release the film under a different name in China. That never came to pass due to the international situation which cut off the once lucrative Chinese market for Hollywood. In America, those on the opposite side of the partisan divide, who were outraged at the actions of their opponents who claimed offense at such a name, flocked to see the film just to make a point. Without this organised viewing – not for the story’s promise but just to rub the other side’s nose in it –, Shanghaied would never have just about managed to break even as it did.

I know you've said that all characters are fictional, but that doesn't clarify as to whether the backdrop will look similar to what we have nowadays? My best guess, judging by what you've said, is that the geopolitical situation will also be fictional, which is probably for the best.

Having said that, I look forward to what comes next.

Part One - Political Violence


1 – Blue states and Red states

When the United States of America entered the 2020’s, the decade witnessed the most turbulent period in the nation’s history. Civil war could come about before the Thirties were reached due to events occurring during the Twenties. The causes were many but at the heart was the fact that every single societal issue, no matter how trivial, became one of partisan politics. Americans divided themselves into Them and Us every day. Whereas in previous decades, splits had concerned such hot button topics as gun rights, the death penalty & abortion. Now it was about everything imaginable: gender, climate, pop culture and school dinners. The partisan political lens was through which Americans viewed it all. What were They trying to do to Us with this? Such was how so many Americans came to look at their lives. They were encouraged by this by those seeking power, to make money or just out to cause trouble.

The latter really did that.


In late 2020, American voters selected a new president. The results of that contest were bitterly rejected by the loser but the loser he was. Out of office went the 45th President the following January and replacing him in the White House was the 46th President. The latter’s term was beset by health problems and that increasing societal divide across the nation. Mid-term elections in ’22 saw his party, the Democrats, lose the House. The Senate was already in the hands of the Republicans and now they had complete control of Congress. Come February the following year, the suffered an eventually fatal stroke on Valentine’s Day. He collapsed in the Oval Office and doctors lost the battle to save his life the following morning. Ascending to the presidency was his vice president. She became the nation’s 47th President. A ‘woman of color’, there wasn’t that much love for her among a good portion of her party nor many of the Democrats’ supporters at-large. Obstructionism in Congress from the Republicans became more brazen. They impeached Cabinet members and then went after her in late ’23. The latter concerned baseless and hypocritical charges yet the whole nation was split down the middle as to what side they were on with that. Not having enough votes to convict her, impeaching the 47th President was about playing the long game rather than getting her out of the White House. Democrats themselves looked at the future with concern at her being in office too: it was possible that she would be president for ten years as, constitutionally, she was able to run for two more terms should the voters allow for that.

An incumbent president usually sails through re-nomination by their party. For the 47th President, it quickly became apparent that such a feat would be impossible for her. Fellow Democrats lined up to run against the president. She was a neo-Liberal in a party where Progressives had major influence not at the top but among the wider ranks. Mark Walsh, the junior senator from Virginia, emerged as her leading challenger for the Democratic nomination. He was a noted Progressive with a rapidly expanding base of support. Impeachment, despite its failure, had hurt the standing of the 47th President. The Republicans intended that their own candidate would take advantage through 2024 but, instead, Walsh’s campaign was booming. He won the opening primary election and didn’t look back from there. Staying in the race in the face of calls for her to drop out, the 47th President lost each one which she contested. It was an embarrassment the longer it went on. Eventually, after Super Tuesday, she gave in. Walsh then threw everything at winning in November. The party establishment fell in line behind him where they finally conceded that they couldn’t fight the will of the voters and have their favoured candidate stay where she was. The 47th President would eventually campaign for Walsh though not with that much enthusiasm it must be said.

That didn’t matter. The 2024 US President Election was won by Walsh. He was to become the 48th President after a narrow win against his Republican opponent. As to that victory, it was only narrow when it came to the outcome of the votes tallied in the Electoral College. With the popular vote, his win was secured by more than nine million votes more than Roy Allen, the Governor of Ohio. However, only by sixteen votes in that body did Walsh win. North Carolina decided the election with Allen almost managing to pull of the impossible but just losing there and thus being denied the White House. A central plank of Walsh’s campaign had been for the post-election abolishment of the Electoral College: a method of selecting presidents which his supporters, and many Americans too, considered undemocratic. He won the presidency via it but wanted rid. This he was going to be unable to do after winning though. The Republicans had managed to maintain their hold on Congress despite the Democratic victory in the race for the White House. Losses were taken to shorten their majority in the House, but in the Senate, the Republicans expanded their control. They had fifty-five senators (out of a hundred) whose representation was granted by less than forty per cent of the electorate. If the Electoral College was undemocratic, what term would be best to describe the situation with the Senate!?


Through the Twenties, the national political partisan divide became one of a regional matter. Individual states became increasingly Red (denoting the Republicans) and Blue (the Democrats). Within them, the other party was increasingly marginalised and left without avenues to assume power. In previous decades, for example the Republicans had managed to be strong in California despite Democratic dominance while there were large numbers of Democrats in national & state offices through states such as Florida & Texas. This changed as the decade moved on. One side forced the other out of force either by mobilising enough voters in elections or by playing political games which opponents deemed undemocratic. The Democrats channelled money into previous Purple – swing – states to turn them Blue while expanding their control within Blue states. Voters within those states were kept politically-engaged. During elections which fell in years when there wasn’t a presidential race, votes for the Democrats had previously not been so strong. They were now. The Republicans did much the same (they had always had better support in non-Presidential years too) though went further as well. Back in the 2010’s, party strategists had created the REDMAP project. This was a national effort to turn large areas of the country Red on the map though control of state levers of power. Following the ’20 Census, they doubled down on REDMAP with access to all of that census data made available. Within Red states, the Republicans were able to control redistricting and apply that on a scientific degree to follow what they had started last decade. A friendly Supreme Court helped with this. Where there was strong opposition coming from Democratic governors in states with the Republicans controlling the state's legislatures, the former were stripped of their powers to stop this. Gerrymandering ran rampant to ‘pack, stack & crack’ Congressional districts as well. Voters were disenfranchised in a legal manner. Data from that national census conducted in ‘20 was applied not just for state governments but on a national level too. It changed the make-up of the Electoral College to the overall benefit of the Republicans. They were allowed to stay in the game when they really should have been locked out of it due to the demographic make-up of the nation.

Within those states which became Red and Blue, residents who were on the opposing side increasingly began to leave them for elsewhere. The United States had been undergoing democratic changes via population shifts throughout its history, but what was seen during the Twenties was one of a political nature. Republicans left Illinois & Massachusetts: Democrats moved out of Missouri and Ohio. These citizens who labelled themselves as such, or were given that label by others, did so because of societal changes within them influenced by the national political landscape drove that. In the face of extensive, but failed, opposition from the 47th President leading the charge, the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2023. That was done from that Republican-friendly body at the behest of several Red states efforts. The right to access abortion services for women was lost at the national level meaning that states could, and did, outlaw it within them. A dozen Red states did so within six months. Blue states expanded access to abortion and several passed legislation to give legal protection to women from Red states who came to them and subsequently faced the threat of penalty where they lived. Another significant Supreme Court case the following year helped these demographic changes occur. In Suárez vs. Alabama, the former (a young man) lost his case against the state of his residence when they sought to impede his right to attend university elsewhere in the nation. Alabama had passed a law exempting that state from any financial costs – even minor ones – involved with residents attending higher education at facilities on a so-called ‘hit list’. Suárez wanted to go to New York University, which Alabama regarded as far too liberal… and in a Blue state. If he wanted to attend, he could freely do so, but they blocked the transfer of education records via financial measures which had been signed into law. Suárez, nor NYU, couldn’t pay for them and nor could they access what Alabama said was state property. It sounded petty on the face of it but it was important. The young man went to the university of his choice yet this Red state had made its point. The Supreme Court allowed for this state to do as it wished, negatively impacting the futures of its residents who wished to be educated in Blue states by causing them administrative headaches. State’s rights were increasing in many fields and the Red states did all that they could as they fought a rapidly increasing all-encompassing culture war where everything was a fight based on political lines.

The culture war of the Twenties meant that negative opinions of those from states on the other side of the divide meant a big deal. ‘Oh, you’re from a Red/Blue state’ might not have been an overt insult, yet it became a remark which summed up an individual. Even if you were a Democrat, if you lived in a Red state, that defined how everyone else viewed you. More and more this became important. Certain companies were barred by state legislatures from doing business within them. Red states did this in the main but there were some Blue states who followed the lead set. Consumers couldn’t access products and services which their fellow Americans across the state line could. Another case which made it to the highest court in the land was Dolan vs. South Carolina. The Supreme Court rejected the plaintiff’s suit against the state where he was a resident when it came to him being fired by his employer due to his political activity. That private enterprise terminated him because he was an active Democrat – he’d run for local office – in a Red state. This was done under the protection of a state law giving his employer permission to do so: they could fire those whose politics they disagreed with. Many Americans in Red and Blue states reconsidered their residence in light of this and moved elsewhere in the nation in light of Dolan vs. South Carolina when further states followed the example set by South Carolina. Georgia’s state government, in the hands of the Republicans while a powerless Democratic governor could do nothing, moved to ban the media networks CNN and MSNBC from the state. The case went to the Supreme Court and Georgia prevailed. CNN left its home offices and while it and MSNBC – the two of them liberal networks – could broadcast into Georgia, their employees were banned from entering the state under penalty of individual imprisonment. California, joined later by Hawaii, then used the same reasoning to impose restrictions on the right-wing Fox News. In the interests of public safety, it was argued that that media network was a danger to their residents. More states soon found other ways to restrict unfriendly media to connect with the public. This turned Red states redder and made bluer Blue ones.

3 – Betrayal

Mark Walsh, the Democratic Senator from Virginia, was inaugurated as the United States’ 48th President at midday on January 20th, 2025. The ceremony in Washington was well-attended despite the extensive security presence. There was no violence though a false scare with reports of a man with a gun – he had a large phone – did cause a bit of alarm just ahead of Walsh taking the oath of office.

Walsh was a Progressive. His short political career had seen him on the left of the Democrats where he had followed a social democratic agenda. During the recently-concluded presidential campaign, Republican attacks had said that he was a socialist, even a Marxist. He wasn’t. Coming from elements of the public support of the Democrats – not the party itself –, there had been criticism that Walsh wasn’t left-wing enough. Those who were on the far left said that he would govern as a neo-Liberal, that he would sell out those who elected him to office and once in the White House be just like his Democratic predecessors. None of the campaign promises made by Walsh nor comments coming from anyone in his inner circle supported such assertions. Walsh promised change, real change, and his post-inauguration speech affirmed that. He came into office alongside a Republican controlled Congress though and he was going to have to work with them to get anything done. Within months of Walsh in the White House, those pre-election detractors on the left were saying ‘I told you so’. The new president compromised with Congress. He showed no sign of honouring his campaign promises. Walsh wanted Congress to allow him to appoint a new judge to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. He gave the Republicans what they wanted elsewhere and expected that they would keep their word. The fool. Senate Majority Leader, Bill Green, played him very well indeed. There would be no nominee that Walsh wanted to see on the Supreme Court allowed to even get a hearing before the Senate. Green had already had a hand in making sure that Walsh only managed to get weak candidates to fill his Cabinet and now blocked any appointment to the Supreme Court. It was to remain at just eight members with six of those being conservative minded.

Those promises made back in 2024 by Walsh were many. He attracted the wide range of support, and the votes that November, by pledging that there would be wide-ranging immigration and police reform. He intended to see a nationwide student debt cancellation. Matters such as the United States’ relationship with Israel were to be reassessed. There would be action taken on climate change. The ATF was supposed to be reformed and refunded. Abolition was to be relegalised. The Electoral College was to be abolished. New states – Washington DC and Puerto Rico – were going to be added to the union. Once in power, Walsh could do none of this. Congress wouldn’t even give him an inch to manoeuvre. They refused to budge on their opposition to him and all of his policies. When Walsh started using executive orders as his predecessor had done, the Supreme Court, egged on by Green and other senior Republicans, saw those declared illegal. What Walsh had been trying to do using presidential authority was seek a middle ground on many political issues. This upset his previous supporters no end. They hated the Republicans but began to despise him too. He was labelled a ‘sell out’ and called Green’s puppet. The neo-Liberal agenda which he was trying – and failing – to follow came with howls of betrayal. Walsh had betrayed so many of those who had voted for him… at least those with the loudest voices and the most influence.


Among those was a congresswoman from California.

Maria Arreola Rodriguez, oft known by her initials ‘MAR’, had been one of the most important campaign surrogates for Walsh during his presidential run. She was a young Progressive, a Latina with passionate supporters nationwide. Just short of the constitutional age requirement to have run for the presidency herself, she had backed Walsh over the 47th President and then engaged with voters nationwide once he won the Democratic primary. MAR was loved by the left and hated by the right. In Blue states, there were always adoring crowds for her; she rarely travelled to Red states. The Republicans demonised her but she knew how to use that to her advantage. It just made her more popular among those on the left. MAR came out against Walsh in late ’25. Her supporters had already turned against the president and she, after much angst, followed them in realising that they had been betrayed. Republican obstructionism aside, where Walsh could govern, he did so as yet another neo-Liberal who’d lied to all those Progressives who’d put him in power. The fury in her was expressed initially in a limited manner but her open attacks on the president increased in strength as ’25 turned into ’26. There was a pair of cases being heard before the Supreme Court where Mississippi and Oklahoma were facing suits for the attempts within those Red states to limit gender recognition and also in what manner they had to honour the legality of gay marriages. MAR self-identified as a lesbian and was married to another woman. Identity politics was what she fought on and these attempts threatened her and so many like her. The president’s lukewarm public comments in support of the plaintiffs against those states and then his further attempt to once more strike a deal with Green in the Senate (Green was from Oklahoma), were a slap in the face. Asked by a reporter in February ’26 if she intended to run against Walsh for the Democratic nomination in ’28, MAR could have kept quiet and said nothing. She had done so before when that question was posed. This time, she said she was considering it, yes, and also attacked Walsh’s lamentable Progressive credentials. Two days later, her father was shot dead.

Dante Arreola Vega was a politics professor at UC Berkeley. He and his wife had adopted the orphaned MAR when she was just a toddler. He wasn’t a public figure like his daughter was though was known in academic circles. Coming out of his house one morning and walking over to his electric car, he stopped to look at something on his windshield. It was $100 bill positioned below the wiper. He removed it and stood looking at it. A lone shot rung out, one from some distance away. Half of his head was blown off and the sniper was making his escape before anyone knew what had happened. MAR was caught on camera when the news reached her. Images of her reaction was broadcast around the world. Walsh spoke many kind words in memory of her father in a White House address but attention was on MAR when she was caught up in this personal tragedy in the media spotlight. This came about when her wife was involved in a legal dispute with a state prosecutor in Indiana. MAR’s partner was a native of that Red state and while living in California, she still had family back there in Indiana. On a short home visit to see her sister’s newborn child, she was physically assaulted in the street. That happened back in December 2025 and now, three months later, Indiana legal authorities were seeking her extradition with the charges filed that she had been the assailant of a poor innocent misogynistic homophobe… whose father was a state senator. MAR had already spoken out against this politically-motivated case against her wife. On the day her father was murdered because of her politics, extradition papers were served. That wouldn’t come about as California would refuse the demand for its resident to be sent there but the charges remained on the docket. It looked like a deliberate timing move on the part of Indiana yet it really was just a coincidence.


National political violence hadn’t ceased since Walsh had taken office. That killing of the father of the California congresswoman was one of many shocking events as the Years of Lead continued. In Minneapolis, one of those ‘autonomous zones’ crafted out of a disadvantaged portion of that Minnesota city by an anarchist collective was the scene of gunfire. A trio of armed gunmen from an out-of-state militia group entered when armed with automatic weapons. They killed sixteen people. Another, non-fatal attack was witnessed at another autonomous zone, this one in Detroit where right-wing militia arrived with the aim of killing political enemies. Police officers stopped them ahead of that attack in Michigan… and then had petrol bombs thrown at them by those whose lives they had saved in a misunderstanding of the intent of their presence within the self-declared no-go area. Starting in 2025, several of those militia groups on the right (who had no worries about an emasculated ATF coming after them) created their own autonomous zones in various Red states. These were in rural areas where they openly carried weapons and stated that they would keep out by force of arms ‘lefties’. Those states where these were sited had state governments which were of the law-and-order character yet no action was taken against such militia groups. In Wyoming, there was the disappearance of a journalist from the Chicago Sun-Times who entered one of these autonomous zones. In equally-Red Kentucky, a travelling family who got lost on their way from Pennsylvania to Missouri to see relatives vanished too. The couple’s young child turned up at a police station but his mother and father were nowhere to be seen. They were African-American, like the journalist who disappeared in Wyoming.

Car bombs exploded in a series of attacks made by those on the extremes of the national political divide. In New York City first, then Boston and next Charlotte, explosions occurred as political violence occurred. Almost two dozen deaths were caused by these blasts which targeted Democrats but also bystanders too. FBI investigators sought right-wing terrorists but couldn’t get any substantial leads despite all efforts expended using the wide-ranging powers which they had. There was another blast a month after those attacks in November 2025 and March ’26. This time a huge bomb hidden within a private vehicle went off in April ’26 in Sioux Falls. In the Red state which was South Dakota, a Republican political event was targeted with thirteen deaths seen. Using a gun not a bomb, there was the brutal murder of a candidate running for Congress in increasingly-Red New Hampshire. The Democrat slain there was seeking a seat during a special election upon the resignation of the sitting Republican. He didn’t stand much chance of winning when faced with the gerrymandering undertaken in recent years in New Hampshire, but his well-financed campaign had national profile. There was much money being spend on his campaign and MAR – months after her father’s assassination – had endorsed him. He was killed a week before election day though during a home invasion at his private residence. He’d been tortured and then mutilated after death. The New Hampshire State Police was meant to be protecting him yet he’d been killed without them apparently seeing anything. Allegations came thick and fast that there was a cover-up. When the FBI moved to investigate the state troopers, state legislators in New Hampshire passed an emergency law banning federal efforts to do that.

A month later, the Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland was held hostage by a gunman in his office in Annapolis. A Republican in a state very much Blue, James Howard was a moderate and an enemy of much of his party. The masked woman who had two pistols, a knife and (so she said) an explosive suicide vest was spouting wild conspiracy theories. Howard was the personification of evil in her mind and she wanted him to ‘confess’. She was quite mad. Before he could do as demanded, the office was raided by SWAT officers with the Maryland State Police. Shots were fired and both the hostage-taker and her hostage were killed. The tragedy hadn’t begun due to politics but it became political afterwards. Comments were made from political figures that Howard was assassinated. Those on the right said that Blue Maryland killed him; left-wing voices claimed that the right did this as a false flag and pointed to the personal political history of that woman with those guns. The truth was muddled in claims and counter-claims. Maryland assisted federal investigators – the hostage-taker had crossed state lines when armed – but West Virginia wouldn’t cooperate when the FBI wanted to search her home. There was another one of those stand-offs between state and federal forces, as seen four years beforehand in Kansas, which was broadcast live to the country by an on-scene journalist. No shots were fired but, ‘federal stormtroopers’, as the Governor of West Virginia called them, were turned back.

Walsh intended to intervene in this situation himself but found himself rather distracted. Starting in May 2026, the president would take his country to war. He had repeatedly said during his run for the White House that the era of American foreign adventurism overseas would be ended yet, like his other promises, he broke that and once more was seen as betraying all those who put him where he was.

Subscribed! Hope this timeline does not become a reality.