Undeniable Plausibility
by Stephen Foster
By Stephen Foster, December 11, 2013
Here is a novella written for the purpose of illustrating/reiterating a frequently previously-made point.
In the year 2029, fifty-two year old President Orlando Alvarez—the first Hispanic elected President of the United States—and a liberal in the mold of former President Barack Obama, is in the second term of his presidency. Alvarez is being threatened with impeachment by the conservative Congress for taking controversial executive actions in the implementation of some of his blatantly redistributive economic policies which could never have even gotten a hearing, much less a vote, in the conservative United States House of Representatives.
President Alvarez is suffering through typical second term blues, and his job approval numbers have taken a nosedive in recent months.
The liberally controlled U.S. Senate is poised to change hands in next year’s (2030) off-year elections, as several liberal senators are up for reelection in states that have trended reliably conservative in recent presidential elections. President Alvarez’s policies are particularly unpopular in most of these same conservative states.
Interestingly enough, the President’s policies and his economic outlook are viewed with favor by the reigning pope who is in the mold of one of his recent predecessors, the late Pope Francis I, who 16 years earlier, had expressed deep concern about the plight of the poor among us.
With President Alvarez looking into an increasingly likely political abyss for his administration, its legislative agenda, and his political party in 2030, he decides to leverage the economic and social ideological solidarity he shares with the charismatic new pope, and actively seeks opportunities to publicly align his administration and its agenda to those policies which the new pope seems to think are worthwhile.
Out of apparent desperation to tread political water, he starts quoting the pope in political rallies to remind the public that he and the pope see things similarly.
To be, or not to be, continued? (Can you go to the back of any book and find out an ending?)