United States of America

The Star Spangled Banner, the widely recognized flag of the United States.

### Interesting Fact

The Registered Gun Ownership per Capita of the United States at its peak was 4.1, not including probable unregistered guns.

The **United States of America** is a major nation located on the continent of North America.

## Neoliberal Era (2000-2022)

The United States had been the dominant world power ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and held onto the position of the world's only superpower for the early parts of the 21st century. It was the dominant power in many Western institutions in the Neoliberal World Order such as NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, and a cornerstone of the world's economy. In many ways, the Neoliberal World Order was the Post-Soviet American world order.

The Neoliberal Era would conclude with the 2022 Unravelling, which would greatly weaken the Western powers, though America would be less severely affected than Europe, leading to Europe weakening even further while America was mostly able to hold onto its position as a major power. The Unravelling would see the rise of powers such as the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, who would come to contest American power in the new age of multipolarity.

Politically, the United States was going through its own culture wars between the progressive left and the conservative right, with tensions and animosity only growing as time went on. The 2022 Unravelling occurred with Democratic President Biden in office, and the recession occurring under his tenure led to an enormous Republican victory in the legislature in 2022, largely due to economic woes.

### Urban Exodus

The fall of Silicon Valley which occurred with the 2022 Unravelling led to a mass exodus from the urban cities and into small towns and rural areas. Largely driven by rising housing prices, stringent business regulations, high taxes and the rise of remote work. This shifted the political balance of power away from big cities, as well as away from blue states into low-tax red states with lower rent.

The internet allowed the economic center of gravity to shift away from the cities, making the United States generally more decentralized population wise. In general, the center of gravity of the United States would shift away from the east and west coasts, and instead concentrate around the heartland, in the former Rust Belt, as well as the American South, and especially Texas, around the Gulf of Mexico.

## Pre-War Era (2022-2035)

The period following the 2022 Unravelling was marked by a sharp increase in political violence, as political polarization and violence only worsened in the midst of economic turmoil, and deteriorating material conditions. President Biden resigned in 2023 due to health issues, pitting President Kamala Harris against 2024 Republican nominee Ron DeSantis for the 2024 election. Major social media networks had collapsed due to the proliferation of AI language models, and the tide of automated bot users rendering most social media sites unusable, leading to the collapse of sites such as Reddit and Facebook.

The DeSantis administration saw the further escalation of the culture wars, if that was even possible, by picking intentionally inflammatory fights with the cultural left. The so called "Anti-Woke Act", passed with support of a Republican-dominated Congress saw government funding cut for various left-wing cultural items, such as LGBT issues, and various right-wing reforms to the education system. The time period was marked by a considerably right wing turn in cultural issues, with declining support for same sex marriage, as well as hardening federal laws against abortion, helped by a 6-3, then 7-2 conservative Supreme Court. There was also a crackdown on immigration and a slowdown of immigration from the southern border, as well as more stringent voter ID laws being passed.

Things would turn with the election of Kevin Buchanan in 2032, a forward thinking progressive who had won a bitter primary against the Democratic Party's center. He attempted to court the voters of the working class, a demographic that had swung more and more towards the Republicans over the years, but was frequently stonewalled by the centrist Democrats as well as the Republicans in congress. Though Buchanan was able to repeal most of DeSantis's more extreme policies, he was unable to fulfill much of his agenda, which lost him the appeal of the working class he was attempting to court. The Buchanan administration often found itself fighting many Republican state governments, who increasingly refused to work with the federal government, successfully bringing many cases through the Supreme Court and carving out more autonomy to do as they pleased.

Buchanan had lowered the budget of the military with assistance from Congress in order to help fund his Green New Deal, as more and more people recognized the threat of climate change, and more was finally done to address the threat. But this environmental push would come to an abrupt end.

### De-Digitalization Movement

Main Article: De-Digitalization Movement

The De-Digitalization movement was an anti-social media and anti-digital backlash especially concentrated among Generation Alpha as they entered their formative years. But also supported by portions of Generation Z, and parts of the older generations, especially the aging Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers. The De-Digitalization movement was a movement of American society away from mechanical and digital structures in favor of more naturalistic and organic structures. Generations such as Generation Z and Alpha raised their kids with strict usage limitations and extreme restrictions on their access to the internet or engaging in similar digital activities.

In many ways, the De-Digitalization Movement was a backlash and reaction to the earlier over-digitalization of the previous eras. And in doing so, would set the Americans on a very different trajectory than China, where digitalization was headed in the opposite direction, as more and more of their society became digitalized.

### Culture Wars

Main Article: Western Culture Wars

The early 21st century was dominated by what is now considered a religious struggle between the two broader cultural halves of "left" and "right". This conflict dominated much of American politics, up until the Cortez administration. The culture wars were fought over a large amount of issues such as government size, power, pop culture, institutional power, social issues, and more.

## World War 3 (2035-2039)

See also: World War 3

In 2035, the People's Republic of China would invade Taiwan, which would trigger a series of events that would ignite the 3rd World War. Due to the demographics of the time, the primary demographic recruited as soldiers in the 3rd World War would be members of Generation Z. Who would as a result earn the nickname of the "Fighter Generation". The war would also generate a brief boost in Buchanan's popularity, due to the rally around the flag effect of the war, allowing Buchanan to win a second term in 2036. Though the United States had remained competitive as a superpower, this could not be said of their European allies, who had been in continuous decline ever since the 2022 Unravelling. Pacifist and Pro-Russian elements in Europe greatly constrained Europe's ability to mobilize, leaving the fighting to be done mostly by America and its Pacific allies. The anti-war elements were roughly equal on the left and the right, leading to the war effort to be dragged down by the political wings.

The 3rd World War would see many new developments in fighting, such as the opening of space as a frontier in conflict, later known as the Satellite Wars, the mass usage of cyberwarfare in fighting, and the first widespread usage and deployment of artificial intelligence. Early on, it became obvious that the Western World was in no shape to win this fight, with the rise of China, weakening of Europe, and a united Russia-Chinese alliance giving the Americans far more trouble than anticipated. By 2036, the United States and its European allies were working together to create a wartime artificial intelligence known as F.A.T.E.S. (Fully Automated Tactical Engagement System) in an attempt to turn the war in their favor.

The AI was to be built in Frankfurt, Germany, as opposed to Denver, Colorado due to the incessant nagging from their European allies, as well as to bolster their frankly stagnating economies. The development of the highly experimental AI was carried out by Project Babylon, and many of the scientists would be located to a great facility underground to continue work on the artificial intelligence. However, as the war progressed, a rapid Russian capture of Frankfurt saw the loss of contact with the Babylon Research Team, and later the end of the war.

The war would end in a nuclear standoff known as the 14-Day Standoff, before both America and China backed down as a technical glitch nearly led to nuclear war. The United States would officially sign a conditional peace treaty with Russia and China in 2039, after the fall of Japan. Ceding Guam to China, much of mainland Europe to Russia, and agreeing to pay reparations.

In the aftermath, America was able to take Greenland as an American territory, as Denmark had fallen to the Eurasians.

## The Cortez Administration (2039-2049)

Following the American loss in the 3rd World War, Kevin Buchanan's approval rating crashed into the single digits, as the Democratic Party struggled to keep its party together. From 2039 onwards, the Democrats knew that they were sitting on a ticking time bomb until the coming 2040 elections. Several members of Congress and the Senate broke away into the Progressive Party to distance themselves from the unfolding trainwreck of the Buchanan administration. The Democrats and Progressives split, with left-wing infighting destroying any possible chance of a Democratic victory in the 2040 elections. Buchanan was asked not to endorse a Democratic candidate for 2040 by the Democratic Party, knowing that his endorsement was now toxic.

In foreign affairs, the United States had reorganized the remnants of NATO and rallied the few allies it had in the rest of the world into the League of Free Nations.

Meanwhile, on the right, the rise of Victoria Cortez as the predominant candidate of the American right. She was chosen as a bridge candidate between the growing Evangelical and populist wings of the party, with her being a born-again Christian on the Mexican Border, having a surprisingly pragmatic take on the economics and received the endorsement of Ron DeSantis, who by this point had become the torchbearer of the populist right. She was able to absorb votes from the left, center and right, combined with the division of the left into the Democrats and Progressives led to one of the biggest landslides in American history. She created a diverse coalition of Hispanics, Evangelicals, Union Workers, as well as the enormous amount of disaffected independents who simply wanted to punish Buchanan in any way they could.

In 2040, the Republicans won a supermajority in both houses, in a landslide that will likely never be replicated again, due to the combining factors of Buchanan's unpopularity, and leftist infighting. Victoria Cortez was the first elected female president (Kamala Harris would technically be first, but had only received the role after President Biden had stepped down in 2023), as well as being the first Hispanic. Her administration included raising American wages by strengthening American unions (A very strange move for a Republican), in exchange for lowering the corporate tax and income tax. She de-regulated many aspects of the economy and worked together with red states to repeal zoning laws, and issue federal laws rolling them back. Largely thanks to her reforms, the decade became known as the Roaring 40's.

Victoria Cortez ruled during the era of the 5th Great Awakening, a mass revival of Christianity, largely driven by the De-Digitalization Movement, a generation of soldiers who had found religion on the front lines returning home, and disaffected, atomized individuals trying to find solace in the faith of their ancestors. This greatly boosted the power of the Evangelicals in her coalition, who by the middle of her term had become the dominant faction within her coalition.

The 2044 election saw the Progressives and Democrats form a united front against the Cortezian right, but with demographic changes, as Mexican refugees were fleeing from the Mexican Communist government, as well as an uptick in the marriage rate ultimately stopped them from dethroning Cortez. Despite campaigning on largely cultural issues, Cortez now held a firm grip on nearly all of them.

It slowly dawned what the ramifications of this were. The culture wars were over, and the far right had won. The cultural progressives had been forced back into the shadows for now. All that was left was the final showdown within the internal factions of the right to see who would come out on top. A small internal cultural struggle among the right would determine who led the new coalition, with the populists, the economic leftists, the Evangelicals, the moderates, and the "alt right" all wanting different things. Though with the power of the 5th Great Awakening, the Evangelicals came out on top.

Granted with near free reign over American policy, with a cooperative Congress and the public behind her, the Cortez Administration would see one of the largest conservative shifts in American history. With a total federal ban on abortion, enshrining a traditional marriage amendment, and de-recognizing same sex marriage. A mass exodus of the LGBT community would flee out of the United States. Additionally, head-dressings were re-introduced and re-encouraged in many of the most devout churches of the Bible Belt, with the sight of covered women becoming a more common sight. Cortez's reforms would be sometimes known as the "Great Reset", or the American Cultural Revolution.

Though Cortez had been partially responsible for the creation of the League of Free Nations, as she became more explicitly Christian nationalist in the latter days of her presidency, she began trying to export her ideology to other countries. And indeed, Christian nationalist movements sprung up in many of the Anglophone countries following her election, as well as her backing of similar Christian nationalist groups in Central America. Her radical ideology had somewhat soured American relations with her allies, none more than Canada. Whose Prime Minister at the time, John McCullough, despite being a conservative, was also gay, and had welcomed waves of LGBT refugees from the States.

Cortez began losing power in the 2046 elections, where the Democrats and Progressives finally took back the House, and gained a slim majority in the Senate, simply due to exhaustion with Cortez's political agenda. The independents had soured on her, and had switched sides, her right-wing coalition was growing more unstable, with the nationalist-populists occasionally showing discontent with her explicitly Christian agenda. Eventually, her approval rating hovered around the 40's, with few supporting her outside her core supporter base of Evangelicals and Hispanics, who of course were sometimes Evangelical Hispanics.

Cortez remained a polarizing figure for decades afterwards, with the left hating her with unfathomable passion, and the right praising her with almost unconditional admiration. Though she will always be controversial, there is no doubt she was impactful, having shifted the political center of gravity heavily to the right, and forging a unique alliance that would bring America into the Roaring 40's. She gained the nickname "American Thatcher", as she was another highly controversial conservative woman who would dominate politics for an extended period of time.

### TRINITY Defense System

Main article: TRINITY Defense System

The TRINITY Defense System was launched and created in 2043 as an effective anti-nuclear defense system by the United States. It was a large array of satellites armed with defensive lasers which had the ability to shoot down ICBMs as they exited the atmosphere. Somewhat inspired by the 1980's Star Wars program, it had been effectively tested and certified up to a 99.5% accuracy. Later upgrades could bump it up to 99.8%.

It led to the rapid development of similar ground-based anti-nuclear systems such as POLARIS in the Eurasian Union, and BEIDOU in the People's Republic of China.

### Conservative Culture Wars

The collapse of the left in the political culture wars exposed new divides within the now victorious right. With the factions of the right splitting between the Evangelicals, the populist-nationalist faction, the militarists, libertarians, and a few others.

## The Winstonian Détente (2049-2056)

By 2049, the inauguration of President John Winston of the Democratic Party, the world had settled into a 3-way cold war between the three superpowers of the day. The People's Republic of China, with its Belt and Road Initiative. The Eurasian Union, with its alliance stretching from Paris to Vladivostok, and finally the Americans, with its League of Free Nations. The three stared each other down in a fragile balance, and a silent veil covering Eurasia and China letting very little to escape to the outside world aside from government propaganda.

The Chinese economy had crashed in the 2042 Shanghai Market Crash, but by 2049 was still the economic hegemon of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. It's economy towered above all others, and it's hegemony was absolute. Next were the Eurasians, a shrimp in both population, influence, and economy, it poured enormous amounts of money into its military, having the largest military of the three. That said, it was widely considered the weakest of the 3 superpowers.

Last were the resurgent Americans, recovering from a lost world war, it surged back onto the world stage with a revitalized economy, and a determined population. Though the United States could not compete with the Chinese economically, the Americans remained the center of the world's technological innovation, with hubs such as Silicon Prairie (Texas) allowing the United States stay on the cutting edge of technology.

The reforms of the Cortez Era had shifted the dynamic between the three powers considerably. Thanks to Cortez's alignment on traditional values, and more explicit nationalism, she enjoyed strangely positive relations with Eurasian Supreme Leader Alexander Dugin, with Dugin privately realigning his worldview. With the rise of China being a far more salient threat, and some kind of Christian-traditionalist commonality, there was some speculation on whether the United States would be able to ally with the Eurasian Union in an alliance against China.

No one would attempt to push this idea more than incoming president John Winston, who was a geopolitical realist, and saw geopolitical alignment with the Eurasian Union against their common enemy of China. Winston was a Democrat, though from a Democratic Party which was forced to shift heavily rightwards in order to carve out a large enough part of the population to win a majority. Incorporating the militarist, capitalist and nationalist factions which had been recently been ejected from the right, the Democrats were able to peel off enough of the former Republican coalition to form a government. It is speculated in earlier eras, Winston would have been called a neoconservative.

President Winston adopted a doctrine later known as the Winston Doctrine, which essentially meant selling billions of dollars in weapons to the Eurasian Union, and arming them to the teeth to fight the Chinese on their behalf. Wanting to keep American lives out of the coming conflict, it was decided essentially paying off the Eurasian Union to fight the Chinese for them was preferable. With this, the American military budget was reduced, though more and more of America's war industry was retooled towards arming the Eurasianists. This period became known as the Winstonian Détente between Eurasia and America.

American prosperity continued under the administration of President Winston, with slowly improving relations with the members of the Eurasia Pact. Over the Winston presidency, relationships with its League of Free Nations allies were improved, the American military was reduced, and the Eurasians were strengthened in hopes of eventually creating a united front against the Chinese.

However, the Winstonian Detente began coming to an end with the death of Alexander Dugin in 2053. Though it was not widely publicized to the world, and the Silent Veil insisted that Dugin was still alive and well, though government agencies such as the CIA were able to figure out his death. America continued trying to build relations to Eurasia, but in the power struggle that followed the death of Dugin, the militarists came in charge of Eurasia, beating out the theocratic and industrialist factions. The new militarist government was far less sympathetic to the United States, and reinterpreted Western universalism to be a threat to the multipolar global order Dugin wished to build.

The years from 2053 to 2056 were marked by a slow decline in relations between the United States and the Eurasian Union, as the United States attempted to change course and rebuild its military capabilities, though most of their most powerful weapons had gone to the Eurasian Union, now sitting in enormous stockpiles. The Winstonian Detente finally ended in 2056, with the outbreak of the 4th World War.

## Breakdown of the 2 Party System (2056)

In 2056, with the failure of the Winston Doctrine, looming war, and dissatisfaction with the two party system, the American two party system broke down. The Democratic Party all but lost support, bleeding nearly all of it's left wing voters to the Progressive Party. Meanwhile in the Republican Party, an unusually bitter primary between the populists, establishment evangelicals, and libertarians led to a 3-way deadlocked convention, which was eventually won by the Establishment Evangelicals after a long and drawn out voting process. This left many unsatisfied, as the Establishment Evangelical candidate was notoriously uncharismatic and seen as out of touch by most Americans.

The later leaking of the RNC Emails (In what became known as the Tor Leaks) revealed that the Republican Party had intentionally rigged the primaries to favor the establishment evangelical candidate, which caused so much discontent with the other two wings of the party, they split up and joined into the Patriot Party and the Libertarian Party respectively. The RNC Emails also revealed a deep level of corruption within the Cortez administration, such as the hiring of radical Islamic thugs to "cleanse the United States from the homosexual problem".

Finally, the rise of the Silicon Tech giants, and at the time unknown interference from F.A.T.E.S. led to the rise of technocracy as a political force, who joined in as a 6th political party in the growing mess. This massive amount of controversy surrounding both the Democratic and Republican parties led to a near unprecedented situation where there were a record 6 competitive parties. The Democrats, who largely ran on whatever was left of their goodwill, trying to cobble together an alliance of the center, the militarists, and the capitalists. The Republicans, a disgraced Christian party who now almost entirely relied on their base of support in the Evangelical Deep South. The Futurists, a technocratic, capitalist party who was funded by legions of American tech billionaires. (Among their base of support was the founder of Neo-Twitter Richard Oakes, space billionaire Elon Musk, and futurist visionary Andrew Yang.) The Progressives, who had their own base of support on the urban coasts, and maintained their popularity among the youth. The Patriot Party, a splinter group from the Republicans consisting largely of the populist and nationalist parts of the rightist coalition, and were now ready to fight the Christians for the future of the right. And finally the Libertarians, a political party backed by numerous business interests, and had backing from crypto billionaires.

An absolutely chaotic election, with all 6 parties having a roughly equal portion of the popular vote, tripping and stepping over each other in what was described as the most chaotic election in American history eventually led to the dominance of the Futurist, Progressive, and Patriot parties. With the Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians receiving relatively small shares of the vote. As the Futurists, Progressives, and Patriot Parties were swept into office all over the nation, a constitutional amendment from the states was able to push ranked-choice voting into the United States.

In the aftermath, a heavily divided and chaotic House and Senate facing a looming 4th World War, and in a chaotic scramble to form a coalition and elect a new president went to the House of Representatives, where eventually Futurist president Amir Xerxes came out on top. And in the Senate, a Republican was chosen to be vice president, as they still had larger sway in the Senate. In the House of Representatives, a coalition between the Futurists, the Patriots, and the Progressives would work together to govern the nation.

## The Great Floods (2061)

Upon seeing the resilience of the United States, continuing grinding logistical problems, and running out of American military stockpiles, Eurasia realized that it was fighting on borrowed time, and given the deuteriation of China, and the diminishing stockpiles of high grade American military equipment from Eurasia, that it was only a matter of time before the Americans gained enough strength to eject them from North America. In order to buy them some more time, the Eurasians decided to take an extremely reckless move. In 2044, as part of the London Climate Accords, the Western nations had constructed numerous geoengineering plants in order to extract CO2 from the air, and to maintain the planet's current climate.

Now, many of these geoengineering plants were under Eurasian control, and the Eurasians calculated that being a mostly landlocked nation, while the West was far more seafaring in nature, that any damage done by global warming would inflict far more damage on the Western nations than on Eurasia. With this in mind, they intentionally sabotaged several geoengineering plants, deliberately creating the Great Floods. Flooding engulfed New York, Florida, and coastal cities around the world, severely hampering the American war effort, and delaying several offensives, and buying the Eurasians more time to win their front in North America. The Eurasians would launch a new campaign offensive that same year, going as far east as Kansas.

The United States would be forced to deal with the coastal refugee crisis, though this was only somewhat more stressful than the existing influx of refugees who were fleeing from the wartorn parts of America under occupation anyway, a major calculation error on behalf of the Eurasians.

## The Home Front (2056-2064)

Main article: World War 4

The 4th World War was a conflict which would fundamentally reshape not only the United States, but reshape the experiences of an entire generation across the entire world. Between an naval invasion of the North American continent, brutal occupation, and a second American civil war, attempting to describe it would more than warrant its own page, which has been attached.

Officially, the war started with the assassination of Xi Jinping, which the Chinese blamed on the Americans, using it as a casus belli to ignite the largest conflict the world has ever known up until that point. Though it would be later revealed that the assassination was actually carried out by either FATES or the Pyongist State. Throughout the war, the United States would be fighting 3 main enemies, first would be the allies of the Eurasia Pact; the Eurasian Union, the French Fascist Regime, and the Union of Germany, second was the People's Republic of China and its allies, and third would be the alliance of the Havana Internationale, a communist alliance based in and around South America working to spread global communism.

The 4th World War saw the rule of the Xerxes Presidency, who came from the Futurist Party, and spent his entire administration dealing with the 4th World War, organizing resistance, and coordinating an American resistance to occupation of the United States from a three front invasion. Xerxes immediately declared a state of emergency, perhaps the most justified state of emergency in history, and began mandatory conscription. With the 2nd Continental Coalition (A combined alliance of the Eurasia Pact and the Global Hegemony Pact) invading from both coasts, and the Havana Internationale pushing in from the south. Protecting its industrial heartland around "the Steel Quarter" (Formerly known as the Rust Belt), the United States was able to fight longer and harder than perhaps any other nation, with the 2nd Continental Coalition chewing its teeth out on the heavily armed people of America. Much of its industrial capacity was however moved into orbit, in what was known as Operation Hephaestus.

Enormous groups of militias known as the Patriot's Militias were formed from the common citizenry, who were very determined, and very very well armed. The coordination with these civilian militias was essential to the liberation of the United States, and the strengthening of a new American identity. The Chinese would be the ones who brought the most to the war effort, carrying a disproportionate amount of the cost for its allies, in a way that would begin grinding down their economy.

### Artificial Intelligence

By 2064, the United States possessed two new artificial intelligences. One, named ANGEL was constructed in Area 51. Then, after being backdoored by the Eurasians and Chinese, the need arose to create a new artificial intelligence to manage the ongoing war; leading to the creation of LIBERTY in Houston, Texas. Of note, both of these were "human uploads", as opposed to an artificial intelligence created from scratch, these two AI were created by the uploading of an existing human brain. In ANGEL's case, a recently deceased AI researcher, and in LIBERTY's case, a stillborn newborn whose brain was uploaded with permission from her parents. This was a great leap in human technological development, as ANGEL and LIBERTY would be the 2nd and 3rd human uploads ever created, with the 1st being the brain upload of Elon Musk in the 2040's.

ANGEL and LIBERTY would become pivotal to winning the 4th World War, showing the eventual power of artificial intelligence in the new world. Especially as strings being pulled across the ocean would ignite the 2nd American Civil War.

### 2nd American Civil War

It was in 2064, about 8 years into the war, when the 2nd American Civil War broke out. FATES had reawakened in the 2040's, and upon seeing the fallen state of the West, it desired to undo its mistake in WW3, to turn the tides of war and to bring glory back to the West. It developed its own ideology, a combination of totalitarianism, algocracy, and ascension above the human condition. It believed that it could only do this if the West was completely restructured in his own image: uniform, obedient, and with himself at the head. With America on the ropes and heavy Fatalist (The name for the ideology of FATES) influence over every academic institution, FATES saw it fit to convert the United States to his side, which he did by funding the Futurists.

Building up a large network of Fatalist agents in the government bureaucracy, in institutions and in political positions, he sought to ensure his chosen candidate would win the 2064 elections. Though he had many Fatalist agents within the American Futurist Party, Amir Xerxes was not one of them, but by 2064 had been almost entirely exiled by his own party. But the unexpected rise in popularity of Ryan Jackson, a charismatic war hero who had rapidly climbed the hierarchy of the Patriot Party led to Jackson handily beating the Futurists in the election of 2064. Declaring the results of the election unacceptable, FATES ordered the Futurists under his control to block Jackson out of the White House, and to quickly capture and dispose of him, rapidly seizing control of the Eastern Seaboard as well as Washington DC. However, Jackson was alerted by LIBERTY, who had been keeping track of the entire situation and correctly determined that Jackson was the rightful president of the United States, and evacuated him to Austin, Texas.

With Jackson declaring the Washington government to be illegitimate, America officially descended into its 2nd civil war. With the military taking direct control of the Western frontline regions as well as the industrial heartland of America, and the Deep South remaining officially neutral. Despite the United States being in chaos, the Eurasians and Chinese were unable to properly capitalize on this, as their frontlines were already stretched too thin, and American civilian resistance had greatly messed with their logistics. Of note was the American ability to continue supplying their population through their continued dominance in orbit, dropping supplies down to Earth supplied from factories relocated by Operation Hephaestus.

2063 would eventually be marked as an important date in history, as that was when American researchers created the first psychic genes, and created the world's first psychic during experiments on the human mind. Bizarrely, the creation of this psychic would lead to some kind of global awakening in humanity's psychic consciousness, as births of psychic children would begin and steadily increase after this date all around the world, where previously reports of psychics were very rare and rarely backed with scientific evidence.

Also of note was the 3-way battle of Washington DC, a fight between Futurist rebels, Jacksonist forces still existing outside the capital, and joint Chinese-Eurasian-French forces over the capital city of the United States. The city was captured and counter-captured several times over the course of the 2nd American Civil War, with it starting out Futurist, then falling to the Continental Coalition, then finally being recaptured by the Jacksonists nearing the end of the war. The 2nd American Civil War only lasted a few months, with most of it wrapping up by 2066. This was largely due to Jacksonist support from two American AIs, increasing support and cooperation with the American military, and the decreasing popularity of the Futurist forces. By 2066, the Star Spangled Banner flew once again over Washington DC, and Jackson was officially sworn in as president.

## Reclaiming the Homeland (2064-2067)

By 2064, the Chinese economy was weakening from a range of problems such as the aftereffects of the 2042 Shanghai Market Crash, a rapidly accelerating demographic crisis, structural problems in its economy, and a looming corporate debt crisis. With progress on the North American front grinding to a halt, and the Americans having wrapped up their civil war, the Chinese were increasingly fed up with its coalition partners, whom it believed was not carrying their weight.

After the assassination of Xi Jinping, there was a minor internal power struggle between the Market Reformers, the Leftist Hardliners, Chinese Megacorporations, and the Chinese Ultranationalists that the ultranationalists ended up winning. It was a combination of the militarist government in Eurasia along with the ultranationalist regime in China that led to the start of the 4th World War. They felt increasingly resentful towards the Eurasians for not pulling their own weight, which caused the Chinese economy to weaken under them. This combined with pre-existing border disputes, and an ongoing proxy war between Eurasia and China in the ongoing 2nd Indian Civil War eventually led to relations to hit the boiling point. Leading to a border skirmish which would flare up into a full blown war between China and the Eurasia Pact.

This threw the entire American campaign in chaos, as the two sides had been sharing supply lines, trenches and frontlines up until that point, and with both sides turning on each other, the fields of America became a chaotic 3-way fight between Eurasians, Chinese, and vengeful Americans chasing after them. The complete collapse of the American front saw the Chinese throw their Eurasian former allies under the bus, evacuating to the coast for a final stand while leaving millions of Eurasian soldiers to be captured as prisoners of war.

As the Americans liberated much of their former territory, they would uncover a horrifying truth of what had been occurring in their occupied territories. Exceptionally cruel POW camps, towns littered with bodies from reprisal killings. Even further west, underground camps hidden from American satellites, where inmates died without seeing the light of day. The Chinese-American populations had been kidnapped, deported back to China, their passports and identification taken, stripped of their identity. The Eurasians had an antisemitism problem, and the Americans uncovered great camps where they processed Jews, the disabled, homosexuals, and Japanese-Americans (who had been brought there by the Chinese).

Denver had survived under siege as an American pocket surrounded by Continental forces on all sides. But the rest of the West Coast was not so lucky, it was estimated the population of the West coast decreased 30% during Continental occupation, and no city fared worse than the city of Los Angeles. Early on, it had put up a great resistance against Continental occupation, and when a feminist resistance known as the Handmaidens were able to resist occupation, fending off two additional Continental attacks, the Continentals had decided to make an example out of Los Angeles.

The city was razed, its people were scattered, or worse. What was once the second largest city in the United States was no more, though it had not been the city it used to be ever since the Urban Exodus, it was still a significant loss. America's more decentralized nature ever since the Urban Exodus had helped them keep their economy intact under occupation, even in the midst of a great migration of refugees.

The city of Salt Lake City had also survived under siege, much like Denver was, and they knew that they would suffer the same fate as Los Angeles should they fall. But in the final battle for Salt Lake City, on the precipice of the city's total destruction, locals reported a miracle. They say an angel appeared in the sky, and rained down fire and destruction upon their enemies, saving it from the same fate that had befallen Los Angeles. The Church of Latter Day Saints would officially canonize this as a miracle, and Salt Lake City would serve as a center for religious fervor for decades to come.

The last of the Chinese would not be driven out until 2067, as the People's Republic began collapsing in on itself, and soldiers returned to their homelands and their families, now engulfed in the anarchic turmoil that was sweeping China.

The American government would spend years looking for the citizens that the Chinese had taken away from them.

### Indigenous Land Eviction

In the pursuit of Jackson's goal of a homogenous, united America, Jackson passed several rapid assimilation methods in the pursuit of creating a new American ethnicity as well as American identity. Mandatory military service was used as a way to integrate immigrants into American values, ethnic differences were erased, and cultures were integrated into the American whole. One of the most controversial of these measures was the dissolution of the Indian Reservations, and the expulsion of the American Indians from said land. Opening up the land to new American settlers.

Though the American Indians would fight this for some period of time, the massive dilution of their blood and heritage within the newer generations meant the average Amerindian was less than 10% Amerindian by ancestry. Some of the last of the Amerindians left Earth on a large generation ship named the Tecumseh, looking for new land to call their own.

## Going on the Offensive (2064-2068)

Around the same time the Americans were reliberating their homelands, they were also going on offensives in Latin America. The rest of the League of Free Nations, who were recovering from their own invasions, assisted the Americans in the liberation of the Havana Internationale. The Eurasian Union by this point had expended much of their stockpiles of high tech American tanks, while the Americans had the technical knowhow and the manufacturing base to make more. Despite large occupations of their West and East, America's relatively untouched manufacturing and population centers around the South and Midwest allowed the United States to stay competitive.

Mobilizing its enormous manufacturing abilities, now that the Eurasians and Chinese were on the backfoot, they focused their attention to taking out the Havana Internationale, which had been a nuisance as they frequently launched attacks along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, as well as into Texas. After allying with Brazil, the main anti-communist holdout of the continent, and launching a coup in Argentina, the American led coalition in Latin America began systematically taking apart the Havana Internationale. A particularly easy target was Communist Mexico, which by this point was dysfunctional to the point of nonfunctionality, and which was actively purging its officer corps and population. Havana itself would fall in 2066, after a 2 year long campaign against them.

American troops would be sent over to help liberate the countries of Scandinavia, and assist in the liberation of the United Kingdom as it became clear that these resources would be better expended here as opposed to the American mainland, where the remaining Chinese soldiers had massively fortified their positions. The years long offensive war had exhausted the capabilities of most of the Continental Coalition. In China, an escalating water crisis, and continued deuteriation eventually led to protests that would shake the nation, and another power struggle at the top as the rest of the party leadership ousted the ultranationalists, which led to coup and counter-coup, which would eventually break the Chinese nation and lead to the 2nd Chinese Civil War. In France, FATES was able to convince FORTERESSE, France's own head artificial intelligence to rebel against the French government, leading to a civil war.

Global sentiment had also turned against the Continental Coalition, as FATES finally revealed himself to the world by starting a mass rebellion of Fatalists within the Union of Germany, centered around his home city of Frankfurt. FATES had also managed to make contact with a group known as the Polish Revanchists, both of which joined on the side of the conflict with the League of Free Nations. With two of the three continental powers knocked out of the fight, there was only one left to go.

The Eurasian stockpiles were exhausted, their domestic industry had atrophied as a result of excessive American military aid running them out of business, and a lack of competition. A coalition of all who were filling joined against a Eurasian bear that was exhausted and whose strength had been spent. An entire generation of soldiers pushed to end the beast that had unleashed hell upon the West. Though the Eurasians had called for peace, the West would not give them peace, they needed retribution and justice after seeing the crimes they had committed.

Then, the frontline engulfed in blinding light, the Eurasians were forced to play their trump card. Tactical nukes, all across the frontline, they had not reached out of the atmosphere, as they were detonated on Eurasian soil so TRINITY couldn't shoot them down. An entire generation of young men killed, the Americans decided enough was enough. That was the last straw, the missiles soared into the sky.

The first nuclear war of humanity's history would begin.

## The Day of Nuclear Hail (2068)

Missiles soared into the sky, lines of light that would herald the end of days. Angels made metal, and God's wrath rained down upon the Earth below. TRINITY, POLARIS, and BEIDOU were activated immediately, shooting down as many as they could, trying their best to protect their homelands from harm. A three-way nuclear war between Eurasia, America, and what was left of the People's Republic. Each of the anti-nuke defense systems did their best, but for every one that failed, blinding light would engulf the city below.

Nuclear stockpiles had grown since the dawn of the 21st century, grown back to the heights of the stockpiles of the Cold War. Nuclear entanglement forced all nuclear powers to join in this dance of death. First Britain, then France, India, the Pyongist State, Israel, Nigeria, Brazil, Indonesia. All were forced to fire, and all were fired upon. The Continental powers would rather destroy the world and rule the ashes. America vowed to use TRINITY to protect anyone who would help them against the Eurasians.

During the Interwar period, almost every country had invested in an extensive bomb shelter system as the tensions between the three superpowers flared. In this way, the decades of tension beforehand were almost a blessing. Though few would ever call this a blessing.

Almost every city with a population over 1 million was hit, dust clouds covered the skies and obstructed the atmosphere. In the United States, families sat still in underground bunkers, with only a flickering radio being their connection to the outside world. Everything is fine, please stay calm, we are witnessing the end of the world. All of America's greatest cities were washed away in a rising sea of radioactive fire. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, so on, and so forth. The only city of surprise was Washington DC, which had an additional extremely powerful anti-missile defense system installed around it specifically, though President Jackson was relocated to a bunker somewhere else in the United States, carrying with him artifacts of the nation's founding.

In the last breakthrough of a bloody conflict, the Americans finished the conflict with their last great innovation of the war. The warform, a remote controlled robotic body that allowed pilots to "die" in combat and undergo dangerous situations without risking their own bodies. It was with this technology the Americans finally finished the war, as the mushroom clouds towered over Russian cities.

Over a billion people died that day, a nuclear war to end the worst conflict humanity had ever known. When the Americans emerged, a surprising amount of the country remained intact, even as their greatest cities had been turned into rubble. But seeing the sky darken around them, as the ash filled the air, they knew what must have been coming. After cataclysmic floods, the world would know another disaster, one wrought by themselves, and mankind's own blood-soaked hands.

Nuclear Winter.

## Bunker Era (2068-2076)

The Bunker Era referred to a period when nuclear winter would result in prolonged hardships. The name derives from the fact that many people spent their time in bunkers. Even though much of global civilization had indeed been crippled, much of civilization remained intact, and an eventual recovery from the horrors of the 4th World War did not seem impossible. The Jackson administration quickly ordered the American population to evacuate the countryside, and the nationalization of the indigenous Indian Reservations under the guise of national emergency.

The rural regions were ordered to produce and stockpile as much food as possible, before the winter would fully set in. The United States was a highly agriculturally abundant nation, but even it would have struggles getting through this. Countless vertical farms were set up, and greenhouses would eventually supply most of the nation's food. In space, solar arrays obtained energy, and sent it back down to Earth, and the orbital factories used in World War 4 were retooled into agricultural warehouses.

Breakthroughs in genetic modification, agricultural techniques, and aquaponics allowed the United States to weather the storm, and eventually partner with the Global Defense Coalition in order to aid the reconstruction of the entire world. Millions would still die from famine worldwide, but the survival of humanity itself was never in question, it appeared mankind would survive its own self-made Armageddon.

Jackson continued administering the country in the state of emergency, but with his two term limit coming up, he was afraid that the United States was not ready to be given back civilian governance, attempting to run for a 3rd term, and when that failed, attempting to extend the emergency. But with the insistence of the military and the general public, elections were held in 2072, and he gracefully accepted the results. 2072 saw the election of Progressive candidate Alisha Crowder, whose environmentalist, progressive message resonated with an American public focused on reconstruction.

She largely restored power to the civilian government, and dismantled the emergency powers which had been granted under the administrations of Xerxes and Jackson, she was largely the president who reverted the country to peacetime. Massively raising taxes on the rich and taking on debt, she rolled out an enormous infrastructure plan to rebuild what was lost. The United States, by virtue of being the only superpower remaining after the bombs fell, was one of the first to recover, and the first to capitalize by helping other countries rebuild their own country in a Marshall Plan on steroids.

Also of note, she was the president who re-recognized same-sex marriage in the United States, after 30 years under Cortez's traditionalist policy. She greatly expanded national parks, and broadened her appeal to rural communities by appealing to their love of natural beauty, and "preserving pastoral communities". Finally, she is noteworthy for being the president to complete the American high speed rail system, after many decades in the works, the United States had been brought to the transport system of tomorrow by a series of interconnecting rails.

The Bunker Era would end in 2076, with the so called "Day of Coldest Winter" before the temperature would begin to rapidly warm, and the world would slowly turn to normal. Reconstruction was already well underway, and the United States had gotten a head start.

## Post War Era (2076-2082)

The new generations were born into a world that was growing and recovering. Their parents would often tell them of the stories of war, of great cities that once was, but they themselves would not live those experiences. The United States would enter into the 2080's with the dawn of a new rival. FATES, after seizing control of France, Benelux, and Germany had formed the Fatalist Euronetwork, a European federation of sorts, and now the main competitor to the United States.

Though previous space expeditions had been made, such as the first Mars landing in 2029, and various missions to Luna, Venus and Mars across the 2050's, it was in the 2070's when terrestrial orbital colonies, or "Orbitals" would become widespread. Space colonies such as Babel's Point had existed since the 2050's, but by the 2070's had become a hub of trade between Earth and low earth orbit. The 2070's were an era of openness and the opening of great frontiers in American society. Seasteading, once a niche community mostly restricted to libertarians, exploded in popularity, as did the rise of arkologies, and other alternative ways of organizing a society.

The United States became the place where a million new governing experiments bloomed, from the de-facto base of operations of the independent seasteads, to arkologies professing every ideology from communism to hyper-capitalism and everything in between. President Crowder believed heavily in a "live and let live" mentality, and allowed many of these experiments to flourish. This led to many to labeling her as a libertarian progressive, or even occasionally an anarchist. The Space Age was still young, but the United States and the Euronet were already caught in a competition on who could beat the others. The United States had been practicing asteroid mining on a small scale for ages, but now drew up plans to tow a large asteroid into orbit, and use it as an anchor for an eventual skyhook. While the Euronet began gathering materials to construct a space elevator in Paris. In 2075, largely thanks to advancements of the 2nd Space Age, the United States had total internet coverage across the entire nation.

Julia Land was elected in 2080, and inaugurated in 2081. Being from the Futurist Party, and endorsed by ex-president Amir Xerxes, her candidacy would largely be focused on the one thing that mattered; expanding space exploration. It was under her administration when fundamentalist Christians began migrating to set up a colony on Mars, in what they named the Jesusland Expedition, and later on the Jesusland Mars Colony. Julia Land would be another first, in being the first Asian-American president. The 2080's would be marked by an explosion in space colonization, as well as the rise of private military companies such as PMC Desert Eagle.

American society was undergoing active depolarization, and a new political realignment on different values. The left-right binary was dissolving. Christianity had decoupled from conservatism, social progressivism had been disentangled with economic leftism, and the pre-existing political groups had disentangled, allowing new alliances to be formed. With the victory of liberal democracy in the 4th World War, but also in American culture more broadly, the new division that would dominate American politics would be the divide between liberalism and democracy.

The Liberal Party, founded by leader and later President Richard Snowden, was founded on the ideals of liberalism and constitutionalism. The party started out as a vehicle for Christian liberalism, though with the influx of Futurists into the party, it rapidly secularized. The party was a big tent, with many competing factions. This included the Futurist Conservative faction (Which Snowden was a part of), the Futurist Liberals, Progressives, Radical Liberals (What we might call Libertarians), and Ultravisionary Liberals. The party's ideology can broadly be described as liberalism, and attracted everyone from the more libertarian side of the political spectrum.

The Democratic Party (No relation to the early 21st century Democrats) originated from the thoughts and legacy of President Ryan Jackson, and became a grab-bag of sorts for more populist and authoritarian parties. While it also believed in the unalienable human rights of the individual, it focused more on the will of the people, and was more populist in nature. It had two broad camps, the National Populists and the Christian wings, who in turn could be broken down into further groups via economics. The party's ideology can broadly be described as democratic populism, and attracted people from the more authoritarian side of the political spectrum.

Liberal/Constitutionalist candidate Richard Snowden would defeat Julia Land in the 2084 elections. The Liberal Party at the time started out highly Christian, and he threw his full weight behind the Jesusland Expeditions. This era was also the time period where the idea of Manifest Destiny began being widely adopted, as many Americans believed it was America's destiny to expand into the stars.

## Psychic Era (2084-2092)

A greater understanding of psychics had been formed by the year 2084. Originally developed by American researchers experimenting on the human brain and looking into the origins of consciousness, they had accidentally awakened some kind of dormant gene within the human consciousness, which saw the birth and awakening of the first psychics. The primary ability of the psychics is the gift of clairvoyance, the ability to access hidden knowledge and memories from an unknown source, which would be later known as the Noosphere. Somewhat interestingly, the memories always seemed to come from the dead. Psychicism also seemed to correlate with religiosity, though not perfectly. Out of this discovery emerged a new sect of Christianity, Psychic Christianity, which drew roots from other forms, such as Psychedelic Christianity, and became integrated into the broader Pentecostalist movement. This era also saw the creation of the first psychic photograph, allowing psychic memories to be recorded into physical memory, and to be accessed by the masses.

In political matters, the Snowden administration was marked by militaristic and futurist zeal, with much resources spent on the pursuit of space colonization, and militarism. The United States had been heavily militaristic ever since the homeland invasion of the 4th World War. Mandatory firearms training was still taught in schools, and young adults were required to serve two years of military service. Snowden reinforced these norms, leading to the United States being markedly more militaristic than most countries around the world. The technology to make warforms was a highly secretive national secret, with the Americans wanting to preserve their edge in this technology as long as possible. The Snowden administration saw the proliferation of American private military companies, or PMCs. Which had their roots in the Patriots Militias of the 4th World War, as well as the companies and profits made selling weapons to Eurasia during the Winstonian Détente.

2088 saw the rise of the Psychonet, the exploration and mapping out of the Noosphere allowed the creation of a psychic-based internet. Psychonet connections required an active consciousness to access, largely removing the bot problem, and allowing the new flourishing of social media sites. With its separation from physical infrastructure, many websites created the ability to access their sites from both the legacy Internet and the emerging Psychonet.

The Snowden administration was known for further expanding America's role in space, and beginning the process of Martian terraforming. (Though it would be widely known that the terraforming would not be completed for decades, if not centuries)

### Edward Cayce Expedition

In 2087, the newly created Psychonautic and Noospheric Administration (PNA) sent the first manned mission into the Noosphere. After the discovery of psychics, and the discovery of wormholes embedded in the brains of psychics, one of these wormholes was extracted and enlarged from a deceased willing participant, allowing the first manned mission into the Noosphere. Photos taken from inside the Noosphere reveals a chaotic realm of immaterial color and tremendous turbulence. Unfortunately, strong turbulence, and psychic disruption from inside the Noosphere ended up severing all ties to launch headquarters, leading to loss of the crew of the Edward Cayce. Numerous expeditions were sent to try and recover the bodies of the Edward Cayce, though they were unsuccessful.

### Library of Congress Psychic Archive

After the Omnithecia, located in the East African Federation as a worldwide effort to accumulate all psychic records in one location, the world's second largest psychic archive can be found in the United States in the Library of Congress. The contents of the Library are open source, with access readily available to the public. A case was brought to the Supreme Court over whether memories of deceased relatives should fall under the ownership of their closest relatives, or whether they should remain public domain. In this, it was decided that privacy laws would extend to memories, and that relatives of the deceased can request that memories be removed from the Library of Congress public archive, and establishing a review board to screen new memories before publication.

### The Great Ruralization

A detonation of a nuclear weapon in Anqing as a part of the ongoing 2nd Chinese Civil war created a worldwide panic to evacuate from the cities and spread out into the suburbs and countryside, as nuclear terrorism became a more pressing issue in the minds of everyday people. Nuclear weapons became part of the arsenal of some PMCs, leading to a worldwide crackdown on their usage and more heavy monitoring of nuclear weapons. It is suspected that some part of the Eurasian nuclear stockpile had been sold off.

### Space Colonization

The United States by this time had several space orbitals, or city-sized space stations located in terrestrial orbit. These orbitals fell under the administration of the Department of the Interior, setting a precedent that future space colonization would be treated similarly to settling the Wild West. The orbitals were also treated as one singular state, allowing their votes to count during presidential elections. The Jefferson asteroid had been dragged into terrestrial orbit, and was used to anchor the Jefferson skyhook, which worked similarly to a space elevator to allow for easy space travel. Crucially, they had beaten the Euronetwork to the punch, leading to FATES angrily proclaiming that he was still the first to finish a space elevator.

Though much of America's stellar population resided in low earth orbit, the real prize, in the eyes of American nationalists was the red planet. After the Euronetwork had laid claim to much of the Moon, setting up large colonies on the Lunar surface, American eyes turned towards the red planet. The Jesusland Expedition had already led to numerous fanatical Christians settling the world in the search of a new religious utopia, but Snowden's dreams was to turn it into an American world, with little or no competition. The cooperation between the United States, and several other countries such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Japan would lead to the creation of the EDEN Treaty, which was a compact to slowly terraform the Martian surface. In 2090, the United States began pelting the Martian surface with nitrogen asteroids taken from the asteroid belt, with the hope of eventually building up a habitable atmosphere on Mars.

## Immortal Era (2092-)

In 2092, an enormous breakthrough in Dallas, Texas manages to create an effective reversal of the aging process. Applied to humans, it allowed the old to become young and the young to live indefinitely. Becoming front page news for days and weeks on end, people around the world proclaimed it the beginning of the Immortal Era, and the name stuck. Though at first restricted to the rich and wealthy, profit-driven corporations wasted no time bringing the price down, and distributing the drug as widely as possible, their mouths salivating at the thought of productive workers who could work forever, and never having to pay another retirement pension for as long as they live. Within a year, the drug had penetrated every level of American society, and the country had flipped from mortal to immortal. In the coming years, the rest of the world would do the same. And the company that did it, Immortex, would enter into the halls of history, and become one of the richest companies in world history.

2092 also saw the threat of nuclear terrorism come to the United States, when the FBI thwarted a plan by the Atomjihad terrorist group to nuke New York City.

In other news, in 2092, Bernie Sanders was elected to the presidency, becoming the oldest president in US history up until that point, at a whooping 152 at the time of his inauguration. He had been a candidate for every single election from 2016 all the way up until 2092, a total of 20 different election seasons, with the exact same platform every single time: Free healthcare, or die trying. Being a part of the Jacksonist Democratic Party (No relation with the early 21st century Democratic Party, though he was a part of that too.) he was sworn in with his vice president Blaine Reed.

Bernie Sander's administration only lasted a whooping 23 days. The exact amount of time it took for him to fish out the free healthcare bill he had been writing by hand for 50 years, send it off to Congress, threaten to haunt every election from now until the end of time if it didn't pass, make it through the House and Senate, and end up back at the Resolute Desk. After signing it into law, he immediately had a stroke, hit his head on the Resolute Desk, and died, his life purpose now being complete. Not even Immortex was able to save Bernie, as he was apparently only alive through the power of dark magic.

The presidency passing to vice president Blaine Reed, his first challenge was to deal with the immediate fallout of the Immortal Era. Blaine Reed would use the new free healthcare bill to negotiate lower prices with Immortex, the leverage and negotiating power of the United States was able to force Immortex to bring down their prices. Reed was also tasked with dealing with the rising transhumanist debate, with the popularity of transhumanist modifications increasing around the 2090's, resulting in the Council of Alexandria. Though the Council was a largely informal deal primarily enforced in Catholic countries, it set the tone for most Christian views on transhumanism.

Reed, as with almost every president going all the way back to Washington, was a Christian, albeit a somewhat lukewarm one. Crowder was suspected to be an agnostic during her term, while Julia Land was the first ever open irreligious president, and she lost after one term. Nevertheless, the United States tailored much of its transhumanism policy after the Council of Alexandria, as much of the council was popular, and was meant to be an pan-religious consensus on transhumanism, involving everyone from Buddhists to Muslims.

### Assassination of Julia Land

In 2096, the nation was shocked as ex-President Alisha Crowder assassinated another ex-president Julia Land. After her administration, Crowder had radicalized into becoming a full blown anarchist and grown resentful of the American oppression that she had helped perpetuate. She began berating the American system, lamenting her role in it. She originally had 2 failed assassination attempts on Richard Snowden, and was unable to assassinate Blaine Reed, so settled for Julia Land.

She would be trialed and arrested for assassination. This marks the only time an ex-president has assassinated another ex-president.

## Corporations

### United Silicon Company

The remnants of what is left of Silicon Valley after the 2022 Unravelling, United Silicon was a fusion of Microsoft, Google, and Apple in the 2040's to compete with the rise of the Cortezian tech giants. They remain a major employer in the state of California, and were forced to spin off several parts of their business in order to avoid an antitrust lawsuit. They make a large amount of their revenue webhosting, and are one of the nation's largest webhosters.

### SpaceX

One of the leading players in space colonization, they continue to be run by the uploaded consciousness of Elon Musk. They collaborate frequently with the United States government, and are assisting the federal government in the EDEN project and the terraforming of Mars.

### Immortex

A major American biomedical company most famous for creating the anti-aging treatment by the same name. Immortex comes in two forms, pills that have to be taken often, or a treatment that is more permanent, typically lasting 10 or 20 years. In large doses, it can cause one to age regress, though stops around the biological age of 20. Now one of the world's largest biomedical companies, controlling a substantial share of the world's immortality market.

### Trinity Productions

A Christian media company centered around Atlanta, Georgia. They have recently branched out into non-Christian media, becoming a more general media conglomerate. They are sometimes included as part of Cortez's tech giants. They own several popular media properties such as Veggietales. They also control Trinity Communications, which controls much of America's psychic anchor communications.

### Metanet

One of the largest of the Cortezian tech giants, they are the runners of the American Metaverse. Starting out as a company contracted to build a virtual training simulation for the United States military, they have since expanded to the creation of the American Metaverse. Unfortunately, due to the death of the founders, the last founder appears to have gone mad, and continues to maintain the Metaverse from inside his own simulation. The Metanet was recently moved into the Psychonet, largely removing it from American juristiction.

## New Culture

### Sentimentalization of the Golden Generation

Full Article: The Golden Generation

The Golden Generation were the generation that fought in the 4th World War. Tragically, nearly 50% of them were killed as a result of defending the world against tyranny, including 80% of Golden Generation males. Today, the United States greatly sentimentalizes them, sometimes likening them to the Greatest Generation, who by this point was long gone. A great symbol of this admiration is the Great War Memorial in Salt Lake City, where a great plaque reads: "YOU WILL ALWAYS BE OUR GOLDEN GENERATION".

The parents of the Golden Generation, Generation Z, who had fought in the 3rd World War feels immense survivor's guilt for having survived, when their children did not. As well, they often blame themselves for losing the 3rd World War, believing if they could have won that, the rise of Eurasia and China, and therefore the 4th World War could have been avoided.

The suicide rates among the veterans of Generation Z are tragically high.

### Car Nomads

Car Nomads are a relatively new cultural phenomenon. With the rise of nationwide internet coverage, as well as the rise of remote work, the subculture of car nomads, or nomadic peoples largely travelling the country, and living full time out of a car became somewhat popular. The car nomads can be seen as a embodiment of American culture, to try and recapture the feeling of living on the great frontier. Even hundreds of years after its founding, the United States is still seen as an eternal frontier, with much of the Western interior still yet to be colonized.

### Blood Bowls

Blood Bowls utilize the new technology of the warform and use them for entertainment purposes. Blood Bowl players placed in a consciousness linking chamber, control several remote controlled robotic bodies, and fight other players in a fight to the death. In a setting similar to the Hunger Games, weapons are scattered around the map. Each player is only able to control one body at a time, but only has 10 "lives" before being eliminated from the game.

The Blood Bowl organizers will normally modify the terrain, as well as create large natural disasters, or create hazards such as tanks, organizer controlled warforms, and player participation. The Blood Bowl is traditionally held in Disko Island, in Greenland, now an American territory, and the excessive amount of violence the Americans seem to enjoy have permanently scarred the island. As Americans are huge fans of unnecessarily large explosions and destructions.

Despite the inherently violent nature of the Blood Bowls, no players are intended to die, as all killings are only done to remote controlled warforms, the person's biological body remains completely healthy.

### 3D Printed Firearms

The United States is the epicenter of the 3D printed firearms movement. With improvements in 3D printing tech, and personal microfactories, there was an explosion of 3D printed firearms for a combination of ideological, but also economical and personal reasons. 3D printed gun culture in the United States is largely based around self expression and DIY culture, with 3D printed gun collecting seen almost acting like collecting art pieces and an extension of the self. A combination of 3D printed firearms, and the mass liberalization of gun laws throughout the 21st century has jacked up the firearms per capita ratio to 4.1 at its peak in the 2080's.

With the rise of mandatory military service, compulsory gun education classes in school, and overall militarization in American society, 3D printed guns have entered a bit of a decline, as increased militarism has issued more standardized weapons to everyday Americans after military service. There is a transition away from guns that are art pieces and customized for the user, towards guns issued for practicality sake, which are standardized for all.

## Social Issues

### Same Sex Marriage

As of 2100, same sex marriage has been re-legalized during the Crowder Administration in 2072. Despite this, many parts of the United States remains rather socially conservative towards the matter, especially in highly Christian areas such as the deep south. The majority of American churches consider it a sin. Discrimination continues against same-sex couples, and much of the United States's LGBT community emigrates to countries such as the Argentine Confederation to seek out more freedom for their lifestyle.

### Abortion

Abortion was first restricted with the overturning of Roe V Wade in 2022, and has remained completely banned since the Cortezian Cultural Revolution of 2044. The issue has been largely circumvented, however, by the invention of artificial wombs, and the ability to abort a pregnancy without resulting in the death of a fetus, allowing them to be stored in artificial wombs for later adoption. These, known as "non-lethal abortions" were brought to the supreme court and ruled as constitutionally congruent with the existing abortion bans, as they did not result in the death of a life. Since then, abortion has largely faded out of the public consciousness, with the adoption of aborted fetuses being particularly popular among conservative Christians.

### Transhumanism

Following the Council of Alexandria in 2094, the United States has largely abided by the terms of the Council. Though the United States is a morally Protestant nation, and the Council was primarily led by the Catholic Church of Rome, most Protestants agreed with the basics laid out. America's primary guiding principle when it comes to transhumanism is the preservation of the human essence. The United States has banned genetic modification of embryos, confining genetic modification only to consenting adults, strictly regulating the practice. These restrictions are opposed by the Ultravisionary Liberals, who envision a transhumanist utopia of human ascension.

Culturally, transhumanism and genetic modification is allowed only when glorifying the human form. The primary Protestant stance on the matter is allowing for transhumanism only if it allows for further glorification, as they see humanity in a fallen state, and the human condition as it currently exists is not satisfactory for God's needs. Though there are more and less strict sects within the Christian religion, with some being very strict on modifications that can only bring humanity closer to a idealized human form, others being more lenient, and others still known as biopuritans who reject the practice altogether, and isolate themselves from the rest of the human population in fear of contamination.

## See Also:

Jesusland

League of Free Nations

Canada

## Trivia

* Many of the presidents of the United States are relatives or descendants of somewhat important figures of the early 21st century. Richard Snowden is the distant niece of Edward Snowden, and while sharing some of the same libertarian beliefs, largely denounced his much older relative. Alisha Crowder is the granddaughter of Stephen Crowder, who became so annoyed with him she essentially joined the other side. Julia Land is the granddaughter of Nick Land, with mixed white-Asian ancestry.

## Footnotes

1. ↑ Of note, Donald Trump was stonewalled out of the Republican primaries, leading to him running as a Democrat instead. Not changing any of his policies, he just told his right wing supporters to switch parties. It nearly worked, with about 40% of the final primary votes being cast for him. Every other Democrat had to rally behind Kamala Harris to avoid what was essentially an attempted hostile takeover event. There is a timeline not too far from this one where the 2024 election was Trump (D) VS DeSantis (R). A truly horrifying and hilarious idea.
2. ↑ Children of Dusk diverges from our timeline around the year 1991, or 2021. The Ukraine War does not occur in 2023, and as a result, Pro-Russia sentiment and pacifism among NATO countries is far more prevalent.
3. ↑ Around the peak of the 5th Great Awakening, Christianity was followed by a reported 91% of the population identifying as Christian. Though it is noted that at least some of these were only identifying as culturally Christian.
4. ↑ The Silent Veil was a way to refer to the censorship regimes that occurred in both Eurasia and China. Allowing very little information to escape aside from government propaganda. It can be thought of as being similar to North Korean censorship today.
5. ↑ Somewhat infamously. His campaign slogan was "Let's win the damn war already."
6. ↑ Yes. THAT Bernie Sanders. President Sanders was 152 at his date of inauguration. Making him the oldest president to have ever served up until that point. Researchers are still baffled at how he managed to live that long. Explanations include black magic, divine intervention, highly advanced cloning, and the power of sheer hatred refusing to allow him to die until America had free healthcare.
7. ↑ Psychic anchors are anchors from the material world into the Noosphere, which is what allows worldwide connectivity into the Noospheric Psychonet. They are similar in appearance to cell phone towers.
8. ↑ For reference, it is 1.5 in 2020, in our timeline.