Our War
by Craig DiLouie
Genre: Dystopian Thriller
A prescient and gripping novel of a second American civil war, and the children caught in the conflict,
forced to fight.
Our children are our soldiers.
After his impeachment, the president of the United States refuses to leave office, and the country erupts
into a fractured and violent war. Orphaned by the fighting and looking for a home, 10-year-old Hannah
Miller joins a citizen militia in a besieged Indianapolis.
In the Free Women militia, Hannah finds a makeshift family. They'll teach her how to survive. They'll give
her hope. And they'll show her how to use a gun.
Hannah's older brother, Alex, is a soldier, too. But he's loyal to other side, and has found his place in a
militant group of fighters who see themselves as the last bastion of their America. By following their
orders, Alex will soon make the ultimate decision behind the trigger.
On the battlefields of America, Hannah and Alex will risk everything for their country, but in the end,
they'll fight for the only cause that truly matters - each other.
Craig DiLouie is an acclaimed American-Canadian author. Formerly a magazine editor and advertising
executive, he also works as a journalist and educator covering the North American lighting industry.
Craig is a member of the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, International Thriller Writers and Horror
Writers Association. He currently lives in Calgary, Canada with his two wonderful children.
Craig DiLouie is an author of popular thriller, apocalyptic/horror, and sci-fi/fantasy fiction.
In hundreds of reviews, Craig’s novels have been praised for their strong characters, action, and gritty
realism. Each book promises an exciting experience with people you’ll care about in a world that feels
real.
At https://craigdilouie.com/, you can find all of Craig’s major
works, interviews, and hundreds of interesting blog posts. Be sure to sign up for Craig’s mailing list so
you can stay tuned on new releases.
GUEST POST
Anatomy
of Civil War
By
Craig DiLouie
Craig
DiLouie is an author of speculative fiction. His most recent novel,
Our
War,
was published by Orbit in August 2019. Learn more at
CraigDiLouie.com.
Recent
events have prompted more than one reader to tell me my dystopian
novel Our
War
(Orbit, August 2019), about a second American civil war, is quickly
becoming nonfiction. A 2018 Rasmussen poll found that nearly a third
of Americans believed a civil war was likely to happen in the United
States in the next five years. While I personally believe civil
strife (defined as 25+ deaths per year) is far more likely than civil
war (defined as 1,000+ combatant deaths per year), the scenario
depicted in Our
War,
which is precipitated by the impeachment of a president who refuses
to step down, is certainly plausible.
In
this novel, just as in reality, American politics has become so
polarized and tribalized that it gained conditions that have
precipitated coups and civil wars in other countries: entrenched
polarization, distrust of public institutions, violence achieving
legitimacy as a way of solving problems, lack of political
leadership, and divisive press coverage.
The
war’s first catalyst is the president’s impeachment by the House.
As in reality, right-wing commentators, militias, and even
politicians warn of civil war if the Congress were to remove him.
Meanwhile, thousands of people camp at the National Mall in an
“Occupy the Mall” protest demanding the president resign, though
the country is evenly split on whether he should be removed, and
one-third unequivocally support him. After the Senate convicts the
president, he refuses to leave office, triggering a Constitutional
crisis. Snipers fire into the crowds at the Mall, resulting in a
massacre aired on live television and a nationwide panic.
Experts
have estimated that as many as 60,000 armed right-wing militia
members are operating in the United States. They stage a national
armed protest that snowballs into a revolution. In their view, they
are fulfilling the intent of the Founding Fathers who said if the
government became broken, the citizenry had a right to overthrow and
replace it. While their initial goal is to protect the president
against a perceived soft coup by the Deep State, eventually they aim
for a Constitutional Convention that will completely rewrite the
American system.
Even
with swelling recruitment in the first days of the civil war, they
don’t have the numbers or resources to control the entire country,
but they do have enough to roll into a small town, make changes to
its government, and keep going to the next. The Three Percenters
militia is to an extent based on this concept, that only a small
percentage of Americans is necessary to successfully overthrow the
government, inspired by a belief that only three percent of Americans
fought and won the American Revolution.
The
government, meanwhile, dithers in response to this rapid, diffuse
threat to national security. While there are some 650,000 police in
the United States, many would be sympathetic or even actively join
the militia side, and the majority of the rest are in cities, where
the militias are indeed stopped from going further. As for the
powerful U.S. military, they would find it very difficult to respond.
A recent Military
Times
survey found that nearly four out of five active-duty service members
see the military as being more politically polarized. One out of
three service members is registered Republican, with the officer
corps tending to be more conservative, and one out of five is
registered Democrat, with the rank and file tending to be more
liberal. Add to this the fact that though impeached, the president
remains the commander in chief of the nation’s armed forces.
The
military faces a tough choice. They could remove the president with a
coup, attempt to restore order by force and risk open warfare against
Americans, or safeguard life and vital infrastructure while the
president and Congress, which has relocated to New York, begin talks
to achieve a political solution. They decide on the latter, leaving
the war’s factions to fight it out among themselves.
Civil
war ensues. Eventually, the battle lines would form not between
states but largely between rural (sparse population density and
predominantly conservative) and urban (high population density and
predominantly liberal). For example, Indianapolis, where Our
War
takes place a year after the war started, is a deep "blue"
city in a sea of "red." In the early days of civil strife,
gunmen in ski masks attempted to cordon off sections of the city, but
failed in the face of massive crowds taking to the streets demanding
unity and peace. After a bomb goes off in Mile Square, followed by
days of house to house fighting between police and gunmen (including
rogue police officers), the city government finally secures the city
only to find it surrounded by right-wing militias who regard it as
the grand prize. This is very similar to Sarajevo's experience in the
1990s.
During
the siege, various organizations inside Indianapolis form their own
militias, some out of simple self defense, others to achieve their
own political goals as the Left becomes similarly armed and
increasingly radicalized. The police department becomes the
government army operated by a centrist coalition, while Leftist and
other civilian militias defend their turf. While the presidential
side has better training and weaponry, the Congressional side has
greater numbers. As the war goes on, refugees, failing
infrastructure, shortages, and even atrocities and child soldiers
become common.
The
executive branch and Congress meet for peace talks in Ottawa, but the
president holds out, hoping for successes on the battlefield that
will result in more concessions. For the presidential side, the
stakes are far more than whether the president stays in office or
gains immunity from prosecution if he leaves. He and his backers are
aiming for a Constitutional Convention that will rewrite the
Constitution, with demands including zero restrictions on gun
ownership, a national ID card, elimination of the income tax, a
balanced budget requirement, English as the national language, and
more. The Congressional side, led by centrists, mainly wants to
remove the president and resume the same system as before the war,
resulting in internal conflicts with the Left, which has its own
demands, such as publicly funded elections, elimination of
billionaires, healthcare as a right, and more. Meanwhile, reeling
from the economic shock of America tottering on the brink of
collapse, the rest of the world suffers its own wave of populist
movements and wars. Various countries send aid to the United States,
while some supply arms to one or even both sides of the conflict.
Our
War
poses the above as a possible scenario for a second American civil
war, resulting from entrenched polarization and gridlock as the
kindling, a Constitutional crisis as the spark, and a small but
well-funded and coordinated militia movement attempting to overthrow
the government.
This
polarization, entrenched by competing media, results in Americans
with common problems having entirely different narratives about why
those problems exist and how to solve them, even different sets of
facts. Meanwhile, gridlock has made government ineffective and
destroyed trust in public institutions; the American political
system, designed to promote unity, means one party cannot get much
done without either the White House along with a Congressional
super-majority, or the parties being civil and compromising.
I’d
like to say the solution is to simply listen more to the “other
side,” or some such platitude we often hear as the answer to these
problems, but the truth is I believe there is simply too much money
and power invested in the polarization for it to stop without more
systemic change. Just as it attempts to be nonpartisan, Our
War
does no preaching, being a story designed to entertain while at the
same time, as a dystopian novel, provide a warning. It is up to the
reader to reflect on the themes and discuss solutions on their own.
What I can say is I naturally hope a civil war never occurs in
America, as in many civil wars, everybody fights, and nobody wins.
Enough
to say Our
War
is speculative fiction, however much it's starting to resemble
reality; let's hope it stays that way.
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