Children's Book Corner: The United States of Bubba

     Once upon a time, there was a mighty nation named the United States of Bubba. Bubba used to be part of a much larger country called the United States of America but, fearing government infringement on their states' rights, Bubba seceded from the union and founded its own neo-confederacy and named it Bubba.
     Bubba's national motto was "Fuck, Yeah! Fuck you!" and its flag consisted of a revamped Confederate flag with a giant red, white and blue finger pointed at the rest of the earth in the center.
     For many of the people in these new United States, this was a paradise. The Bill of Rights was trashed except for the Second Amendment, the only part of the original constitution that survived from the original 50 states. Now, people could own as much guns and ammo as they wanted without the government tracking their sales and activities (as with the old United States.). But in Bubba, it didn't matter how many children were accidentally or deliberately killed with guns because, you know, Freedom!
     And just as more guns was the answer to gun violence, as austerity and more sacrifices by the destitute was the answer to crushing poverty, the answer to runaway corporate greed was less regulations and fewer liberals screaming to shackle the invisible hands of the Free Market. In Bubba, there is no Congress. There are only lobbyists and the Bubban Legislative Exchange Council or (BLEC) providing model or draft legislation that this libertarian utopia would adopt.
     Among the traditionalist legislation proposed by BLEC was the right to shoot and kill people on your property whether or not you felt threatened, the right to defend your home using the Castle Doctrine against police barging into it with BLEC-inspired No Knock warrants that always seemed to end in bloodshed (Which was OK because, well, Freedom!).
     Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that fostered a culture of dependency had been obliterated and replaced with understaffed and overwhelmed clinics, food banks, churches and bread lines that never seemed to have enough. This allowed the citizens of Bubba to get back to their traditional roots of hunting and fishing until all the game were killed off without any meddlesome Fish and Game authorities because, well, Freedom!
     Unregulated industry, now free from the onerous demands of environmental groups and federal agencies of the evil, liberal United States of America, immediately produced a smog across the landscape that never seemed to go away. People in Bubba began to die at alarming rates of various types of cancer as well as ecoli, salmonella and cholera while Big Business shrugged its broad shoulders and denied responsibility. Those who complained of this were visited by corporately-employed right wing paramilitary groups and given a stern talking-to because, well, Freedom! Free Market!
     Rising temperatures from the smog produced bigger and better hurricanes, especially across the Gulf States of Bubba but since there were no more disaster agencies or environmental impact reports or disaster relief that would've required spending offsets that could no longer be made, that left the burden of reconstruction on individuals now freed from the burdens and obligations of that liberal evil named Altruism. And it wasn't called reconstruction because, well, that brought back unpleasant atavistic memories of the Civil War.
     In the utopia that was Bubba, people of color, liberals, gays and bisexuals, Democrats and feminists were either barely tolerated or banned outright through excommunication. The new nation was run by a few hundred ultra wealthy elites who kept stressing, like the Communist Party of old, that poverty was a virtue and is still a better way to live than under a liberal culture of dependency that gave a free ride to old people who'd toiled at their jobs for a half century or more. Those ignorant enough to point out this neo-confederacy named Bubba suspiciously resembled the Nazi Germany the ruling elite pretended to hate while nonetheless emulating from top to bottom were immediately shot. 
     The smog cover across Bubba was as impenetrable as Venus' clouds and satellite photos could no longer see the land mass. Since the Bubban constitution consisted of only the Second Amendment, that meant the poor were free to kill each other off (the several elites who controlled Bubba were, of course, exempt). Soon, the right wingers began to splinter, divide and subdivide with neighborhoods and even individual homesteads at war with each other, with Aryan Supremacy groups waging open warfare on the KKK, state militias conducting guerilla insurgencies against evangelical cults with no trained, professional constabulary to interfere, no fire departments to put out the constant infernos and no EMS services to save lives.
     But it was all worth it because they'd purged the bothersome, micromanaging liberals who'd called for gun control, regulations tightening clean water and air laws, better inspections of food, a higher standard of education for all and commonsense drug laws not written to feed the bottomless avarice of the Free Market of for-profit prisons.
     Yes, with the last of the liberals finally purged from the neo-confederacy of the United States of Bubba, the people were now free to be fleeced, poisoned and subjugated by billion dollar corporations. That's not to say Bubba was perfect. What began as an admirable attempt to establish one, true religion quickly degenerated into open warfare with Methodists fighting Baptists, Lutherans battling Mormons, Catholics fighting everyone and so forth. But they all could at least agree on one thing: That the all-inclusive, largely secular Unitarians that allowed homosexuals in their flock were pure evil.
     With no central government to assist in times of natural disaster, parents losing children to gun violence and cancer from polluted earth, skies and water, with no security for those too old and weak to work, nothing but private health insurance with $10,000 deductibles, $50 co-pays and premiums costing thousands a week, Bubba had at last achieved the Utopian Dream:
     A much shorter life span and a lifetime of stressful and unchallenged hatred, racism and paranoia in exchange for the tyranny of liberalism. Because, as any Bubban can tell you, there is nothing that can kill an empire or great nation faster than actual progress.