Chapter 4

Kathleen Lehrer walked into her office a few minutes before seven, looking as if she hadn't slept very well, which she hadn't. Her secretary wouldn't arrive for another hour, so she put the coffee on, hoping that the caffeine would get her moving. By the third cup, her secretary arrived, shaken by her boss's appearance.

"Ms. Lehrer, you look like you didn't sleep at all last night," said Marge Schriber.

"I had the most frightening nightmare which woke me up about 3:00 this morning, and then I couldn't get back to sleep. In the dream, I saw fire and explosions coming from the Capitol, bodies all over the place and someone telling me, 'they're all dead, you're now the President.' It scared the hell out of me!"

"I can imagine!" replied Marge. "Even though you are pretty far down the line, you are still in the line of succession to the president."

"You know, I have never thought of that until now. I have enough to do being Secretary of Education, without being president. I just don't have that as one of my ambitions in life."

"Well, it was just a nightmare."

"Yeah. Well let's get going. We have enough to keep us busy without worrying about my bad dreams."

Kathleen Lehrer did not envy the man whom she was about to see. Stephen Ruskin had defeated several better known members of his own party to win the nomination in 1996. The former governor had endured brutal attacks on his character and honesty to triumph with 39% of the vote in a three way race. After Ruskin received impressive results from the New Hampshire and Southern Primaries, the other candidates withdrew, and Ruskin sailed on to gain the nomination. He then won the Presidency over the beleaguered incumbent, who had tried to reduce the deficit, reform the health care system, and reduce the bureaucracy, but could not get a Congress of his own party to go along with his programs, primarily because of undue influence from various special interests. When efforts to reform the way Congress worked and the way campaigns were financed were attempted, the leadership was able to get them watered down so much that the measures that were finally passed were practically worthless. The incumbent had survived a bruising primary challenge and then presided over a deeply divided party. In a three way race, the presence of an independent candidate took just enough support away from the President to cost him the election.

Three days after being sworn in as Secretary of Education, unaware of the position into which she would be thrust within five short weeks, Kathleen Lehrer made her first official trip as Secretary to the White House in order to attend her first Cabinet meeting. Although she was still in the process of settling into her new position, she was starting to shake things up already. She was determined not to get sidetracked by what she thought were unimportant side issues such as school prayer and aid to nonpublic schools, but with getting on with the real issues of how to once again make the U.S. educational system the best in the world. She had some ideas about how to accomplish that goal, but it would be up to her successor as Secretary of Education to implement those concepts. Kathleen Lehrer would be in a position to have a great deal more influence over education policy than she would have dreamed at the time of that White House visit. She would have much weightier matters to consider, decisions that would determine whether or not the United States and possibly the entire world would even survive, let alone educate the children.

As she approached the White House, the Secretary of Education couldn't help but notice the strict security measures that had been taken over the previous decade to guard against terrorism. The concrete blocks and vehicle checks for two blocks surrounding the White House, the machine gun nests visible on the White House roof, surface to air missiles hidden behind bushes on the White House lawn, heavily armed sentries wherever one looked, and metal detectors at every entrance to the White House and its grounds made the executive mansion look like what it was, a heavily armed, well defended fortress.

The necessity for all of these security precautions was made all the more evident less than a month before her nomination as Secretary of Education, when an assassination attempt was made against President Ruskin using a rocket propelled grenade aimed at his limousine as he was leaving the White House. The armor on the limousine worked as it was supposed to and kept the president from suffering more than a few scrapes and bruises. Nineteen innocent people were killed however and another fifty had been injured from shrapnel from the exploding missile. This, on top of a previous attempt on the President in the last year gave the President's security people plenty of reasons to be paranoid, and to have ulcers as well.

Kathleen Lehrer worried what the long-term effects of all of the violence and countermeasures taken to prevent it would be. The latest attempt on the President's life caused the assumption of a frightening attitude among those around the President, particularly among his security people. A bunker mentality and increasing paranoia among high ranking government officials caused a sense of continuing high tension that had no end in sight.

This seemingly permanent crisis atmosphere that enveloped the United States had profound effects on the American people. The crime rate soared, especially for crimes involving violence. The divorce rate, which had begun to level off during the late 1980s, once again increased dramatically. Many people just completely lost all hope that the situation would improve; the suicide rate had doubled in the last five years. What had happened to the United States?

Basically, the United States could not escape the flow that had ensnared other great powers throughout history. The United States had followed the same patterns as the Roman, French, British and Russian empires, and had unfortunately fallen into many of the same traps that had claimed these earlier world powers. Each power had started from a relatively small area and had gradually added more territory and its accompanying wealth to build itself into a major, if not the major power of its time. Each society was founded upon certain ideals and principles which, for the most part, were greatly responsible for nurturing the coming power. These ideals formed the foundations for these societies. These societies were also fortunate enough to have people with the wisdom, foresight and ability to take advantage of the opportunities that came their way to advance the influence of their governments and cultures.

The increase of the political and economic power of each of these societies was accompanied by the rise of the culture of each society. This was evident from the artistic, literary, and especially architectural achievements of each society. Some of the greatest works in these fields in the history of the world have been accomplished during these periods of expansion.

As each society developed, the governmental bureaucracies grew and flourished in order to administer the new territories and the increased responsibilities of the central government. As each society reached its apex, and began its long, slow decline, the bureaucracies continued to grow. The law of diminishing returns holds for governmental bureaucracies as well as it does in economics. As a bureaucratic structure grows, its productivity per person decreases, individual creativity tends to be stifled, and the system becomes more and more inefficient. The society becomes stagnant. The people become more and more apathetic. They feel more and more that they cannot do anything to influence their government.

They drop out.

The economy begins swinging between boom, inflation, and depression, with the boom periods becoming shorter and less frequent as the society deteriorates. More and more people become disenchanted with the system. Because of the gross inefficiency of the engorged bureaucracies, the government's debt continues to grow, often while the society as a whole is relatively prosperous. This just makes the government's inefficiency more obvious to the people. Order begins to break down. As the government tries to crack down on the increasing unrest, the prisons become dangerously overcrowded. The crime rate soars. The government becomes more tyrannical and corrupt. The crime rate continues to soar. A vicious circle develops. Fear of crime and of the government's actions to combat crime grows among the populace like a cancer. Cynicism runs rampant.

The erosion of the foundation of the society continues and even accelerates. The decay is evident throughout the society. Structures that were built during the earlier, more dynamic times have begun to fall into disrepair. People try to escape reality through drugs, alcohol, and a looser moral structure. People tend to become more corrupt because they feel that everyone else, particularly those in power, is corrupt. The fabric of the society has become worn and threadbare. All that is needed is a little more tension applied to it, and the fabric will tear. The society is accelerating inexorably toward collapse.

Warnings and attempts at reform will occur, but it will be way too little, much too late to stop the momentum of the avalanche of history. The government sees enemies at home and abroad and feels increasingly threatened and paranoid. Demagogues such as Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his successors throw reckless charges at anyone who dares to think or speak differently than they do, which has a chilling effect on the remaining freedoms enjoyed by the people, causing many to remain silent rather than risk being labeled a "Communist" or a "subversive".

Terrorist acts such as assassinations and bombings become almost commonplace. As the acts of terrorism become more frequent, the perception grows among the populace that the government is impotent. To counter that impression, the government begins spending outrageous amounts of money on military hardware in order to show its strength and power. These expenditures cause the government's debt to climb even higher. Rather than taking the politically unpopular step of raising taxes to pay for all of this weaponry, the government would rather borrow or print more money. The resulting inflation further erodes the people's confidence in the government This wasteful military power is built upon a rapidly decaying foundation. The whole system is on the verge of collapse. All that is needed is a spark that will cause the entire situation to explode.

Starting as the original thirteen colonies, the United States followed these steps in its rise and fall as a great power. The United States expanded its territory and influence throughout the 19th century, gradually increasing its economic wealth as it gained access to the bountiful resources of the new territories. In 1917, the U.S. ended its status as a debtor nation; it remained a creditor nation until the Reagan deficits plunged the country back into debtor status in the Spring of 1985.

The United States reached the peak of its political and economic hegemony in the period immediately following World War II. Practically every other world power had sustained major devastation in the war; the United States emerged almost completely unscathed. The United States had the atomic bomb; until 1949, no one else did. The United States had the most powerful military machine in the world. The United States had the strongest economy in the world. What happened to make the United States fall from the exalted position of being the most powerful nation on the planet to the abyss of revolution in just over fifty years?

Actually, the seeds of that decline had been planted long before World War II. In 1915, five per cent of the population controlled sixty per cent of the wealth while sixty five per cent of the population owned only five per cent of the wealth. Between half and two thirds of U.S. families were living below the subsistence level, with only one third of the children completing grammar school, and only one child in ten able to graduate from high school. During this period, anarchist and socialist movements were gaining a great deal of support from workers because of their demands for a minimum wage, eight hour work day, an end to child labor, and minimal health and safety standards for the factories and mines. A very vocal anti-war movement developed to protest U.S. involvement in World War I. The United States government, as it would again fifty years later, attempted to squelch those who protested the war and substandard living conditions.

By 1933, most of the world was caught in the midst of the Great Depression. In the United States, one-fourth of the population was unemployed. Bank runs and failures became commonplace. The whole capitalist system was on the brink of collapse. The United States was on the verge of revolution. Desperate measures taken by Franklin D. Roosevelt to prop up the system were able to stave off a total collapse of the system until World War II finally brought the country out of the Depression.

The United States had long supported or installed corrupt, brutal dictators as long as they acquiesced in the plundering of their countries, to the detriment of the large majority of their people, by U.S. companies. Porfirio Diaz of Mexico, the Somozas in Nicaragua, Batista of Cuba, Chiang Kai-shek of China, and the Shah of Iran were all benefactors of U.S. support. The Mexican Revolution of 1910, the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, Castro's Revolution of 1959, Mao's Revolution of 1949 and Khomeini's Islamic Revolution of 1979 were the inevitable results of these short-term beneficial, long-term disastrous policies. The leaders of the United States had effectively renounced, without actually coming out and saying so, the principles of supporting people who fought against government tyranny while mouthing platitudes about supporting freedom loving peoples. For the most part, the people of the United States failed to see through the hypocrisy of their leaders. This hypocrisy however, was very evident to foreigners, which contributed to anti-American feelings around the world. Unfortunately, the hypocrisy of the U.S. leaders did not become apparent to Americans until after the foreign reaction struck home in ways that were impossible to ignore any longer.

The disastrous consequences of the U.S. interventions in Vietnam and Lebanon, combined with the bankrupting of the United States by Ronald Reagan's military buildup, showed the prescience of Dwight Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex. Lies and deceptions by Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam and Richard Nixon about Watergate undermined the credibility of the leaders of the United States government This credibility was not recovered until after the events that will be outlined in this book.

Economic blunders by Presidents Johnson and Nixon were felt long after they left the White House. Johnson's attempts to fight his war on poverty and the Vietnam War without raising taxes (which would have made the Vietnam War even more unpopular a lot sooner) resulted in the inflation that plagued the United States until the early 1980s. Nixon's wage and price freeze, combined with his urging of the Federal Reserve to pump up the economy, had the economy booming until after he was safely reelected. Then, both inflation and unemployment soared. President Ford's attempts to bring inflation under control slowed the economy too much right before an election year; he abruptly switched gears in order to reduce unemployment, which caused federal budget deficits to reach their highest pre-Reagan levels.