Kurt Schlichter - People's Republic

Many people helped make this novel possible. Not that I am attempting to shift blame should it turn out to be a raging dumpster fire of jumbled words and stupid ideas – in that case, the fault is entirely my own.

Always first is hot wife Irina Moises, who was there from the beginning. Actually, not from the beginning – I would not let her read it at first, but she eventually became the first reader and my primary advisor on whether I was veering entirely off the rails. Without her hard work and support, this book never would have happened.

Kellie Jane Adanagain joined in to proofread the entire manuscript, for which I am immensely grateful. She is a heck of a writer – check out her latest book The Method .

Thanks also to Drew Matich, Brad Essex, and Jimmie Bise, Jr., for their takes! Also, to all those who read the sample chapter and provided feedback – thank you!

The amazing Salty Hollywoodturned my very basic idea about a cover into the remarkable cover you now see. Thanks, Salty!

And, of course, I want to thank radio studs Larry O’Connor, Tony Katz, Dana Loesch, Hugh Hewitt, Derek Hunter, Ben Shapiro, Cam Edwardsand Cameron Gray. There are others too. Their support brought me to a wider audience despite the risk to their own careers.

Folks like Michael Walsh, Robert O’Brien, Owen Brennan, Stephen Kruiser, Adam Baldwin, and John Gabrieltalked through the scenario with me even if they didn’t know it. Thanks for the input, suckers!

Two gentleman who have since passed on inspired me to do this work. One is Andrew Breitbart, whose reaction when facing the cultural gatekeepers of the left was never to ask to be let inside but to simply scale the wall without permission. The other is Captain Daniel Deaton, United States Navy, who became a friend through social media and provided me with much valuable feedback on my fiction from the perspective of a guy who had been there and done that. Any officer the NCOs adored as much as they did CAPT Deaton had to be squared away. I wish both of them were still here, but we are richer for having known them.

And finally, there is noted author of real literature Kenny, who drank many a beer with me back in J3 talking about how we would write our own books someday. Remember: I don’t like fiction, I can’t use fiction. Brochures – now that’s where it’s at!

There were many others whom I may have overlooked. Thank you too!

And, of course, I want to thank every single one of my Twitter followers (currently 71,000+) for being so very, very #caring.

This novel is not an eager fantasy of a future that I or any other sane person wants. Rather, it is a warning. It, or something very like it, could represent America’s future if we continue down the path we have embarked upon. And we must reverse that course before it is too late. We still can – if we choose to.

The key feature of a democratic republic is less that each participant has the capacity to win than that each participant has the capacity to lose and accept that loss. They can lose gracefully because they believe they have been heard, that the system is fundamentally fair, that it is not rigged. So when they lose, they accept their loss and continue to press for their preferred candidates and policies through the existing system. Chaos, violence, upheaval – while not unknown, even in recent decades, these are entirely foreign to a healthy United States of America.

The idea of ending the system, of truly disrupting the status quo, does not arise in a healthy democratic republic. But I fear that our Republic is no longer healthy. In fact, I fear that there is an elite distinguished both by its cultural and political progressivism and its geographical concentration in the cities and on the coasts that is seeking to disenfranchise the rest of the population by altering the rules that competing interests have, until now, played by.

There was a time when politicians did not seek to win the presidency by the thinnest of margins over 50%, where the President was the President of all Americans, where he (or she) did not encourage his supporters to “reward our friends and punish our enemies.” He (or she) did not label millions and millions of Americans as “deplorable” and “irredeemable.”

There was a time when presidents did not attempt to escape the legitimate input of Congress through executive decrees and appeals to unelected judges who all seem to have graduated from the same dozen liberal universities. There was a time when the media prodded and poked every candidate and leader, instead of targeting only the opponents of their preferred candidates.

There was a time when reasoned debate was possible, where an opponent’s argument was honestly framed and debated on that basis instead of misrepresented and the points raised ignored in favor of personal slanders and cheap snark. Remember that if you read a critique of this novel accusing me of hoping to see the future People’s Republic depicts.

These norms, laws, and customs, along with our Constitution, are what holds our country together. But these are also the very things that our cultural elite attacks, undercuts and weakens. After all, these are obstacles to their power; they are meant to be obstacles to rule without restraint. They are designed to be employed by other citizens to check and balance those who would rule without accountability, without the need to consider the other half of the population.

When the norms, laws, and our Constitution are ignored for short term political advantage, those who would do so likely imagine that it is merely an expedient measure, that somehow, down the road, we will return to normal again. But it is not that easy. It is not that simple. You cannot expect that your opponent will placidly continue to abide by the old rules even as you reap the advantages of the new ones. If you push and push, eventually there will be a push back. There will be a reaction, and we may not be able to control it. Because when you change the rules, you change the game. And when you change the game, it might not be into a game you are prepared to play and win.

This novel explores what might happen, how the forgotten half of America might react, if we choose to change the rules. But we can also choose not to throw away the greatest, freest nation in the history of mankind.

And I pray we do.

“Stop talking.”

The young man in the passenger seat wisely did as he was told, but he kept loudly breathing in short, shallow puffs. He was scared, as he should be. Kelly Turnbull, behind the steering wheel, was merely ready – his breathing slow, but deep and steady. Turnbull stretched out the fingers of his right hand, his shooting hand. He felt the pressure of the sixth gen Glock 19 in his belt. He mentally ran through the motions – left hand on the door handle, pushing it open, swinging out onto his feet as his right hand retrieved the pistol, bringing his hands together to grip it, taking aim, and rapidly putting two 9 mm hollow point rounds into the faces of each of the three gangbangers now staring at them from the crosswalk.

The gangsters decided to keep walking – there weren’t many cars to jack anymore out on the roads outside secure sectors, but something about this guy told them that the cost benefit analysis of potentially grabbing a working ride versus dealing with the hard case in the driver’s seat was not going to work out in their favor. Even dirtbags have intuition, and they prudently obeyed theirs.

The light turned green – naturally, one of the few working traffic lights left in Los Angeles had to be right there – and Turnbull pressed the gas. The Dodge was nearly 20 years old, but it still ran fine – Turnbull had made sure of that before he bet his life on it.