In The Transformation: GTE 45, set in a fictionalized America forty-five years in the future (GTE 45), the Republican Party collapses at its 2016 presidential nominating convention torn apart by disagreements over its presidential nominee. The result of this is the transformation of the United States of America into the Corporate States of America. Told through its three main characters, as well as through two competing histories relating different versions of what happened to bring about this transformation, The Transformation: GTE 45 envisions a very possible near future. Indeed, the events in the novel appear to be unfolding. Read the excerpt from the secret and illegal history of what happened at that 2016 convention and then get the book to discover the world of GTE 45.
Excerpt from an illegally downloaded history:
“… in its attempts to roll back the New Deal, the Republican Party needed to win over an important block of Democratic Party support: working and middle class white men and their willing wives. Starting with Richard Nixon, the Republican Party made a calculated decision to relinquish a piece of its soul to get the job done.
The seduction of choice: resentment and fear. They began a campaign designed to convince these marginal MAKERs that their way of life was being compromised, about to be eradicated by the Democratic Party’s support of civil rights for African Americans. Then came busing, Affirmative Action, women’s liberation, legalized abortion, and the gay rights movement. The fear that America was becoming a godless country, along with what seemed to many as an endless tide of illegal immigration of brown people, particularly Mexicans, made some white folks mad. They believed their slice of the American dream, though small, was about to vanish into the mouths of the undeserving ‘other.’
Collectively, these clashes were known as the ‘Culture Wars.’ Over the decades, the Republican Party fueled its flames until it burned so white hot, even they could no longer control it. Those ignited by these issues slowly, but inevitably, began wielding power, demanding the Republican Party do more than pay lip service to their worldview. But even as they moved the party to champion these issues the country, as a whole, moved away from these. By the early twenty-first century, the vast majority of Americans had no problem with women being equal to men or women controlling their bodies. They accepted gay marriage and taking a hit of pot for pleasure. All in all, most Americans wanted government to stay out of individual lifestyle choices.
Yet the Democratic Party continued to lose local level elections and couldn’t keep control over Congress. Many blamed it on a lack of party unity driven by their conservative wing, the “Blue Dogs” [Woof], others on their utter neglect of local politics, which permitted the Republicans to employ a bottom up strategy. By taking control of state politics one school board at a time, one town council at a time, and one state house at a time, the Republicans were able to control the state apparatus that drew the state and Congressional district lines. In this manner, with little objection from the Democratic Party, and with only occasional and ineffectual oversight by a compromised judiciary, the Republicans successfully gerrymandered state after state, giving them permanent control of both the House and Senate and sufficient statehouses to block and then reverse, most progressive change. Yet, because the presidency, the USA’s only national office, tended to galvanize the true silent majority- the young, the old, minorities, and those who simply turned out only when the presidency was up for grabs -the GOP with its out-of-step social agenda, appeared permanently shut out of the White House.
This failure set in motion a great debate within the Republican Party as to how to achieve its goal. The result was that the GOP became a house divided…
…the hoped for Republican unity never materialized. Stone never even got through his acceptance speech before half the delegates walked out and reconvened three days later in Houston. Led by Texas Governor Pablo Cross and Tennessee Senator Randall Carey, who gave a fiery welcoming address to the assembled, they immediately voted to join with a small, mostly unknown political party, the Founders Action Party, “FAP.” They vowed to “take back” the nation and remake it as originally envisioned by its Founding Fathers. To that end they nominated businessman Ted Ganar as the first FAP presidential candidate.
The Republican presidential candidate, Stone, remained on the ballot but to no one’s surprise, went down to defeat. Ganar, while unbelievably, popular fared no better because the FAP was unable to get on sufficient state ballots. No matter. The FAP was actually elated to see the country repudiate the last standing Republican. The Democratic candidate, Emily Harris, won handily due to the disarray of the Republican Party and the FAP’s presence, but her victory was truly short-lived.
Right after the presidential election the FAP, led by primarily by Governor Cross and Senator Randall, immediately undertook to pull together the disparate wings from the now mostly defunct national Republican Party. They imposed on their followers a discipline heretofore unseen in American politics. Moving “faster than a speeding bullet” [the slogan adopted by the FAP] this new political powerhouse immediately urged the still existing local and state Republican leaders to renounce their former party affiliation and join the FAP.” Excerpt from: The Transformation: GTE 45
Read it all: http://amzn.to/1RWEzdO
GTE45 