“The Second American Civil War,” “Civil War II,” “the MAGA rebellion,” “the White Tide…” it has many names, but for most people of my generation its still just, “the war.” New conflicts have come and gone, but none conjure the same deluge of emotions as the war that nearly ended America. This is a book of memories, a record of the bloodiest conflict in American history assembled from those who are still with us out of the hope that future generations will learn from our mistakes.

While there is still debate over the myriad causes, political, economic, cultural, what is beyond dispute is that the fighting started because of an election. The 2028 Presidential Election was the most contentious such contest in living memory. A battle between Democracy and Autocracy, a battle over Centrism, Progressivism, and Trumpism, with three candidates promising radically different directions for the country’s future. The results of that election would inaugurate 7 years of war, upending ordinary life for countless millions at home and abroad.

Thomas Stanley greets me at the door of his cottage and hurries me inside to get out of the rain. As the former political operative turned CCC¹ worker takes my coat, he apologizes in advance for the state of his office, clearing away notes from a sofa before we can begin. Mister Stanley is nearly finished with a book of his own: memoirs of his time in the MAGA government.

IIt was a little after 10 at night when they told me to get miked up. I’d spent most of the night with the rest of the campaign staff fielding calls from what seemed like every official in the party and every donor in the country. Half were demanding that we stay in the fight and refuse to allow that bartender from taking office. Maybe a quarter were asking us to concede, begging the campaign not to send the country into any more chaos, while a final quarter were just trying to find out what the hell was going on. I always gave the same answer, “We’re not giving up, stand with the President, and tell your people to do the same if they know what’s good for them.”

[He laughs]

I was a 22 year old kid, and they had me threatening Governors, Senators, and hedge fund managers. None of us had ever met the President, but we were willing to say or do anything for him and the campaign. We figured the rest of his family must have felt the same, because anytime the door swung open we’d hear them screaming into their phones or rushing back and forth from the President’s bedroom. Anytime that happened we felt like we had to work harder, shout harder, be tougher to the people on the other end of the line, “to keep the dream alive,” we’d always say.

What dream was that?

I dunno. No really, I have no idea. The answer was different no matter who you talked to. Your side thought we all had the same goal, to turn America into a strong, Christian Nation where white men wouldn’t have to worry about losing a job to an illegal. Truth is, none of us on the staff were that ideologically committed, and never had been.

Anyway, around 10 an older blonde lady pulled me off phone duty and starts miking me up. “You’re on in 3 minutes with FOX29. Just say that the race is far from over. That we’re gonna fight it out to the bitter end, etc.” The whole time she was smacking my suit with a lint roller and pushing me through the main room toward a small sound stage. Basically a closet made out of acoustic foam.

Did you know why they chose you?

Nope. I mean I thought I knew why: the President must have heard what a good job I was doing and I was getting promoted. That’s how the campaign made you think things were supposed to work. One minute you’re nobody, the next you’re somebody. The only time you might even think you were doing a bad job was about 5 minutes after they fired you. So when they put me in front of a green screen and pointed to a teleprompter all I could think was, “This is it! The President wants YOU to be his voice.” I was already planning out my office in the White House when I realized I wasn’t talking to the local FOX affiliate. Someone’s wires must have gotten crossed and I was talking directly to the FOX News Room.

Were you scared?

Are you kidding? You couldn’t have taken the smile off of my face with a sandblaster. I was the face of the campaign that night. It never occurred to me at the time that this must have been a mistake. I issued the campaign’s statement: that we would fight every step of the way, that the vote was rife with fraud, and other lines you’d probably heard one version of or another since 2016. When they went to commercial no one tried to usher me away. That blonde lady was long gone, and I was left waiting for the next segment. When they brought me back on, I was joined by all these other talking heads, including this Texas state legislator I’d never heard of before that night.

JP Lamonte.

The very same. He’d been on the FOX affiliate for Llano or something, and proposed that Texas should call an emergency legislative session to recognize Junior as the victor in the election. While I was on with the main newsroom, the idea was already spreading like wildfire online. When they introduced JP, that was the first time I’d ever heard the idea.

How’d it go over?

The whole FOX team and most of my fellow talking heads hailed it as a brilliant solution. Then we spent the next hour cycling through more guests, trying to one-up each other to stay on, berating anyone who suggested that simply declaring another candidate to be the victor wasn’t how elections worked. Around midnight they pulled me out of the booth and replaced me with the campaign manager. The President’s daughter in-law even told me I’d done a great job before getting back to her own call. That brief moment of serenity was then broken when she started shrieking a string of obscenities over the phone between demands that whoever she was talking to stand behind her husband and father-in-law. That’s when I noticed the actual candidate, Junior. He was pacing between the threshold to his father’s room and the TV, where he’d occasionally stop to do a bump of coke in between talking to the room.

Talking about what?

Nothing, he just rambled to whoever was there about how she could not be allowed to take power, how the results were being fabricated by the libs, then he started crying about how he never wanted to be President, and that he was just doing what he thought his father wanted. This guy was my party’s nominee, more than that he was the heir, the guy who had taken over the movement when his father, the man who was going to Make American Great Again, graciously retired rather than seek another term. At the time, I think I mostly just felt sorry for him. He had to have an awful lot on on his shoulders.

I was actually thinking about walking over to the candidate and try to offer whatever comfort that my just over two decades of wisdom could muster when he staggered into the President’s bedroom. That was the first time I, or anyone outside of the inner circle had seen him in the flesh in quite a while. He was a skeleton, gaunt and pale. I guess nobody had bothered to touch up his roots or spray tan in a while. He had all these tubes and wires hooked up to him and more medical machines than you’d find at the best pre-war hospital. Junior fell on the bed and started weeping like an infant, and I could swear he tried to unplug him at one point.

I definitely wasn’t supposed to see any of that.

A couple of security guards carried him out of the room and plopped him on the couch. That was when someone must have noticed that I wasn’t supposed to be there because the chief of security hauled me out of the room right after. He chewed me out for what felt like an hour, told me that the President was fine and that I was a dead man if I said different to anyone. Then they sent me over to the bullpen with the other surrogates.

They didn’t fire you?

Nope, there’d be no point. Now they had a very motivated campaign surrogate who’d have to end a rising career just to tell the truth. It was a truth I didn’t believe, despite what I saw. The President hadn’t been seen in public since after the midterms, and there were always rumors from the left that his little tumble was worse the White House let on. But that couldn’t be true! The President was a strong, tough-guy of a leader, and the left were all a bunch of [expletive deleted] liars. Sorry, again, that’s how I was back then. To believe my own eyes was to believe those people and that was just as good as being one of those people.

They finally sent us home around Wednesday afternoon. I was wiped. Felt like I called every member of the party twice. I passed out a few seconds after my head hit the bed in my hotel room. I don’t know how long I was out, but when I finally came to it was from someone pounding on my door. After dragging myself out of bed I saw one of my fellow staffers through the peephole. She was a cute blonde from upstate New York. Head of her local Young Republican chapter, but to hear her talk, you’d think she was in favor of repealing the 19th Amendment. I’d barely opened the door when she started smacking me and calling me names.

“Where the hell have you been,” she shouted, “the campaign’s been trying to get ahold of you for the last hour!”

I was in trouble, and as my mind was racing trying to come up with an excuse, the staffer grabbed me by the wrist and shoved me into the bathroom. Before I could muster the mental energy to ask what she did that for, she told me to get cleaned up and dressed. “They called the election for the bitch,” she said, “we need you back at base 30 minutes ago.”

I tried and failed to ask a question. Like if I was being fired, if they wanted me back on TV, or if she’d please close the door so I could get changed. Nothing came out.

[He shyly looks away.]

I was terrified of women. Well, terrified of myself really. My therapist says that’s common for people that were in my situation. I don’t know how many closeted queer people were in the party back then, but it must have been a lot. Sorry, I don’t want to get bogged down in therapy-speak.

It’s alright.

Anyway, there I am, absolutely terrified that she’d telepathically determine that I was one of them, and she says, “they need us all back working the phones. YOU are gonna be interfacing with podcasters. All our people. So hurry up!”

She shut the door, and let me get dressed. The whole time I was thinking, “This is it, you’re in!” It was like everything bad that happened the night before was just a bad dream, and only my moment in the sun remained. That’s how the party worked, how our side managed to recruit so many young people in those days. The Dems, they just begged their people for money and wouldn’t even answer an email with anything more than a form letter. Well, until that election anyway.

I rode with her back to the war-room, the whole time she’s fiddling with my tie and tossing out my old campaign pins for a simple American flag. “You gotta look like the real deal if you’re act like it.” I started sweating. Did she know that it was a mistake the first time I went on the air? When I got back, the President and his family were gone. It was just the media outreach team. They handed me the latest talking points and moved me over to a green screen. There were a handful of other surrogates there, mostly campaign staff, and the even acting AG.

As I was skimming the talking points, I kept glancing at the wall of screens displaying different news feeds. The President was on, looking like he did in every presser of the last few years. Fine. Just as he was, if not better than they day he had his fall. I smirked, because he was doing his thing. He was livid at the supposed results of election, denounced the media for spreading left-wing lies, all while talking up his son. That was when I finally realized what most people on the other side had figured out a while ago.

It wasn’t him. That thing from last night, that corpse, that was him.

What made you realize your party had been using a deepfake to impersonate the President?

It was what he said. It was almost the exact same thing Junior said the night before when I wasn’t supposed to be watching. And when he started to boost his “son,” it became even more obvious.

What went through your mind?

Relief.

Really? You didn’t…

What? Change my mind? Turn around and sprint to the press and tell them, “Hey! Everything you guys said was true, my whole life, the lives of all my friends, and those of half the country have been a lie!”

No. I was grateful, excited even. We’d gotten one over on the libs, and there was nothing they could do about it. Our guy was already the President in all but name, and now I was gonna make sure he stayed the President. When they called my name, I kept my mouth shut about the truth and told our voters to do everything in their power to keep that commie congresswoman out of the White House.

A week later, Idaho voted to recognize Junior as the President-elect.

Did you think the Legitimacy Crisis would lead to war?

No. I thought at worst, the libs would burn down their own cities again. Maybe march on DC and stink up the Mall for a few days. A few people I knew thought there’d be… wanted there to be a fight. None of us thought it would lead to this… who in their right mind would?

¹ Civilian Climate Corps