i get that your paragraph shows the aspiration for personal fulfillment, but isn't a big component of humanism that of equal enjoyment?

 

You're right, it's terribly written and doesn't make logical sense. I took it out. I should have mentioned that this character lives in a time when things are really, really bad for atheists, so he's sort of a next-gen atheist, part of a more militant and cautious generation.

 

About the day job comment, I would suggest not judging an entire work from one questionable paragraph, which I admit was terrible and unnecessary. For the record, I am actually quite a good writer. That just wasn't a good example.

 

Thanks for understanding. Everyone has bad moments. I've been working on this for weeks, and much of it is far more readable than that.

 

Sure. It's a work in progress and it's a very dark novel about resistance to an attempt by the Christian Dominionists to takeover civil government in the near-future. There are many parts that I am still going over- that I have highlighted for future work- because I'm trying to move the story along. It's quite a long novel. I will post the Author's note:

 

 

Author’s Note:

Please read before proceeding

 

Choose carefully: this book may not sit well with you. By the end of this passage it is assumed that roughly half the people who picked it up in the first place will have put it down and refused to read on. If I have managed to offend you, provoke you, anger you, then I have already succeeded. Of the more open-minded among you, who continue past this admittedly wordy note of mine to read the novel in its entirety, I hope you see that the purpose of this work is to open a dialog. This dialog can be one of amity or enmity: at this point, I don’t care because in either case I will continue to struggle for the de facto civil rights of my atheist, deist, secular humanist, rationalist, bright, freethinking, agnostic and pagan brothers and sisters. I will struggle by any means necessary, because the enemy I am up against is relentless and unwilling to listen to reason. Speaking of the enemy…

…Marvin Raycliff, one of the novel’s central protagonist characters, once said of Dominionism that sometimes, very rarely, conspiracy theories are true. Only a real skeptic would say this. Speaking of skeptics…

…Populist America condemns intellectualism, so intellectuals condemn America in snide retaliation. I admit my complicity in this sordid affair. By way of a subtle but vicious cycle, the standing of the intellectual in America has been utterly eroded. For those seeking the votes and allegiances of “the common man,” this is a godsend, a way to mobilize disparate people against the arrogance and smugness of “ivory tower intellectuals.” Speaking of God…

…the threat posed to the freedom of all Americans by Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionism is a major theme of this novel, but there are other themes as well that are at issue in these pages. They are themes drawn from my own political and scientific philosophies: my eupraxsophy, if you will. Let it not be said that this is a propaganda piece: the novel is written “under the microscope” and my own ideas are under the same strict examination, through the perspectives of the various characters, as are the ideas that I personally oppose.

I am an atheist, a humanist and a rationalist. As such I represent a minority in America that, while it has gained media traction of late, is actively distrusted and misunderstood by the masses and villified by a vocal minority of fundamentalist religious leaders who want nothing less than total “Dominion” over all institutions and aspects of civil and private life: the destruction of secular, or civil, government. They want to replace secular government with Theocracy, a political system in which, in the case of the United States, the head of government would be the distorted Jesus Christ of the Christian Right. “Jesus, save me from your followers.” Non-Christians, especially Muslims, homosexuals, atheists, and even more progressive Christians would be second-class citizens at best, or euphemistically “relocated for their own protection” to concentration camps.

These Dominionists are not the Evangelicals, although they exert considerable political influence over Evangelical voting blocks. They are the worst of fundamentalists, and had they not been born to the luxury, comfort, and opportunity of life in this country, perhaps it would have been D. James Kennedy and his Christian Coalition cohorts flying planes into towers. Imagine if the middle-eastern Jihadists and the most hardcore, hateful fundamentalist Christians in America switched places and lifestyles, but not religions: I don’t think we’d see much of a difference except that a secular and predominantly Muslim developed western country would be locked in an unwinnable war against Christian terrorists. The difference between a fascist and a terrorist is this: technical legitimacy, and the correlates of birth. If or when Christian Fascism, or Christo-Fascism, rises to power here, it will at first take the form of (marginally) popular democracy: social conservatives of every stripe, including Catholics and Protestants who would have been killing each other two hundred years ago if not for our free thinking founding fathers, will unite in a kind of holy alliance to expunge this country of its intellectuals, its atheists, and its outcasts. In short, anyone who is not a social conservative is at risk.

The focus of this novel is a conflict between the rational and the irrational, between knowledge and ignorance. I am not supposing that the irrational does not have a place in our culture: it has been a driving force as much as reason. Irrationality is what makes myths, literature, movies, TV and comic books entertaining, but it is also what leads to the acceptance of propaganda by a population subsequently willing to endure economic sacrifice and to send its loved ones to die in places whose names its leaders can’t pronounce.

I’m not afraid of a Christian president; Christian Presidents are all my country’s ever had. I am afraid of a president who approaches public policy in the same way that he approaches personal spirituality. That is scary. I am afraid of a Christian Nation, because there’s no such thing. If there were, if the world was filled with people who were truly Christ-like, then I doubt you would be able to find a shred of religion on Earth. A little joke among my circles is that Jesus Christ must have been one of the greatest atheists who ever lived, as he had such a brilliant understanding of religion.

What exactly should- or must- be done about a fundamentalist movement within the world’s most powerful country, a movement which recognizes no boundaries and engages in no rational dialogue? I have ideas, and I want to test them, so I am writing this book, which is called Sons and Daughters. The book begins by chronicling the organization of a resistance- a counter-movement, indeed a counter-conspiracy- that recognizes almost, but not quite as few boundaries on what is acceptable conduct in the fight against religious totalitarianism.

Some people put their trust in our political system to weed out the bad crops. In other words, “It can’t happen here. Americans wouldn’t let it happen.” I think we all know that the only appropriate response to “it can’t happen here” is “the hell it can’t.”

I do not want to give the impression that I think all people of faith are sheep or cattle waiting to be herded by charismatic and dangerous leaders. However, I have too often met those who believe that if someone were to falsely represent their religion in such a manner as the Dominionists misrepresent Christianity, then surely the evil-doer would be struck down by an omniscient and benevolent God; that no human intervention is needed to prevent the next holocaust. They further insist that since that’s what they believe, it’s okay.

It’s not okay. Prayer alone is not an option against religious tyranny.

Generally they believe that “God is love” and that He operates out of free will, but to say that you would do nothing, because God will take care of a problem- especially a problem as big as 21^st Century America’s successor to the Nazi Party- recalls that terrifying and ageless poem by Pastor Martin Neimöller:

 

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

 

Does this sound familiar? It should. I’ve got two words for it: moral bankruptcy. It may be happening next door, right now. Why don’t you put this book down for a second and check on your neighbor?

Thanks. Much appreciated.

In continuation: The evils wrought by those who came cannot compare to the evil of the silent ones, the evil of those who would not speak because it wasn’t their turn up against the wall. The Dominionists are a vocal minority, but they are influential enough that during the past eight years of George Bush’s presidency, we have come as close to a tyranny of the religious majority over the non-religious minority since the Era of McCarthyism.

There will always be evil. That is a given: human beings are capable of great kindness and cruelty in the same moment. Evil will always come. But silence… is no virtue. It is a choice, and it is the wrong choice. For fuck’s sake, tell your children, warn them of the aggressor who wraps himself in the cloak of patriotism and religion; warn your sons and daughters before it is too late.

 

 

Thank you,

xxxxxxxxxxx

Atheists and skeptics should all be willing to put their views forward by whatever means possible to open the eyes of the the complacent. My position is even if you can reach a few people to think and reason instead of following fantasy and insane theology it will eventually undermine their grip on our world. As Nordman suggests, I would realize the average American has difficulty with words beyond the 8th grade and lose interest quickly when they need to utilize a reference book to comprehend.

I would also suggest you forego warning people they may be offended by the content of your book, many of these people actually need to read it. You can state your views and your perspectives but your goal should be to get your book into as many hands as possible. Your statements in an Introduction or Author's Notes are really for marketing. The idea is to sell the possible reader into purchasing your book. Your editor or publisher will likely have proven techniques for maximizing browsers into purchases. Anyway, I applaud you for your effort and I look forward to your publication.

 

 

A more polished excerpt (doesn't start at the beginning of the novel, but that's because though I'm otherwise satisfied with the beginning, there is one chunk of narrative that I need to polish. Keep in mind I am trying to get the story out and then go back and polish, so there might be some technical problems with the following, but I think it's got a pretty solid basis.

 

============================================

 

“I learned in Korea that I would never again, in my life, abdicate to somebody else, my right, and my ability, to decide who the enemy is.”

 

-Utah Philips

 

 

Red Scarf

 

Battle of Ankara, Franco-Turkic War:

March 31, 2018.

 

Sometimes you hear the bullet.

The one that kills you. It was an old saying. She wasn’t sure from where, but the French soldiers knew it, and they said they’d heard it on M*A*S*H. The context: a war correspondent arrives at the 4077^th with a preconceived notion of war. He leaves, of course, with his preconceived notion dispelled. He left in a body bag.

What it comes down is that preconceived notions are useless. The writers of M*A*S*H had known it, and the French knew it too.

Amazing.

She didn’t know if it was true, if you could hear the bullet or not. She’d never had the honor of finding out.

Once upon a time she’d been a little girl who loved Darwin, Punk Rock, and Pink Hair.

She grew up.

Five years ago, when the war had started, she’d been trained as a psychologist. She’d been made a strategist in the Parisian-American Secular Militia, though she’d lived there for only four years, mostly as a grad student. Her official title was Information Officer. Her rank was equivalent to a captain in the French Army.

Information Officer. Like so many other things in war, it was a violent euphemism. She was an interrogator. Lately, she’d been on the front lines, upgraded to combat status. After torture- up close and personal- what was it to her to point and shoot at nameless faces?

Absolutely nothing.

France had been at war for five years. The war, initially a conflict over what Western Europe saw as Turkey’s undue influence in the European Union, had metamorphosed into something grander: a conflict between the secular values of Western Europe and the Islamic Fundamentalism so prominent in Turkey and her allies.

As France and Turkey were both nuclear powers, the situation had not been good from the start. The nuclear exchange was brief. Two missiles, one from each side; Paris and Istanbul were gone, just like that. A brilliant flash and a mushroom cloud. Ankara, too, had been shelled in recent months to ruins and irradiated by dirty bombs in the long fighting that followed.

She, Lillian Beatrice Keighn, wept for Ankara as she wept for Paris: a beautiful city reduced to rubble. She’d heard it said that one could see the face of the devil in a mushroom cloud, but Lillian didn’t believe in that nonsense. She hadn’t bought into it before the war, when she was a student, and she didn’t believe it now. Not after what she had seen… and all she had done.

By the age of 32, she had killed 13 men at the Battle of Izmir, and 21 at Adana. She stopped counting after that, except for the faces she saw up close, the faces of the men and women she had frightened to death behind the locked doors of the Militia’s interrogation rooms. She remembered a boy, he couldn’t have been more than 18 when he’d put on the Turkish uniform and joined the Jihad. Turkish nationalism had found an ally in Islamic fundamentalism, and had declared war on the European Secularism.

In France it was called the Jihad. America called it The War. The conflicts had become so inextricably linked that there was no distinction made anymore, in the U.S., between the battlefields of Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq, or any of the other places whose names its politicians couldn’t pronounce.

As she wept for Ankara and Paris, Lillian wept for Philadelphia. For New York. For Washington. She wept because she was afraid of what she would find when she returned. News from the States was scarce, but what she knew frightened her deeply: a new political party, the Moral Patriots, were threatening to supplant the old GOP. They were doing it though a politicized brand of religion. She did not have to be told who these Moral Patriots were. She’d known them before, under a different name: Dominionists[1]. These were the kind of people who would spit on you if you doubted that American was a “Christian Nation.” They hated gays, atheists, intellectuals, and anyone else who didn’t fit their vision of the day when they would take America back for their savior. They were a cancerous mass and they were spreading through the halls of Congress in Washington. They were the reason she and so many other young Americans had found their way to Europe.

America was officially neutral in the war. Sure, if there was one group Americans hated more than atheists and gays combined, it was the Muslims. Turkey, a formerly secular country, had fallen to fundamentalist fervor. The United States, however, did not intervene. They continued sending soldiers to the Middle East to fight their Oil War, but France, in an attempt to rally the other secular countries of Western Europe to their aid, had simultaneously alienated the many fundamentalist Christians who held sway in American politics. Overnight, American soldiers left any bases they had in Turkey. American exchange officers were recalled from France and England, sent to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Lily had just completed Grad School and was considering staying in France for another year when the war broke out and Paris was evacuated.

After the brief nuclear exchange in the early days of the war, which left Paris destroyed, many of the Parisian refugees formed militia units. Having been involved with the network of Secular Humanist and Rationalist groups in Paris during her time as a student, she signed up in a special legion of radical American émigrés, the Red-Scarves. They were called such because of the red bandanas they wore around their necks to distinguish themselves from the French servicemen and militia soldiers.

Lillian’s unit was called the American Idiots. It was a Green Day reference. They all wore Green Day t-shirts under their uniforms. They were mostly young, and disaffected from mainstream American society. That was partly the reason they’d wound up in Europe, meeting, of course, through the EuroSec[2] networks.

The other reason was that their movement in America was in trouble. Though the Moral Patriot Party was technically still a political minority, they were influential enough with both politicians and voters to manipulate political sentiment in a masterful fashion- by wrapping themselves in the cloak of religious and patriotic fervor. As Lillian once described the situation to a feverish French soldier, it was a plot ripped straight from the pages of Sinclair Lewis.

“Who?” had been the perplexed soldier’s response. “You ever see that old show, V? With the alien fascists?” The soldier nodded. “V for Victory!” he managed in English. “Well that was based on It Can’t Happen Here, but they threw in aliens because the network executives thought the LCD wouldn’t get it otherwise.” The soldier, confused, had asked about the meaning of LCD. “Lowest common denominator,” clarified Lily, realizing just how many pop-cultural idioms were lost to translation.

A lot of things don’t translate. That soldier, who she’d nursed back to health only scant weeks ago after a grip with fever, lay dead at her feet now. He was just a kid, no older than the boy who taught her what she was capable of…

Last year, she had learned from a smuggled newspaper, Marvin Raycliff had gone into hiding after a failed attempt on his life by an “unknown assailant.” Raycliff had been adjunct faculty to the Anthropology Department when Lily was an undergrad in Philadelphia, her home. He’d been one of the leaders of the secular movement there. He was an avowed atheist, a militant rationalist, a vehement skeptic. She loved having sex with that man…

…that man, who fondled her breasts, the two of them alone at night, in a dank apartment in South Philly. He said, “This is wrong.” She said, “We’re here, aren’t we. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t right.” “I could lose my job…” “You could lose me…” Going into her, on top of her, underneath her, writhing on their sides in bed, a position for all the grains of sand on the beach… He made her feel important, but not like a princess. They were partners in crime, the Bonnie and Clyde of the Rationalist Movement. They were rebels for being together, and for being who they were.

She had loved him, known him, inside and out. It was not love, in the romantic sense of the word, but rather the sharing of passions- political, philosophical, scientific. It was stress relief, a base, human urge, for two like minds to come together in She loved how he made her feel untamed, blurred the boundaries between human and animal, barbarian and philosopher, between little Lily Keighn and Lillian, the woman of power, force, resistance. She loved the man he saw himself as, that maverick of an intellectual, who walked tightropes every day for what he believed in.

Raycliff, according to the article, had eventually gained tenure, but lost it that same year over his unique brand of militant “rational activism.” He had recently criticized the Vice President, Adam Powers, a born-again Christian who abandoned the Republican Party mid-term and declared himself a “Moral Patriot.” Powers had not taken kindly to this, nor had his supporters. Hence the probable affiliation of the “unknown assailant” was not so mysterious to Keighn, as she read the article.

The failed attempt on his life convinced Raycliff to flee from the public eye, which he had. He’d disappeared. The article said he “could not be located to testify.” No investigation was planed, but the charters of the Secular, Humanist and Atheist organizations in the U.S. had been subsequently revoked by the government, their members silenced. Or so they thought. According to the smuggled article, these events had sparked a new phenomenon: A kind of “Atheist Nationalism,” represented by fearsomely-named organizations like the Scarlet Panthers, Ockham’s Razors, and the League of the Militant Godless. They were young, angry, and vicious. They vandalized ministries where homophobic parents sent their gay teens to “Conversion Therapy,” assassinated unpunished sex-predators in the clergy… they were absolutely magnificent.

Their magnificence motivated Lillian not only to survive this war, but to return to America and to employ her needed skills that she had learned as a Red-Scarf to the fight for a Rational Society, in which children did not wear uniforms and carry guns, a society in which religion was never allowed to interfere with government, a society in which leadership would be based on qualification, skill, and competency, not political clout. She fought for a rational society in France, and she would fight again in America. Her country needed her. She swore to herself that if she made it back, she was taking the Red-Scarves with her. They were the only ones with the skills, the only ones who could lead.

Skills, she thought. Play-acting. Like all the times she’d pretended as a child to serve on the Starship Enterprise and explore strange new worlds, she’d learned to explore strange, new skills. She learned to be a torturer and she played her role well. In the interrogation room, she’d made a point of slipping her hands into black leather gloves in front of the subject. She’d smiled evilly, purposefully when she first made them sweat, gone out of her way to instill dread in the POW’s.

She understood how people thought. She knew which buttons to press. Sometimes, though, there were no buttons needed. The boy who’d died of a heart attack before she’d even arrived for their second session had taught her that, scared as he was, to death, by the thought of her.

At night, it sometimes occurred to Lillian, that she did not particularly like who she had become. She took pride in the idea of the thing, not the actions that the thing required. So she was a fighter, and a torturer because she had to be. She didn’t like it. But then, she’d think, Maybe I don’t have to. How many lives had she saved with the information she’d retrieved from those sessions with the Turkish prisoners of war? Thousands, probably. She’d never really know, it didn’t work that way, but what she did was necessary: every cut, every whipping, every drop of the enemy’s blood until she’d stripped away the lies and broken him. She was very good at breaking people. It was the only way to get them to talk.

This was war. She understood that. It had become part of her mystique: all the young, French infantrymen were in love with her, the crazy American woman who smoked hand rolled cigarettes like a European and could drink them under the table faster than you could sing The Bastille. She didn’t have to like who she’d become. It was enough for her to be who she needed to be, and she needed to be a fighter…

…She’d been a protester. Skipped her senior prom to go along with all her other friends to a massive protest in DC. She was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, holding a sign, when she realized who was behind her. They were wearing bandanas over their faces. They carried a scarlet banner with golden-yellow sickles and hammers, surrounding the words Free Saddam.

Her first thought was, who let them in? She realized, then, that there was a problem. She had always known that she was a dissenter, someone who stood their guns when everyone else went with the herd. The problem, she realized, with dissent, was that it had become too damn permissive.

In retrospect, she thought, in that moment she had been revitalized as a human being and a rational actor. She had reasoned then, that self defense was not only logical but right, and that in war, the best defense is always a good offense. And in prelude to war…

…At 16 she’d watched in silence in her high school class room as the second plane hit the World Trade Center on the TV. She’d scanned the faces of her classmates, hoping to discern whether anyone shared her opinion: So what? Now America knows what it’s like to live in the rest of the world, she’d thought… She’d understood, even as a teenager, that one death was tragic but 3000 deaths was a mere statistic.

…She knew, then, that a human being had to be able to choose when to strike preemptively, to judge when action, direct action, was warranted. A human being had to know when to fight, and when not to fight.

She reasoned that there was no God counting the heads of sparrows, no heaven or hell waiting for her after death. She’d seen enough death to know there was no other side. At Ankara, at Izmir, at Paris… she’d seen Ground Zero, stood where the Arc de Triomph once stood, surveyed the wreckage, the nuclear shadows of victims burned to the walls of buildings and the concrete of sidewalks by the mighty burst of gamma radiation. She had lost so many friends and comrades.

The fighting in Ankara was dying down, but it was not yet over. She observed, in the distance, an explosion- black smoke, orange dust. The smell hit her. Napalm. Across the street, a dog stepped on a landmine and lost its lower abdomen. She thought of all those post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies she used to watch with her brothers, in the basement rec room of the old house: the tales of familiar worlds destroyed by terrible cataclysms, nuclear and viral holocausts. Only the most toughened survived. She felt like one of those survivors now. She felt like she’d lost everything, even her humanity, until she reminded herself what humanity was: the state of being an intelligent animal. She felt marginally better.

In all those movies, the whole world looked like this, like Ankara: smoking, smoldering wreckage, a dying land. Once, as a precocious ten-year old, she had asked her brothers if the movies were realistic at all. Sam, 14, said they weren’t, that they were made up, but their older brother, Nathan, corrected him. “They’re not realistic about here, but there are some places in the world that are just as bad.” 10-year old Lily had wondered how anything could be worse than having to go to school, to which her brother Sam had replied, “puberty.”

The thirty-two year old Lillian on the battlefield remembered another article she’d read, smuggled in with the newspaper in which she’d heard about Raycliff. It said the world was dying. Entire ecosystems were collapsing. Every month another natural disaster claimed more and more lives. In America, millions of patriotic Christians swore on their Bibles that this was it, the Apocalypse, metaphorical or literal, that it was here. Surely the Anti-Christ walked the Earth; the Moral Patriot Party grew.

Maybe it wasn’t death, not really. She was being anthropocentric. It wasn’t very rational of her. What the world was doing was changing. It was never going to be the same again, and Lillian Keighn wondered if the human race would change with it, or die from it.

Civilization could not survive as she knew it. She was aware of that much. Her country needed a revolution, and the revolution would not be civilized…

In the King of Prussia Mall with her mother, Beatrice, shopping for a prom dress: all the shoppers turned to the displays of televisions as Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Their eyes were glued to the TVs on display…

… as years later she could not avoid staring at the portable television in the refugee camps, after the nuking of Paris, and President Le Mont ordered the evacuation of all major cities and areas located near military bases in preparation for a counterstrike. Suddenly everything made sense to her…

...Lillian Keighn, little Lily Keighn, ten years old on the playground, her knee bruised by a hard kick from a nasty, rotten boy. She cried until she felt something else, something base, and she stopped crying. The strategic genius that she would become, she began to plot her revenge.

The boy’s name was Simon Kushner, and he was a jerk. Everyone hated him, even though they all pretended to like him, because his parents were so rich and they had a pool and a rec room with an air hockey table…

Nathan’s medals shipped home from Iraq in a little box. Nathan himself arrived in a larger box. The day after the funeral at Valley Forge, 18-year old mourning Lily skipped her prom to go with her friends to Washington DC to protest that illegal war out of no pacifistic ideal. She understood that some things were worth dying for, and some things would never be. She always said that she’d fight for a cause she believed in, be it revenge, or a political movement. In France, she’d found her niche in the Red-Scarves, but the war, as terrible as it had been, would be over soon, and she would go back to America… if America would let her return. The French government certainly would vouch for her, but she didn’t know how much that would really amount to, considering the international tensions.

…Little Lily spray painted one of her brother’s old water guns black and even gave it a shiny finish, painstakingly reproducing the technical details with her art set, from a picture she printed off the internet. The next morning, as she passed Simon’s cubby on the way to her own, she slipped the gun into his backpack. Simon freaked that day at lunch, but since he was known for drawing attention to himself through stunts like that, his parents and teachers assumed he had been trying to play a very inappropriate practical joke on the class. It didn’t help when he realized it had been a water gun and tried to change his story so he didn’t sound like a wuss…

Lillian Keighn, Captain Keighn of the Red-Scarf Legion looked over her unit, the American Idiots. “At ease, people. Sergeant Carson, bring me the flare gun,” she ordered, looking at her watch. It was 13:20. Any minute now, French reinforcements were set to arrive by helicopter at the ruins of Ankara. She was to give the pilots the signal for safe landing conditions. She looked around, waiting for something to go wrong. Strangely, nothing did.

The militia unit’s ranks had been thinned, but the best of them lived yet. A few cases of shellshock, some trauma, but they’d live. She had it on good word that this would be the last battle. She was waiting for a sign, whether she was right or wrong.

In the distance, Lillian heard the sound of helicopters. “Sergeant,” she snapped, and a Red-Scarf soldier peered at the horizon with his binoculars. “Captain,” he announced triumphantly, “it’s the French. They’re coming. The war’s over. It’s over.” Lillian cradled the flare gun in her hands, stepped back, positioning it for a forward arc. She steadied her frame and fired a burning pink flare into the sky. The war was over. All the pent-up feelings she held inside her were released. The war was over. She cried.

“Are you okay, Captain?” asked Carson. “Yeah, Carson. I’m fine,” she said, wiping the tears with her red bandana. She suddenly felt very old, realizing she was a veteran. Silently, tearlessly, she mourned the passing of the war that had given her purpose, defined her coming of age, and made her who she was. There was no escaping her past. She was a soldier without a cause. The only thing left for her was in America. In America, she would be an outcast, but at least there was a cause there, waiting for her, and it was worth fighting for.

 

 

Immigration and Naturalization Services

Department of Justice

www.usdoj.gov/ins/

4/19/2018

 

From: Re-Integration Officer First-Class Robert Pulansky, INS, DoJ, Commission for Émigré Re-Integration (CER)

 

To: Director Harold Spoon, INS, DoJ

CC: Director Sarah Whistler, FBI, DoJ

 

Re: Subject Interview (transcript to follow)

 

Director Spoon:

 

The attached transcript is typical of our sessions with American émigré combatants returned from the Franco-Turkic War. The common pattern is one of not only arrogance, but outright defiance and distrust of authority. We are still going over the psych profiles of the former émigrés, looking for a more consistent diagnosis. It is not shell-shock, though we have encountered this as well. This may be of note: The subject of the following transcript, KEIGHN, LILLIAN B., a former Major in the Parisian-American Secular Militia served with distinction, earning a post-war promotion before returning to the United States. She was offered instatement, with transfer of rank, in the United States Armed Forces. The subject, fitting the typical pattern, declined. Since returning to her home of Philadelphia, subject KEIGHN, LILLIAN B. remains unemployed and living off veteran’s checks from the French Government.

 

If a psychological basis can be found for this phenomenon then we must act to protect the mental health of these individuals and re-integrate them by any means; however, if this is indeed a pattern of outright dissent, the Commission recommends surveillance and wire-tapping of any and all former émigré combatants.

 

 

Robert Polansky, Re-Integration Officer First-Class, INS-CER

 

 

 

 

Immigration and Naturalization Services

Transcript: Émigré Re-Integration Interview

Date of Interview: 4/5/2018

Interviewer: Stanley Berman, Officer Second-Class, INS, DoJ, Commission for Émigré Re-Integration (CER)

Subject: #0910; Keighn, Lillian Beatrice; Major, Parisian-American Secular Militia

Subject DoB: 7/22/85

 

Time Index 14:45

 

Stanley Berman (SB): Please state for the record, your name, date of birth, and former rank, occupation and any pertinent information regarding said occupation.

Lillian Keighn (LK): Lillian Beatrice Keighn. I was born on July 22^nd, 1985. I hold the rank of Major, retired, in the disbanded Parisian-American Secular Militia. I served as Information Officer in a unit called the American Idiots, Unit MS-12. Serial Number PASM-041212C.

SB: And at this time, are you mentally or physically incapacitated in any way as to be unable to testify?

LK: No.

SB: In addition to your military experience, you are also a trained psychologist, is that correct?

LK: I hold a PhD in that subject.

SB: And you received that PhD before the start of the Franco-Turkic War?

LK: That’s correct.

SB: What were you still doing in France, then?

LK: Considering my options.

SB: Please be specific.

LK: I was considering whether I would return to America sooner or later. There were jobs in Paris. I was looking for the right job.

SB: And you found it as a soldier in a foreign militia.

LK: I’d been a sympathizer.

SB: You became much more than a sympathizer. As an American citizen on an expired student visa, you were a soldier in a foreign militia. Did your duties as a militia information officer include interrogation of enemy prisoners?

LK: Yes.

SB: As an interrogator in a foreign militia, the Parisian-American Secular Militia, were you familiar with the legal obligations of Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention[3]?

LK: Yes, I was familiar with Article 17.

SB: As a senior interrogator in the Parisian-American Secular Militia, did you inflict on any prisoner of war, any physical or mental torture in the process of extracting information? Did you use coercive methods? Did you make threats? Did you violate the Third Geneva Convention?

LK: In accordance with the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I may incriminate myself.

SB: This is not a court of law, Ms. Keighn. The Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply.

LK: It’s Major, not Miss. Am I not being compelled to testify? I’ve already provided justification for my refusal to answer. Next question.

SB: Do you consider yourself a loyal citizen?

LK: What do you mean by that?

SB: Would you ever consider taking up arms, unlawfully, against your government?

LK: Only against an unlawful government, Eagle Feathers. How archetypically American can you get?

SB: The subject will refrain from redirecting questions to the interviewer. Major Keighn, before you left this country, as an undergraduate you were an associate of a Dr. Marvin Raycliff, is that correct?

LK: I took some classes with him.

SB: As an undergraduate, you were associated with several local and national organizations, which used to operate in this country, but have since been shut down. These organizations include the Secular Student Alliance, Coalition for a Secular America, The Center for Inquiry, the Rational Response Squad, Americans United for Separation of Church and State…

LK: What’s your point?

SB: The subject will refrain from interrupting during this procedure. At this time, do you, Major Keighn, intend to contact other former members of said organizations during your time in the United States?

LK: Only socially.

SB: Do you intend to contact Dr. Raycliff?

LK: I thought he was dead. Is he alive?

SB: The subject will refrain from redirecting questions in a manner counterproductive to this session. As a re-integrated citizen of the United States, do you intend at this time to participate in dissenting actions that would threaten the domestic tranquility of your country?

LK: I don’t follow.

SB: You said that you fought in France for a cause you believed in. Would you do the same here?

LK: Is this a test of my character or my patriotism? Cause they’re not the same thing.

SB: The subject will refrain from redirecting questions.

LK: Loyalty to the country, always. Loyalty to the Government when it deserves it. Mark Twain. Ever heard of him?

SB: The subject will refrain-

LK: The subject is done.

SB: Ms. Keighn-

LK: Major Keighn.

SB: Major, I have additional questions.

LK: If your additional questions have a legal basis, you can call my family’s lawyer. Dwight Duncan. He’s in the Yellow Pages. I’m leaving.

 

End Transcript Record.

 

 

 

“War is the health of the state.”

-Randolph Bourne

 

Readjustment

 

Lower Merion, Pennsylvania

July 4, 2018.

 

The Fourth of July had always meant Barbeques and Fireworks to Little Lily. To Nathan, the Fourth of July had been something more: a patriotic holiday.

Every Fourth of July, Lily’s parents set up a little shrine for the son who’d given his life in service.

The shrine was like so many others that she’d had seen in her youth- shrines to countless fallen soldiers- husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. There were pictures of Nathan as a child, a young man, and a soldier. She looked at the pictures: 10-year old Nathan in his Star Trek uniform; Nathan, the Boy Scout, at 12, with all his latest merit badges on display; Nathan, the linebacker for the High School football time; Nathan, the graduate. In the next picture Nathan wore the uniform of a Private in the US Marine Corp. In the last picture he wore the uniform of a Sergeant. A Star of David- a necklace from a girlfriend that came back all those years ago with Nathan’s medals lay on the shrine, next to his dog tags: Gunnery Sergeant Nathan W. Keighn. SE-7224923K.

A hand on her shoulder: Sam. He had developed into a strikingly handsome man, married a beautiful woman and fathered two beautiful children. Mark and Lisa were playing on the backyard swing set, supervised by their mother, Linda.

Lillian turned, faced her brother, the middle child and the baby of the family who’d both outlived their older sibling. “It seems so long ago,” said Sam. “Yeah,” said Lillian.

She was still wearing the uniform she’d worn in France. She’d worn it every day. She didn’t have a job, was living with their parents. Every day she washed and dried that uniform, and put it on fresh in the morning- the red scarf, the Green Day t-shirt, the French military apparel. She stared at the shrine, to Nathan again, clutched her own dog tags. She’d kept everything. Washington had reached some accommodations with the new government in Lyon, and had allowed the émigrés to return home with minimal harassment: a three-day detention, a re-integration session, and a two week observation period. The French Government had even ensured that her guns would be there when she arrived in the airport.

Lillian removed her dog tags, set them next to Nathan’s on the shrine. She picked up the Star of David necklace, rubbed it between her thumb and her index finger. “I thought you didn’t believe in all that stuff,” said Sam.

“It can still mean something to me,” said Lillian.

The uniform had not gone over well with her mother, Beatrice. She begged her to change. “If you put on something else you could get a job at the Starbucks,” Beatrice had said to her one day. “Mom, I have a PhD in Psychology.” “Who could tell from how you’re dressed? You look like…” “A veteran?” “Well, if it were an American uniform…” “What if it were an American uniform, Mom? Look, I’ve got an arrangement with the new government in Lyon[4], they’re sending me veteran’s pay, I can manage.”

She had, of course, been working. Not for pay, but for solidarity, rebuilding the ties of the old secular groups, driven underground. She’d been busy, she and her other Veteran Red-Scarves. Before leaving France, she’d received a promotion to Major. She’d been told that if she wanted it, she could have her rank transferred to the U.S. Armed Forces. She declined. She had other plans. When she and the Red-Scarves returned, the other groups in the splintered American Rationalist Movement had rallied around them as war heroes mistreated by a biased government.

None of this, she could tell her parents, or even Sam. The INS had made it clear that activism was not to be in her future. Of course, she would resist, but she couldn’t endanger her family. Sam had a wife, two kids. A normal life. She didn’t want to ruin his dreams, didn’t want to tell him she was up to something dangerous. It would have shattered him.

“When are you gonna take off that uniform?” asked Sam, at the shrine.

“When I’m finished,” said Lillian.

“Your war’s over. What are you still fighting?” asked her brother.

“Everything,” she replied.

She couldn’t tell him the details. It was too much for him. He’d been an average kid, a C-student who loved basketball and bubble gum. Decent, average, normal. He owned a Yum-Yum’s Water Ice franchise in Bala Cynwyd. He wasn’t an intellectual, like her. He couldn’t understand that there was more at stake than mortgages and college loans.

“Forget I asked,” said Sam. He walked on, rejoined his wife and their beautiful children. Lillian went to the barbeque, plucked a sausage from the grill and put it on a bun with plenty of mustard.

“When do the fireworks start?” she directed the question at her mother, sipping iced tea with a slice of lemon at the patio table.

“Same time, every year,” said Beatrice. “7:00.”

“19:00, got it,” said Lillian. Beatrice frowned. Lillian was so used to thinking in military time, she hadn’t meant to alienate her mother, but everything she did, everything that was now second nature to her, seemed to have that effect.

The only person not particularly affected by her presence was Noah, Lillian’s father. He was a shy man of 59, standing off to one side of the patio and smoking a cigarette. Lillian felt in her pocket for her pouch of rolling tobacco, and walked to where her father stood.

Noah Keighn passed his daughter a lighter. It was an old, steel lighter he’d been given by his father.

Lillian’s g