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This is one of the shortcomings of such a short story... we don't get to see the year in between. I tried to somewhat convey, though, that the populace were, in fact, jarred awake by the events of that day in 1954, and that the tendrils of the PDF were more deeply in place than it originally seemed, without giving it enough power to withstand a rejection by the population. IOW, they were out on a limb, knowing if they succeeded in cutting the head off the current government, they had to have the backing of the rest of the country for the plan to work. Those laws, while somewhat dramatized, aren't far off from what many here would and have put into place, given the chance (for instance, the Patriot Act, Sunday blue laws, etc.) under our own republican government. The difference being this American government was intended to be closer to the Roman republic in its lack of safeguards against the rise of an absolute ruler. Twelve consecutive terms puts Lincoln on the Castro longevity scale, an entire generation or two having grown up under slowly eroding freedoms, and thus not normally thinking twice about it. Thus, the revolutionaries didn't want armed conflict with the people, nor could they have won such a conflict, but rather had to do something to shock a people, that took for granted by this time that Lincoln was in charge, and nobody could really stand up to him through normal channels (think along J. Edgar Hoover lines), awake to what could be.
For the record, though, PDF was just meant as one of those great propagandistic names of such groups, good, bad or indifferent, and a slight nod to Monty Python's Life of Brian. You may consider them a third party, but consider also that they came from within the people. I see them as more of a spearhead than a third party.
Haven't read Resurrection Day , but I'll have to check it out, being a big fan of counterfactual history. I just finished Peter Tsouras' Cold War Hot, a collection of scenarios from 1948-1989 (and highly recommend it).
Scratch, I wanted more of a portrayal of events rather than going the route that made better drama, so the predictableness is, somewhat, by design. But you're right, a more dramatic plot twist probably would make it more entertaining. Maybe Brooks should have been shown reporting to his KGB handlers
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Thanks to both of you, and everybody else, for the comments.
For the record, though, PDF was just meant as one of those great propagandistic names of such groups, good, bad or indifferent, and a slight nod to Monty Python's Life of Brian. You may consider them a third party, but consider also that they came from within the people. I see them as more of a spearhead than a third party.
Haven't read Resurrection Day , but I'll have to check it out, being a big fan of counterfactual history. I just finished Peter Tsouras' Cold War Hot, a collection of scenarios from 1948-1989 (and highly recommend it).
Scratch, I wanted more of a portrayal of events rather than going the route that made better drama, so the predictableness is, somewhat, by design. But you're right, a more dramatic plot twist probably would make it more entertaining. Maybe Brooks should have been shown reporting to his KGB handlers
.Thanks to both of you, and everybody else, for the comments.
sorry its taken me so long to comment Ive been very busy 
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