A Battle Unseen

[Doc]

Playa de la Paz, Baltusia, February 18, 5658

Mary was in her office signing some Imperial Decrees to send back to Kaliburg by the end of tomorrow. One declared a new Ducal Park in Nevaras, another was a Royal arts initiative for Kalistani schools aimed at hiring more teachers with backgrounds in visual mixed media, so that kids interested in studying art could get a broader range of experience in their curriculum. It didn't necessarily de-emphasize music education, it merely broadened the ranges of options the student could access. It was fairly limited in scope, but so were the 100,000 other decisions she had made which lead to a gradually increasing quality of Life for the people of the Empire. When she signed, she looked out at the clear blue water of the Anantonese Ocean and the turquoise sky above it.

A thin, dark line traced the curvature of Terra across the horizon. She stared at that almost invisible line for a good long time and imagined she could see the high masted ships of the ancient Anantan Empire, under full sail, travelling between Vintalli and Ananto, or perhaps some turning to the starboard and heading into San Luis, which was called something else at the time, to stop for water or supplies before continuing further to Andalay. The dream stirred her blood and made her heartrate increase, and brought a very pleased smile to her face. And here she sat, in that same paradise that had stripped from her nation for so long, completely at liberty to imagine and dream of a day when it might be returned home.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at her door. She was startled at the abruptness with which she was pulled out of her fantasy. "Please enter," she said almost meekly, feeling a bit flushed from the surprise. In walked Lady Jennifer Alvarez-Miller who walked in and bowed slightly, while the Empress motioned her Chancellor to take a seat.

"Madame, you seem excited about something. Are you feeling alright?"

"We are fine, Lady Alvarez," said the Empress. "Just daydreaming. We are pleased we still have the capacity. But we did not expect you until tomorrow. We have the proclamations we desire you to return to Kaliburg all ready to go."

Lady Jennifer smiled and nodded, and received the folder with the signed proclamations in them. "Well, I got an earlier flight, Madame. So I figured I could come down for a day and just visit for a while. I spoke with Lady Jensen downstairs, who said it would be no problem, and got the staff to prepare a room for me."

"Cousin, you are always welcomed to our homes, where ever we happen to be. Victoria will make sure you are as comfortable as any person has the right to be, and we trust you will join us for dinner tonight. We trust you didn't make the trip early just to pick up these proclamations though."

'Well, Your Imperial Majesty," said Lady Jennifer. "I didn't actually. We just got the results of our internal polls ahead of next year's general elections. Now of course, we are still more than a year out, and political opinion does change on a dime. I thought I would share them with you if Your Imperial Majesty is interested."

"Absolutely," said Mary. "But, there is a hint of hesitance we hear in your voice. Are we mistaken?"

"Well, not really," said the Chancellor. "Well, kind of. I just don't know how to read the results so much, like what to make of them."

"Well, let's hear them and perhaps we can put our two heads together and work out a more complete analysis," said Mary.

"Very well, Madame," said Jennifer. She took a deep breath and said "Here we go. The Democracy Forum movement is kind of over in Kalistan."

"Over?" asked Mary incredulously. "How can that be?"

"Thing is: They shot themselves in the foot when they came to Kaliburg. There was a great big rock that they accidentally overturned and found major divisions in the movement. And people who had put their faith in the movement sort of began abandoning it as soon as the leadership divided, first into two factions and then, they sort of turned on themselves. Charges were made, money went missing... All this in like, 8 months or whatever. It fell apart pretty quickly, and now there isn't a single person or group that can speak for the whole movement in Kalistan... Social media is a mess."

"Well, that more or less confirms our belief that Democracies can't govern anything, even their own institutions," said Mary with a slight smile.

"Yes, well, the issue is, Madame: When democratic governance collapses, there is nothing to keep the... shall I say, less scrupulous actors in check. The people who were disappointed by the slow pace of reform in Kalistan are somewhat more eager for reform now than they were before, when their energy could be channeled into a more benign form of protest."

The Empress looked at the Chancellor for what seemed like ten minutes without saying anything. Clearly the math was working in her mind as she played a mental game of chess between herself and the people of her nation. "Do continue, Lady Alvarez," she said at last.

"Your Imperial Majesty: The polls suggest that a lot of people are abandoning the social Dems, which are our closest ideological party for more extreme leftist parties, where as a portion of the Democracy movement have formed a pretty extreme right wing movement in this country, which talks about increasing the size of the military and the police force, clamping down on Immigration, and seeks to openly work for limitation of the Monarchy."

"That can't be permissible in Kalistan, Lady Alvarez," said the Empress incredulously. "Are they fascists?"

Lady Jennifer slowly shook her head, "Not explicitly, Madame. On the Left, socialists and communists don't seem to have much of a problem honestly saying what they really are. Ask a communist: "Are you a Communist?" and they will openly pull out their Red Card and show you when they joined, and tell you all about the Party foci they helped form, and then tell you their entire program for revolution. They are true ideologues and are very proud of their affiliation with and identification to their ideology. Ask a fascist, on the other hand if he is a fascist, and he will lie, immediately. And he will say he is a good, patriotic Kalistani, loyal to our nation and the system. And then he will follow that up with paeans to democracy and justice. But then, in his next breath, he will start mentioning that to secure the good things in life for people like him, and his family and people like me, maybe gas chambers may be necessary. Not for everyone mind you, just the dangerous minority who somehow lack any real power due to their base degeneracy, and yet somehow has full power to menace and hurt him, and his family, and you and me, and that we all need to stand in defense of our nation, because the only way combat his imagined enemy, who has suddenly changed into the source of all his woe and misery, is to hate, to incarcerate, and to maybe even murder his foes, while simultaneously elevating him back to his traditional place of power and privilege. THAT's the way we make our nation great again... but cutting out the so-called tumors of our society to save the rest of it. And right now, a crypto-fascist organization is polling at 4.5% with the threshold being 2.5%."

"Good Lord!" said Mary, aghast.

"It is why Kalistan has long held to the anti-fascist part of the law so strenuously, even as we were able to modify the single party aspect of it."

"Well, we certainly can't have that in Kalistan," said the Empress.

"Of course not," said Lady Alvarez. "But the issue is, fascism ALWAYS comes under the pretense of democracy. in this way, democracy can occasionally be good and beneficial to the society, but it can also serve as the parent of its own mortal enemy. Like leukemia, Fascism starts as a normal thing where something goes awry. It then reproduces the aberrant cell over and over, until it metastasizes, breaks off the main tumor and floats to another part of the body where it plants itself and slowly takes over there too. In a very real way, fascism is like a cancer, and you can't do what you need to do to actually kill it effectively without killing the healthy cells around it too. If it was like a virus, the immune system could see it and neutralize it. But it looks just like democracy, so the immune system can't distinguish it from democracy, even after its too late and the society becomes riddled with cancer."

"Please Jennifer, spare us the metaphor. What would you suggest we do about it?" said the Empress. "We certainly cannot cancel elections."

"No, you definitely will not want to do that, Your Majesty," said the Chancellor. "That would give them fuel, that would validate every complaint they raise against your Monarchy, and drive people into their arms."

"So, what do we do? Is there anything the Institutional Party can do to help us?"

"It is likely we will keep the outright majority this election, unless something horrible happens between now and then and the Party shows itself incapable of acting," said Lady Alvarez. "If we could just get the Socialists to help us... I... I don't know how that would happen without admitting them to the cabinet."

"Would that neutralize the fascists?"

"No, not likely, but we would at least have allies in the fight.

"Do you think this has anything to do with..."

"It's possible, Your Imperial Majesty," said the Chancellor, knowing exactly who the Empress was referring to. "I've expressed concern with your sister, and she gave me a run down on options for the Bureau. There may be something she can do to disrupt them without attracting a lot of attention..."

The Empress bristled. "Meg is... pretty efficient," said the Empress. "And she is ruthless. I got the crown, she got everything else."

"The Bureau is supposed to brief me next week," said Lady Alvarez.

"Well, we don't suppose there is much to do today," said Mary. "Let's keep watching this, and follow the polls to see if they solidify around anything, and meanwhile, let's go down and have a late lunch with Vicky. I think she's waiting for me."

"I think you are correct, Madame," said the Chancellor.