Ron called this a spite rant. I call it a really, really nice dream.

The “Give It Back!” attack happened on a crisp November day just weeks after the very unpopular “Drink This, You’ll Like It” Act became a national reality. Citizens had begun to realize some days before the DTYLI Act kicked off that only two options existed for them: sign up for the government-mandated program or pay stiff monetary fines for failure to do so.

As government regulations and restrictions on small businesses and personal liberties grew in number and severity, people saw their working hours reduced, their benefits cut, their wealth confiscated, and their employment jeopardized. With all taxes tallied, including state, federal, city, county, sales, property, excise, and others, most people saw that they had to work until well past midyear before their earnings became their own. And even then they didn’t have enough left with two jobs to pay their mortgages, satisfy DTYLI Act requirements, keep their utilities turned on, and still feed their families.

Every attempt by clear-thinking representatives of the people to repeal the onerous act was stymied by partisan votes in the senior governing body, causing popular approval ratings to drop to near zero for all members of the central government. Noisy grumblings about returning power to the people became more frequent as the intransigence of the majority party locked all efforts to break the gridlock in a lethal two-step danse macabre, refusing to even bring the issues to a vote.

Several years of biased studies, inflated reports, skewed statistics, and misleading propaganda had repeatedly given assurances that everyone in the entire country, including business owners, professionals, dependents, customers, and even non-citizens, would benefit greatly from the DTYLI Act. But as kickoff day neared, rumors of technical “glitches,” administrative snafus, and system fubars became widespread.

The ever-present but ephemeral PR bubble finally burst as people read and understood the fine print, releasing a vast flood of disgust and frustration across the entire country. While that debacle was soaking into every nook and cranny of the public awareness, the central government in its monumental unawareness decreed that, due to financial shortfalls created by political chest-thumping, it would do its best to inflict pain on as many people as possible and blame it on the minority party.

To that end it began restricting access to public monuments, war memorials, and points of scenic interest, including parks and campgrounds. It even tried to keep people from fishing in a thousand-mile area of free ocean. The act of blocking access to and fencing off certain areas turned out to be more costly than continuing normal practices, since many were traditionally open 24/7 and special barricades had to be fabricated, transported, and put in place to limit movement.

Groups of vacationers found themselves unable to access sites and points of interest for which they had planned trips, and large groups of elderly veterans who had made special trips to honor their fallen comrades encountered fences, barriers, and officious government guards placed there to deny them entry to the sites constructed and maintained in their honor.

Such ignorant arrogance and spiteful political posturing added fuel to the flames which had brought dissatisfaction with government in general to a rolling simmer, overheating the national disgruntlement to a full boil and creating alliances between groups which traditionally had little in common.

Biker gangs, veterans in wheelchairs, Boy Scout Troops, survivalists, the KKK, Christian fellowships, librarians, the DAR, the NRA, and countless numbers of out-of-work citizens, vacationers, and patriots came in convoys of trucks, SUVs, busses, Harleys, and nondescript vehicles to the government center armed with all manner of weapons, from ball bats and chains to squirrel rifles and Peacemakers to 1911s and ARs.

Thousands of men and women in white leggings, knee pants, and weskits stormed the palace and the parliament, shouting “Give It Back! Give It Back!” The motley but dangerous collection of enraged patriots dragged white-haired old bureaucrats from their dens by their heels, whipping them with ropes and chains torn from the barriers set up to block movement into the people’s memorials.

As if choreographed by a veteran Hollywood director, squads of citizens began systematically going through offices and archives, collecting records of all types – disks, thumb drives, tapes, photographs, hard copies of documents, and ledgers. When they were satisfied that all documentia of interest had been gathered and placed in safe storage, they began disinfecting the legislative chambers, individual offices, cafeterias, and bathroom facilities.

At the palace, the chief executive was gagged, hog-tied, and carried out on a rail, then placed in a cage bolted to a flatbed. The residence and its offices were purged of all records and completely emptied of furniture before being encapsulated in rubberized tarp so that they could be thoroughly and properly decontaminated. All lackeys, flunkies, lickspittles, spokesmen, advisors, “experts,” parasites, bootlickers, brownnosers, and enablers found inside the palace and parliament buildings were hauled to an indoctrination center for retraining as day laborers on infrastructure repair projects.

All members of the legislative and magisterial branches who openly supported the DTYLI Act and actively resisted efforts to repeal or defund it were taken to a fenced area in hill country where they were eaten by feral hogs.

Career staffmembers of various governmental regulatory bureaus were designated as field laborers in resource development; for example, ranking individuals of the agency designed to control and regulate use of natural resources were sent to oil rigs at sea and in arctic regions as well as fracking sites for development of rockbound subterranean natural gas and oil.

After an impromptu but lengthy trial conducted by provincial governors in the chambers of the high court, the chief executive, his high minister for foreign affairs, and his primary legal affairs manager were found guilty of sedition and other acts of disloyalty and/or harm to the nation. Immediately upon pronouncement of guilt, they were dispatched to a heavily guarded detention center on a tropical island owned by another country to await their fate at the hands of the new government about to be formed.

Once the parasitical infection had been scrubbed from the centers of government activity, study groups comprised of economists, constitutional scholars, career military officers, business owners, and entrepreneurs gathered across the country to consult and develop modifications to the founding documents to ensure that central government could never again become such a self-feeding monstrosity as the one just recently disposed of.

As their ideas were collected and analyzed, several common and persistent themes emerged, chief among them being that the basic concept of a constitutional republic with three separate but equal branches of government need not be scrapped but simply amended. In only a matter of days after all the working groups’ proposals were evaluated, a list of 10 new amendments came into being:

1. Serving as a member of the legislative branch of government shall not be a career in se. Persons elected to either house of legislation will not be permitted to serve more than a total of 12 years as a legislator regardless of which he or she is elected to; for example, a person having served 2 years in the lower house could not serve 2 full terms in the senior house since that would total 14 years.

2. No person shall be eligible for service as chief executive or secondary chief executive without having honorably completed at least 4 years’ national military service. Similarly, no person shall be appointed to serve as prime minister for international affairs or as national chief law enforcement officer or national primary legal advisor without having honorably completed at least 4 years’ national military service.

3. The composition of the national high court shall be such that at least 50% of its members attained the rank of 0-6 in the military magisterial system.

4. The executive branch shall cooperate with the legislative branch to ensure that a balanced budget is submitted, approved, and maintained each calendar year beginning February 1st. Deficit spending shall never be authorized except with approval of all three branches of government and only during times of war or natural catastrophe such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tidal waves, megavolcanoes, or invasions from outer space.

5. All persons applying for welfare, food stamps, and unemployment checks must be certified drug-free by certified medical authorities before receiving benefits.

6. All persons receiving welfare, food stamps, and unemployment checks will be assigned duties in public service in return for their benefits. Such duties may include, but are not limited to, maintaining public areas, maintaining public vehicles, maintaining public buildings, and assisting public-service organizations such as fire, police, and rescue squads.

7. The age of eligibility for receiving Social Security or age-related medical benefits shall be 70.

8. The length of service required for eligibility in retirement programs for military or federal law-enforcement careers shall be 30 years, at which time the accrued retirement benefit shall be 50% of the pay for the highest rank successfully held during that career.

9. English shall be the official language of the nation, and no government funds will be approved for printing official documents in any other language.

10. The practice of Islam and its customs shall not be permitted within the borders of the nation or any of its possessions or territories.

Elections will proceed as outlined and scheduled in the founding documents, with the next full cycle beginning three years hence. Until the inauguration of the next chief executive and installation of the next full legislature, the affairs of the nation will be managed by a rotating panel of ordinary citizens, none of whose authority shall extend beyond 6 months’ duration.

The panel will include, at a minimum, one active-duty military officer of flag rank, one provincial governor, one magistrate with at least 20 years’ experience, one medical general practitioner, one structural engineer, one lawyer, one teacher, one unemployed grandmother, one large-scale farmer, and one professional bartender.

Selection to the panel will be as follows: names (with titles) for each position will be submitted by governors of the various provinces; the names will be inscribed on blank metal disks and inserted into yellow tennis balls with colored spots indicating the specialty of the nominee; the tennis balls will be placed in large buckets with colored spots matching their own; ten 6-year-old children will be selected at random from school rosters who will then each draw one tennis ball from a bucket to determine the panel’s members. In case of death, illness, resignation, or completion of 6 months’ service, another 6-year-old child will draw another tennis ball from the appropriate bucket to fill the vacancy.

Persons choosing to campaign for public office shall have no direct access to mass media until 90 days prior to the date of the election for the office to which they aspire.