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Thurgood Harrison worked as a security guard in the US Capitol Building during the last days of the union. His grandson, Will, has been writing a book about the Transition. Both are here today to discuss the environment of the Congress just prior to and during the Transition. A massive stroke last January left Thurgood mostly unable to speak, so Will is here to tell his grandfather's story and, when necessary, to interpret for him.

As far as all the stories go, and I have collected a lot of them in the past couple years, nobody ever really talked about cessation. America wasn't the problem according to both sides, it was the other side that needed to be fixed. One side would say their opponents were "un-American" and then the other would say their opponents were inciting hate. It wasn't a fight so much as a stalemate.

They all got riled up about the same issues. Gay marriage, economic policy, health care, drugs. Did you know they used to call it "The Drug War"? Seriously. The same folks who voted to send soldiers to Afghanistan where they'd pay some local tribe to collaborate even though they were growing heroin poppies also voted to pay cops to bust kids for weed. This was their "war".

What about those other wars, the ones in the Middle East and...

Nah. I mean, yeah, that used to be an issue, they used to fight about that. But not by the time all the real stuff started going down. I mean, just look at the news feeds from back then. The networks just stopped covering the wars. Heh, they were losing ratings. The wars became so unpopular with everybody that the Congress stopped arguing about it. By those last five years or so, supporting war, any war, in Congress was political suicide. Well, except in the southwest, but they weren't really part of the fight anymore.

Why not?

For the same reason the northwest and the mountain states weren't, either. With the northeast and southeast bitching day and night, it got real easy to do things in other states you weren't supposed to do. Why shout over the umpteenth debate over abortion rights when you can just tell your cops to not enforce the laws the locals don't agree with? With so much of the country's population centered east of the Mississippi and all of the news coverage camping out there, too, the rest of the nation was already acting like three or four different countries. Not like anyone in New York or Atlanta cared. There were so many celebrity politicians and pundits that were living rich, famous lives thanks to the divide that they didn't want to ruin it all by pointing out that the rest of America was falling apart.

When did the Transition officially start?

Officially? Never. Unofficially the big names behind it all, a lot of the names sitting in the history books, had plans going back to the 20th century. They were just biding their time. When the military got called home, that's when they made their move. They knew it was a sign of weakness, that the federal government was circling its wagons. When the 120th Congress of the United States was called, the representatives from what would eventually become the RNE and the NAR just didn't show up. They couldn't make a quorum and the government, which was already crawling, came to a halt. That was the big move. The President was behind closed doors with what he called "a collection of influential individuals" for over two weeks. When he came out, that's when the Transition went into full gear. It was a two-year plan to allow the proposed "fledgling republics" to get their ducks in a row and hold elections. The remaining participating members of the Congress still showed up for sessions, but as gramps has always said, it was like getting a cat to read the sports page.