A Republican Hurricane

Imagine what Hurricane Irene how would affect people if the Tea Party - Republican program for dissolving American government were in full effect.

First of all, most people would have had no warning that the hurricane was coming because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would have been shut down. The Tea Party declared it a waste of taxpayer dollars. Sure, private weather companies could exist and tell their private clients that weather was about to go wild, and the Pentagon would continue to be well-funded and would have its own weather monitoring capabilities. But having a government service that efficiently serves everyone without charging ... that would be socialism.

For most people the first signs of Irene would be their cardboard boxes blowing away. The Republicans want to eliminate taxpayer-subsidized housing, Social Security payments, unemployment compensation, and Medicare. They do want to charge enough local taxes to pay police to keep the resulting 60 million homeless Americans out of abandoned structures, so boxes would be the new McMansions. You might think a family of four or even one would provide enough weight to hold down a box home against the wind, but you are forgetting that food stamps, a socialist evil, would have been eliminated. People would be too skinny to weigh down a box against hurricane force winds.

But why worry about the lazy socialist rabble? Republicans would be fine. The rich would have even more money because taxes would be even lower, and no government regulations would prevent them from industriously creating jobs for the unemployed people of India and Africa. Warned by their private weather services, the rich would simply fly their private jets to Texas to enjoy the Perry drought. If they lose a few servants trying to protect their mansions and yachts from the weather, they could be easily replaced.

Their are rich Republicans and their are religious Republicans; that is the alliance that has crushed (in our imaginary scenario) the socialist Anti-Christ. The Religious, non-rich Republicans who could still afford ammunition would be getting out their Vietnamese-made Kalashnikovs and perhaps a few still-functioning American made relics of when guns were still manufactured in the United States, before deregulation. You might think they would be protecting their homes against the 30 million homeless people in the path of the Hurricane.
No, they would be in a sectarian war. With church-state separation gone, inter-Christian tensions would have risen to unforeseen (except by me) heights. The hurricane would be the last straw. It would be clearly caused by a lack of appropriate prayer. The Baptists would accuse the Methodists and Catholics of praying wrong. As soon as the winds slowed the majority religion in each locality would go out armed and demanding conversion or death. Surviving Republicans would flee to their respective religious enclaves.

The economy would spiral into Depression that made the 1930's Depression seem like Happy Days. Even the U.S. military would eventually collapse, unable to pay its troops. States would secede from the union, and localities would secede from states.

It would be God's anarchy. Meanwhile, the socialist, religiously tolerant states of the world would get along just fine (as the Soviet economy did in the 1930s) and historians would write first drafts of The Rise and Fall of the American Empire.