American Ideal

In the GOP style
Just say, for the sake of argument, that the GOP controlled all three branches of government and could re-invent America to their specifications, what would that look like?
Women, er, girls, back to the kitchen! The Workplace is just too dangerous and complicated for you. And you can forget that Planned Parenthood ever existed.
Since nearly everyone with a Spanish surname was rounded up and deported (even the ones born here, 'cause their parents were probably illegal and they don't talk English too good) It's been hard to find cheap labor so everything is outsourced, We export Jobs and Dollars and Import everything else.
Medicare and Social Security got too expensive since SDSI, Corporate, Capital Gains & Estate Taxes were eliminated and Income tax was capped at $1 million, but axing them was out so the age of eligibility was raised to 80.
The combination of drastic tax cuts and the Conquest of SouthWest Asia had depleted our Treasury to the point that most of the functions of Government were disassembled. Most folks don't even remember FEMA. Or the EPA or the USDA or the NLRB...
But Homeland Security and the Military are well stocked! In fact, that's where you could get a job. In the NEW National Guard. These aren't your old-school weekend warriors and sandbag fillers, nope. These are crack troops, trained in urban counter-insurgency, that patrol all our major cities and towns. When local police forces balked at implementing provisions of the Patriot lV Act, particularly the forced collection of DNA from everyone in the country and the installation of surveillance gear giving universal coverage in any space, public and "private", they were stripped of their firearms and relegated to foot patrols and traffic direction and the NG stepped in. Now the NG presence is felt everywhere, they are the guys (and they are almost all white guys) on the streetcorner with assault rifles and flak jackets. There are 6 million of them nationwide, almost 2% of the population.
Did I mention the state of constant war that we are engaged in? Even before we had seized half of the Middle East, we had engaged in South America, a campaign to undo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution. Several little wars got hot and we are in the process of securing that region as well. Keeping out the flood of deportees and the deluge of new refugees required building a "militarized" border, a wall that made the Israeli wall look puny and the Berlin wall look understaffed. All of this takes troops. Since a draft was about as likely as ending Social Security, a backdoor draft ensured that we had enough bodies to stand 10 million men at arms.
By backdoor draft I mean the "War on Drugs".
Judges were given instruction to dispense stiff sentences with a join-the-army option, for even the most minor possession. Some recruiters, pressured to perform, set kids up that they weren't able to convince otherwise. This has kept the Military supplied with new recruits, many of them minorities. Typical "drug enlistment" was six years plus reserves and from time to time, stop-loss orders kept some of these guys in for 15.
That is, if they survived. Occupying a dozen countries from fortified positions, under constant siege, outnumbered 100:1, relying on armor and intimidation to get through, this was tough duty. The actual number of casualties we sustained was classified but it was in the hundreds per month.
Of course, none of that is ever mentioned on the Tv News. At first, after the takeover, Media was just all happy-talk, titillation and fearmongering "Reality" Shows, but soon, the Decency in Media Act made sure everyone's shirt was buttoned right up and everyones' roles were biblically Correct. Between the DiM Act and the privatization of the Internet into subscriber-only commercially censored fiefdoms, the collapse of Print Media and the sell-off of the USPostal Service, it was nearly impossible to find out what was happening in the world, or to find others who believe anything other than the Party Line.
But some things fell so badly apart that they couldn't be swept under the rug, like the MadCow outbreak in the Chicago area or the Jet collision at Dulles that killed several Senators and several hundred others in the Air and on the ground. Each disaster was proof that the Terrrrrrrsts were still active among US and demonstrated the need for increased vigilance.
And patience with the astronomical cost of gas.
If you could get it, Gas was over $10/gallon! If you could get any. For months at a time, Non-essential vehicles could not fuel up. Deciding what was essential was a process of pleading and pulling strings that most people had no leverage to pull.
Advancing militarily from Mesopotamia into Persia had united the world against US. Even England refused to sell US any Oil during the WorldWide Embargo. Our Economy took a huge hit, but so did the rest of the world's, they realized that if the Giant fell down, everyone would be squashed, so the Embargo didn't hold, but Oil was no longer traded in Dollars and traders held out for exorbitant prices for their crude. Supplies became erratic, causing ripples that kept US just off balance, but not a Tidal wave that would take US down.
Not since the great depression has this country had such scenes of poverty and destitution. People were literally starving to death in American Cities, Businesses collapsed and Unemployment went through the roof (though the Military and HSA soaked up some).
(to be continued)

(this is an unfinished piece, I could spend another day on it, but things are happening too fast)