I have a good friend who is a wannabe author of political and spy thrillers. The other day over coffee he said he had an idea for a major novel that would be so shocking that it would almost certainly quickly become a best-seller. Here's the plot, he said.

The newly elected president of the U.S. has dementia. His rapidly fading mental abilities, that were never very sharp to begin with, are getting worse by the day. During the campaign, this was largely covered up with the aid of a compliant media, highly scripted presentations and staying largely out of sight in the basement of his home avoiding any contact with reporters. He goes days without an appearance and in the few times when he ventures out onto the stump, his audiences rarely number more than a few hundred as his highly charismatic opponent routinely draws boisterous and excited crowds of 100,000 or better. Nevertheless, with a large dose of electoral fraud, he manages to win.

Now in office, his dementia is getting worse. He is increasingly directed and controlled on a daily basis by his scheming, highly ambitious wife and a staff of third rate career political operatives who have been co-opted by the radicals on the left. His ethnic vice president is so incompetent that even the few who might consider removing him, are horrified by the prospects of her becoming president.

The book is about the vicious in-fighting among those who control the president as the country steadily deteriorates and slips into chaos amid growing anger and resentment among the greater population suddenly hit by frightening inflation, run away gas and fuel prices, growing armies of drug-fueled tent cities of homeless spreading throughout major metropolitan areas, out of control crime and racial strife at multiple levels, international threats and conflicts triggered by inept decisions in the Pentagon and State Department, a lack of focus in the White House and insidious misdirection from Beijing.

The southern border with Mexico is opened and thousands of illegal aliens from all over the world flood in on a daily basis bringing more drugs, crime and threats of terrorism into the country. Corruption at the highest levels is rampant.  With the help of insider trading and large pools of black money, fortunes are being made by those in Congress and within the government bureaucracy known as the Deep State that controls the country with minimum interference from elected officials. Powerful big tech entrepreneurs have grabbed control of the left-wing narrative and greatly influence what the American public sees and hears. Communist led and inspired teachers’ unions, promoting gender and racial conflict, support leftwing school board agendas as angry parents desperately fight back in a major struggle over who has the right to control what their children should be taught. A majority of universities have become indoctrination factories for the radical left.

A major pandemic, created in a U.S.-funded biolab in China, paralyzes the country. The ineptness of the government is on full display as hundreds of thousands die while the medical bureaucracy criminally blocks and censors previously approved treatments that would easily neutralize the disease. The NIH and CDC are in league with the big pharma companies who are raking in billions of dollars selling highly profitable vaccines and booster shots that are damaging and even killing thousands of patients.

It's an America that could not have been imagined even two or three years earlier.

In fact, the whole idea is so outrageous, no one could believe it. Right?

So I asked my friend, how does this horror story end?

Well, he said, I'm still working on that. I'll let you know three years from now.

Graphic credit: Pixabay license

Frank Hawkins is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Associated Press foreign correspondent, international businessman, senior newspaper company executive, founder and owner of several marketing companies, and published novelist.