Are We Headed For Jericho?

A friend recently turned me on to the CBS television series, Jericho. I watch so little network television that I confess to never having seen the show before this week. Obviously, then, I am quite uninformed as to the overall plot and previous episodes. What I saw Tuesday evening, however, stunned me. Why? Because it very aptly depicted what could become a very real-life scenario for these United States in the not-so-distant future.

If I accurately picked up the basic plot of the show, average, freedom-loving citizens in the Western U.S. are fighting against tyrannical elements of their own government, including military forces. The State of Texas has declared its independence from the corrupt new government and another civil war is breaking out in America. And all this was predicated upon a nuclear attack, which some believed was an inside job. Am I close?

Contributing further to my amazement was the way Jericho used real-life political events to depict America's fall into tyranny. I was flabbergasted to see the characters of Jericho refer to the Continuity of Government act as the foundation for the government's declaration of martial law after the nuclear attack had occurred.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Continuity of Government (COG) act is not television make-believe: it is the real deal.

To read up on COG, go to Wikipedia's entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_of_Operations_Plan

In addition, I have reported the potential problems associated with COG in this column.

See http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2007/cbarchive_20070112.html

See also http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2007/cbarchive_20070525.html

Here is a quote from the Wikipedia entry: "The George W. Bush administration put the Continuity of Operations plan into effect for the first time directly following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Their implementation involves a rotating staff of 75 to 150 senior officials and other government workers from every Cabinet department and other parts of the executive branch in two secure bunkers on the East Coast . . . . More