States of Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Ocasio-Cortez Administration

By Gib Kerr

It’s 2025 in the Divided States of America and the newly elected Marxist powers in D.C. move swiftly to impose their radical agenda—from the Green New Deal to draconian gun control, open borders and, with help from Big Tech and the Deep State, complete control over the flow of information. When all seems lost, Duke Shelby—a combat-wounded Navy SEAL and Missouri congressman—joins with his fellow Red state Patriots to fight back. A Flyover country rebellion gains momentum, forcing the military to examine their oath to support and defend the Constitution...and ultimately, to choose sides in America’s greatest internal conflict since the Civil War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Post Hill Press
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637584873

Book preview

Published by Bombardier Books

An Imprint of Post Hill Press

ISBN: 978-1-63758-486-6

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-487-3

States of Rebellion:

The Rise and Fall of the Ocasio-Cortez Administration

© 2022 by Gib Kerr

All Rights Reserved

Cover Design by Tiffani Shea

Interior Design by Yoni Limor

This novel’s story and characters are fictitious. Certain long-standing institutions, agencies, and public offices are mentioned, but the characters involved are wholly imaginary.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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Post Hill Press

New York • Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

To Mom & Dad––

My gratitude for you grows with each passing day.

Table of Contents

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

PART TWO

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

Acknowledgments

About the Author

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Summer, 2009

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…."

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Her eyes stopped him in his tracks. Big, round, dark eyes, staring silently at him amid the cacophony of the surrounding gunfight.

She couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old—maybe a first or second grader had she been allowed to go to school. Was she afraid of him—frozen with fear—or merely curious to see the strange uniforms of the American Special Forces? She never made a sound.

A second after Duke locked eyes with the girl, the man with the suicide vest burst into the room shouting, Allahu Akbar! Her father. Her own fucking father! Duke squeezed off a couple rounds and dove for cover. The shock wave from the blast hit him middive, blowing him out the door.

Life was cheap in the hills of Afghanistan. Too cheap, if you asked Duke. As a Navy SEAL, he had seen it—up close and personal. But this experience would be especially hard to shake.

How the hell could a man blow himself up and kill his own daughter? What kind of sick son-of-a-bitch would do that?

Men like Duke were told not to ask Why? Just do your job, they’d say. Stay in your lane. Salute and carry on.

The military produced plenty of robotic killers, but Duke was not one of them. He had no problem dispatching sociopathic murderers to their eternal reward in paradise, but he was enough of an independent thinker to question the wisdom of why he was there in the first place.

He understood that, after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, it made sense to go after Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan to prevent more terrorist attacks. It was now eight years later, though, and the mission had changed. Bin Laden was nowhere to be found, and the Taliban had emerged as the primary enemy.

Duke had read how this mountainous country had earned its moniker as the Graveyard of Empires. From Alexander the Great to the British and, more recently, the Soviet Union. Would the USA be next?

His missions had led to lots of encounters with the local populace, many of whom were good people trapped in a Medieval culture. Some of the characters reminded him of inbred perverts from Deliverance. Others, though, displayed remarkable humanity.

Sorting the good from the bad was the challenge. To eliminate the targets without creating new enemies in the process. Collateral damage was inevitable. Innocent women and children, like that beautiful brown-eyed girl, too often paid the ultimate price. The cowards hid behind them, using them as human shields.

For every successful mission, it seemed, additional enemies emerged, determined and willing to sacrifice their lives in order to exact revenge upon the American invaders. One step forward and two steps back, Duke thought. It was getting more and more difficult to see the end game.

Off and on, he had spent over two years in this God-forsaken place. Following the Surge in Iraq, where his SEAL team helped to establish a semblance of order, he had completed three deployments in Afghanistan. This would prove to be his last.

He came to in the smoke-filled rubble. The mud walls of the little house were no match for the C4 explosives in the suicide vest. There was nothing left but blood and horror.

The next thing he knew, the medics were evacuating him to a waiting Chinook helicopter. When they lifted him up on the gurney, he tried to look back at the house, still thinking of the girl. She was gone. But he would never forget her.

October, 2024

That familiar scene popped into his head like an uninvited guest. It jolted him awake—not every night, but often enough that Becky had learned to live with it. He knew that it freaked her out at first. She seemed shocked to see her badass Navy SEAL husband crying out in his sleep, waking up in a sweat with tears streaming down his face.

Sure, the counseling had helped. But the pain was always there, just beneath the surface.

He was lucky. Just a concussion and some shrapnel in his leg. Enough for a Purple Heart and some time off for R&R. He missed his SEAL team buddies while he recovered, but he was ready to transition back to civilian life.

Now he was a father of two beautiful girls. About the same age as…no, he couldn’t go there. He changed the subject in his head. He had mastered that tactic. Fortunately for him, he had plenty to think about as he looked out the window of a Gulfstream G700 from forty-five thousand feet.

The country was at the peak of the 2024 elections. Silly season, as they called it. Duke’s journey from the military had been as unlikely as it was unexpected to him. From grad school at Harvard—thanks to the GI Bill—to a wild ride as a high-rolling real estate developer. Then the pandemic of 2020 and financial ruin. And finally the persecution from the IRS that prompted his entry into politics.

At forty years old, Marmaduke Duke Shelby was still a relatively young man. He had packed more into his forty years than most men twice his age. Some good, some not so good. Now he was a man on a mission.

He was a sixth-generation Missourian, named after his great-great-grandfather, John Sappington Marmaduke, the legendary Confederate cavalry commander who went on to become governor after the war. Duke was Missouri royalty, some said. But these days it was a political curse to come from such a bloodline. Nothing to brag about on the campaign trail, that’s for sure.

The family’s fortunes had declined steadily from one generation to the next. By the time Duke was born, his dad was struggling to hold onto their family farm outside of Weston in Platte County, Missouri, just up the river from Kansas City. They were proud of their roots but had to work from sunup to sundown to keep the debt collectors at bay. They lived from one harvest to the next, praying for timely rain and higher commodity prices. Somehow the good years outweighed the bad ones, and they managed to hold onto the farm.

Like a lot of the farm kids he grew up with, he dreamed of a better life. College was his ticket out. He made it as far from that farm as possible—literally. To the other side of the world and back. Then, after some twists and turns, to the heights of power in the halls of the United States Congress.

Suddenly awake, he looked around the cabin of the $75-million jet. The flying Rolls Royce, as it was advertised. They were soaring across the country at Mach .85, surrounded in comfort—plenty of room to spread out or catch a nap on the reclining leather seats. Duke had dozed off just long enough for another damn nightmare. He hoped no one had seen him jump before he came to.

Dude, you OK? His old friend Marcus Hughes, seated across from him, looked at him with concern.

Damn! Busted. Yeah, I’m fine. Just a bad dream, Duke said.

Hey, man. It’s OK. I get those, too. Marcus had had his share of similar experiences while serving with Duke overseas. They were teammates during the worst of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He lost count of how many missions they went on. They were always after a high-value target. Some backward asshole with no respect for human life, who thought wives and kids were expendable. Like Duke, it was always the kids who came to visit Marcus when his mind was left to its own devices.

Looks like a whole lot of nothing out there, man, Marcus said. He had also grown adept at changing the subject. He often kidded Duke about growing up in the country. Flyover country. A place that most folks from the coasts like Marcus did not understand. Marcus was a city kid, born and raised in DC, where he now worked as a private contractor to the intelligence community.

Duke smiled and looked out the window at the vast expanse of farms and prairie. You Swamp creatures never get it. This is the real America, where your food comes from and where people still love their country. You need to get out here more often.

Actually, Marcus was getting to be a regular in these parts. Like this flight with Duke, it was usually a covert trip on someone’s corporate jet. Marcus called them his undercover brother missions. He took a certain delight in being one of the only black guys at most of these meetings. It was top-secret work that could cost him his job—if not his life. But at least they got to ride in style on occasions like this.

Today they were riding in Carson King’s jet, on their way to King’s headquarters in Wichita. The jet began its descent over the rolling Flint Hills of southeast Kansas. Duke loved this landscape. Hundreds of thousands of acres of natural prairie, mostly untouched by man—the ground too rocky to plow—still looked exactly as it had for centuries.

Reminds me of a scene from a John Wayne movie, Marcus said. I can picture Comanches and herds of buffalo down there.

There used to be millions of buffalo here, Duke said. General Sherman killed ’em all after the Civil War. It was part of the government’s plan to get rid of the Plains Indians. They figured, if they killed the buffalo, the Indians couldn’t survive. Sherman and his men killed about ten million of ’em. It worked. The Indians either died off or ended up on reservations.

Marcus shook his head. The brilliance of our federal government. Progressive thinkers of their day, no doubt.

Modern progressives were now the nemesis of Duke and Marcus. That’s why they were on this mission. If they failed, they’d lose everything—their careers, their freedom, and maybe their families. But they were a different breed. They had risked it all before. They thrived on risk and the adrenaline rush it gave them.

They smiled a knowing smile at each other.

The events that brought them to Wichita that day were still hard for Duke to believe. He was a lifelong student of history, though, so he was able to put things in perspective.

He knew that historic events normally don’t happen instantly. They tend to sneak up on you, like the proverbial country music star who becomes an overnight success after twenty years on the road.

That’s how Duke viewed the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, although her ascent had taken only six or seven years. Toward the end of Joe Biden’s one and only term, as politicians from both parties jockeyed to succeed the ailing octogenarian, a series of events stacked the decks against the Republicans.

Donald Trump claimed to have legitimately won the 2020 election. Duke’s congressional committee had investigated hundreds of instances of fraud and irregularities that clearly refuted the Mainstream Media’s insistence that Trump’s assertions of Democrat cheating were baseless. The evidence was overwhelming—to the point that Duke was shocked by the media’s apathy and partiality. If they had to ignore flagrant cheating in order to get rid of Trump, they were perfectly fine with that.

Trump ultimately conceded to Biden only to avoid throwing the country into complete turmoil. After leaving the White House, he remained a dominant presence on the political scene, overshadowing would-be successors while pumping enthusiasm into the party that he had single-handedly rebuilt in his image. He helped return Republicans to power in the midterm elections by reclaiming the House and Senate.

The year 2024 was supposed to be the year of Trump’s historic comeback. His supporters were salivating at the thought of vindicating the stolen election of 2020. It all seemed preordained. Until the stroke.

Joe Biden’s health had been steadily deteriorating for years. The White House staff covered for him as long as they could. But in the first week of October—only one month before the election—Biden suffered a massive stroke, which left him completely incapacitated. His handlers had no option but to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and to elevate Vice President Kamala Harris to the presidency.

On the final approach to Wichita, Duke caught the last few minutes of the Buck Sexton podcast. The topic, of course, was the stroke and the impact it would have on the election.

Until Biden’s stroke, Sexton said, Biden and Harris were the most unpopular duo in the White House since Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. Kamala Harris was so unpopular that she couldn’t even win her own party’s nomination for president this year.

Sexton recounted how Harris had dropped out of the 2020 presidential primaries in December of 2019 after languishing in single digits in the polls, even in her home state of California.

Let’s face it, Sexton continued. "Kamala Harris is just not very likable. That’s why she got her butt kicked by AOC in the 2024 primaries. AOC spent years accruing political capital by campaigning and fundraising in Blue states around the country. AOC is the golden girl of the left. It’s no surprise she beat Harris for the nomination.

And now, Sexton concluded, AOC is riding this huge wave of sympathy for Biden, who’s suddenly being hailed as a martyr for the progressive cause. And she’s rallying the left to her side to finish the work of poor old Lunch-Bucket Joe.

For decades, but especially since the election of Obama in 2008, leftists had been steadily advancing their progressive agenda throughout American culture. Focusing on academia, the arts, and media, they had aggressively pushed to indoctrinate America’s youth to their radical point of view. Trump had made great strides to reverse their radical movement, and the Washington, DC, establishment that supported it. But the stroke changed everything.

In October of 2024, AOC tapped into the emotions of millions of young Socialists who believed that America was inherently flawed because of its racist past. They were ready to finish what Obama started in his drive to fundamentally change America.

Their jet landed in Wichita and taxied to King’s private hangar. Duke and Marcus exited the jet and jumped into a tricked-out Chevrolet Suburban for the drive to King’s headquarters. Every move they made was planned specifically to avoid being photographed. The flight crew and hangar personnel were under strict orders not to take any pictures.

This was Marcus’s third trip to Wichita. He had developed a reputation as a top-notch security specialist with connections ranging from the Pentagon to places all over the globe. Since retiring from the SEALs, he had parlayed his expertise and tech relationships into a lucrative career in the private sector.

Along the way, though, he grew disenchanted with the self-serving power of the military-industrial complex that had prompted Eisenhower’s warning back in 1961. Marcus had a front-row seat to the abuses of the Deep State in their all-out assault on Trump. He saw how guys like James Comey and John Brennan destroyed the lives of people who threatened the DC power structure. He witnessed enough corruption that he could have been a whistleblower, which would have (at a minimum) ended his career. But he found a better alternative.

He decided to become a Minuteman.

The official name of King’s covert organization was The Patriots. They drew inspiration from the colonials who dared to stand up to the British Army at the Old North Bridge in Concord in 1775. The brief skirmish there kicked off the American Revolution. Against all odds, after years of bloodshed and extreme hardship, the American upstarts somehow prevailed over the greatest military force in the world.

Marcus knew enough about military affairs to understand that, in many ways, the triumph of the Continental Army over the British was miraculous. Indeed, most Americans were convinced that the hand of God had played a significant role in their success.

Throughout his life, Marcus had not been a particularly religious man. Disinterested in theological matters—and disinclined toward deep introspection—he rarely gave much thought to spirituality and existential questions.

As he got older, though, he grew more convinced of God’s existence. It started with the birth of his son, which opened his eyes to the miracle of life. He laughed tears of joy when he first held his newborn son and exclaimed to his wife, "They say there’s no atheists in foxholes. Well, there sure as hell ain’t no atheists in the maternity ward!"

For the most part he kept that aspect of his life to himself. Modern American culture had grown hostile to religion, particularly to Christianity. He felt compelled to practice his religion in private, almost like the ancient believers who worshipped secretly in the catacombs of Rome to avoid persecution.

Marcus’s faith gave him strength and energy through the darkness of America’s descent into chaos and division. Like the revolutionaries of 1776, he felt the hand of God at play in the Patriot movement. He had a newfound clarity of purpose and an intensity that made him a perfect ambassador for the cause.

Marcus had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1995 where he made a name for himself as the first African American quarterback on the football team. After Annapolis, he had an eventful career, culminating as a SEAL Team commander with extensive action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was well-known and admired by all who knew him.

Through sources who learned of Marcus’s growing antipathy toward the Deep State, Carson King took notice of him, too, and arranged a private meeting. King shared his vision for the Patriot movement and introduced him to some early players. The caliber of people involved in the Patriot movement was beyond impressive. The men and women Marcus met at Patriot gatherings were leaders in their communities. They were upstanding, highly educated, successful and—most importantly—they were committed to supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States.

Every Patriot member had been hand-selected and screened prior to being invited. Sketchy characters of any kind were not allowed. It was very much a top-down recruiting model, starting with a small group of high-powered business executives and retired military officers, with a definite bias toward quality over quantity. The organization operated covertly.

Its founders, whose identities remained obscured by the murky nature of the organization, were extremely well-capitalized and connected at every level of government and business. Following the contentious election of Joe Biden in 2020 and the left’s growing militancy, the Patriot founders began to organize in earnest.

Today, Carson had summoned Duke and Marcus to a critical meeting. The situation looked dire. The time for action was upon them.

The urgency of the situation had become clear with AOC’s rise to the top of the Democrat party and her apparent glide path to the White House. If she were to succeed in eliminating the Electoral College, in packing the courts, and perhaps in giving statehood to the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico, all power would reside on the coasts. California and New York would control the entire country. The states, particularly the South and the Flyover states, would be subject to a powerful, unchecked central government in faraway Washington, DC.

Duke and Marcus had thrown themselves into the Patriot movement with every ounce of energy they had. Not only were they meeting with scores of influential citizens, but more importantly they were coordinating with their network of retired military officers across the country.

They were also establishing some delicate back-door channels of communication with active military personnel, whose involvement had to be completely sub rosa. They were acutely aware that in a serious constitutional crisis, the military would be the ultimate arbiter of America’s power struggle. As reluctant as most active duty officers were to get involved in politics, many were realistic enough to know that, sooner or later, they may not be able to avoid it.

Their SUV pulled up to the sprawling campus on the outskirts of Wichita. King Industries’ headquarters seemed out of place, rising impressively out of the Kansas prairie and dominating the more modest structures around it. Its gleaming, modern architecture bore testimony to the amazing success story of the King family, who had grown a small oil and gas business into the largest privately-owned company in America with $120 billion in annual revenue and over 120,000 employees. Through diversification and acquisitions, King Industries had branched out into a wide variety of industries while controlling much of America’s critical lifeline of petroleum production, refining, and pipeline distribution.

Passing through multiple security checks—unlike anything they had experienced outside of the Pentagon—Duke and Marcus eventually made it to Carson King’s inner lair: the C Suite—home to some of the most powerful decisionmakers in the country, although most of them enjoyed living quietly and anonymously in Wichita. Duke knew that most of the elitists on the coasts couldn’t find this place on a map.

Duke marveled at the modesty of the surroundings. Very Midwestern, he thought. Sure, there were ample displays of Native American artifacts and a smattering of valuable artwork on the walls, but all in all the feel was down-home. This was a place where serious businessmen did their thing, with no pretensions and no worries about impressing the Wall Street types who had been begging King to go public for years.

Carson King himself emerged from his office with a broad grin. Welcome to Wichita, gentlemen. He extended his hand to Duke. Nice to meet you, Duke. Thanks so much for coming today.

He turned to Marcus and his smile widened. Marcus, you’re getting to be a regular around these parts. When are you going to move to Kansas?

They laughed and Duke said, You sure you want a Swamp creature like him around here?

King enjoyed a hearty laugh. Duke had read all about the kingpin and was surprised by his vitality. After all, King had recently turned eighty-nine years old. He still stood tall—only slightly shorter than the six foot five of his prime—and was amazingly fit for a man his age. Worth over $50 billion, he was one of the wealthiest men in the country. And undoubtedly one of the most remarkable.

Gesturing toward a conference room, King said, I have a special guest who’s eager to see you.

Duke and Marcus stepped into the room but did not immediately recognize the man in the wheelchair. As he turned to greet them, they were stunned to see the governor of Texas.

*   *   *   *

The atmosphere turned serious as Carson led Duke and Marcus into the room. Greg Abbott, in his third term as governor of Texas, had been paralyzed in a freak accident by a falling tree while out for a jog in the 1980s. He fixed his eyes on Duke, who had become a national symbol of the Patriot cause. Duke himself was still getting used to the celebrity status that he had achieved.

Pleased to meet you, gentlemen, Abbott said as he reached up to shake hands with Duke and Marcus. Sorry for my surprise appearance, but we can’t be too careful these days. It would be a bombshell story if people knew we were meeting like this.

No need to apologize, Governor, Duke said. We’re operating under the same conditions. No one knows we’re here, at least as far as I know.

They took their seats as King addressed them.

Thank you all for being here and for your commitment to preserving constitutional government and liberty, which are threatened today unlike at any time in our nation’s history. King spoke slowly and deliberately, with a delivery as flat as Kansas itself. He was a reserved man, not fond of public appearances and clearly not a politician. But when his blood was up, he was a formidable force.

"I’ve been involved in politics for a long time. But this is different. This is life or death, and I don’t mean that hyperbolically. If we lose this election, which I think is more than a distinct possibility, we’re going to experience an assault on our liberties unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed in America. And we need to be ready to fight back.

We have the resources we need, and we’re building the most impressive network of freedom fighters since the American Revolution, King continued. We’re here to hammer out our final plans, and you gentlemen are destined to play a pivotal role.

Duke understood that he had become a modern-day Minuteman.

America was more divided than ever. Always a flag-loving Patriot, Duke was stunned that a huge segment of the American population either hated their country or were ashamed of it. He noticed that very few of the people on the left ever displayed the American flag. They didn’t care about the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem. To them, America was not an ideal—it was apparently just another piece of real estate. Nothing worth defending.

So what do we need to do, Marcus asked, to support and defend the Constitution?

It sounds like a platitude, Abbott said. But the Constitution is nothing more than a nuisance to the Swamp these days. Civil liberties are under attack like never before. Washington seems to have forgotten its constitutional duty to ensure domestic tranquility and repel invasions.

He was referring to the masses of illegal immigrants pouring across the Mexican border.

Abbott continued. That means we have to be ready, willing, and able to intercede and assume responsibility for performing the basic functions of government when the government abdicates those duties.

They walked through the multitude of threats facing the Patriots. Not just open borders but violations of the Second Amendment, shocking restrictions on free speech, vast expansions of federal regulatory power, the potential elimination of the Electoral College,