The year is 2050... 262 years since states adopted the constitution. Whether the states any longer have enough in common to remain together is the quandary. In recent decades the states have polarized as cross internal migration has amplified the nation's cultural, moral, and economic differences.
The country's liberty loving founders would not recognize the mid-twenty first century nation they spawned. Belief in a power greater than the State is suppressed. Schools teach mandated theory as truth rather than critical thinking skills. Mega corporations cower in fear of the State but rely upon regulations to stifle competition. Science is no longer objective inquiry but a manipulated tool of the State. Settled science is what the oligarchs decide.
Access to health care, a permit to have children, getting into the right school, and avoiding a re-education camp have cowered citizens into following directives of the ruling class. Only leaders in academia, media, entertainment, and the bureaucracy define the 'common good'.
Psychologists have long known that fear is the primary motivator influencing human behavior. In preceding decades, government learned to effectively use fear to control the population. Although fear was often irrational, the State became intoxicated with the power fear gave them.
Julie, Andrew, and the Resistance have neutered the National Security Agency's mammoth fleet of big brother voyeur eyes. With the fear of surveillance gone, they hoped their work was done but the president declares martial law and will use any and all means of replacing his eyes-in-the-sky to regain control of the population.
Nearly two hundred years previous, a civil war broke out to break the yoke of slavery, now another civil war looms to break the State's yoke of slavery. Skirmishes break out around the country as armies face each other. Cooler heads wish to avoid a full scale civil war, but can it be averted?