There were others too, but to my shame, the Pro was not among them. As much as I pushed Howie to join what we laughingly referred to around the office as the “flaccid resistance,” he refused. “Trust me on this,” he said. “We’re keeping our powder dry. Now’s not the right time,” he said. I trusted him to keep our powder dry until the right time, even if I had no idea what he was referring to. He was Howie, and that was enough for me. I wasn’t wrong.

The administration fought back with its best weapon, other than guns—patriotism. Members of the administration took every opportunity to define “real Americans” as those people who supported the president of the United States while dismissing the opposition as “misguided people who may not even understand how their attempts to undermine confidence in the government are assisting the enemies of democracy.”

The highlight of this “America first, last, and always in our hearts” campaign was the introduction of the New American Pledge. Standing directly in front of the Statue of Liberty on New York’s Liberty Island, the president asked several hundred children invited there for this ceremony to place their right hands over their heart and repeat these fifty-four words with him: “I am an American. I am born of the sacrifices of heroic men and women. I was shaped in the cauldron of liberty and justice for all. I accept my solemn duty to preserve and protect the rights of all Americans to live without fear wherever our flag might wave. I am an American.”

I have to admit on some level I admired the political skill that had enabled Wrightman to seize control of the narrative. As I’m certain it was intended to do, this pledge created a furor. Or as I referred to it in a column—to Jenny’s dismay; “Why do you always need to start trouble?”—“a führer.” It solidified Wrightman’s support among people who self-identified as patriots while painting those of us who opposed it as anti-American or even terrorist sympathizers.

When possible, I fought back with my keyboard. As long as I didn’t directly attack the Wrightman government, Howie ran what I wrote, although we noticed that Pro pieces were getting less pickup and reposting than previously. Of all the columns I wrote, it was my Christmas column that attracted the most interest. Admittedly it was controversial: I attacked Santa Claus. I wrote:

Since the 1949 publication of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, we have remained diligently alert for the appearance of Big Brother, the Stalin-like dictator who would destroy American society and impose a totalitarian structure on us. As it turns out, we have been looking in the wrong direction for all these decades. It wasn’t Big Brother we should have been watching out for. In actuality, it was Santa Claus.

We built the finest military in history to keep out the would-be Big Brothers; meanwhile we invited this jolly old man into our homes. Why not? He had a friendly smile, a delightful ho-ho-ho of a laugh, and best of all, he came bearing gifts for us all. What could be wrong with that? Not only did we welcome him, we set out milk and cookies for him!

But as we discovered too late, behind that jolly old facade lived a very different man. He wasn’t at all what he seemed to be. The warning signs were there. He moved only in the darkness and was known by an alias. While we were welcoming him, he was taking advantage of our hospitality. He learned all about us. He spied on us, compiling detailed lists. He determined who was “good” and who was “bad,” and he rewarded those people who fulfilled his expectations and punished those who took actions he didn’t approve. Without our knowledge he managed to install an extraordinary surveillance system that enabled him to determine when people were sleeping or when they were awake. He knew how to ensure our cooperation, bribing us with promises of gifts that we had already told him we wanted. It was an amazing scam …