Disillusion by Alfred N.Muggins

12/3/25
  Pete was a veteran of the Iraq War of 2003, and the occupation of 2003 – 2011. He had lost friends to the Sunni Al Qaeda movement. It had screwed him up quite a bit at the time. He had suffered from post traumatic stress disfunction by the end of his period of duty. He could not concentrate well, afterwards, and had returned to home in Arkansas. Thankfully he had been able to use the services of the Federal funded Veterans Association. They had helped him find civilian work, and to stay in touch with fellow veterans. Life improved and rebuilt itself.
  In 2020 he unexpectedly lost his father and mother to Covid, as people in his state ignored the warning of the medical establishment, encouraged by their all American president’s casual disregard for the dangers of the invisible virus. The loss of both parents hit him hard, but he picked himself up and with the help of his friends got his life back on track once again.
  By the time of the 2024 election he had forgotten the part the all American presidential candidate might have played in his parents demise. Life had to go on, and now it did indeed seem that America’s biggest problem was the corruption of fat politicians, mainly Democrats, who lived easy lives in Washington  on the backs of honest working men, who could do with reductions in their tax burdens.
  He was doing okay, working for the Veterans’ Association, looking after ex soldiers like himself, helping them to overcome their problems. He felt the elation of many fellows when he heard their 'streetwise' candidate had won the election campaign. Hopefully the new President would bring jobs back to America, industries whose workforces had been replaced by foreign workers abroad, and stop the neverending flow of illegal immigrants into the States who took honest Americans' jobs.
  He actually celebrated when he watched the new President’s Inauguration ceremony indoors in the Capitol Building, because of the cold weather. It felt like it might just be the beginning of a new age, where the swamp might really be drained, the illegal immigrants kicked out or prevented, and industrial jobs restored. He believed the very real President when he promised those things. Because he wasn’t your typical well behaved suited politician, and he seemed to have a sense of humour! Pete believed he would do his best for the ordinary working man.
     Then suddenly without warning, in the second or third week of the new presidency, suddenly he received an email from the government. The Veteran’s department was being cut back. His job had been terminated. He would receive his money for a couple more weeks and then that would be it, no job. The job he thought he would have for the rest of his life was suddenly not there any more. What could he do? He rang friends and colleagues, and it was the same story for them, they were expendable too, and had lost their jobs. The whole department of the VA had been closed down…..! He couldn't believe it at first. This was just not what he had expected from the new President!

     He talked to people, watched the news, and looked at social media. He thought about what he could do to get through to the President, to tell him, to let him know about the awful mistake he was making by letting his billionaire appointee make the cuts to government expenditure which had caused the loss of his job. He soon realized however, listening to the various medias and weighing it all up, that the President himself was really the one who had instituted these changes. He had put an outside businessman and billionaire in charge of this DOGE government organization to audit the departments and make relevant cuts to save money for the Treasury, so America could reduce its public debt, which was apparently way out of control after Democrat generosity and lack of control, in recent years!
     He had been a sniper in some of his duties for the army, and he was getting to boiling point! He decided to go on the hunt for the President or maybe his billionaire appointee. They had betrayed him and his colleagues, and betrayed America! The President didn’t even know what side he and America are supposed to be on in the invasion of Ukraine. Well Ukraine’s was a bit closer to America than Iraq, he thought, or Afghanistan or Vietnam, and he could see that Europe did need defending. Okay, it should pay more for its own defence, but  Europe still needed defending. The new administration was selling Ukraine and their old allies out.
  After a few months of American decline, and feeling ever more bitter he took up his gun. The Constitution allowed him as an American citizen to bear arms, and use it as his right, to protect America from foreign invaders and treachery, from this carpetbagger and his rich predatory friends!

   He has been given the use of a high up apartment with a good but quite distant view of the entrance to a building the President was due to visit this morning for a press conference. As expected the President was leaving with his security detail, but from this distant vantage there was a clear enough view. The President stopped to take a question from a well dressed female reporter. Perhaps his vanity would be his undoing? Pete was able to fix the President in his sights, and squeezed the trigger. The President dropped down, definitely hit, but Pete squeezed another shot into the collapsed body to make sure, as sure as he could, and Pete cleared the building as fast as he could, fearful of being caught by Trump’s security.....
15/3/25
    Pete got out of the area, getting in the car he had parked a couple of blocks away. He drove normally, trying to be as normal as possible, so no one would suspect he had anything to do with it. However his heart sank when he noticed there was some kind of road block up ahead. He was some distance away from the scene by now, and had dared to hope he would not be found. A couple of local police cars had narrowed the road. The Police bore guns. They pulled his car over as they were doing with anyone on this road. Some officers were questioning another motorist at the same time. 
    "Where are you coming from," his interrogator asked. Pete gave the address of a sympathetic friend who lived in the area, outside the range of any possible shooter, but in a well populated area behind him, a plausible place. His friend would back him up if they questioned him. He had left his weapon concealed in the apartment, well under floorboards. The flat was rented by someone in the Organisation, who was away currently.
   "Have you heard anything of an incident in the neighbourhood?"
 "No," he hadn’t. "We need to search you and your car." A quick body search, and a basic search of his car was done.
   Pete thought the officer suspected him and if he had been doing the officer’s job, he would have detained the potential suspect for a longer period. However he detected that maybe this police officer was not so keen on catching a freedom fighter. He knew the President was by now very unpopular with most folks, and maybe this officer felt the same. He waved him on with a thankyou. Perhaps it was better for most Police officers to wave suspects through, because secretly the murder of the President was what most Americans by now secretly wanted, for this imposter in the White House was by now a liability to most Americans, and they wanted rid of him. He most likely had relatives or even a daughter or son who had lost their job recently or couldn’t pay the higher prices for everything easily, or a parent who could not afford the higher health insurance fees now that the Democrats' Affordable Care Act had been scrapped, or maybe a friendly Latino neighbour who had been taken away to a detention centre and never seen again a few months before, or perhaps a son who had been killed in the new war for Israel.