The United States is
experiencing good times, which Democrats attribute to their pompous, LBJ style,
president. President Bart Schroeder is
the former Texas governor and also the owner of a large turkey ranch in West Texas.
Unfortunately, not all
Americans share this view. Abigail,
Sherlock, Newton, and Moose (all pseudonyms for security reasons) are students
at Michigan Tech or Finlandia Universities, both located in Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula. Unhappy with the way Lower
Michigan ignores the concerns of the Upper Peninsula residents, they decide to
coerce the president into supporting an initiative making the Upper Peninsula
and Northern Wisconsin into a fifty-first state (a popular and recurrent
real-life notion).
The president is given the
ultimatum to support their cause or the Yoopers (as the U.P. residents refer to
themselves) will throw the upcoming election.
When the president refuses, a truckload of his turkeys is hijacked. Walter Brainthorpe, the truck driver, is
stripped naked, drenched in molasses, and covered with feathers. The newspapers have a field day, and Walter
Brainthorpe makes the rounds of the talk shows.
When the president refuses
to give in, Newton, a grad student and resident nerd at Michigan Tech, develops
weapons-grade gelatin, which solidifies at room temperature. The four students enter the White House as
tourists and dump large quantities of weapons-grade gelatin into a White House
toilet. The gelatin solidifies in the
White House’s main sewer pipe, plugging all toilets. The constipated toilets are considered a crime scene and can’t be
unplugged until released by the investigative authority. A jurisdictional dispute develops among the
FBI, CIA and Treasury Department as to who should be in charge. The Environmental Protection Agency receives
an anonymous memo stating the gelatin is laced with mercury, and clean up can’t
begin before an environmental impact study is obtained. The president’s chief of staff brings a
porta-potty into the oval office as a short-term fix.
Since the president is still unwilling to capitulate
(Pharaoh needed ten plagues), the Yoopers decide to return the turkeys, not to
the turkey ranch but to the White House.
The turkeys are thrown over the fence late at night. The Secret Service’s thermo imagers pick up
numerous head-size thermal images, which they assume are commandos wearing
infrared absorbing fatigues. Six Apache
gun ships are called in to strafe the White House lawn with rockets and cannon
fire. By morning the lawn is pockmarked
and dead turkeys hang from trees and float beak-down in White House pools. Walter Brainthorpe declares it a flagrant
misuse of the military.
The president finally calls
in his best CIA agent who travels to the Upper Peninsula in search of the
guilty culprits. He rummages through the two universities, areas he considers
hot spots of political unrest. Finally,
at a Finlandia University dumpster, he discovers some shredded documents with
the word sisu (Finnish for strength and determination). The CIA agent assumes this is the acronym
S.I.S.U. and reports his findings to the president. The president decides S.I.S.U. stands for a Sensory Inhibiting Satellite
Unit, with capabilities to incapacitate entire battalions with a single beam of
radiation. He further concludes that
Finland is responsible for his problems and intends to turn the Upper Peninsula
into a Finnish colony.
The president calls a press
conference and tells the American people he has irrefutable proof that Finland
has weapons of mass destruction and is infiltrating the U.P. The American people rally around the
president and the American flag when the president orders a preemptive strike
against the U.P., all except for Walter Brainthorpe who would rather use diplomacy. Political pundits declare his comments
political suicide.
The chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff decides to use the classic technique of shock and awe. A battalion of M1A1 tanks is ordered up from
Camp Grayling in Lower Michigan, a nuclear attack submarine with cruise
missiles is ordered to take Marquette harbor, the 82nd Airborne
makes a nighttime drop over the center of the U.P., and marines make amphibious
assaults against Michigan Tech and Finlandia Universities.
Fighting against insurmountable odds, the Yoopers obtain complete victory in less than twenty-four hours using nothing more than cunning and guile. No shots are fired. In a surprise ending, Walter Brainthorpe is elected president.