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The following essay was originally published in March of 1987 by Mrs. Vula Bimbaum, who is the English Language Consultant for the Holy Grail Press.  We here at the Holy Grail Press were relieved when this this prophetic piece joined other great works of literature, such as Orwell’s 1984 and Clark’s 2001. They didn’t happen when they were supposed to, either.

No one is sure where the battle lines were first drawn. Some say it was the University of Michigan that first started allowing only Traditional grammarians to enter their program, and the Traditionalists spread from there. The Structuralists were undoubtedly centered around the University of California at Berkley.

First it was only the professional journals, but it spread from there, slowly at first. The Traditionalists captured the media center of the Northeast by placing key personnel into strategic positions. The Structuralists were able to capture Hollywood and subsequently the Western media machine.

As of yet there was no bloodshed, but the demonstrations were becoming increasingly violent. A picture of Noam Chomsky was burned at a rally in upstate New York. And a spontaneous gathering in San Francisco rampaged local schools and confiscated all the traditional grammar books, to later be torched in what was described as “a holocaust of the written word.”

The cold-blooded murder of Mrs. Grumsbee on January 28, 1992, was almost inevitable. Although the assassins were never captured, the two men in ski masks that machine-gunned the 87-year-old grammarian while she was diagramming sentences at the blackboard were undoubtedly members of the radical faction Do Wah Ditty Ditty (Death to the Whores of Dead Dialects), fanatical Structuralists who had become disillusioned with the inability of the non-violent Structuralists to prevent the already decisive gains of the Traditionalists from spreading any further.

Tensions exploded as the National Convention of English Teachers erupted into the famous Chicago Grammar Riots in July, 1992, in which 47 people were killed and scores of others were injured. The nondiscriminate violence that followed the Chicago Grammar Riots turned public opinion against the Structuralists. However, quick victories gave the Structuralists control of the entire Southwest and the western coast up to central Washington State. Seattle, however, remained a Traditionalist stronghold.

The violence that followed has been well documented: The invasion of Omaha and its subsequent recapture by the Traditionalists. The sinking of the USS Enterprise off the coast of Texas. The air strikes on Cheyenne.

And then the world shaking Presidential Directive. On October 4, 1993, the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Reno, Nevada, were destroyed with nuclear warheads fired from silos in the Midwest. Even though the Structuralists retaliated with the destruction of Pittsburg, Kansas, the cause was lost.

The Structural Loyalists fell into confusion, abandoning their cause and dispersing into the populace. Some joined into small bands of armed resistance, but were quickly subdued by the Verb Vengeance, the newly formed corps of crack Grammarians, which later formed the nucleus of the Secret Grammar Police.

It was an astounded world that saw the entire Northern and Southern American Hemispheres fall quickly into the militaristic dominance of the Traditionalists in the spring of 1998. Europe was unprepared, especially with the unexpected assistance of Great Britain. Australia offered no resistance. And from there Indochina became incorporated, while Africa was swept from both the south and the north.

For a few short months the fate of the world stood in fear of perdition. The decisive blow came when Red China signed the monumental Grammarian Treaty of Peking in the fall of 2000. Soviet Russia had no choice. In the famous communiqué from the Soviet Premier delivered on January 17, 2003, the fate of the world was decided: “What the hell, English, Russian – it’s all pretty much the same, ain’t it?”

The transition came quickly. Soon there was no other language but Proper Latinate English on the planet. Stories of death camps have never been confirmed.

 

 

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