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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