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Harry Harrison did a "viking time travel romance novel". The Technicolor Time Machine http://www.fictiondb.com/autho...

Begin comparisons to Orson Scott Card's Hidden Empire by combining this story + Justice Sotomayor Warns Against Tech-Enabled "Orwellian" World + DARPA Funds Harvard's Soft Exoskeletal Suit + politics

Sounds a lot like Ben Bova's "Colony" right down to the teaming masses of poor solely created by the uber-corporate moguls living on the colony. That station had a part where the fortunate "many" lived, and a secret 'second half' that was essentially an empty virgin ecosystem where the moguls had their vast mansions. Great angst was had that they didn't move a few hundred thousand of overpopulated earth's teaming billions up to that second half. All the "brown people" as a previous poster called them, rose up in revolution.

I'd love to see a station of this type, if not magnitude, full time livable, in my lifetime but I'm not expecting it to happen.

But hey, maybe you know something I don't. Lets say Bachmann becomes President. And Congress gets a veto-proof majority of Republicans. Now what? What is the mechanism that the US is "Destroyed"?

Read up on the Patriot Act, if you don't actually think the Constitution can be weakened and subverted. When I was growing up (the Seventies) the clauses in the Patriot Act were merely the subject of wild-ass speculative fiction, like in this popular political pot-boiler from when I was in high school. I scoffed at the idea when I was 15; now that i'm 50 and have seen a real-life version of "The R Document," I'm not so skeptical anymore. The problem with a democracy is that without active participation from the citizens, it simply slides into some kind of tyranny. Since you mentioned Bachmann, I would say the "destruction" will be in the form of an oligarchy, with an able assist from the more pragmatic wing of the religious right, of which Bachmann (and Perry) are notable examples.

That's a bit scary... http://www.fictiondb.com/author/harry-harrison-marvin-minsky~the-turing-option~104464~b.htm

When I was a but a wee lad, I quite enjoyed the Planet Builders series.
This site has them all