The millennial waste-and-Menace crisis; the Clean U.S. Party founded and sweeps to power

pivotal · background, ~turn of the millennium

• When: background, "a post-Soviet and -Jihad era" / "the millennial fulcrum of very dark U.S. times" (scene 081); pre-O.N.A.N.
• What: In a time when the landfills are full, waste is choking the coasts, and — worse — there is no external Foreign Menace left to unite against, the U.S. turns on itself. The Clean U.S. Party (C.U.S.P.), a "surreal union" of ultra-right gun types and far-left ecology types — the film's pointed coinage is an "annular agnation" of the two disillusioned fringes — forms around Gentle; its first plank is Let's Shoot Our Wastes Into Space. "A kind of post-Perot national joke for three years," C.U.S.P. then sweeps to victory in "an angry reactionary voter-spasm" as the two mainstream parties split apart — the political origin of the entire O.N.A.N. order.