fluff

A man well into his years, Angelson remembers a time in his life of shimmering splendor and gold, whether it was gilded rust is besides the point. A boy growing up in the United States had everything going for him; the world was his oyster, albeit an unstable one.  The son of a truck-driver turned salesman and a nurse turned real estate agent, he was the generation to be the star on the Christmas tree of American exceptionalism. But at the tender age of 14, his entire future crumbled for his own eyes with the Second American Depression.
Growing up, he remembered the stories and tales he once heard of the mighty United States of America: King of the World, Master of All, Slave to None. The defeater of all adversaries, and the most powerful force in human history. A shining, shimmer splendor to gaze upon. As he aged into adulthood, there was none of those tales, no glory to be found. Only shame, misery, and more shame. A lost sovereignty, to Canadians no less. Concessions to Latinos and Hispanics. Its provinces lost and abandoned. An economy that continued to choke and strangled like a noose.
For fifty years he saw this, a heavy weight and burden on his soul. Throughout his life, he never truly knew God, for it seemed God did not care for him. And yet, it seems, as Paul came to believe in an epiphany he received on the verge of ending it all, He still had a plan for Paul, and a plan for the Union. In these embered, simmering ashes of the once great and mighty United States, Paul sees the Phoenix rising from the embers, to create a towering inferno that will tower and burn out the past, and all adversaries. Alas, a newly hatched bird, even a Phoenix, requires the right care and nurturing to become the mighty bird of prey it might be. And so, with a snapshot of the past firmly planted in his heart, a guiding light to anchor him as he treks on a path of revitalizing the nation he once knew, he sets out to nurture this bird into becoming the mightiest creature on the planet, to feast upon its predators and crown itself King of Nature upon the bones of its competitors. To all those who seek to stand the Union's and his way will find themselves set upon by an enemy who for 50 long years had kept his unbridled passion corked in a bottle.