Those were the days... When was America 'great'? And who has Steve Bannon reincarnated?

Have you heard of “Godwin’s Law?” It asserts that: “If an online discussion (regardless of topic) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will invoke Hitler.” In practice, it is used to shame or chastise those who make any sort of comparison to the fascist hellscape of the mid-20^th Century.*  To be sure, an overused, hyperbolic cliché can be tiresome.** 

Mike Godwin must be going crazy, right now, amid the tsunami of post-election comparisons. For the record, I do not think Donald Trump wants to, or will, become a Hitler. Parallels with Mussolini are creepy though, starting with Il Duce’s fervid rallies and relentless slogans, calling on Italians to rebuild classical glories and — translated literally— “make Rome great again.” 

Sure, I’ve made my own parallels with 1933 Germany, and they remain apt. Just as the Prussian barons, or Junkers aristocrats, fostered the racist-populist brown shirts as a counterweight to socialists and communists, so Fox News, Breitbart-Limbaugh-Jones and the Kochs deliberately whipped non-college white male boomers into a froth… exacerbated by their grouchiness over getting old and seeing the world change around them.

As those so-clever 1930s lords did then, today’s oligarchs stare in disbelief that a gifted shaman leaped aboard their carefully-trained beast, threw off the intended jockeys and grabbed the reins for himself.*** Back eight decades ago, at least a few of the Junkers had enough honesty to proclaim: “Mein Gott, what haf we done?” Alas, do not expect any such honor or decency from Rupert Murdoch, or the Worst Man in America, George F. Will.

Yet, I take solace from history. Back in the 1930s, as today all over the planet, common folk were mesmerized by new communications technologies. Back then it was radio and loudspeakers, that amplified the hypnotic voices of gifted, polemical svengalis, who took over almost everywhere, plunging humanity toward an abyss.

But not in the English speaking world.  Our parents and grandparents were captivated by gifted orators, too. But here, and in Britain, those gifted speakers were on our side, urging us — as Pericles did in Athens — to make the most of our democracy. Which brings us to a question that blue Americans really need to ask their red neighbors:

When do you envision that America had its “great” golden age?  “Make America Great Again” implies a clear notion of a time. So when was that?

It would seem that generally folks are referring to the era of the Greatest Generation – the boomers’ parents -- who overcame the Depression and Hitler, contained communism, built a booming market economy and got us into space, while too-gradually, but deliberately, taking on so many longstanding prejudices and injustices they inherited from their parents and a thousand other generations. 

Oh, but a funny thing about those folks in the World War II generation. They voted high taxes on the rich, which the rich patriotically paid. And they admired labor unions.

Above all, that clade of Americans had one favorite living human, a man adored by his people, his fellow citizens.

No wonder the New Lords have spent hundreds of millions and decades portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt as Satan, incarnate.  All while invoking nostalgia for the “great” American era of the 1940s and 1950s, sweeping aside one fact -- that every notable aspect of that period was Rooseveltean. A time - I must reiterate - when unions thrived, the rich paid taxes, science was admired, and moving forward was in our blood. 

Oh, you sour boomers, don’t you dare to invoke the Greatest Generation!  They were union men, democrats mostly, held no truck with foppish billionaires, preferred facts over assertions, built giant projects, gave the world its first general peace and… oh, yes, can I say it again? Their favorite living human was FDR. And do you know who followed Roosevelt in that slot? Who was the most-admired American during the 1950s? A fellow named Jonas Salk.

Oh, they were far from perfect, my parents and their friends. Their faults were monumental! But they emulated the American Founders, and the soldiers of a righteous, abolitionist blue Union, and others who pushed our fine Experiment forward, not wallowing in nostalgia.  (See how I answer right wing adoration of the 1950s.) Moreover, we are not lesser beings than the Greatest Generation. We benefit by living in the great civilization they built. But they raised us to launch from their shoulders. And yes, we have mightily amplified all of their accomplishments with creativity, science and compassion. 

(BTW, the next generation – millennials, especially – are so much better than us boomers that there’s no comparison. Calmer by far. Generally wiser, nicer, smarter. As a parent I’ll take some credit. The best thing we boomers ever did! And we so owe the kids an apology, right now. We need to get out of their way.)

== They built ‘great’ America. FDR merely summoned their wills. ==

No, fanatics, you don’t get the Greatest Generation, who would be appalled by your quiver-lipped wrath and shrill, drama-queen wails. No. You must flee farther back from their Rooseveltean era, in search of your earlier “great” time!

Here’s a candidate period for you -- one admired by the alt-right and Fox – lauded in a song you might recall:

“Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

Didn’t need no Welfare State.

Everybody pulled his weight.

Gee our old LaSalle ran great.

Those were the days.”

Is it 1929 then, that alt-right and the folks at Trump rallies yearn for? Surely the oligarch-junker lords financing the movement would be pleased to crank-back before FDR.  And yet, we all know that’s not it. 

Forget 1929.

It’s 1861, they yearn for. Only this time a confederacy that’s victorious. Plantation lords and their fervid vassals finally overcoming the blue forces of science, facts and progress. (And let us admit that this round of the civil war, with help from the Czar, the Confederacy has taken Washington.)

Alas, stupidly, they ignore real history and where this can only lead.

Their conspiracy will carry us to Paris, 1789.

== Back to Godwin ==

Okay, we’ve drifted. Yes, it is vital to nail the Trumpists by demanding they say when they think America was Grrrrreat! ****  

Still, circling back to the beginning, we started with Godwin’s Law. Recall that I dismissed the likelihood that Donald Trump wants anything Hitlerian. So don’t exaggerate! It just harms your credibility. I doubt he’s personally very racist, while cynically egging on those who are. Though parallels with Mussolini seem apt.

No, I’ve taken you on this journey in order to convey a chilling moment of realization that I had today, when looking at Donald Trump’s White House appointments. A shiver of recognition that can only have come from watching way too much History Channel (before they became the Bigfoot Channel.)  Specifically…

…I looked at the epically prototypical brownshirt who is Donald Trump’s chief aid and ‘strategist’ — Steve Bannon, whose silver-spoon life and cushy parasitism at Goldman Sachs then subsidized a plunge into manipulative populist cant, raging against the civilization that benefited him for decades. (Forecast; no bills will be introduced to actually change Wall St. parasitism.)

I know him, you see. Not directly, but every howl against modernity. Every appeal to Cyclical History (the central incantatory touchstone of the reactionary right.) His contempt-drenched ragings against science and every other knowledge caste. I know the cult of neo-feudalists who aim for a return to the standard human condition of 6000 years, and his raves are identical to their calls for a return to kingship, to dominance by Aryan males, to Church and hierarchy and empire, stirring mobs to crush citizenship. 

Using populism to wreck government by-the-people.

Moreover, in all traits he seems eerily reminiscent of (may Godwin forgive me) a certain historical figure whose arc and ambitions and face strike chilling parallels. A fellow named --

Martin Bormann. 

The chief aid, factotum, ear-whisperer, private secretary and ‘strategist’ who controlled the flow of information and access to you-know-who. The Grima Wormtongue of humanity’s darkest time.

A stretch? Then photoshop-modify the hair. Ditch the peach fuzz. Hell, drawl the name. 

Now guess which of them said: ““Darkness is good… That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

Okay, that was Bannon. Here’s the full paragraph: “Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

And now some of you are mumbling: "Brin are you insane?  Bannon will surely see this! It will stand out and get you on a list." To which I answer, well... ******

I do have to ask: has any member of this generation actually read Mein Kampf? Anyone? At all? Read it! Or at least skim -- look past the screeching racism and rage at the deeper threads of romanticism and the incantations of cyclical history. The calls for not improvement or progress, but restoration of a spectacular purity and glory that never, ever existed in the past.

Then note while flipping through those pages, it isn’t Donald Trump whose voice you can hear, speaking the lines. (Trump is more like Huey Long or Father Coughlin or yes, Il Duce.) But Bannon is there. His voice.

Oh my Godwin.

== Best friends ==

Do I exaggerate?

Check out who are Donald Trump’s most fervent foreign admirers.

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Enough...

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* I was a participant in a long-ago, early-primitive message group, when attorney Mike Godwin coined his famous ‘law.”

** Speaking of clichés, it can be apt to swap the phrase “Godwin’s Law” into Godwin’s Law: “If an online discussion (regardless of topic) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will invoke Godwin's Law.” 

*** As DT eagerly toes the line of Koch orthodoxy, I have to wonder if he experienced recently a moment like that in the film NETWORK, when Howard Beale meets Ned Beatty's wonderful mogul, Arthur Jensen. Watch it. Watch Network, including the classic "Mad as Hell!" scene... and then my response to it.

**** Tony the Trumpeter Tiger?

******  Will I be put on lists? Oh, sillies, of course I'm already on lists. And other lists of people whose 'accidents' would be probed. I do have some courage and sense of duty to a civilization, planet and species that I love, and so willingly take some risk. But probably foremost is the fact... that I wrote the character Nathan Holn, in The Postman. And there are some tough hombres out there who don't care that I portrayed Holn as a villain. They adore him, anyway. And me as Holn's 'creator. And hence, I've been offered shelter in places where... let's just say it would take an army. Martin Bormann would have envied these 'redoubts.'  Of this I have little doubt.

******* Oh! Late breaking development. I'm not the first to notice the resemblance!  Aw shucks.  And also... relief. 

Post-election: picking up the pieces

Okay, back to a general post-mortem: let’s focus on the election itself, starting with two quick dismissals.  This was not about working class pain, or racism.

Yeah, yeah, I hear your howls. And sure, maybe a third of Trump voters have some justified sense of grievance over jobs. Unemployment dropped dramatically under Obama and his near-record departing-popularity reflects this. But changes in the U.S. industrial landscape have resulted in fewer workers getting the high-class and highly-paid manufacturing billets their dads had. Sure, automation is far more to blame than outsourcing, and Republican oligarchs did far more to outsource than democrats. Still, there’s real pain there. Clinton should have addressed it better…

…and yet, less than a third of Trump voters were even remotely in that category. The rest are doing fine, economically. Many of them even know, grudgingly, that Democrats manage the economy better than Republicans do. Always.

No, their rage was cultural and psychological, not economic.

The same holds for racism. Yes, sure, it plays a role! And I hate it. And we need to fight it. And sure, maybe a third of Trump voters are affected by that poison. And many of the rest suffer from the new version -- lazy racism -- that has replaced much of the overt kind. White people who sit back, envision the scores of black and latino personalities they like, and the biracial couples they enjoy on TV, and conclude that means racism doesn’t apply to them. It gives them excuse to shrug and declare “racism is dead!” With the real, underlying complaint: “stop nagging me!”

        

Look, I accept all of that and again declare that we must fight it, as we fought, earlier, more overt forms of this disease. And we need to accelerate the trend that already began under Obama, of bringing manufacturing home. But let’s be clear… neither of these explanations for Trumpism correlate with all Trump voters.

I believe I know a better correlation. One that has an almost 100% overlap. But let’s hear from some others, first.

== Psychological theories – starting with Good vs evil ==

Why Rural America Voted for Trump: Robert Leonard, a New York Times reporter who grew up in rural Iowa offers perspective on the cultural divide between red and blue counties in the United States: 

“Political analysts have talked about how ignorance, racism, sexism, nationalism, Islamophobia, economic disenfranchisement and the decline of the middle class contributed to the popularity of Mr. Trump in rural America. But this misses the deeper cultural factors that shape the thinking of the conservatives who live here.”

This piece is flawed, missing several crucial aspects of “culture war,” such as the growling resentment that’s been spurred against all professions of knowledge. But some of the narratives that confederates tell each other do go back a long way, even to pre Civil War times, and we need to listen – in order to refute.

He quotes one Baptist minister: “The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans believe people are fundamentally bad, while Democrats see people as fundamentally good,” said Mr. Watts, who was in the area to campaign for Senator Rand Paul. “We are born bad,” he said and added that children did not need to be taught to behave badly — they are born knowing how to do that. We teach them how to be good,” he said. “We become good by being reborn — born again.” He continued: “Democrats believe that we are born good, that we create God, not that he created us. If we are our own God, as the Democrats say, then we need to look at something else to blame when things go wrong — not us.”

This drivel is an example of the many narratives that are used, to justify a hate that boils and overwhelms any attempt at negotiation or conversation.  Nor are facts - such as pragmatic outcomes - able to penetrate. If we subtract outliers like Utah and Detroit and Chicago, name a metric of moral and healthy living that is not worse in Red America, from teen sex, STD and pregnancy rates to obesity, dropouts, divorce and domestic violence, gambling and so on. Name... one... exception. Other than abortion which is a disagreement over fundamentals. See also: Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild.

The NYT report implies that vast sums of money flow from red to blue America, when in fact it is largely the other way around. Indeed, as my family watches Bryan Cranston’s riveting depiction of LBJ, in “All The Way,” I am reminded of images from the America I knew, back when Trumpists claim America was great, when the South and Appalachia were synonymous with grinding, hillbilly poverty. Images that should embarrass those now screaming that “government never does any good.”

No, the source of Red America’s trauma runs deeper. 

What hurts is the annual brain drain. The fact that every June, at the local high school - the center of all life in rural towns - the brightest kids weep and hug and swear to keep in touch… then scoot as fast as they can to the universities and bright cities that thereupon, at a deep, psychic level, become associated with blandishment and the stealing of hope. The stealing of your children. But we’ll get back to that

Another claim is that the problem is generational. If only America could return to the 1950s again. The romantic personality is always drawn to wistful homesickness for a past that never was. See How nostalgia for white Christian America drove so many Americans to vote for Trump by Sarah Pulliam Bailey in The Washington Post. 

These romantic yearnings for a fabled fifties are insidious and it is vital to answer them. You’ll make little progress by talking about the racism and sexism of that period, not when some of these folks yearn for an era when everyone knew his or her place.  What you can do is tear to shreds their every assertion, as I did in my posting: Was 1957 America Better Than Today? 

Even better, point out that the Greatest Generation of that era voted for high taxes on the rich, joined strong unions, and adored, above all living humans, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

== The power of metaphor: dad vs. mom ==

Earlier I mentioned the brilliant master of language, George Lakoff, who tried to tell the Clinton campaign they were combatting Trump in all the wrong ways. 

“The Clinton campaign decided that the best way to defeat Trump was to use his own words against him. So they showed these clips of Trump saying outrageous things. Now what Trump was doing in those clips was saying out loud things that upset liberals, and that’s exactly what his followers liked about him. So of course they were showing what actually was helping Trump with his supporters.

“I tried to convince people in the Clinton campaign — early on, I wrote a piece called “Understanding Trump,” in March 2016, and it was sent to everybody in the Clinton campaign. Everybody at the PAC, for example, got a copy of it. It didn’t matter; they were doing what they were told to do.” says Lakoff.

Lakoff continues: “All progressives and liberals have a moral worldview, what I described as the nurturant-parent worldview. (But despite his many anti hispanic statements,) many Latinos voted for Trump. Why? Because “strict father” morality is big in Latino culture. The campaign was not looking at values. They were looking at demographics, and they missed the role of values.”  

Lakoff urged liberals to sell the notion that the “father” such voters need is the one composed of our common will, in fairly negotiated government, not a strongman caudillo, like Bush or Trump.  It is more abstract, but it could be sold, if Democrats would only try.  That would mean actually standing up for science and journalism and all the other knowledge professions. And yes, even the civil service.

Another psychological factor should be obvious, from the core character trait of the man these folks elected president. Pride is indeed key, and it takes a weird form, in Red America. Watch some of the riffs of the "Redneck Comedy Tour"… later re-named “Blue Collar Comedy Tour.” Seriously, rent some of the videos, in order to better understand. The humor is excellent! Endearingly self-effacing and self-mocking... only…

Only, after a while you realize, with a shiver, that all the self effacing jokes amount to a form of bragging. There's an implication, underlying every jest about good-ol' boy dumbness, that their fervidly passionate simplicity is more genuine, and "real," and vastly preferable over being a smartass college boy.

Indeed, I assert that this is what won Trump the election.  And I’ll explain next time.

== We coulda used a bit more Luther, or rather Lyndon ==

While we’re thinking about the most under-rated president of the 20^th Century... for those of you needing solace: watch Bryan Cranston's spectacular portrayal of LBJ in "All The Way." If he doesn't get an Oscar, there's no justice.

For decades I have fumed that no one would tell the story of Lyndon Johnson and all he did for our nation, refuting pathetically vile depictions by the likes of Oliver Stone. LBJ's loyalty to JFK's dreams was carried out with dispatch, passion -- and yes the ruthless political cunning this film so accurately showed. If you are shuddering over today's transition, imagine the majority of parallel worlds without the combination of JFK's assassination and LBJ's relentless push, where the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and the '65 Voting Rights Act did not happen. The flames that would have consumed us, as our souls would likely have deserved.

Sure, there are red states where those rights are undermined by foul tricks, like gerrymandering. Indeed, we could certainly have done even better. But the playing field shifted, because of Johnson, to a better and more fair nation. And but for Vietnam, he would have crushed Nixon in '68 and we'd all have been the wiser for it.

Oh, is there an award for casting? Seriously, I never saw an array of actors who so looked like their historical counterparts! I recognized Humphrey, Dirksen, McNamara, Hoover and so on, at first sight, and the Martin Luther King role (played by Anthony Mackie) was perfection! Alas, this is all the movie that Hubert Humphrey will ever get. But most of us don't get movies. 

== Is that pertinent to today? ==

Maureen Dowd interviews Peter Thiel: "When I remark that President Obama had eight years without any ethical shadiness, Mr. Thiel flips it, nothing: “But there’s a point where no corruption can be a bad thing. It can mean that things are too boring.”  

Want irony? I kinda agree. I do wish Barack Obama had been slightly more like LBJ, with just a tad better instincts for the jugular and political knife fighting. His relentless attempts to negotiate with a cult whose central code — the Hastert Rule — was and remains to never, ever negotiate with Democrats, even for the good of the nation, seemed foolish and kinda pathetic after a while…

…though endearing, as the Democrats provided us with two 8-year presidencies that saw not a single administration high official convicted or even indicted for malfeasance of office. Dig that.  not one. Only the first and second times that happened in U.S. history.

That utter proof of honesty, combined with the utter fruitlessness of a 24 year, half-billion dollar endless search for something to pin on the Clintons, ought to affect any rational mind, especially in comparison to the endless lists of calumnies and crimes committed by both Bush regimes and (even before entering office) by the Trump Administration.

Oh, but the cult is immune to facts or irony. 

Here’s a test: any GOP lurkers out there, can you name one of the apocalyptic predictions about president Obama that came true? That even got broached or proposed by him? DHS internment camps? UN black helicopters? Swarms of henchmen confiscating guns? Forced abortions?

What none? Zero? And there's no embarrassment over there? None at all?

This is culture war. And the Confederacy is ahead. But Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory….

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Start planning the revolution! In real life and in sci fi

First items you all have probably heard by now - news that Donald Trump's senior staff all use the same RNC email server that mysteriously disappeared 22 million messages during George W. Bush's administration and one that U.S. intelligence services believe was compromised by the Russians at the same time as the DNC's. The Trump campaign hammered Hillary Clinton for her using a private email server, during her tenure as Secretary of State.  Also five members of DT’s staff turn out to have been registered to vote in more than one state.  Ah, consistency.

But onward…

For all of the drama surrounding the Million Women Marches , the upcoming March for Science as well as cabinet appointments and critiques of the inaugural address, it is important to recognize that little is achieved by preaching to the choir. Urban wailing will be dismissed as Blue State Noise, unless some crucial factors change.  The factors that empowered the Republican Party to control all three branches of the federal government, plus two-thirds of the states... all with minorities of the vote in every 21st Century election except 2004. The hard lesson: simply having 60% of Americans on your side is not enough to win.

That will require a multi-front approach, and demonstrations rank way down the list, along with righteous petitions, late night comedian sketches and grand statements by celebrities. (Madonna, please go away? You're not helping.)

Far more significant will be efforts, led by former president Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder to confront electoral cheats, like gerrymandering.  Indeed, I wrote recently about how liberals should start practicing judo, by accepting Trump’s demand for a commission to investigate electoral fraud.  A call that is now echoed in this article on Salon. 

== The only thing that will make a real difference ==

But most important of all will be one simple thing – chipping away at the Confederate coalition.

(And let there be no doubt of that terminology, when nearly all of Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments hail from Olde Dixie! My assertion, that we are in a later phase of the Civil War, has been proved.)  

Among the lessons of the recent election is that the confed-coalition, while effectively deployed, is razor thin. Hence the goal should be simple. Peel away just a few more millions of the sane or partially sane. Just a few will do it.

If the Fox coalition can be pared to -- or below -- one-third of the electorate… if we can draw away from the madness those decent and sapient American conservatives who still believe in facts and science and competitive enterprise… then the edifice collapses. These “ostrich” conservatives" have been in denial for decades, clinging with endearing loyalty to a movement that long ago was hijacked by monsters and that has betrayed them at every level.

Urge them to ponder Ronald Reagan, who famously in the 1970s said "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party Left me."  We can argue over whether his justification made sense, at the time. But it makes for a great paraphrasing, that should make your ostrich wince. Urge him or her to jump off the train wreck, because:

"You aren't leaving the Republican Party; The Republican Party left you."

Oh, it won't be easy. They may have to be coaxed out of their holes, one at a time. And that means you might actually need to listen to your own ostrich a bit, as well. But one by one, that is what will make the biggest difference. Conservatives who at last accept the testimony of all facts and reason — that their movement has gone mad. And that whirring sound is Barry Goldwater, spinning at 5000 rpm.

== Ostriches are starting to lift their heads ==

Oh, most of the truly-sapient ones have already fled, like all the scientists, teachers, journalists, economists, doctors and every other knowledge profession warred-upon by Fox. 

As for those who remain, many of them, like George “the Worst American” Will, still cling to the mantra incantation that “Yes, my side's gone crazy... but... but at least liberals are just as bad!”  - thereby concocting rationalizations for otherwise-intelligent folks to keep watching hypnotic poison on Fox. 

(Again, set your calendars to remind you monthly about the Fox Boycott.) 

Delusional obstinacy is a primary attribute. Hence, it is especially noteworthy when one of the master-poisoners awakens, pulls his head out of the hole of denial, then speaks up for his country and civilization, as — (and I shudder to speak it) — Glenn Beck has done.

Yes, Glenn Beck, who railed that George Soros must be a master world oligarch manipulator, because Soros personally “toppled eight foreign governments!”  Beck, whose chalkboard incantations convinced millions of nodding dittoheads that the rise of oligarchy is all the doing of liberals and that he (Beck) was the primary heir of Martin Luther King. 

Only now Beck proves that he has one hallmark of sanity… the ability to notice a precipice under his own feet. And Beck confirmed this - a bit - in his make-up session with Samantha Bee. 

 Now, can rising ostriches actually get others to lift their heads? Hold that thought. Soon, I will speak of the one thing that can and will save the Union and our revolution: the Year of the Colonels.

== Sci Fi predicted it all ==

Wowzer: both Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley’s Brave New World are back in the best seller lists, for obvious reasons. 

But then, recall that all Americans are weaned on legends of Suspicion of Authority (SoA). Nearly all of the propaganda issued by Fox and alt-right portrayed their side as the brave heroes, resisting plots by nefarious elites to turn America into Oceania. Sure, nearly everything they said was lies – and not one of the things they claimed Barack Obama would do in office came true, or ever even crossed his desk. 

Never mind that, right now. I want you to look at what you have in common with your ostrich! but look to the common, underlying mythos! The same, identical theme of Suspicion of Authority or SoA

Sure, the "authorities" they hate are scientists, journalists, economists, doctors and every other knowledge profession... but the undercurrent is the same, and you can start there. (See also The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, by Thomas M. Nichols.)

If you understand the shared impulse… romantic belief that YOU are in-the-know and part of a heroic-historic resistance movement, defending freedom against scheming elites… then you will better be able to reach out to those frightened, quaking ostriches. Especially, you can ask:

“Are you really more afraid of scientists, journalists, teachers, doctors and every other knowledge profession, and think they are plotting against your interests, more than the oligarchs who are re-establishing feudalism? The lords who ruined freedom for 6000 years?  Really? You trust them over scientists? Teachers? Doctors?”

== It boils down to Sci Fi! ==

But science fiction is pertinent to our crises today.

Here’s a novel that dives straight into the worst case scenario… that our current Phase Eight of the American Civil War might suddenly go deadly hot. Tears of Abraham, by Sean Smith is an action-packed page turner, that's also thoughtful about loyalty, honor, courage and what it takes to be American, especially when the chips are down. Those chips tumble as the U.S. spirals into a violent frenzy of our recurring civil war — a fate we can avoid, helped by warnings like this one.

Only... how can it be avoided, when the Rasputin who is actually in charge of our destiny seems to want destructive chaos?  I'll comment more about this later, though it is as scary as any novel. 

In sharp contrast to Tears of Abraham is a very different depiction of near future civil war written by one of Steve Bannon's favorite authors, Empire, by Orson Scott Card, whose fiction almost always extols demigods and mutant chosen-ones while dismissing any chance that democracies, institutions, and open citizenship might ever, ever work.  In Empire, Card portrays civil war brought on by liberal do-gooders and too much open accountability. The victor – whom we are supposed to admire, reveals that he had manipulated the entire thing, in order to transition America – like Rome – from a foolish republic into a confidently overwhelming empire. And we are supposed to cheer.  Well, Scott is good at that, getting millions to sob admiration toward demigod, chosen-ones in his Ender universe.

My own The Postman has an ironic role in all of this. The novel is experiencing a sales surge as folks realize that my “Holnist” characters are alive! With major roles in the new administration. That cautionary tale – whose moral and heart  elements were faithfully conveyed in the film (even if the brains weren’t) – is a both a warning and a tribute to the stunning power of the very thing Card despises… citizenship.  And yet I have to tell you that, disturbingly, I also get fan mail, now and then, from fellows who blithely call themselves Holnists!

What…?  How…? Well, it’s simple. A good writer gives his villains strong lines. He conveys how they are likely to speak, giving voice to their best rationalizations and justifications. In this case… well… maybe I did too good a job.

Worrisomely on-target is a novel by my friend Gregory Ness - Antioch - that combines hard SF with fantasy and fretful observations on a new American Civil War and dark age. “In 2025 the U.S. disintegrates into angry mobs fueled by social media and misinformation. The once great nation turns away from science and tech in an effort to protect entrenched interests and preserve economic stability. Scientists are killed or exiled and laws passed to regulate innovation. … An American biologist’s dreams take him back to the Great Library of Alexandria where he witnesses the birth of western civilization. During the day he watches its disintegration.”

In the near future I will post about Robert Heinlein and his eerily on-target predictions from 1953, that are coming true before our eyes.

Yes, let us explore SF scenarios! And be stirred or chilled. And yet. Let us remember. There is nothing more inspiring than our present and ongoing revolution. The one sparked by Ben Franklin and his lads. A militantly-moderate revolution that was designed to be ongoing, as each generation pushes forward, not only profiting from a flat-open-fair-competitive-cooperative system, but also taking on injustices that their own parents took for granted.

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We are an ongoing revolution! And if we fail – as Athenian democracy failed – the oligarchs will make damn sure it isn’t tried for another 2000 years.