CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGERS IN FICTION

 VERY Clear & Present Danger

Too Ridiculous to Contemplate as a Threat Even in Fictional Works

I like to read every dystopian or TETOWAKI novel that comes along, especially the well-written, thought-provoking and sometimes painfully realistic works by the likes of Orwell, Rand or Pournelle. I have even read a zombie apocalypse book or two, but prefer a more realistic threat, such as a runaway police state, super virus or asteroid strike.

So I was eagerly looking forward to reading a new book I had ordered, Article 5. “Compliance is Mandatory.” Deliciously chilling right there. Resistance to an overbearing Police State? Oh, I’m in on reading that! Until I got the book and started in on it. The culprit stealing all our freedoms, oppressing us, and making people disappear? Why, the “Religious Right”, of course.

Honestly, you can’t get much more unrealistic when it comes to a threat to or from our American government. If the Far Left had their way (and they’re slowly getting it) they would have the Christian Conservatives in the gulags already, not vice versa. For the moment, they’ll settle for silencing those who don’t agree with them via media and education's (some of our best fiction writers right there!) ridicule, ostracism and outright censorship (if it’s not reported on the news, it didn’t happen) and of course government diktat (think random bureaucratic regulations with the force of law, “Hate Crimes” and Obama’s Supreme Court picks). In the Mainstream Media and Hollywierd, political conservatives are drummed out of the business in a bizarre form of reverse-McCarthyism by Liberals who are completely oblivious to hypocrisy. You never even hear about Christians in Hollywood; perhaps they’ve all been fed to the lions for entertainment already.

It’s the Leftists who are at this very moment attempting to force all of their ideals upon everyone else via over-bearing government sanction and enforcement. It’s not the Religious Right who is mandating what size your soda may be, what firearm (if any) is protected under the 2^nd Amendment (if any), what you can and cannot eat, what your kids can and cannot be taught in school, what you can and cannot say or write, what you can or cannot grow or do on your own land (dependent on endangered/fictional critter habitat rather than legal deeds and titles and property taxes paid), etc, etc. And don’t forget, coming very soon, which doctor you can see, what treatments you may receive, and whether or not it’s more economical to just pull your plug outright, before or after birth.

While the Religious Right most often seems to remain the premiere publishing/film-making option for officially sanctioned fictional Police State Bad Guys, in my reading I still find another oldie but goodie clinging tenaciously to life…the threat of ultra-patriotic military officers. This form of bag guy became popular in the late 1970’s and still hangs on in the hearts of the older mainstream print and movie storyline writers despite a realism level below zombies on the real world threat scale. A generals’ junta in the U.S.? The current crop of generals have been taught to heel, fetch and beg via political correctness, media exposure, political meddling and sacrifices of their own integrity upon the almighty alter of career advancement. Like politicians, to achieve a high enough rank to “change things” a multi-star general has to make so many concessions to the system that he becomes part of the problem himself long before he gets there. Did you know every single Federal employee from the seasonal Forest Service college kid cleaning campground pit toilets to the elderly once-every-ten-years census clerk temp takes the same oath to “protect and defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic”? You don’t see too awful many of them banding together to overthrow the government because of the oath they took any more than you do generals. 

Besides, who in the hell needs the military for a takeover? I know a certain president who has his own private army, complete with columns of armored personnel carriers and billions of rounds of ammunition stockpiled. Nawwwww...an idea like that is just too outrageous and crazy even for dystopian fiction.

One last extremely popular option for media-approved bad guys still exists. Nazis! That’s right, Nazis, those guys who gave us WWII and the Holocaust (the latter of which, BTW, Muslims think is fictional). As in the movie The Sum of All Fears (which thankfully my brother told me not to bother watching) Muslim jihadists who constantly and bellicosely state that they wish and fully intend to destroy America would certainly never steal nuclear warheads and try to, say, destroy America. No, it would more likely be some secret cabal of fanatical Nazis who’ve been hiding underground since 1945 just waiting for a good chance to crank up the ol’ Fourth Reich. Plus Nazis are anti-Semitic. This draws attention away from the fact that it’s the Far Left who can’t wait to hand the keys to Israel over to any old rabid blood-soaked Muslim power that happens to come along. For extra convenience, Nazi characters can also be all male and all white! What better Bad Guys can you ask for than that?



 So, can one of you from among of our legions of adoring fans (what do you want for supper, Hon?) point me in the direction of some decent dystopian fiction before I have to watch television?