I can’t think of a single dystopian novel or movie that imagined our government filled not with aliens but ignorant conspiracy theorists, Russian assets, sex criminals and grifters.
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A real world example that the trump Kakistocracy has already blown past before he takes office. Many chilling similarities, at least as many as Nazi Getmany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu
I have concepts of a book to write. About politics and government but fear I have waited too long. The new admin would not like it. I would be on lists.
I'm reading Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" and not even that is as far fetched. But, we are not going back! We lost the battle but the war is still to be won.
I saw a strange future movie where the galaxy voted a demon whose platform was to destroy the universe to be their President. They didn’t pick a cabinet, the demon just proceeded to destroy everything.
Well, actually, I did make an animated short film four years ago about exactly what we are heading into now. In fact, sometimes I feel like Trump must have watched it, since he's lifting policy ideas from it. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY94BGpyCY4&t=4s
Atlas Shrugged had a government full of idiots. It also had business people leave society until it completely collapsed then go and rebuild it. It was all about money.
If someone had tried to pitch a novel with current events as the plot ten years ago, most editors out there would have rejected it almost immediately as “Not believable.”
Have you read the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson, Hunter series by Mercedes Lackey or The Shadow series by James Patterson. They've got some genocidal bigots in spades.
Is it ignorant to believe that Trump and a bunch of other people (including pootin and Co.) are reptiloids? I mean... often people called out things to blame someone instead they should point themselves.
Right now, yes, but….? I think your version of an alternate US is even more likely than A Handmaid’s Tale. Much simpler to accomplish, even though we don’t currently have that technology? I hope? 🤞
In no way can I imagine a US in which half of the population is limited to 100 words a day. Or silenced at all. Unless, of course, we’re talking about people grounded in objective reality being silenced, in which case I can imagine it quite easily.
Heinrich Boll's The Clown and Murk's Collected Silences are close, they describe how wide spread grifting and corruption at every level of life led to a confounding, dystopian reality that honest people were too demoralized to fight. The mundane nature of it is what's chilling.
And yet the draft of this novel has been in the works for decades and dems and libs took the high road. WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OVERTHROW OF OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
You can only see it in the peripheral, but The Long Walk or even The Running Man(NOT THE MOVIE) by Stephen King are great examples of what this can lead to.
America's last election makes the wrong case for direct democracy. The mob doesn't always get it right after all. Plato will be smiling down on us right now.
except instead of using a baby as a human shield when an unsuccessful gunman took a shot at him and being unable to live with the national disgrace, he joked about the guy who actually died at his rally and nobody gave a shit. if that kid had the dead zone power, he'd have hated that last handshake
Watching it happen from Canada. Feel like it is a bad movie. Wish I would wake up and the sane result occurred. My 28 year old son texted me the next morning and said “he was so disappointed in people”.
Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents are amazingly prophetic. Written in the 90's, the language of the ruling party, the pandemic and the racism are so spot on. There is a discussion about how American cannot be made great again in the second book.
It's the ones behind the clowns, criminals and idiots that are far more frightening. The Peter Theils of the world. Best argument in history for "No more billionaires!"
I am fairly sure that William Barr’s pedo dad (associate of Epstein no less), wrote sci fi novels with a very similar character outline. Of course there were also underage girls as sex slaves, which this administration would love to implement day 1.
And we are almost always the cause of our society collapsing in those stories. War, viruses created by us, us inventing something smarter than us, someone trying to control someone else. Would think we’d learn by now.
I fail to understand that, knowing how disastrous these people he's nominating to these positions are, he must know that he's literally destroying the country, wiping it off the map of relevance & importance in the world & handing it over to the dictators of the world. How does that benefit him?
He is doing & will do everything he can to be a dictator himself & join that club. He idolizes Putin, Orban, Erdogan. Wants to be President for Life like Papa Doc & will remake the US to be a banana republic if he is unleashed.
A Turkish proverb I have cited a lot lately: When a clown enters a palace, he does not become a sultan. The palace becomes a circus. That is 45/47 perfectly.
I always liked The Arrival from 1996 with (dare I say it) Charlie Sheen. The fascist government was run by aliens disguised as humans who were trying to change the climate by making it hotter. Sound familiar?
You should check out Russian Sleeper Cell by @fathernathan.bsky.social;
that's pretty much the book he wrote trying to warn us of this impending reality.
Brave New World , not exactly, but terrified me when I read it. Made too much sense not 2B scared. + a short story by Vonnegut, the equalizing one that “adjusts” people. Fahrenheit 451. Rand, some of her work is spot on. The writers followed the thread, which follows the $, &follows human condition
As a kid, I remember thinking how adults running the world were so smart. Then I grew up and realised that among them were the various idiots and "not nice" kids I'd tried to avoid in school. There's little reason for any kid today to share my earlier feeling about adults.
That describes the USA under tRump, China, Russia, Venezuela, Hungary, Syria, Iran, and every member of the IDU chaired by Stephen Harper the worst pm Canada ever had to endure and who is behind the PoiLIEvre attempt to takeover Canada using low iq ditchbillies. Never vote conservative!
I can't think of any that uses ginned up and funded trans hate and terror to win an election either. Oh wait, that's real life. as you said. That tactic will succeed until the public comes around to the fact that trans people are people and have rights just like everyone else.
Think about it. Would Trump dare get normal, intelligent, or decent people to surround himself with? A narcissist only needs devoted sycophants, Trump will never hire the best or the brightest.
I only saw that movie last year; on Christmas Day. I thought it had to have been made during trump's first term, because I've heard conservatives say some of those lines, word-for-word. It was only after that I learned it was made in 2006, and I was like 😳
Well, it was supposed to be entertainment- not foreshadowing… but I should have known better being that republicans have been on this track for over 60 years.
Kamacho was actually an excellent president and didn’t really fit with the story at all: he knew how to delegate, hired the right people who were qualified for the job, gave credit where credit was due, and genuinely cared about the country.
Or The Clown, by Heinrich Boll, which is about a demoralized clown navigating the desiccated shell of German society after WWII. The irony is that only grifters have authority and they can only pretend to have ideals because they've changed allegiances and narratives so many times.
Blade Runner. Altered Carbon. The late stage death knell capitalism of the Aliens franchise.
A dystopia built by rich ignorant fools only concerned with their own wealth and lives at the expense of everyone else, and without all the cool sci-fi tech.
Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series: 10 fiction books that chronicle the world from 1900 through World War II with a socialist’s eye, showing ever so clearly how big business choreographed the conflicts. He didn’t see RFK Jr. though - that boy is too strange even for fiction!
were a corporeal alien race to travel across time and space to make physical contact with us—whether the intent be peace, war, enslavement or genocide—i'm sure we'll all be done for in the first 39 hours from whatever prion/protein parasite that evolved on the outside of the craft that brought them
Have you seen the movie "Don't Look Up," about the POTUS refusing to warn the citizenry about impending disaster? The reason behind it is to remain in power, even though most Americans will be killed. That's kind of a nutshell explanation, I don't recall all the details.
I feel like I am living in a world suggested by three films superimposed, Dr Strangelove, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Blow Up. My brain is trying to make sense of this but it's difficult
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu
What stands on the border of insanity?
Canada & Mexico.
As for 100-word limits one women in the US? It’s 100% fiction. 😊
In no way can I imagine a US in which half of the population is limited to 100 words a day. Or silenced at all. Unless, of course, we’re talking about people grounded in objective reality being silenced, in which case I can imagine it quite easily.
I am saying it again.
We have entered the era of the fall of the holy American empire.
🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
It was on CBS sometime ago,
Loved it!
Then, it was funny ha ha.
Now, it's funny uh oh...
And eye opening...
Maybe the smart folk should not write books?
Bad story telling, terrible editing, and who came up with these characters?
that's pretty much the book he wrote trying to warn us of this impending reality.
And what they are doing treason?
Welcome to the Kakistocracy
Can we switch to the Idiocracy timeline please?
U-p-g-r-a-y-e-d-d 2028: for A Double Dose of Democracy!
But maybe a mix of the two coz we are in clown world.
Oh no that's "IT."
Makes sense coz it feels like our country has become one mix clusterfuck in the sewers
I rewatched this last weekend and couldn’t sleep afterwards.
Disturbing.
At least it had a happy ending. 🤷🏽♀️
Unless, of course, they're *all* Russian assets, sex criminals etc
A dystopia built by rich ignorant fools only concerned with their own wealth and lives at the expense of everyone else, and without all the cool sci-fi tech.
All of us should write a book.
Close to what you are looking for.
Frightened me.