When I started submitting Come the Harpies to agents and publishers, I was hoping that the novel would be picked up quickly. That's because many of its themes are relevant to the social and political situation we find ourselves in today, largely as an outcome of Trump's horrific performance as president. I figured that my dystopian effort would be far more compelling to an audience while Trump was in office, assuming that America would wise up and kick him out on November 3.
Now, I'm not so sure that we will be swearing in a new president in 2021.
Come the Harpies projects what things will be like 50 years from now based on what's happening in America today. It's a nation where all citizens are required to carry guns; where laws regulating the environment, food processing, worker safety, oil production and much more are wiped off the books. It's a country where a small group of business plutocrats hold absolute power and where immigration is banned and non-white people have been sent into exile or conscripted into slavery.
Needless to say, it's a nasty, smelly, violent place on the verge of environmental apocalypse.
In other words, it's what the nation would be like after 50 years of Trump-like, white supremacist rule. The most terrifying thing is since I finished the manuscript, the nation is taking on more and more of the aspects depicted in its pages. It's playing less as a satire and more like a prophecy.
Trump is following the same playbook that others like Putin, Xi, Orben, Erdogen, Hitler, and Mussolini employed to install authoritarian rule. And it seems to be working. Trump has finally latched on to a winning strategy--at least a strategy that won him his first term. And that strategy is fear.
Fear is the strongest human emotion. Nothing stokes human response more than fear. And Trump knows how to push those buttons.
So much to fear:
- Fear that growing numbers of brown and black people will overwhelm white privilege.
- Fear that the Dems will take your guns away.
- Fear that the Dems will take away your religion, your unborn babies, your right to use incandescent light bulbs.
- Fear that "those people" will take away your job and suck up all your government benefits.
- Fear that the Dems will make you drive electric cars, take away your oil and coal, and close down the country just because of some stupid flu virus.
- Fear that your business will have to serve diverse-gender people.
- And the biggest fear of all: that Dems will make the government spend much less on military stuff and much more on healthcare, college tuition, infrastructure, childcare and other non-essential things.
While the basis for most of these fears is unfounded, ridiculous, and completely ginned up by the extreme right, the feeling of fear across vast swaths of America is quite authentic. This can be attributed to the blunt force of Trump's American Carnage messaging supported by his incredibly effective propaganda machine embodied by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and various websites.
It's sad, but logic, truth, facts, empathy, love, and competence are all ground under the boot heel of fear. We've evolved to make fear the paramount emotion because human survival depends on our ability to react to danger--and to Trump, that danger is Democrats.
So for all the decency and effective leadership that Biden represents, I can't help thinking that Trump has a winning formula for a large portion of the vote--just scare the bejesus out of people! Between that, voter suppression and the absurd Electoral College, I fear November 3 could be a very long night.
Of course a Trump victory would be good for my book, which lays out in detail what to expect after another four years of Trump, and beyond. On the other hand, I truly hope that November 3 is not a good day for my book.
America could use some good news.
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