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Wired has a recent article about author Octavia Butler and how her work presaged the "Make America Great" again campaign.
Octavia Butler, who died in 2006, was the author of such visionary science fiction novels as Kindred, The Parable of the Sower, and Dawn. Gerry Canavan, who just published a book-length study of Butler, describes her as one of the greatest writers of her era.
"I think you'd put her up there with Philip K. Dick and Le Guin and Delany and these other people who really made an impact on the way that science fiction circulates," Canavan says in Episode 234 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "Especially that mode of literary science fiction that's somewhere in the middle between genre fiction and prize-winning novels, she has to be top two, top three in that list."
Butler made headlines this year when fans noted that her 1998 novel The Parable of the Talents features a fascist politician who rises to power by promising to "make America great again." The comparisons to Donald Trump are obvious, but Canavan says the character was actually inspired by Ronald Reagan.
[...] Butler had a singularly dark imagination, and often had to do multiple rewrites in order to tell her stories in a way that readers would find palatable. But Canavan says that in the current political climate, Butler's dim view of humanity is starting to seem ever more relevant.
"She often thought about how easy it would be for everything to just kind of go back to the way it was," he says. "That the things that seemed like they were permanent progress were really just a kind of epiphenomenon of the wealth of the United States in the latter half of the 20th century, and that when that fell apart, all the bad days would come back again."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:23PM
The Democrats have a history of ignoring what the common people want and a lot of the support the GOP gets comes from people that are voting against the arrogance and elitism of the Democratic party.
I'm not going to disagree with you, but I'd qualify this to say that politicians in general "have a history of ignoring what the common people want." Or, rather, they find ways to placate some portion of the masses, while ignoring the rest of the demands and going their own way on their private agendas. After all, the vast majority of politicians are upper-class, powerful folks to begin with. Should it surprise anyone that they're "elitist"?
Sure, I'll happily criticize the Democrats for their elitism. But the Republicans are just as elite and just as well-known for disguising their agendas that benefit the powerful in a thin veneer of populism. Fleeing from one party to another simply for that reason is silly. It's all a bunch of rich folks trying to pretend they're somebody you'd like to have a beer with. The Republicans are just slightly better at that sort of act. Or maybe Republican supporters are just more happy to live with inequality, whereas Democrats often make inequality an explicit target in their platform but then maintain the status quo.