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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: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:51PM
I'm not going to respond to the random rhetoric about an agenda here, just to note that I'd happily mod you informative for the link to info on the slogan if you hadn't sullied it with BS. Just precisely what from the "quick glance at her bio" supposedly tells us "all ya need to know"?
Anyhow, what I really wanted to say was that whether or not the exact words "Make America Great Again" were used by Reagan or even other previous politicians, MANY previous campaigns have used SIMILAR rhetoric, perhaps most notably in presidential races with FDR in 1932 ("Happy Days Are Here Again") and Kennedy in 1960 ("A Time for Greatness"). For those who want to take a negative perspective on history, FDR steamrolled the largest expansion of the federal power ever seen and even fellow Democrats began to worry about whether they had a "king" in the White House when he ran for a 4th term. JFK had his detractors too, worried about other power consolidation in the usurpation of states' rights in the Civil Rights era, warmongering in the Cold War crises going on beyond the "Camelot" propaganda, etc. I'm NOT arguing these presidents were bad, only that slogans about "making things better" or "great" are common, and we can always find negatives in presidents who attempt any major actions.
I'm no fan of Trump, but this idea of sci-fi "warning" us about anything with this slogan is just silly. Lots of leaders have had agendas for major change. Sometimes they accomplish it; most of the times they don't. But even if they do, there is bound to be some negative aspects and sacrifices. None of this is to argue we SHOULDN'T fear Trump -- personally, I'm mostly concerned about the fact that the Executive Branch's power has been steadily growing larger and larger since FDR. If there's any threat of "tyranny," it's because of how much America has allowed previous presidents to get away with, contrary to the express wishes of the Founders for a weaker centralized government and particularly a weakened executive. With our modern system, it's almost inevitable that some leader will eventually take all that power and do horrible things with it. (Some would argue some presidents already have....)