So, today Camera Girl asked me whether I had figured out the plot for my sequel to \u201cThe Sniper.\u201d\u00a0 I had to confess that my efforts to outline the story had so far been pretty feeble.\u00a0 And this has a lot to do with work and the annoying responsibilities it entails.\u00a0 But I have been thinking of late about a plot line having to do with a very, very wealthy and powerful character (Connors) trying to change drastically the way that Americans live.<\/p>\n
And this ties in with the current state of affairs in these United States.\u00a0 It\u2019s apparent that people on the Left and the Right are turning to populist leaders and movements because the American dream doesn\u2019t seem to be working very well lately.\u00a0 Of course, the two sides of the political \u201cbinary\u201d would attack the problem in completely different ways.\u00a0 The Mamdani wing would confiscate all wealth and \u201credistribute\u201d it in a way that would turn the United States into Cuba or worse.\u00a0 But even the Right hasn\u2019t managed to turn America into a capitalist wonderland.\u00a0 Trump has made some moves to try and reverse the off-shoring of American industrial jobs but so far, the results have not been robust in my opinion.<\/p>\n
So, I look at this situation and I think that this may be the challenge of our age.\u00a0 And suppose the political parties aren\u2019t up to the challenge.\u00a0 And what if the corporations aren\u2019t interested in being part of the solution.\u00a0 If I want to get dystopian, I can have us descend into a rerun of the end of the Roman Republic with our own Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Caesar.\u00a0 We could run that playbook and end up with an Augustus ushering in the approximately five centuries of American imperial rule by destroying the republic.<\/p>\n
But what if I write a more hopeful tale.\u00a0 Not a utopia but a technocratic attempt to find a better way to organize society.\u00a0 Of course, artificial intelligence (AI) is the boogeyman of the day right now and it gets stood up as the cause of and cure for all our problems.\u00a0 So, I can easily be accused of jumping on the bandwagon if I have Connors use some form of AI to help design a different framework for integrating people with an optimal result for the great majority of the population.<\/p>\n
Now, I freely admit I haven\u2019t the foggiest idea what that would look like or even if such a thing is even theoretically possible.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t want to end up looking like Plato does when someone reads through his \u201cRepublic\u201d and the whole thing is a bunch of feeble arguments where he knocks down a bunch of straw men on his way to enthroning \u201cphilosopher kings\u201d as his best and brightest ruling over his ant hive of an ancient brave new world.<\/p>\n
But I think I would like to play around with this idea of a trillionaire re-ordering society along logical lines to optimize human happiness.\u00a0 So that\u2019s kind of my take on the sequel\u2019s plot.\u00a0 Of course, the first question I\u2019m asking myself is whether the attempt is a success or a failure.\u00a0 I\u2019ll have to roll it around to see which is more interesting.\u00a0 Have patience oh my friend Polemarchus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, today Camera Girl asked me whether I had figured out the plot for my sequel to \u201cThe Sniper.\u201d\u00a0 I had to confess that my<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,1289,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[4484,5205],"class_list":["post-37453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-the-american-archipelago-book-1-the-sniper","tag-the-sniper"],"yoast_head":"\n