Political Dystopian

The story takes place almost entirely inside a priest's confessional office. Chapters alternate between a psychiatrist giving her confessions to the priest and the confessions of the very patients mentioned by the psychiatrist in her sessions. Every sentence that is written in the past tense is spoken aloud to the priest or by her, and every sentence that is written in the present tense is one of the priest's thoughts or an action she experiences.

The DRAG.N units were invented to support the marriage of the Universal Health Initiative (UHI) and Green Nation. Their purpose: mass airborne vaccinations to ensure health for all US citizens. The illogically expensive vaccines serve another purpose though. Laced with behavioral modification drugs, the REP vaccine has created a docile, drugged, and receptive American populace. The anti-UHI activists are determined to takedown the DRAG.N and the corrupt healthcare system.

The classic dystopian novella, Anthem, is one of the earliest books to explore a theme which has become a standard motif in science fiction literature: the search for individualistic expression in a repressive and rigorously organized society.

In Ayn Rand’s Anthem, humankind has entered a dark age at some point in the unspecified future. Individuality is no longer permitted, and people are assigned roles to fulfill in their lives. The work's protagonist, Equality 7-2521, is given an undesirable job as a punishment for thinking for himself and desiring to become a scientist instead. The novella outlines his journey as he starts to commit more “crimes” against society, such as desiring a companion of his own choosing, discovering electricity, and ultimately fleeing from his leaders.

As today’s society edges closer and closer to full-fledged collectivism; as the rights and dignity of the individual continue to be trampled underfoot in the name of “the collective good;” as more and more people refuse to study the history and logical conclusions of their beliefs, and claim that re-branding socialism wipes away its entire shameful and often bloody history, while simultaneously refusing to believe the massive amount of evidence of that history - the work of Ayn Rand is more crucial and relevant than ever.

October 15, 2016: Hillary died in her sleep today. I was smoking a fat Cohiba when I heard the news. We were still talking about Hillary a couple hours later when we heard a rumbling and went outside to West Broadway. A great throng of Bernies was moving toward us from Prince Street. The crowd grew as we watched, swollen by new Bernies as it moved. An ad hoc Bernie rally. Someone carried a large effigy of Bernie’s hoary head before it. I saw something red and realized it was a red flag, the universal banner of revolution, unfurled by revolutionaries since the Middle Ages.