Obama’s World 2050: Read Good Intentions Before the Election

The success of 2016: Obama‘s America shows there is an audience for conservative movies. Many movie-goers missed the obvious conservative message of a billionaire hero who saves Gotham City from the Occupy Gotham mob in the mega-hit The Dark Knight Rises. That Hollywood could at long last make Parts 1 and 2 of Atlas Shrugged for a niche-market represents an under-appreciated accomplishment.

If we look back, the books that have best put across a conservative message (or an anti-statist) message in the most indelible fashion have offered a vision of a future socialist or statist society. The classics, of course, are Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Now we have Bob Zeidman’s Good Intentions, a satirical novel about a future America in which political correctness has run amuck. Zeidman pictures a society in which everyone works for the state, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World “primitives” are the few remaining entrepreneurs.

Zeidman’s protagonist is Winston Jones (the counterpart of Orwell’s Winston Smith of 1984). Winston Jones is chosen by the Fairness for EveryBody Society to be the president because he has the required makeup—ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation, etc.—to “fairly represent the diversity of America.” In his attempt to escape his destiny as President, Jones goes about a voyage of discovery of the true America and comes to an understanding that it has veered radically off course.

The future America has solved the diversity problem by pairing couples to produce a homogenous gene pool, where everyone is alike. If we are all the same, there is equal opportunity and the government assures equal outcomes.  

Zeidman’s future Americans work for the government, where they work for the good of all. To prevent conflict in child rearing, one parent families are encouraged and the state provides an “e-father” for young boys and girls.  Property rights are not enforced because we are obliged to share with the less fortunate. In one scene, Winston encounters a frantic homeowner, in which illegal immigrants have decided to live. They ignore the plea “but this is my house” with the admonition that she should take care of the less fortunate. Perhaps they can perform some odd jobs to pay their way.

Zeidman’s future America has evolved into the ultimate nanny state. The state places patches of rubber matting around fences on which children might play along with warning signs (which make illegal the removal of the warning sign). The state protects us from ingesting things that might harm our health. In theGovMintBucks coffee shop, a “caffeinator” must be bribed to give customers sugared caffeine. After all, sugar causes obesity and hyperactivity in children and caffeine requires a prescription. Police are posted in the coffee shop to enforce these rules.

In his reluctant adventure of discovery, Winston encounters “The Documented,” a group of legal aliens that refuse to break the law and turn down government entitlements along with the mysterious Freedman Group— “subversives” who believe in free market capitalism and secretly run businesses without government interference. At the other end of the spectrum, he comes in contact with Radical Femlamism, a bizarre blending of Radical Feminism and Radical Islam.

I’ll not divulge further secrets. Just read Good Intentions and pass it on, and read it before the election.