Heinlein’s Crazy Years got nuthin’ on us. His pastors ate clay sandwiches. We’ve got the crazocracy. His fictional society recovered and achieved space flight. We won’t have the education, technology, or resources to redevelop the automobile because they’re all “racist.”
Our future will look a lot more like Anthem than RAH’s “future history.”
Carl “Bear” Bussjaeger
June 24, 2020
HEINLEIN WAS AN OPTIMIST
[Both Heinlein and Rand references in one great quote. Few will fully understand and they will puzzle at it’s meaning until they spend many hours reading the books. Sorry about that.
I post this anyway, knowing that only 25%, at best, will fully appreciate it with additional effort. But the enthusiasm of those the get it on the first pass will be awesome.—Joe]
Mr. Huffman:
You may want to read one of Heinlein’s more pessimistic long-short-stories, “The Year of the Jackpot”. It can be found in the collection “The Menace From Earth”.
Rather than just the “Crazy Years” I sometimes fear that this is actually the year of the jackpot.
Rand was, well, sui generis, and I read Anthem when I was 13 or 14, the first work of hers that I read. I continued on that path, and even got most of zine they published in the ’60s and ’70s.
Heinlein was an optimist, and I fully intend on getting the full Virginia edition collection – when I’m rich and famous instead of handsome and modest.
I prefer Heinlein to Rand.
The Real Kurt
The only answer to which author should be “RAH RAH RAH!”
I just started reading Rand. When I was first introduced it was a hard read and “everybody hated it” and I never got back to it. I read _Atlas Shrugged_ and understood.
I use to describe myself as “An optimist that knew better.” Then I found how deep stupid runs in our society.
I had the pleasure of talking to a very smart co-worker in a very large firm in 2008 about the presidential election. I asked him who he was voting for “Obama” “Why?” He looked at me like I had just grown horns, swept his hands down his lovely brown skin and said “You have to ask?”
When everything is racist, there is nothing left. My fear is that at some point somebody is just going to have “had enough” and at that moment will decide the best response is to be the person he is accused of being.
“So you think I’m a racist, murdering hateful SoB because I’m white, own guns and support Trump? Let me show you what hateful *really* means. Let me show you what mass murder really looks like.”
I’m scared out of my mind for when that person snaps.
Spite is very powerful. Knew a few people who voted Trump not because they thought he had a chance of winning, but did so out of sheer spite for Hillary. And what do you know, it worked.
If you don’t give anyone a third option, they must be this or that, there is no middle ground or no opinion, they may very well stand against you just to spite you for putting them in that position. The riots today have made this abundantly clear, and I do not believe we’ll be voting our way out of this one.