Brian Hess reviews Gunther Roosevelt’s Tales of New America, a collection of Turner Diary-type short stories. From the book’s back cover:
20–50 years from now when America has fallen apart economically, socially and racially. The Federal Government loses control as revenue dwindles and poverty spreads. To survive, States begin forming autonomous regions amidst the disintegration. Emerging from the disorder, Northern Mountain States of the west gradually form a new American Republic, de facto at first, finally in law, as it becomes a bastion of prosperity and a crucible of liberty. A religious and martial people arise with a will to reclaim ruined western States lost to invaders, oligarchs and degradation.
It’s been said that artists are at the forefront of a culture’s zeitgeist, holders of a candle to our collective unconscious.
Perhaps such imaginative, eschatological depictions of a dystopian future revolving around a race-based civil war (see also these two reviews of Elysium) are tapping into an emergent, coalescing desire for secession, or at least a more thorough and forthright segregation.
