No, Jerry.
It occurs to me
- Thread starter Diogenes
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No, Jerry.
I call 'em like I see 'em, Jerry.
SmarterthanYou
rebel
This is delusional thinking. Its why the government will always hold you under its boot. you willingly put your throat under it.
SmarterthanYou
rebel
and yet it doesn't stop them from doing it, almost always with the blind support of delusionals like asshat
SmarterthanYou
rebel
and you should most definitely tell the SWAT team that comes to enforce that unconstitutional law or court order.
Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints:
This captures exactly the idea I am exploring; once people are exhausted, cold, and desperate, the cultural, aesthetic, or moral frameworks of society become irrelevant. Practical survival overrides everything else.
@christiefan915
This captures exactly the idea I am exploring; once people are exhausted, cold, and desperate, the cultural, aesthetic, or moral frameworks of society become irrelevant. Practical survival overrides everything else.
@christiefan915
You should read Cormac McCarthy's books. They're as fatalistic as you are.
Irrelevant. Try to focus. I don't want you to be a victim if/when radical lefties abolish police and prisons, and that time is approaching, IMO.
I'm not going to be a victim because that's not going to happen, at least not in the U.S. Don't give in to fear-mongering. I googled the book:
"A speculative fictional account, it depicts the destruction of Western civilization through mass Third World immigration to France and the Western world."
I can't take books like this seriously because nobody has a window into the future. It would be just as easy for me to believe that the radical right will take away everyone's freedom, make us swear allegiance to something and force us to obey our leader or else. But that's not going to happen either, even though I often say facetiously that the trump administration is on a path to dictatorship.
As part of the left but not the radical left, I don't see us being organized enough to do what you said above. And I don't see it with the radical right, either. My position is that if events reach a tipping point, any rebellion from either side would be crushed in very little time.
I feel sad for you. And the girls.
I know it's a novel. Uh huh. The Handmaid's Tale has entered the chat.
Who said anything about a "rebellion"?
I know you know, which is why I don't understand why you'd take it seriously.I feel sad for you. And the girls.
"... if/when radical lefties abolish police and prisons..." That would be a rebellious act.
I take all information seriously, theoretical or not. What I act upon or choose to give weight to depends on the circumstances.
Not if/when radical lefties are elected or appointed to positions that have that legal authority.
Do you need examples, or can Search Assist find 'em?
I would argue that fiction is not equal to information, except what it says about the writer. Mamdani is only one person. And what's the problem with Search Assist? It's no different from any other AI including Grok.
You could argue that. I don't agree. I believe a work of fiction can also say a lot about human behaviors.
I didn't mention Mamdani, AFAIK.
I didn't say there's a problem with Search Assist.
I asked if you need it to look up some relevant information.
I don't disagree with that. I just don't believe in predicting the future. See 1984 by Orwell as an example.
Then can you name any radical leftie politicians who would abolish police and prisons?
Snark.
Are you seriously stating that fiction cannot provide foreshadowing?
Sure, I can. Does that mean Search Assist didn't find any?
Yes, foreshadowing in fiction is a narrative device in which suggestions or warnings about events to come are dropped or planted. Foreshadowing often appears at the beginning of a story, and it helps develop or subvert the audience's expectations about upcoming events. IRL you could call it a guess.
I asked you, not Search Assist. Search Assist isn't going to give me your opinion.
Yes.
Fiction can serve as a serious harbinger (warning or foreshadowing of dangers), even if it is not literal prophecy or a predictive model. Dismissing works like Orwell’s 1984 solely because they are fiction misunderstands how literature, especially political dystopias, functions.
Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four (published 1949) as a warning drawn from observed totalitarian practices, not as pure invention detached from reality. He drew on Stalin’s USSR, the Spanish Civil War, Nazi methods, wartime propaganda, and the mechanics of power he had witnessed. The novel extrapolates real tendencies—surveillance, language control, historical revision, enforced orthodoxy, and the equation of power with truth—into a coherent nightmare. Its power comes from pattern recognition and logical extension of existing abuses, not crystal-ball prediction of exact technology or calendar dates.
Key concepts from the book entered ordinary political vocabulary precisely because they named recognizable phenomena:
- Newspeak and the deliberate narrowing of language to limit thought.
- Doublethink (holding contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both).
- The memory hole and systematic rewriting of the past.
- Thoughtcrime and the policing of private belief.
- “2 + 2 = 5” as the demand that ideology override evidence.
- The telescreen as the fusion of entertainment, surveillance, and propaganda.
These are not fictional curiosities; they are analytical tools people still reach for when governments or institutions manipulate language, rewrite history, demand loyalty over facts, or expand monitoring. The adjective “Orwellian” exists for a reason.
Fiction is not disqualified as a warning simply because the specific setting (Oceania in 1984) did not materialize on schedule. Warnings work by illuminating mechanisms and incentives, not by forecasting every detail. Animal Farm is also fiction, yet it remains a sharp depiction of revolutionary betrayal and the corruption of egalitarian rhetoric. Other dystopias (Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, We) function similarly: they isolate tendencies already present and show where they lead if unchecked. Treating them as unserious because the plots contain invented characters or exaggerated institutions is like dismissing a medical case study because the patient is composite rather than a named individual.
The claim that fiction “cannot be taken seriously as harbingers” is therefore too absolute. Good political fiction can be more clarifying than many nonfiction tracts precisely because it dramatizes incentives, psychology, and consequences in concentrated form. One still judges each work by how accurately it maps real dynamics, not by its genre label. 1984 has endured because large parts of its analysis of power, truth, and language continue to map onto later developments; that is why people keep returning to it when those dynamics intensify. The fictional frame does not cancel the diagnostic value.
Grok
Grok is an AI assistant built by SpaceXAI. Chat, create images, write code, and get real-time answers from the web and X.
grok.com
I wasn't discussing opinions. I asked if you needed help determining factual examples. Do you?
I was going to say that fiction is only a serious harbinger if the prediction comes true. However, Search Assist corrected me.
Fiction can serve as a serious harbinger (warning or foreshadowing of dangers), even if it is not literal prophecy or a predictive model. Dismissing works like Orwell’s 1984 solely because they are fiction misunderstands how literature, especially political dystopias, functions.
Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four (published 1949) as a warning drawn from observed totalitarian practices, not as pure invention detached from reality. He drew on Stalin’s USSR, the Spanish Civil War, Nazi methods, wartime propaganda, and the mechanics of power he had witnessed. The novel extrapolates real tendencies—surveillance, language control, historical revision, enforced orthodoxy, and the equation of power with truth—into a coherent nightmare. Its power comes from pattern recognition and logical extension of existing abuses, not crystal-ball prediction of exact technology or calendar dates.
Key concepts from the book entered ordinary political vocabulary precisely because they named recognizable phenomena:
- Newspeak and the deliberate narrowing of language to limit thought.
- Doublethink (holding contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both).
- The memory hole and systematic rewriting of the past.
- Thoughtcrime and the policing of private belief.
- “2 + 2 = 5” as the demand that ideology override evidence.
- The telescreen as the fusion of entertainment, surveillance, and propaganda.
These are not fictional curiosities; they are analytical tools people still reach for when governments or institutions manipulate language, rewrite history, demand loyalty over facts, or expand monitoring. The adjective “Orwellian” exists for a reason.
Fiction is not disqualified as a warning simply because the specific setting (Oceania in 1984) did not materialize on schedule. Warnings work by illuminating mechanisms and incentives, not by forecasting every detail. Animal Farm is also fiction, yet it remains a sharp depiction of revolutionary betrayal and the corruption of egalitarian rhetoric. Other dystopias (Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, We) function similarly: they isolate tendencies already present and show where they lead if unchecked. Treating them as unserious because the plots contain invented characters or exaggerated institutions is like dismissing a medical case study because the patient is composite rather than a named individual.
The claim that fiction “cannot be taken seriously as harbingers” is therefore too absolute. Good political fiction can be more clarifying than many nonfiction tracts precisely because it dramatizes incentives, psychology, and consequences in concentrated form. One still judges each work by how accurately it maps real dynamics, not by its genre label. 1984 has endured because large parts of its analysis of power, truth, and language continue to map onto later developments; that is why people keep returning to it when those dynamics intensify. The fictional frame does not cancel the diagnostic value.
Grok
Grok is an AI assistant built by SpaceXAI. Chat, create images, write code, and get real-time answers from the web and X.
I wasn't discussing opinions. I asked if you needed help determining factual examples. Do you?
Search Assist
No, a prediction does not have to come true for it to be considered a harbinger. A harbinger is simply a sign or warning of something to come, regardless of whether the predicted event actually occurs.
WikipediaSo I go back to saying it's only a guess, and it's up to the individual how to take it.