(EXCERPT FROM AN UPCOMING SATIRICAL NOVEL: AFTER THE REVOLUTION.)

THE PRELIMINARY EVENT of the Revolution, which led to all that followed, was the presidential candidacy of Big Daddy. Eighty year-old politician of retro Marxist beliefs, which he’d clung to for six decades, unswayed by continuous technological changes and countless political upheavals– the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites only one of them.

The ultimate True Believer, maintaining his faith in the God That Failed.

This fixed dedication was the chief attribute that caused a generation of rootless young people to flock to his banner. He knew their hunger for a cause. He– Big Daddy, the ultimate father figure (dare we say patriarch?) would provide for all wants. Would answer the desire for a world free of want, free of need, of unease, anywhere– of having to face the awful questions of life or the discomforting realities of a fallen, imperfect world.

Like good daddies everywhere, Big Daddy promised to write a big check– or several– to cover their regrettable debts, as well as correct the mentioned imperfections of society, and make all things well. 

Symbol more than person, he fervidly played the part– white-haired, red-faced, perpetually outraged, waving his arms about– as his young supporters ran his campaign and propped him up psychologically and physically (he’d suffered a recent heart attack), and the great Cause, akin to a religious movement, grew in momentum. Streets filled with the voice of Change (what the mob perceived as Change) until the movement appeared to be– and became– unstoppable. 

(Read a previous excerpt, “People’s Coffee.”)

(Note: The novel will present an artistic run-through of pseudo-left revolution and its consequences– so we don’t have to experience it for real. Last chapter: “A Better Left.”)

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-Karl Wenclas, New Pop Lit NEWS