Mike Westphal 🇺🇦

Octavia Butler’s 1993 dystopian novel “Parable of the Sower” begins in July of 2024. Climate change is turning the globe into a hellscape with droughts, fires and calamitous weather events. Racial and class inequities have soared, women’s rights are under threat, and white nationalism and radical fundamentalism are taking hold. In the book’s sequel “Parable of the Talents” (published in 1998), a presidential candidate named Jarret, who wants to purge the country of those who don’t share his brand of militant Christianity, issues this call: “Help us to make America great again.” His opponent, Smith, is right when he calls him out as “a demagogue, a rabble-rouser, and a hypocrite.” But Smith is “such a tired, gray shadow of a man,” that Jarret is “able to scare, divide, and bully people” into electing him and quickly sets about implementing his fascist agenda.