Dissolution

Author’s Notes

In 2017, a friend suggested I read Margaret Atwood’s, “The Hand Maid’s Tale”.  The story is a dystopian world where women are enslaved in a country dominated and controlled by religious fundamentalists who are intolerant of any dissent.  Atwood doesn’t describe how this society developed, but it made me wonder how such a situation may come to be.  The story caused me to reflect on America’s current circumstances, history, and cultural development. 

For example, New England was founded by Puritans exiled from England.  They emphasized education, local political control, and the pursuit of the greater good of the community which often required self-denial.  Or, the mid-Atlantic with a focus on global commercial trading while incorporating a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, materialistic, and mercantile emphasis with a profound tolerance of diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry.  Or, Middle America founded by English Quakers who welcomed people of many nations and creeds to their utopian colonies.  They were pluralistic and organized around the middle class with moderate and often apathetic political opinions.  Or, Virginia and North Carolina which are fundamentally conservative with a high value placed on respect for authority and tradition and very little on equality or public participation in politics.  Or, Greater Appalachia, founded by wave upon wave of settlers from Northern Ireland, northern England and Scotland who were intensely suspicious of aristocrats and social reformers; stubbornly locked into tradition, and evangelical fundamentalism.  Or, the deep South founded by slave lords from Barbados and the West Indies who created a bastion of white supremacy and aristocratic privilege where democracy was the right and privilege of the few and enslavement the natural lot of many.  Or, the states bordering Mexico, where Hispanic language, culture and societal norms dominate.  Or, the Left Coast, which combined Yankee faith in good government and social reform with a commitment to individual self-exploration and discovery.  Or, the mountain West, colonized by ruggedly independent people that tend to revile the federal government for interfering in its affairs, while demanding it continue to receive federal largess.

Each region so unique.  So different.  Yet united under a common constitution and a common flag.  At the same time, the political boundaries of each region seemed to harden over time, fueled by a 24-hour “news” cycle designed to provoke outrage in order to magnify viewership and therefore advertising revenue.  Perhaps radio first created the angry opinion as news reporting with inflammatory commentators, but television quickly recognized the profitability of rhetoric tailored to each subset of regional culture.  And so, the divisions within the nation have become wider.  Long before Marjorie Taylor Greene called for dissolution of the United States, America was unraveling, fueled by the widening chasm of income disparity, drug use, closure of mental health institutions, lack of respect and funding for education, the secularization of western society, and lack of accessibility to adequate affordable healthcare.

These trends, drove my research and interest in writing the novel, Dissolution.  I reread the Constitution, over and over and over.  I studied the European Charter of Local Self Government.  Could it be time for the U.S. to consider a major reimagining?  Could there be a better way for America to organize and govern itself?  Could MAGA nation be the force that drives America apart? 

I began voraciously reading editorial columns of both liberal and conservative writers; clipping and filing columns from newspapers.  I read Deaths of Despair, by Case and Deaton, On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder, Dark Mirror, by Gellman, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, reread The Third Wave, by Toffler, and Hot Flat and Crowded, by Friedman, The Next Civil War, by Marche, Collapse, by Diamond, People’s Republic of Walmart, by Phillips and Rozworski, and Shadowland, by Horn.  I spent hours diving into the dark recesses of the internet to try to understand the whole QAnon movement.  First to Reddit bulletin boards which led to 4Chan and 8Chan.  They, in turn, led to other sites that were incredibly disturbing.  This dark underbelly of American culture was so filled with violent rhetoric and racial hatred, that I was totally appalled and began to understand that there are significant numbers of people with weapon caches that are simply waiting for a general to rise up and lead them in an assault on American democracy, while incoherently (at least to me) screaming God Bless America.  So-called patriots ready to destroy the country they profess to be fighting for, militias actively practicing their drills while digging caverns and stockpiling food and supplies for the war they expect to come.

So, I began to write.  I wanted to tell a story of America divided by a disparity of wealth, health and education as a warning of what our future might be like if the forces of religious hatred were to rise unrestrained.  I envisioned Congress desperately seeking a solution to avoid civil war by dividing the country into its historical cultural regions and drafting a new Charter For America.  To dramatize this potentiality, I created two families whose lives are entwined over many decades.  Raymond Thomas, born poor, rises with the help of a self-made scion of industry, to create a dynasty of family and business that generates enormous wealth and power.

And the Randall family of solid working-class stock who are proud mill workers whose generations decline as timber resources are diminished and millwork is automated.  I follow them through World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam war.

I compare and contrast the Thomas lives of privilege with the Randall’s lives of struggle through marriage, education, and the twin drivers of opioid use; pain and despair.  The book is purposely dystopian; a possible prelude to The Hand Maid’s Tale. 

Dissolution tells the story of just one province; but life in the province of Ameriwest isn’t so perfect either as will be told in the sequel.  The intolerance of “Woke” culture, warming acidifying oceans, the desperate ocean mining for rare minerals to power the electrification of the world’s power grid, and other delicately “spinning plates” create a balancing act upon which the future of humanity may lie.  Perhaps there is an economic/social model that makes sense in this rapidly changing world of the future.  Who knows?