➡ The Corbett Report held its first live stream, discussing the book “Powerless” by Harry Turtledove, which is nominated for the Prometheus Award. The book, set in a parallel universe where Soviet ideology is global, follows a man who refuses to display a communist propaganda poster in his shop, leading to potential severe consequences. The discussion also drew parallels between the book’s themes and current real-world issues, such as mask mandates. The book was praised for its compelling writing and ability to immerse readers in its alternate reality.
➡ The text discusses a character named Charlie who is average, if not slightly below average, but deeply cares about his shop and his job. Despite his shortcomings, he doesn’t want to make grand political statements, he just wants to live his life. However, his refusal to put up a poster becomes a political act in itself, leading to a series of events that question the idea of powerlessness. The text suggests that even small acts of defiance can spark significant changes, even if they don’t immediately succeed.
➡ The text discusses the impact of Charlie Simpkins’ actions, questioning whether they were a failure or had value. It explores how his situation improved personally and socially after being relocated, despite the harsher climate. The text also highlights how adversity can bring people together, using the Covid-19 pandemic as an example. It concludes by discussing the power of the individual and the system, and the potential for change through non-compliance and undermining the system.
➡ The text discusses the dangers of rapidly changing or demolishing a political system, emphasizing that the transition phase can be risky and potentially lead to a backlash. It also explores the concept of post-totalitarianism, which is a form of ideological control over people that is often more dangerous because it’s less noticeable. The text further highlights that societal issues are not just about political structures, but also about the societal fabric and daily life. Lastly, it discusses the role of individual beliefs and group belief systems in shaping society, and the potential consequences of not allowing individuals to have their own beliefs.
➡ The text discusses the importance of individual defiance against oppressive systems, using the example of a character named Charlie who tries to improve his workplace. It also mentions the story of Havel, who faced persecution for his political dissent but later became the President of Czechoslovakia. The text raises questions about whether it’s better to conform or resist, and suggests that even if resistance doesn’t lead to immediate political change, it can still bring about personal transformation and potentially inspire others.
➡ The text discusses the importance of wearing an N95 mask during the COVID pandemic, and the speaker’s experience with lockdowns in Ontario. The speaker also mentions their books, “Much Ado About Corona” and “All the Humans are Sleeping”, and encourages readers to check out free previews online. The text ends with a discussion about a book they’ve read, and the audience’s mixed reactions to it.
➡ The discussion revolves around a book that explores themes of freedom, anarchy, and societal change. The book, while not heavily based in science fiction or fantasy, is considered for the Prometheus Awards due to its pro-liberty stance. The conversation also touches on the importance of societal conditions for freedom, the concept of ‘second culture’, and the potential chaos that could ensue from sudden anarchy. The participants appreciate the book’s ability to provoke thought and inspire resistance against tyranny.

Welcome back, friends. Welcome back to the Corbett Report. This is film literature in the new World Order, and it’s a very special edition of the Corbett Report, namely the first ever Corbett Report live stream. Yay. Amazing. And we have dozens of Corbett Report members in the crowd live watching this conversation as it is happening. And I know it’s not going to be a comfortable time for some of the people in the audience given their time zones. So. So thank you to the Corporate Report members who have shown up for this conversation and who have hopefully read the book in question.

Because this is going to be a conversation where we are discussing Harry Turtledove’s Powerless, which is up for nomination for the Prometheus Award this year, as you should know, because I talked about that in my conversation on resistance fiction with Today’s guest, John C.A. manley, a month or two ago. And of course I’ll link that up in the show notes if you, if people need to get that information. But if you have read the book, you’re in for a treat. If you have not read the book but are planning to read the book, I highly suggest you stop listening and start reading because there will be spoilers galore.

We’re going to spoil the hell out of this book. So you have been warned. If you are planning to read the book, I really suggest you read it first and then listen to this conversation. All of that being said, if you are watching the podcast of this later on and you would like to join in the live version of this filmless New World Order podcast and to comment and to chat and to leave your questions alive on air, then sign up to be a Corbett Report member and you will get access to the link to this live stream, which will be in the newsletter the week before the film literature New World Order Podcast is recorded.

And we’ll try to do this every month if it works out. All of that being said, let’s get into the discussion of Powerless by Harry Turtledove. And I want to start by reading a review, a review by specifically Today’s guest, John C.A. nley, who you will remember and of course you already know as the author of Much Ado About Corona. He’s the author of all the Humans Are sleeping. He’s@ blazingpinecone.com and he has this article, this review that is that he’s posted himself and that in fact the. The lfs.org website of the Prometheus blog has posted up in preparation for their Prometheus Awards, of which Powerless is one of the finalists.

And this review is headlined Tired of Giving Lies a Helping Hand. A review of Harry Turtledove’s best Novel finalist, Powerless, which says, charlie Simpkins is no philosopher. He’s just another comrade in the West Coast People’s Democratic Republic operating a vegetable shop in Los Angeles. He smokes the government issued Progress cigarettes. He drinks the rationed rotgut at the local Class 4 tavern and generally lives a life of silent compliance. Until one day the government asks him to put up a communist propaganda poster with the words Workers of the World Unite. Instead of taping it to the window of his shop, he tosses it in the garbage.

That’s how Harry Turtledove’s Powerless opens, with one man finally saying no, even though the consequences could easily involve time breaking rocks in a concentration camp. Charlie understood all that. He didn’t feel particularly heroic about chucking Workers of the World Unite into the trash can. He was just sick and tired of giving Lies a helping hand. The lies, no doubt, would go on all the same, but they could go on without him. This alternative historical fiction is set in a parallel universe where Soviet ideology has spread around the world, forming individual democratic republics on the path to true communism.

And then John goes on to say powerless caught my attention because of the many parallels to my own novel, Much Ado about Corona. In its opening pages, the owner of a bakery rather than a vegetable shop has put up a sign rather than taken one down that opposes the COVID mask mandates. No face, no no service. In both novels, refusal to parrot the state’s ideology escalates to life threatening consequences. And I will admit when I was reading this book, I didn’t, I didn’t make that connection. But yes, it is kind of the, the same story, but from the opposite angle.

It’s actually an interesting parallel. So joining us today to discuss this and his take on Powerless is, yeah, for mentioned, John C. A Manley. John, thank you very much for joining us again today. No, I’m glad to be here. And you know, that part that was what really grabbed me about the book because I remember back in Ontario, all the shops that were required to put up a sign that said, you know, mass required different versions of it, but, and I know so many shop owners who hated having to put that sign up saying, demanding their customers wear a sign or wear a mask.

I mean, and I actually helped one green, one groceries, they still put the sign up, but they put the sign up at the bottom of the door upside down because it didn’t say where or how. And then they put their own sign up prominently that said, no masks, we won’t ask. And it was quite something because it ended up getting the attention of CTV News. And all these different news agencies came in and attacked them viciously. They lost about 20% of their customers and tripled the rest of the numbers. And they had people traveling like two hours to come shop at their store.

Interesting. And so that was the. Was that one of the sparks of Much Ado About Corona? Yeah, to. To some degree, there was another natural path up in Northern Ontario who actually did put up a sign saying, if you have a mask, you’re not allowed to enter my store. So that her in particular was really what sparked it. That actually came later whilst I was writing the book. It was like stuff I was writing about was coming true. Like, I wish my book was an alternative history and this one wasn’t. Well, actually, I wish they were both alternative history.

Sorry, let me. Yeah, I was gonna say. Wait, are you saying you want a Soviet in North America? Well, anyway, I think I get what you’re saying. California is almost there, but. Oh, can I just make a correction? When I was on your show last time, I actually said. It was so funny. When I was listening to the audio, I said. I was describing Turtledove’s book and I said that they had gone full blown capitalist. Oh, I don’t. You didn’t seem to notice and I hope no one else noticed, but that’s what I said and I actually meant no communist.

I. I suffer from a slight bit of dyslexia, which gets filtered out in my books, but not in live broadcasts. I didn’t notice it at the time and I certainly wasn’t confused when reading this. I think it’s pretty obvious what this. It. It’s pretty obvious to me what this is right off the get go. And I guess just maybe this isn’t the important part, but my literary analysis of this book. I really, really enjoyed the writing of this book. I think it’s incredibly well written. It feels very real and very sort of lived in as a place, as a time and a place.

And you just kind of feel what it is like to live in this environment on a day to day basis and concentrating on someone who’s. I won’t say a nobody, but basically a nobody, politically speaking. Just an average guy just going about his average life is, I think, a good way of taking something that could be this grand sweeping tale about, you know, the people at the top of the system and what they’re doing. But no, we get the perspective of one of the Lowly people who’s just looking and doesn’t quite even understand what’s happening at those higher levels of power.

He’s just trying them do his job, basically. And I think that’s a good way of framing this, a story like this and grounding it in a sort of reality. Anyway, I quite enjoyed the writing of this. Clearly Turtledove is a good writer and is able to, as I say, kind of ground you in that reality that it feels very real to the point where I just kind of. Once you get the idea, once you get the premise. Oh, okay, so this is some kind of alternate history, I guess, is communist America. Okay, cool. And once you accept that and you’re on board, and then as you say later on in your own.

In your own review, you say, it’s a page turner, a genuine page turner. And I agree with that. It. For me, I could barely put this book down once I started reading it because it was absolutely compelling and I definitely wanted to see what was going to happen next. That’s just kind of my overall literary analysis before we get into all the ideological stuff. But how about for yourself? What’s your experience of reading? Yeah, no, I was the same. And it was very much too. That it wasn’t too sensational. Like there wasn’t like. Like the level of a thriller novel.

But it was. It was interesting because you cared. You cared about him in a way that was odd because a lot of things I don’t like about Charlie’s character. I mean, if. If anything, he’s kind of you. You can see that he’s average, but I’d say he’s almost like a little below average in some ways. Like, you know, he doesn’t seem to be trying. The only thing he’s the redeem. Most redeeming quality seems to be how much he cares about his shop. And despite how all the limitations, he’s really trying to produce a good customer experience.

You know, he does the books and you can tell he really cares about his job. But I don’t remember any time in the book where he actually spent any time with his kids, for example. Yeah, no, that is a good point. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, I was going to defend him insofar as I would say Charlie, certainly he’s not the kind of hero that I think we want to see in a story like this in at least at the sort of the. The base level. We want to see some sort of hero who’s going to step up to the plate and start, you know, chewing Chewing them a new one and tearing them.

Tearing them a new one or whatever people say. Right. And. But he’s clearly not that. He’s just a guy who’s stumbling around and he’s. Yeah, going. Getting drunk and not particularly accomplishing very much. But I. I would actually defend that side of the Charlie Simpkins character because again, for me, at any rate, this is just the kind of the everyman just try. Who. Who repeatedly says he just wants to live his life. He just wants to be left alone. That’s all he wants. He’s not trying to make some grand political statement or some big gesture. This wasn’t from some deep ideological thing.

He just wants to live his life. And I can definitely sympathize with that. And in fact, I would say in my ideal world, wave the magic wand and, you know, arrive in Corbett’s utopia. People wouldn’t have to be these political people always thinking about how do they situate themselves in society, making these grand political statements. No, just live people living their lives and leaving each other alone is. Is my idea of utopia, so I can kind of sympathize with that aspect of it. But, yeah, when you bring it up, yeah. I mean, the greatest thing that he has to even say about himself, essentially, is that, well, he doesn’t beat his wife, which for some reason is just kind of the given in this alternate timeline.

But, yeah, he’s certainly not a family man or someone that you really get the impression that he’s really taking care of his family. No. Though I wonder, too, because, like, this is one of the things I kind of took from the novel was because he doesn’t push too hard. Like. Well, first of all, I guess an interesting point with the essay that it’s based on, you know, Havel’s essay, which I was able to get through some of it. I. It was 80 pages long. I wasn’t expecting that. But the whole idea that, oh, am I going to lose the thought? Oh, well, that Havel’s argument was that dissidents are a result of communist society.

And I kind of see that in his character. Like, he had no ambition to be a political opposition. It just naturally. Because he just said, you know, I just got tired of the lies. I just couldn’t put the poster up. He couldn’t even really articulate why he could not put that poster up on the wall and that it was. So there was that aspect that he was just kind of a natural consequence of this communist society. But also because of that, he didn’t push too hard and maybe that’s why he never ends up in a labor camp.

Yeah. And. And because there’s that delicate sweet spot in something like this where he just kind of rides the line internally exiled. But not. Not in the hard labor camp. You know, it could have been worse, could have been better. Let’s get to that, because, actually, I think that’s going to be, for me, the most interesting part of this discussion. But before we get to that, of course you raise the specter of Havel’s Power of the Powerless, which is obviously, I would say, the at least a seed or a kernel for this story and specifically for people who haven’t read it, I.

I really suggest. If you’ve read Powerless, I. I really suggest you read Power of the Powerless because it’s. It’s got some very, very interesting philosophizing going on about the post. What does he say? Not post totalitarian, but. Yeah, post totalitarian is what he calls it. Yeah, post totalitarian society, et cetera. What that means and what revolution looks like and what dissidents are. And he is very clear to delineate dissidents as if. Anyway, he says a lot, but specifically chapter three is where he introduces this idea. The manager of a fruit and vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan Workers of the world unite.

Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean? I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions.

And he goes on to talk about how the slogan is not obviously ideologically important. It’s not some sort of grand statement that this greengrocer is making. The slogan he goes on to say, is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally. Verbally, it might be expressed this way. I, the greengrocer, xy, live here, and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient, and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.

This message, of course, has an addressee. It is directed above to the Greengrocer’s superior. And at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. And of course, that is the inciting incident, as we’ve talked about. That is exactly what ends up happening in this story that that turtledove is spinning out. And he, he, he spins it out in the way that. I guess again. Okay, let me get straight into this because to me, the most interesting part about this book is that I’d say that the title and the core concept of powerless and the ending of the book is one of those things where the book is reading you more than you are reading the book.

And I mean that specifically because the question is, how do you approach this title, this idea? Powerless, as in, of course, Charlie is told at some point that he is powerless in this system and it doesn’t matter whether there’s a sign in the window or not. The only thing that matters is of course, the party telling him that there should be a sign in the window, et cetera. You’re powerless to do anything about this system. And in the end, of course, spoilers, everybody. In the end, as we see this great counter revolution thing that’s happening with Eichenlode ultimately fails and Eichenlode gets internally exiled as well.

And the whole thing. What was this whole thing that happened? Was it. What did it mean? Did it amount to anything at all? And at the very, very, very end, of course, he meets I Can Load in Mojave and they talk. And it turns out that I Can Load says sort of, sort of looking at the glass half full. It’ll work out somewhere, some way someday. You know, we didn’t get it this time, but it’ll happen. And Charlie is kind of, you know, shrugging his shoulders really. And I think the question for us is, so what do, what do we think? Is Charlie powerless? Was that act of putting, not putting the wind, the sign up in the window, did it matter at all or was it the inciting? In a sense, and obviously I don’t think the novel is quite making this argument, but in a sense, it’s the thing that leads to ultimately this grand sweeping idea of freedom and people catching on and suddenly there’s so much activity happening and you see all these sweeping changes and it doesn’t work.

But the idea of freedom starts to catch on. We see how it can be viral and people can start genuinely opposing this completely unopposable system that how, you know, how could a greengrocer start anything but in a way to Some small extent he did, didn’t he? And I think the question, the big question mark in all of this is so was it completely a failure? Was it a total failure? Or was there value to what Charlie Simpkins did? And I think that’s kind of what the book is asking us at the end. Yeah, well, and it’s on a twofold level too.

On a societal level and on his personal life. On his personal life, I think his, his, his situation improved. I, I don’t know about you. I would have preferred being in that vill, you know, where he got relocated. Now he’s working with another dissident because he ends up being, you know, transferred to another shop. He’s actually around people that, and like I can low too is just down the street while a bus ride. I thought he ended up in a better situation, even though climatically, like as in referring to living in a desert climate was apparently harsher.

I, I thought just the fact that he ended up with people that he could relate to better, which is kind of questionable why they even would do that in that kind of situation. Well, this is actually what always happens, I guess, when the government pushes down is it actually binds people together. Like, you know, I, I can tell you my life before COVID and after Covid, my, my, my friend level of friends on a local level was vastly different. All the people I didn’t really like that much didn’t want to have anything to do with me all of a sudden, for some reason.

So funny. And then I met people that, you know, it was almost the basking was nice because, and I see that, because it was, you could automatically signal to people, hey, you don’t got a mask, I don’t got a mask. We got something in common here. Exactly. Well, this was, this was always one of my, one of my arguments throughout the whole scamdemic was that at the very least, this is a good wheat from chaff separation event. And you can start to see, literally see the people in your community that you could work with and that you could, you know, it’s a, it’s a great way to find other people and in a sense, yeah.

And, and I mean, it’s not like this is unrealistic. This is what totalitarian regimes have always done is exile, you know, internal exile or putting people in concentration camps. And yeah, it, of course, it serves the purpose of actually grouping all of this, these discontents and malcontents together, which, you know, I guess, you know, it’s funny because I guess you’re making the exact opposite argument to what I was thinking, because I would. I would have said that Charlie’s material conditions were clearly worse at the end of the novel. But I would say, even though Eichen Lode’s revolution failed, I would say that the sort of.

The WCPDR is in a better position now than they were before, because I think the implication is that that spark of freedom is not something that’s going to be squelched out by the. The Russians. I don’t think they’re just going to be able to completely get rid of that. I think that now that people have had that taste of freedom, it’s going to be that much harder to sort of drill it out of the population. But. But I am aware that that’s not necessarily in the text. I mean, maybe again, the text is reading me and that’s the way that I approach it.

That’s the way that I see what could happen in this world. I guess I’m kind of the Eichen Lode in this situation, because I think the glass is half full. No, I agree. I think. Well, because you could see with Charlie, when the revolution was kind of going unfolding, how many people were coming to a shop and they were clearly in favor of the revolution and willing to speak openly about freedom. And when they saw the threat of the Russians coming back to try to lock them back down, you know, they were very. Had a lot of animosity towards the Russians and saying things they never would have said before because the level of censorship in the book is quite heavy in the society.

So. No, I agree. I think that. And. And you know what? In that exact moment when as the Russians are coming and invading, um, the thing that I. That tickled me the most was that they started changing all the street signs around just to. Just to mess with the Russians so they wouldn’t be able to direct themselves and navigate through the city. I forgot about that. Yeah, and that’s the kind of thing that, to me is. That’s kind of. It’s not even a parallel. It’s kind of the escalation of the not putting the sign in the window.

It’s like the little things that people can do to monkey around with the system. The system depends on people’s compliance and acquiescence. And at the point at which people start realizing, oh, wait, this really rests on us, and we can start changing things around and sabotaging and undermining this again, that’s the kind of idea that I think survives even this, you know, even if I can load gets internally exiled. The idea of the freedom, I think, is what could catch on. Well, that was my preference. I think if I would was rewriting the novel. Not that I would dare do that, but if I was, I would actually take iken Lord out of the story.

I didn’t like having him in there. I liked him as a character, though. I have a lot of questions about him. But I would have preferred it was more just about them gumming up the system in more ways because there was way too much of that novel where it was Charlie, he’s grabbing the newspaper and he’s looking for Eichenlo to find out what Eichenlo did next. Or he had his ear to the radio constantly. And it was, you know, it’s kind of like creating that, you know, the politician savior. Yeah, but isn’t that. I don’t know, but isn’t that kind of the point of it? I mean, because again, Charlie, at his level of society figures I’m powerless.

There’s nothing I can do. But hey, there’s this politician and maybe this guy can do it. I think. Isn’t that gesturing to that? In fact, Havel writes about that in Power of the Powerless. Western Sovietologists often exaggerate the role of individuals in the post totalitarian system and overlook the fact that the ruling figures, despite the immense power they possess through the centralized structure of power, are often no more than blind executors of the system’s own internal laws, laws they themselves never can and never do reflect upon. I guess I can load breaks that mold because he clearly is reflecting upon the laws.

But. But it goes to show that, yeah, no individual is going to change it. You know, to me, if there was kind of one thing that was really interesting, and I’ll say this, I think the best writing is kind of like the best dreams. And I mean this in the sense that sometimes you can have a dream of a situation that you’ve never personally experienced, but through your dream, you experience that thing and you realize something from that dream that you wouldn’t have thought of before. And that happened to me specifically. I remember when I was a kid, I must have been eight or nine years old or something.

I remember dreaming one night that we had been burgled, that our house had been burgled while we were gone. And we came home and, you know, all the stuff had been taken out of our home. And obviously I’d never experienced that actual experience. But in the dream I got really angry and I was like, oh, that was My stuff, you know, somebody’s playing with my toys, like, this is my stuff. And when I woke up, I remember being surprised at that because if I had tried to imagine how would I feel in that situation? I mean, I can imagine being scared, like, oh, you know, this violation of personal space and security and stuff.

Or I can imagine a lot of things, but I don’t think anger would have occurred to me. But through the dream I realized, oh, yeah, anger, I definitely would be angry if somebody came and took my stuff. I never thought of that. And the best writing can be like that. I’ve never experienced the world of powerless, but I can sort of imagine what it would be like. And the thing that really got to me and made me really have to think was as, as the Iken Lode revolution, whatever is taking place, and as people are starting to come out of their shell and starting to get empowered and emboldened and starting to.

And it was interesting for Charlie to be in that situation where he’s the one who’s now saying, okay, guys, but you know, we gotta put the brake on this a little bit because obviously the Russians are watching and, you know, we don’t want to get them too riled up. We’re just, we’re just, you know, tinkering. We’re not going to mess with anything. And meanwhile, it seems like all of the people who had been quietly going along with everything are now starting to get really amped up and want full on 100% total destroy the system. And he’s like, yeah.

And that, that really brought home to me something that again, maybe I don’t consciously think about enough when it comes to situations like this. If you’re talking about completely and totally changing or demolishing a political system or something like that, the devil is in the details of the transition. That transitionary phase can be extremely dangerous because again, just like in the book, it can completely snap back the other way because people went too far, too hard, too quickly. And of course the. That weren’t. They weren’t ready for the response. And that was something that I guess I, you know, again, in the process of the book, I was kind of like, with Charlie, like, okay, guys, everybody just calm down a little.

Let’s just take it a little bit at a time. Oh, wait, they’re going too crazy with this. And that struck, that struck true to me that I could imagine that happening in a situation like this. It even got so bad that they said the Canadian Federation Communist Republic was complaining, and they said the Canadians never complain. About anything. And they’re complaining you’re becoming too free. It may be important just to clarify for the audience, because the term Havel uses post totalitarian doesn’t refer to like society after. It’s actually kind of. It was an interesting distinction because I think he could.

Totalitarian, for him was like brutal, violent dictatorship. Well, this post totalitarian was more the kind of George Orwell style where it’s sort of an ideological control over the people, which is much more dangerous, I guess, because people don’t realize what’s happening or that they’re a part of it. I don’t know. But, you know, it’s kind of what. This is the direction our world is going in, I think more so anyways. It’s not so much the brute control. Yes. And in fact, Havel does go on to talk about. The existential revolution that he is positing would be the real necessity here.

He talks about. Maybe I should bring up the quote here. So at one point he’s talking about the dissident movements, the so called dissident movements, because he’s always, he’s careful to delineate dissidents because he’s talking obviously in the framework of the, the 1970s, when, you know, Western people are writing about what’s happening behind the Iron Curtain and they, they talk about these dissidents and dissident movements as if there’s some sort of special class of people who are dissidents and what they are doing is having some negotiation with power in some way. And Havel’s like, no, these are regular people.

Like, I’m a, I’m a playwright, you know, I’m not a dissident. This isn’t who I, what I am. Anyway, so he’s talking, he always puts it in quotation marks. But the dissident movements do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems too radical. But on the contrary, because it does not seem radical enough for them. The problem lies far too deep to be settled through mere systemic changes, either governmental or technological. And I think that’s kind of the underlying point of Havel’s essay, and I would say powerless, is that this is.

Yeah, this isn’t about just a political system, just some sort of political thing that is happening. No, it, it’s every aspect of one’s life and, and society and even one’s own personal identity. And that is again, why I’m inclined to cut Charlie some slack. Yes, he does seem particularly unmotivated in a number of ways, and not Particularly the hero that we want him to be. But I do understand he’s grown up in this system where his entire life it’s always been about self censorship and staying in line and just getting by and scraping by with what’s what you have at hand.

And after a lifetime of that, I can imagine it is incredibly hard to break out of those patterns of behavior. So, yes, it’s not just about the. It’s not just about the political structure. It’s about the societal fabric and everything that’s woven into daily life. And that’s again, why I appreciate that this book concentrates on that sort of daily life more so than the what. What wrangling is happening at top of the political system. Yeah, yeah. That’s why I kind of wonder if I can load was out of the story, whether that would have motivated the characters to have been more to gum up the system more.

Like, I would have loved the story even if it took several generations, maybe passed on to the kid. I mean, it could be an epic novel, but of just gumming the system up continuously and getting people out of that. Well, they had that nice contrast. I forget her name. Mary. There was that lady who. Mary Ann Hannigan. Yeah, Anne Hannigan. That’s right. And she was totally ideologically attuned to the communist system because, you know, that’s the interesting thing I actually went try to determine. Because ideology doesn’t specifically refer to beliefs. It refers to like a group belief system.

So in this, you know, this whole. In Havel’s essay and in the book, they both point to this where, you know, there’s nothing wrong with having your own beliefs. But the thing is, nobody in this society is allowed to have their own beliefs or at least allowed to purport they have their own beliefs and they have to take on the beliefs of the. What, you know, Havel called a secularized religion. And instead of everyone having their individual beliefs and perceptions and opinions about reality. And I like the contrast when you see those conversations between Mary and Charlie in the novel, because Charlie, he’s not politically minded at all.

And she thinks he’s politically minded because she can’t see any other way of being reality. And, you know, she’s like, I just didn’t want to put the poster up. I’m not trying to be political. And she’s like, well, that is political. You know, so anyways, I just. I guess I would have. I’m also curious at. I can load what his true intentions were. Like, was he trying to create just a Better form of communism? Or was he just playing that card so that he wouldn’t end up, you know, in trouble? And, yeah, it’s interesting. And, yeah, you don’t really determine any of that at the end.

Right. It’s kind of. Kind of anticlimactic in a sense. You certainly don’t get any answers to what was really going on or what he was really attempting to do or how it, you know, came apart. Again, I would say that’s probably not the sort of the focus, but you’re, you’re, you know, you raise an interesting point because I can load, in a sense, as the deus ex machina of this story. Like, imagine if he hadn’t. Yeah. See, because. Because we are focusing on Charlie and Charlie’s story, we’re inclined to read it as the, you know, the tiny domino that knocks down the bigger domino that knocks down the bigger domino.

And you see that, you know, there’s the mean picture of the tiny domino that knocks down this gigantic domino because of the, you know, and so we tend to think of it like that, oh, Charlie didn’t put the poster in the window, so now the WCPDR is falling apart. Right. But really it’s just a coincidence that at the time that Charlie starts to notice and get interested and start reading the Daily Worker or whatever her every day, and all of this is the exact time that this political guy arrives on the scene. Right. You know, it’s just kind of one of those.

Well, what an interesting coincidence. But, yeah, what if that didn’t happen to me? Actually, the only character in the book that. That really read sort of false or hollow to me, from a literary perspective, was Mary Ann Hannigan. Only because her, clearly her only purpose in every scene that she’s in is just to be the foil, just to be that sort of representative of Communist. The Communist Party. Right. And there were a number of scenes where I noticed she would, you know, come into the store and have this, you know, back and forth with Charlie and leave.

And from the perspective of, you know, reality of the story, what was she doing in the store? Why did she come in? What was any of that about? She really just came in just to have this expository dialogue with Charlie and leave. So that kind of took me out of it a little bit. But I guess you need, I mean, you do need the mouthpiece of the, the party, I think, in here somewhere. And so she was the only one. Yeah, the only possibility with Charlie’s connection with iconload was that because at one point, remember Charlie or his wife, I can’t.

I think either one of them decides it’s a good idea to actually write. I can load and see if he can help. And I’m just wondering if, you know, how many people were doing that with Iconload, you know, was there. How many Charlie’s were there in the county or the country that sent him enough letters that maybe either gave him the courage to do whatever he did politically to get himself in power, which was always a big question, or, or just was of evidence for whatever facsimile of what sherrod of democracy they had there to say.

Look, there’s a lot of people who would like, you know, a little, loosen up the freedom a little. Maybe things would be a little more productive. You know, maybe like I like that scene in the warehouse when he gets transferred to the warehouse and they’re not using carts to move things around and Charlie shows up with a baby stroller and he’s like, let’s, you know, this makes things easier. We can. And I think that was what Havill said is like one of the problems of trying to oppress the people. Is it oppressive the state? Because if you want, you have a more efficient factory now, but then the people don’t feel as oppressed because they don’t have to haul sacks on their back.

Yeah, yeah. In fact, you just raised a good point. Because I remember reading in Hevel’s essay, he talks about his time when he, you know, was being cracked down upon and because of his political dissidents and sent to work at a brewery. And he, he tells the story of one of the people working at the brewery, a certain s. A person well versed in the art of making beer. He was proud, proud of his profession and he wanted our brewery to brew good beer. He spent almost all his time at work continually thinking up improvements. And he frequently made the rest of us feel uncomfortable because he assumed that we loved brewing as much as he did.

In the midst of the slovenly indifference to work that socialism encourages, a more constructive worker would be difficult to imagine. But then ultimately the brewery management started to get uncomfortable with this. They didn’t actually want to improve. They didn’t care about the beer. They didn’t want to improve their product. This guy was trying to change processes and make things better. And like. So eventually they, they, they basically moved him out of there because he was actually trying to improve things. No, no, no, we don’t, we don’t want that around here. And I was thinking, you know, oh, you know, Turtledove should have used that in here in some way.

But actually, yeah, now that I. Now that you raise that up. Of course he did. Yeah. Charlie was trying to improve things. Hey, why don’t we just use trolleys or something? You know, something with wheels to help move these sacks. Wouldn’t that make things better? And, of course, that gets him in trouble. So there you go. That is another parallel with the Pavel essay. After everyone else in the workplace starts bringing, you know, other carts and strollers, and it was almost like we never thought of this, you know, so. Yeah, no, and it should be. I just.

For, you know, people listening. It’s interesting with Havel, you know, the fact that. Well, he wrote that essay and then I think it was like, a few months later. Well, the. While the Secret Service started coming at his door every day. They interrogated him every day for several months, and then he was finally thrown in prison for four years, and then he became the President of Czechoslovakia. So, you know, it is quite a contrast. I mean, obviously, he believed in somewhat of a political solution, I guess, but. Which is odd because his book talks a lot about political order and then human order.

Yeah. So I was a little surprised when I discovered, you know, that to see that he eventually became the president. But. Well, I think he doesn’t outright reject the political. I just think he thinks there’s more to it than political. And I don’t think that’s necessarily incompatible with taking a political position. I mean, at any rate. At any rate, it was a different system by the time he took over. Right. I’m sure things were better. Yeah, well, different. Right. And that, again, that’s kind of the question, because, again, I think the question ultimately, at the end of the day, is this optimistic or pessimistic? And what does this say about our reality? Because the alternate history thing is all fascinating, but.

No, okay, so we’re in our reality, and we’re not in the Communist States of America or whatever. So what does this say about the world that we’re living in? And the question ultimately is, so was it. Was it worth it? Shouldn’t he have just put up the poster and got along and just, you know, that would have made it so much easier. And maybe he should have been like Gomez or the junk shop guy who, you know, turntail and ran at the right time. He cut and ran, and he’s probably safe wherever he is. Isn’t that the better strategy? Or.

Or is there some meaning to this? Did he get something from this act of defiance or, you know, and that’s the real question that we think have to face. And many of us could be asking that in our own lives for all sorts of things like the COVID thing. Well, maybe if I just put on the mask and just, you know, done the thing, I could have just gotten along to get along and been like everyone else and forgot, tried to forget it ever happened and just moved on with my life and it would all be fine now.

Right. As opposed to, you know, whatever happens to the characters in Much Ado About Corona. So I, again, I think that’s the question. And it’s really, it’s really a question that I think is important because I see it raised in the alternative media all the time in various forms is kind of like a, you know, the, the overarching narrative of everything is that they, them, those, the conspiracy controls everything. And they, they planned it all out, you know, generations in advance. And everyone is just following a script that they’ve all been given and they all obediently follow.

Since the dawn of the Egyptians. Exactly, exactly. And you can’t change any of it. It doesn’t matter. You know, it’s the kind of this, the, the old propaganda lay down Gi. You know, there’s nothing you can do. So to me, and I’ve always had the opposite of that, I guess again, I think I’m kind of the Iken lode here. I think, no, this is important. And yeah, it, it didn’t work in the way that they wanted it to or were trying to. But it’s not even about that political revolution. It’s about the revolution in people’s minds.

And that’s, that’s kind of my takeaway from this, that I think ultimately, yes, it was worth it that Charlie stood up to the party and did what he did, even if it doesn’t result in the change in the political order that he might have wanted. But at any rate, it resulted in something, at the very least, a change in himself that is now part of his identity. No, you could tell Charlie was a different person by the end of it. I kind of feel like if they had, if they hadn’t done the iconlode thing and had more of the just people gumming up the system, it will never have pushed it that fast too, too, it was too fast, too hard, and it was much more gradual and slower.

Even if it took 20, 30 years, the Russians wouldn’t have caught on. And if you had the benefits coming at the same time in the competition, I, I, I, I kind of feel I don’t Know if that was kind of the message there or not. I don’t really. It wasn’t really clear because Charlie had a lot irvin, especially the guy, the guy at the Daily Relic. He was kind of his mentor, you know, like telling him, go look in the law books. Because usually the laws are actually fairly good. They just don’t follow them. And you can throw their own laws back at them.

And, I mean, I remember doing that during COVID Like, I was able to go into nursing homes, like when my father was dying. They said, you can’t come in the nursing home. You’re not vaccinated. And if you do well or if you did want to come in, you got to get a rapid test. And I said, I’m not getting the rapid test. And I took out the guidelines from the ministry, and it says right here that in the case of palliative care, no rapid testing is required because even if I tested positive, they still had to let me in because the person was dying.

And, you know, I brought the laws and I showed it to them, and they still didn’t want to let me in. And I said, well, okay, well, since you guys are specifically breaking law, I’m going to sue the manager. I’m going to sue the attendant. You know, I laid it all out for them. They finally said, fine, you can go in, but you have to wear an N95 mask. You can’t wear one of the regular masks. So. And that was one of the few. Only time I wore a mask in the whole thing. It wasn’t my dying dad.

As soon as we got in the room, we just threw in the garbage. Of course. Yeah, but I just. So, yeah, of course. Again, that’s their little power trip. Yeah, yeah, I let them have. Because it was kind of like, Right, it’s the negotiation that happens. But yeah, no, exactly. Right. The using the law. Because nobody actually knows the laws. Even generally speaking, because you can’t make really bad laws, people aren’t going to let you get away with that. And I think that’s what happened with COVID because there was no real political solution to Covid. It was just largely a lot of people gumming up the system.

I mean, it got embarrassing by the third lockdown in Ontario because the streets were more busy during the lockdown than they were when lockdown wasn’t on. Right. The first lockdown, it was a ghost town. The third lockdown is like, everyone’s like, well, I’m on vacation. Let’s go somewhere in the streets, you know, and it Just looks embarrassing. Like, yeah, the restaurant was closed, but I don’t know where everyone was going. But they were going somewhere, congregating in some unapproved manner, undoubtedly. All right, John, we have. Can you believe it? We’ve already been talking three quarters of an hour about this.

Anyway, let’s get the. The audience a chance to jump in. So from this point, please start leaving your comments and questions. I will be checking them diligently and we’ll be going through some of them. But before we get to that, John, tell people again about your books, about who you are and what you do and where people can find you. Yeah, I wrote Much Ado about Corona, which is a similar story in some ways, which you can. Much Ado About Corona. I would actually show you all the Humans are Sleeping, but I actually used it to elevate my monitor so that I could get the.

The webcam at the quite. I can’t believe I used my own book to do this. This is like, horrible. No, I’m gonna pull it out. This is like. I didn’t realize I got this one, so I’m gonna be a little. A little lower now, but there we go. So all the Humans are Sleeping. Both these books, you can get free previews if you just head over to either muchado about corona.com or allthehumansaresleeping.com it’s available in audiobook and print and you can just go and read the first. Like, I’m like this. I hate. I’ve made this mistake so many times of buying books and not knowing I’m going to like them or not.

And I get like four chapters in and I can’t stand it. I have a few books like that, so if you guys can just go there and read the first four chapters to 20 chapters and see if you like it or not. Can’t put it down, then go buy it. Excellent. Yep. I. Well, I loved both of your books that I read. And thank you for sending me copies, by the way. I very much appreciate that. Let’s get to some of the comments. For example, DB Book Club. Thanks for bringing this book to our attention. I enjoyed the overall concept.

It really is the small acts of defiance that matter, as futile as they may seem. Respectfully, it was a touch too didactic. Sometimes, though, I found iken load a little too one dimensional. As noted already, the Hannigan character seemed written to illicit booze. And was Charlie’s wife a little too supportive to be true. Yeah, now that you mentioned that. All that aside, a worthwhile Ready? I look forward to discovering more titles via this book club. All right, thank you for that comment. I hadn’t even thought about that. But, yeah, the wife was not a fully fleshed out human being, was she? Yeah, I guess she could use a little more work.

Yeah, there was a few funny moments where actually she was a comic relief because there wasn’t too much humor throughout the book. And it was often her comments or sly comments on the side that added a laugh. Yeah. All right. Leslie writes, gave up end of first chapter too depressing. Given that I respect James Corbett’s takes on things, my question would be, what is James’s good reason for taking the time to read it instead of getting out into the garden to grow food? Well, if those are your choices, and if you want to go out into the garden and grow food, go for it.

Why read anything in that case might be the question. I truly enjoyed this book. I really, honestly, it was a page turner for me. And as I say, as you know, again, that’s a point that I would like to reiterate. The best books are like the best dreams in that you can experience something that you’ve never actually experienced, but you can sort of see it and understand and start to think about how would I react in that situation, et cetera. Anyway, that’s what this book did for me. John, anything you’d like to say to that? Yeah, I felt this.

Well, I felt the same because it also. Because it wasn’t set in like, the Eastern bloc in the 1970s. It was actually set that. In California, which I haven’t. I had lived there, actually, but at least it was a very close to home. Except, of course, it was very odd about. When was the time of this book? Like, Was it the 60s, 70s? I kind of got the impression it was. But I also could argue that it could be current time and because of the technology. I noticed that in your review. And I thought the exact same thing because I was thinking as I was reading this, what time frame is this? So the only real indicator we get is that he’s talked about it was in his childhood that there was the Long Island Rebellion.

So at any rate, we know that this alternate history has been going on for at least a couple of generations. Like, it clearly wasn’t something that happened yesterday that the Russians took over. So clearly this has been going on for a while. But then, yeah, what. What year are we in exactly? And technologically, I was thinking, I mean, it feels like the 1960s, but of course, I mean, it’s the Communist utopia, the workers paradise. Of course, they’re not going to have smartphones. They’re not going to be driving around in Waymos. They’re not going to have fancy goods and gadgets.

They’re going to be living like, you know, Cuba or whatever it is, where, you know, what year is it? I don’t know, 1960, something like that. My. My son caught something really cool. He’s very good at this. You know that scene when he goes in the bank and he gets the coins at the army? I can’t remember what, who’s on one of the coins, but my son pointed out that the face on one of the coins indicates that the Civil War would have ended differently or the Civil War didn’t happen. So the time change goes back to at least the Civil War, suggesting that maybe the south had won.

There you go. My Civil War history is not very good. So I’m not American, so what would I know? But yeah, I remember reading that and thinking, oh, that’s probably a clue. But I didn’t look into it, so I’m glad your son did. Let’s see what else Fine Skylark writes. I felt this book didn’t reflect the SFV accurately. I’m sorry, I don’t know what SFV means. What does that mean? Sfv? San Francisco Valley. Ah, okay. Well, okay, timeline. I don’t know. Again, I’m not sure what that means. Wasn’t it said in mainly Los Angeles? Oh, yeah, Los Angeles, right.

Yeah. So I’m not sure because I heard people who said they lived in Los Angeles and thought it was highly accurate. As far as the LA layout, I don’t know. I’ve never tried taking a bus in Los Angeles, so I wouldn’t know. But anyway, you know, it seemed, again, if we’re talking about the realism of this book, in fact, that’s one of the things that I appreciate that I think, if I recall your review correctly, might have been one of the critiques that you had, but I really appreciated, I think a lesser writer would have tried to explain and given more of the history.

And this is, you know, this is when this happened. And then that led to that. And given the sort of the grand overview I really enjoyed and maybe this is a taste thing, but anyway, I like. I don’t like being spoon fed with a lot of exposition and a lot of, yes, clearly this is an omniscient third person narrator, but clearly focused on Charlie and Charlie’s point of view and Charlie’s daily life and from Charlie’s perspective He’s not thinking about the grand history of how all of this happened or whatever. To him, it’s just the daily life.

This is my daily reality. And I liked being plunged into it without all of that lore. If you’re going to go the lore route, then sure, you know, I, I, I like Dune, and Dune has this massive, incredible backstory and this, you know, there’s an entire world, there’s a Dune encyclopedia, the references and stuff. Yeah, if you’re going to go into the lore, sure, great. But I don’t think this book needed that, at least not for me. I just would have preferred a little bit more background on the alternative history, but it was fine. It’s interesting because as far as, because this, for the Prometheus Awards, it’s being, you know, the criteria for the Prometheus Awards is that it has either science fiction or fantasy angle, and it’s pro liberty or anti tyrannism.

So the science fiction fantasy angle on this is very, very low because there’s no time travel, there’s no portal that went through to get the other. So, yeah, I, yeah, I don’t know what is, what do labels like that really mean? At any rate, I was happy to be plunged into that universe. Yeah. How does this square with voluntarism, writes gbw. I believe General Bottle Washer. The traditional transformation period is the most turbulent. Yes. Like jumping out of a working airplane without a parachute. Faith calculations. Yep. No, that is the question. That is the question, and that’s the one that I’ve, I’ve stressed a number of times.

And it’s why I’ve always said that if I had the magic button to just instantly plunge the world into anarchy, I’m not sure I would press that button, because I, of course, want to live in a world of freedom. But unless we have the societal conditions for that freedom, it will be the chaos that everyone fears, and that’s that. I think that is what the Havel essay is trying to get at when he talks about the existential revolution. It is not just a matter of the political ordering of society. It’s about everything. The entire social fabric of the universe all coheres into this reality.

And you can change the political order, but if the social fabric doesn’t change, you’re going to, well, maybe like in this case, it’s going to just sort of devolve once again. At least that’s my take on that. And Havel referred to that other term I’d never heard before, second culture, where you have to develop a Second culture, as opposed to just. He referred to parallel structures, too. But second culture was another term. Parallel society. Right. Yeah, but. Okay, yes. Catherine Andrews. It shows that small acts of resistance are critical. Indeed. Jana writes. Was that Dune or Dune? That was Dune.

I was referring to D U N E by Frank Herbert. And an incredibly good book. I really like Dune. It’s a little dry, but it’s. Yeah. In more ways than one. That was a joke. And then. And then when Frank Herbert died, his son kept it up forever. So I don’t know if he’s still writing them, but. Well, actually, I have more to say about that. In fact, at the time that this is released, people will already know what I have to say about that. Anyway, let’s go for a couple more comments and then we’ll wrap things up.

Time Portal. He did his reality shifting books. Curious Notions and Other. And the other kind of kids books, in my opinion, about people from one world visit other. I don’t know what that is in reference to. Do you know Time Portal. No, I’m not. I haven’t heard that book. No. No, I have not either. Okay. And one more comment. M. Key writes, I would certainly not push the button. The magic anarchy button, I guess. Freedom on order. That’s one of the themes in the book, isn’t it? Yeah. I would say again, it to. At least to me, that is definitely one of the most palpable feelings that I had when I was reading the book was that moment where I think it was.

He was in the. The. The meeting. And the meeting started to devolve into sort of chaos as people are getting really, really trying to push. And I can’t. You can’t even remember the specifics of what they were arguing about. But I remember having that feeling that Charlie must have been having at that moment, like, hey, guys, you know, just calm down. We’ll. We’ll get there, but we just got to take it one step at a time. But everyone’s trying to push towards the freedom that they’re now tasting, and it’s going to, you know, it’s just going to collapse because people are pushing too hard.

That was. That was sort of my feeling as I was reading this. Yeah, yeah, I agree. All right. Okay. I think we will wrap up the discussion there. Thank you. Honestly, thank you to everyone out there who has participated in today’s discussion. And of course, thank you to John for bringing this book to my attention. I. I’m sure in a million years I wouldn’t have come across it or read it if you hadn’t have alerted me to the existence of this book. And I, for one, actually truly enjoyed this book. It, I really got a lot out of it and, and it gave me an excuse to read Havel’s essay, which I had not read before.

So now I have the power of the powerless in my, in my mind. And in Probably On Deck for Future, Corbett reports, it’s probably going to work its way in there in various ways. He mentions Heidegger towards the end and the questions concerning technology. And that is a particular thing that I’ve. I’ve been studying for decades now, literally studying it at university and never really brought up in my work. But now I have a sort of segue and there’s got to be something there. Anyway, gears are in motion. So thank you, John, for bringing this to my attention.

Thank you for, for, for doing what you do. Again, I, I hope people out there can appreciate the people who are trying to synthesize these ideas and these experiences into literary fiction that people can enjoy on just the literary level, but they can hopefully trigger that revolution in the mind, the existential revolution that will take us to that next stage where we can push the magic anarchy button, happily do so once people have hopefully imbibed books like Much Ado About Corona and All the Humans Are Sleeping. So, John, thank you very much for that. And once again, the website people should go to Blake.

Yeah, they can go right to blazingpinecone.com and get access to everything, stories about how to be as I think what Irvin said in this book I loved. I love that line where he says, so be as difficult as you can possibly be. Yeah, you know, it’s kind of some. Especially when it’s tax time. Well, this is it. And again, small acts of defiance can make a big difference. I think it might be one of the takeaways. All right, we will leave this conversation here today. And I’m very, very pleased to be able to redo revive the film literature New World Order series.

I think, you know, this is clearly something that I’m interested in doing, so I’m glad that people have been here for it. And so we’ll try it again next month. And I already have the next book in mind and next guest in mind, but I will, I will reel the book so you can start reading it. It is Francis Bacon’s the New Atlantis we’re going to be talking about Francis Bacon’s the New Atlantis with a guest next month. So get reading, get started, get your comments and questions, and if you are a Corbett Report member, you will be able to get a link to the live stream so that you can leave comments and questions live on air as I record that podcast with next month’s guest.

Anyway, that will do it for today. John thank you for your time. Everybody out there in Corbett Report land, thank you for your time and attention and I’m looking forward to doing this again in the near future. The Corbitt report is 100% listener supported. Join the Corbett Report community to become a member and log into CorbettReport.com to read the subscriber newsletter featuring my weekly editorial, recommended reading and viewing, discounts on Corbett Report merchandise, and once a month, a subscriber exclusive video. Sign up today@corbettreport.com members and help support this independent media.
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