Review: Choose Your Own Adventure in American Futures
The author, whose libertarian leanings are evident, makes readers consider the impact of the choices they make in the voting booth.
What if you could choose your own adventure for the future of the United States? That's the premise of American Futures, written by Tom Jenney, an Arizona native of libertarian bent who spent years as a fixture on the state's think tank and lobbying scene.
Within the book's conceptual framework, aliens are among us and can control our minds, to the degree they can force majorities to agree with and act on any given ideology. As a sort of social science–fiction experiment, the reader can impose any of 14 different political philosophies onto the nation. The book then becomes a series of choose-your-own-ideology adventures narrating how things would likely turn out in each timeline.
The book is massive—three volumes in its printed doorstop edition. But it's an easy read, since Jenney uses hyperlinking in the navigable (and far cheaper) Kindle edition to let readers take short trips into the future through multiple scenarios for each ideology. Some scenarios evolve naturally, while others test systems' responses to war, natural disaster, and even the Rapture.
Jenney's libertarian leanings and his background in economics and politics come through, to the degree that certain points—such as warnings about high debt and inflation—inevitably start to seem repetitive. The main characters vary from story to story, and Jenney manages to make most of them sympathetic no matter their ideology, though that dedication necessarily frays for some very unsavorily authoritarian options.
It's a quirky book, but it's oddly addictive. While not a traditional policy tome, it's a serious attempt to consider the impact of the choices we make in the voting booth.
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Sounds like the traditional thought experiment question: If you were king of the world, what policy programs would you impose on everybody?
The only correct answer to that question is: I would declare that nobody could ever be made king of the world and resign my position. Anybody that seriously considers the question of what they would do if they were in charge of the planet should be immediately fed feet-first into a woodchipper.
Thompson Twins did a good song about it.
“Lies, Lies, Lies?”
“Lay Your Hands?”
“You Lift Me Up?”
“Europa and The Pirate Twins?”
Which song? I’m missing something.
lol.
Oh wait, “Europa and The Pirate Twins” was done by Thomas Dolby.
And I finally guessed the song: “King for A Day.”
I really need to add more Eighties to my shuffle. That was some super music! 🙂
I prefer King of the World by Steely Dan.
The Royal Scam is a good daily reminder too …
And I enjoy Donald Fagen’s “IGY” as the Futuristic antidote to power plays on Earth.
Dude, the entire Nightfly album is underrated.
Indeed. Donald Fagen either predicted Art Bell or mimicked his predecessors when he wrote the title cut. And the video for “New Frontier” is truly Survivalism With Style!
Don’t forget to clear out your castle or Fearless Leader Headquarters and destroy it so that no one else can assume your abdicated throne.
Good answer. However, it is a paradox. If you did not first use your power to implement an immutable framework of rewards and punishments for people trying to circumvent your edict, it would expire the moment you stepped down. You would have to make it LEGAL to slay kings and king-aspirants. You would have to REWARD people for doing so, and PUNISH people who supported king-aspirants.
This is why simple Libertarianism never works – “Live and let live” allows those seeking to steal that privilege from you to act unchecked. And, they will ALWAYS do so. In every generation, some people are psychotically obsessed with drugs. Some to alcohol. Some to sex. Some to sex with children. Some to abuse. And some to POWER. All these people ever do all day long, 24x7x365xtheir entire lives is to look for ways to get their fix. They will NEVER “let you live and let live.” Never. And this is why Libertarians need to evolve into a more enlightened “militant Libertarianism.” It’s not enough to hide in Galt’s Gulch – your very existence INFURIATES totalitarians. Your existence is an existential threat to their schemes, because your shining example reveals the lies of their false promises to their followers.
For them to achieve their goals, it is IMPERATIVE for them to destroy us.
As with the heroes of Escape From Sobibor, living life has to be your revenge.
fun but I’m a little cynical about the pre-conclusions.
Did the book cover the option where the voters elect (or are told they elected) a senile octogenarian who reads a teleprompter, with the real policy choices coming from a shadowy cabal of global elites?
That was probably covered under “stolen elections.”
The book is massive—three volumes in its printed doorstop edition. But it’s an easy read, since Jenney uses hyperlinking in the navigable (and far cheaper) Kindle edition to let readers take short trips into the future through multiple scenarios for each ideology. Some scenarios evolve naturally, while others test systems’ responses to war, natural disaster, and even the Rapture.
So this author seriously believes in a Jesus-Come-To-Us Moment as well as a Come-To-Jesus Moment? Hard pass on this one.
Choose Your Own Adventure in American Futures
It’s election time. Do you vote Libertarian, Democrat or Republican?
Libertarian.
Result: Uniparty victory, descent into Marxism continues.
< three volumes. correct result.
Which is the same result as voting Democrat or Republican.
A lie. Libertarian spoiler votes, like the mystical & looter spoiler votes that shifted paradigms before Anthem was published, pack ~25x the law-changing clout of votes wasted on the “winning” Looter Kleptocracy. Appreciating this requires grasping the difference bwtween first and second derivatives. The Looter Klepticracy can afford to hire advisors with the requisite understanding–to the dismay and embarrassment of actual Libertarians watching their platform eaten away by fifth-column infiltraitors. http://bit.ly/3XV2fWQ
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Sounds like the book should have been a video game.
Great idea!
This is sounding like a feature-length adaptation of Prof. Tara Smith’s “Moral Rights and Political Freedom,” structured around a reductio analysis of the implications of different assumptions as to what constitute viable standards of value. Dr Smith pulls it off in 206 pages.
The Rapture? Puhleeze. There’s fiction and then there’s outlandish fantasy. I’ll skip this book.
“Choose Your Own Adventure in American Futures” offers an interactive and captivating journey through potential future scenarios in America.
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