The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Great book and a TV miniseries. An alternative history that has Lindbergh winning the presidency in the 30s and the US government enacting fascism domestically. The book does a great job of portraying the chaos that ensues. The series is also very good.
this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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The Twilight Zone (2019), "The Wunderkind"
Synopsis: A down-on-his-luck campaign manager (John Cho) is determined to get a kid (Jacob Tremblay) elected as the next President of the United States.
I've found the expanse to be somewhat loosely analogous, but making the associations is a bit of a stretch I guess.
UN is America, Mars is Israel, Belters are Palestinians or other brown folk.
Or they're any number of similar analogues.
Spoilers from the last books (post the current end of the show)
! The entire premise of the current leadership is endless unchecked growth
! This mirrors the Laconian goal of superiority through holding onto what's basically a free infinite energy machine, only it's not really free, it's just being stolen from neighboring universes who's very advanced inhabitants really don't like that.
! We see the same hubris from the people in charge thinking that just a little more control or a little more power will be enough to save us, when really the answer is to let go and stop trying to control everything
A lot of what he talks about prior to previous insurrections are pretty similar to what's happening now.
But, do you know who, allegedly, would never instigate an insurrection?
Any sci-fi by Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley Phillip K.Dick, some by Robert Heinlein iirc.
There's also a couple by Cory Doctorow that fit to the tee.
Idiocracy
They found the smartest person in the world and listened to them to fix their problems... Not at all accurate.
Once zoomers can vote and Mr Beast gets elected, things will change.
We’re only 20 years after Joe got frozen and he hasn’t been thawed yet. We still have 480 years before things get that bad.
Pretty sure we're speed running that part.
we're in the "what if they didn't" timeline....
You make a convincing argument.
They also tried to publicly execute him.
The Man in the High Castle.
The Great Dictator
Andor
Whys that?
fascist top-down government that rules without checks and balances stripping away civil rights through exploitation of the vulnerable using fear-of-the-other propaganda and outright lies to further centralize its abusive, selfish control over society while a small dedicated decentralized band of civil rights activists fight the expanding power and influence of the dark side.
Yup, dude even gets disappeared just for being in the wrong street at the wrong time.
Nah that dude was very mexican. Should have tried to not do that.
It's extremely poignant right now
The problem I see is that in Star Wars, the goodies win because they appeal to the inherent good in people, their willingness to actually act
I fear that apathy and learned helplessness have taken root too deeply in the US. People just shrug their shoulders
I sincerely hope that I'm wrong
I mean, isn't the joke that there are only like 20 people who really do anything that matters in Star Wars? The rest of the trillions of beings in the SW universe are apathetic too.
That's also one of the underlying threads in Andor, Luthen is trying to agitate the empire so that they lash out and start really interfering with people's lives. The more the Empire tries to crush dissent, the more apathetic people they disrupt, and the dissent only grows. That's where we're at now, most people's lives haven't meaningfully changed yet, but it's coming.
Its insane that project 25 isnt taught in schools as the actual destructive blueprint for society, its too dangerous for people to be as ignornat of all this shit as they clearly are. Its suicidal
US schools have long been a disaster
Starting the day by saluting the flag and reciting some shit about it being the greatest country in the world is the behaviour of people being indoctrinated into a cult
Gotta get 'em young
Add the twisted version of the history of America taught, and the ignorance of the rest of the world and it's not surprising that things are in a shit state
When you say poignant, do you actually mean "prescient"? Poignant usually means emotional and like tender or tear-jerker kinda
Like of course its also extremley sad, but I feel like prescient is more appropos for what you're trying to express
I meant "pertinent"
So basically yes
It’s all 3
Poignance is saffron
1984 by George Orwell
Not TV (at least not that I am aware of), but it was the first thing to come to my mind. They made a movie if you prefer but, as always, you'll get more from the book.
Literally the first novel ever written "Sinuhe" speaks of a very similar crisis in ancient Egypt.
Take a serious look at the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gutting of the Commonwealth, and the rise of Russia under Yeltsin, then Putin. I'm not sure of any fictionalized works that examine this in any detail, but the aftermath and the new reality is well-described in Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. Link is a 10 year old review in the Guardian.
The falls of other empires would also be instructive. There is an excellent podcast/YouTube channel, the Fall of Civilizations(YouTube Link)(Spotify Link). In listening, I found several parallels to the first Trump presidency. I haven't listened in years.
A paper-thin skinned hegemon leads a dying empire against his staunch allies. I fed this prompt to ChatGPT and it handed me back Dune by Frank Herbert and Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
There is also Adam Curtis's series TraumaZone, showing tons of footage shot in the USSR during it's collapse.
Episodes are around on YouTube.
The Prequel to Schindler's List
The Ultra podcast has two seasons and goes in-depth into previous attempts by fascists at taking over the US government.
Sitting members of Congress aiding and abetting a plot to overthrow the government. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra is the all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power.
When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.
Ultra is SO GOOD
The bobiverse series (about a guy who is hit by a car right after signing up for a cryogenics thing and then wakes in the future to find out he's basically been legislated to have no rights and is stuck into a self-replicating drone for space exploration, it's pretty good) kind of starts off setting the backstory like it. The christofascism just started a bit later.
Obviously it's not one to one but given Trump's performative Christianity it was all I could think about around the failed coup on Jan 6.
on the non-political side, i recommend Mickey 17. the synopsys of bobiverse sounds like it has similar theming except this story focuses more on the character and less on the world (though the world is still there).
Player Piano by Vonnegut