Making Dystopia Great Again

Wednesday, September 3, 2025

11:23 pm

Suicide

Self-titled

Purple juice

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In addition to writing about the decay of our government basically every week for seven months, I’ve decided to delve further into the world of dystopian fiction.

What began as a re-reading of 1984 in the early days of the Trump administration turned to a second pass at Fahrenheit 451. I’m currently reading a book that finds the reader placed into a world where the National Guard operates in Central Park. My next book in the queue is likely Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

On the television and movie front, I’ve been revisiting films and exploring similarly dystopian worlds.

This evening, I re-watched Civil War, a 2024 film starring Kirsten Dunst as a member of a trio of journalists traveling to Washington D.C. in hopes of getting an interview with the president of the United States before he is dead or taken into captivity. I last saw the film sometime in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, with the fear that maybe this very disturbing film would be enough to warn us all of what is possible.

The movie paints a bleak picture, one in which the president says, “We are now closer than ever to a historic victory, as we eliminate the final pockets of resistance.” I could certainly imagine a quote like that coming out of the Boss these days.