http://www.npr.org/2017/04/02/522194002/american-war-explores-the-universality-of-revenge

https://www.amazon.com/American-War-Omar-El-Akkad/dp/0451493583


"American War will give you chills. Set in in 2075, Omar El Akkad's debut presents a fractured and frightening America, where the sun burns hot and the country has turned into war zones and refugee camps. Over the course of two decades, Akkad traces the fate of the Chestnut family, who flee their home in the south and spend the better part of their lives in a sprawling, impoverished encampment. This is where Sarat, a young, brave, tomboy, comes of age: “Perhaps the longing for safety was itself just another kind of violence—a violence of cowardice, silence, submission. What was safety, anyway, but the sound of a bomb falling on someone else’s home?” Albert Gaines, a radicalized Southerner, takes Sarat under his wing, equipping her with the fervor and tactics needed to win the war. Akkad piercingly describes the ravaged towns, the gel packets of fruit rations, the torturous effects of growing up in war. Written with precise care for the fictional truth—news articles, press releases, and oral histories emerge throughout – the book sounds a warning blast. American War is a disquieting novel of immense depth, and possibly a classic of our time. --Al Woodworth, The Amazon Book Review"

Oh, boy, another dystopian novel! I'm amazed at the public appetite for this genre. My hypothesis is that as the nuclear family (which I contend is the most essential of social groups) has deteriorated, the social fabric has become frayed and tattered. This dysfunctionality is manifested in an attraction to destructive, often violent, narratives. Thus, the malaise of destructive primary relationships is projected onto the larger canvas of dystopian and apocalyptic fiction.

Sarat (from this brief review) strikes me as just another young-adult kick-ass "fearless girl" heroine. "Rogue One," anybody?

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/b034986142be5a72e8a2be946e93af3560c4640c/c=603-0-5923-4000&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/03/08/USATODAY/USATODAY/636245715590192003-AP-APTOPIX-Fearless-Girl-Wall-Street.jpg

I love the phrase, "...precise care for the fictional truth..."
Are we FINALLY all finished with vampire and zombie stories?
Yawn....

If you can convince yourself the world is getting worse, it's easier to justify feeling superior to it. That's so Mormon.

My grandchildren will my current age about then...don't envy them the fucked up world they will inherit.

Yeah, but people have been saying that since the time of Plato.

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise" (attributed to Plato. There are numerous variations).

America was rent apart by the US Civil War. The Great War, "the war to end all wars," did not end war. WWII was more devastating to the world psyche, and what about the atomic bomb? Surely we were doomed then. And don't forget that in 1980 Time Magazine confidently predicted that we were on the verge of a new ice age that would destroy life as we know it!!!!!

From Rogers & Hammerstein's "South Pacific," set during the setbacks of the Pacific campaign against Japan:

Nellie:
When the sky is a bright canary yellow
I forget ev'ry cloud I've ever seen,
So they called me a cockeyed optimist
Immature and incurably green.

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we're done and we might as well be dead,
But I'm only a cockeyed optimist
And I can't get it into my head.

I hear the human race
Is fallin' on its face
And hasn't very far to go,
But ev'ry whippoorwill
Is sellin' me a bill,
And tellin' me it just ain't so.

I could say life is just a bowl of Jello
And appear more intelligent and smart,
But I'm stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can't get it out of my heart!
Not this heart...

hunger games

I love how "The Hunger Games" drew heavily from ancient Roman culture. Everything old is new again. I also very much liked "Divergent" with its model of the faction system as one possible way to organize a society -- much like the guilds of the middle ages.