"Be Like Water"

      I have been reading political scare-fiction off and on for years since I was in Junior High, starting with Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451 (the library didn't have 1984, which I read in High School).  And I read history and biography, too.

      Right now, It Happened Here is on my Kindle, a "near-future" nightmare starting in late 2020 that rapidly goes askew from actual history.  (The author may not be aware of the UK mockumentary of the same title, in which the UK is successfully invaded by Germany.) The book is focused on regular people rather than politicians, a pair of brothers and their families.  No ordinary citizen at any point on the political spectrum comes off very noble or particularly evil, just people trying to get by, and the author deserves credit for that.

      And yet--  The scheming, held-over-in-office villains have A Plan.  The book kept reminding me of Matthew Bracken's "The Enemies" trilogy in some weird way.  I wasn't able to put my finger on it at first.  It hit me a few minutes ago: most of these books (notably not Orwell or Bradbury's), Left, Right or worried centrist, are built around the assumption that the bad guys, onstage or off, have a checklist or a playbook, and they're just working their way through it, one careful step after another.  In the real world, would-be authoritarians have two characteristics that never show up in most political-warning fiction: luck and brilliant ad-hockery.  From Lenin to Hitler to Mao, they (and their organization) are opportunistic, flexible, willing to grab for the main chance no matter how it presents itself.  Only in hindsight do they appear systematic -- and the autocrats themselves would rather be seen as careful planners than gamblers grabbing whatever's grabbable and frantically improvising.  But that's the real story.  "For the want of a nail...."

      So when you sit down to read these books, there's often something, something that seems a little off, no matter if you agree with the message or find it risible.  Real life is twisty.  History is only unsurprising in hindsight, when we already know how the story came out.

      I miss "the end of history."  Dammit, I was looking forward to boring years of space travel and fixing up the planet.