Wednesday, April 8, 2015

20150408.0709

I did, in fact, spend most of yesterday sitting at my computer and writing for money. And that meant I re-read a novel, which is not necessarily the worst thing to do while trying to avoid the heat that presages summer. That meant that I had opportunity to consider the words I was re-reading more closely than I had the first time I went through and read, and while I could not necessarily write for pay what I would want to write, this webspace offers a bit more...flexibility to me. Hence the following:

Steve Berry's The Patriot Threat (ISBN 978-1-4668-6260-9, $12.99 as a NOOK® Book) continues the Cotton Malone series as it follows Malone through pursuit of the fugitive Anan Wayne Howell and into a decades-long conspiracy to bilk the populace of the United States. In the world of the novel, the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is fraudulent, certified as in effect by a secretary of state who knew the certification to be false, and knowingly retained by those in power through FDR's administration, when documentation about the falsehood was lost. Malone and the federal agents who accompany him, as well as officials at the highest levels of government, uncover the conspiracy and destroy the only surviving copies of the documents that prove it, ensuring that the secret can never be uncovered again.

Throughout the novel, Berry's characters rail against taxation and the social policies put into place by the FDR administration while praising such capitalist icons as Andrew Mellon. Malone is perhaps most moderate in his comments, but even the President of the United States lambasts his predecessor, joining several others in doing so. Although the novel disclaims itself as a work of fact, it clearly stakes out a position aligned with the fugitive Howell--whose reasoning is accepted by a number of characters, including Malone, even as its fulfillment is denied in favor of retaining the system of revenue generation upon which the United States has come to depend--and against the validity of the income tax system at work in the United States. The obvious historical research informing the novel and conducing to its substantial verisimilitude (which is, in all honesty, something for which to commend Berry) also vitiates against the formal disclaimer in the authorial notes at the end of the book. Such a disclaimer reads much as Chaucer's Retraction, either a pro forma thing meant to insulate or a knowing, tongue-in-cheek comment that would be delivered in an overwrought voice if read aloud and indicating therefore the actual belief in its opposite. In effect, the book is a paean to the falsity of the Sixteenth Amendment. That it was published near the end of the tax season is perhaps coincidence, but a telling one if so.

Again, I know that some will say "It's just a story." I have addressed the point before (here and here, if not elsewhere), and I will state again that stories inform perceptions and approaches to the world. The heavy-handedness with which Berry's book approaches the issue of taxation--indeed, of conservative socioeconomic ideology, generally--will doubtlessly serve to reconfirm for many readers a worldview conducive to regression. As a medievalist, I know that the "good ol' days" were not so good; I do not look forward to their return.

No comments:

Post a Comment