America’s Parable: Octavia Butler Tried to Warn Us
Economic instability, climate change, and White Christian fascism made a maelstrom
Twenty-eight years ago, famed science-fiction author Octavia Butler published her apocalyptically prescient bestselling novel Parable of the Sower, which illustrated what America would look like when climate change, economic instability, and a white Evangelical Christian fascist movement took hold and converged.
Sound familiar?
The eeriest part about this novel is the way in which cultural and political norms were slowly erased. There was no major war, no invasion; instead, a sense of collective lethargy set in across the nation, and things went from bad to worse. Religious fundamentalism seized the country, slavery was reintroduced, water was scarce, and all the social safety nets that the government once provided were rolled back in favor of privatization. If you could afford police protection, health care, the creation of roads and bridges, great—if not, you were out of luck. Butler was clearly ahead of her time. She combined her brilliant imagination with a keen understanding of human behavior to illustrate where the U.S.A. was headed if we continued our ostrich behavior of sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that what was unfolding before our eyes wasn’t…
