Sandra Fluke DNC Speech Predicts Horrible Sci Fi Future, But Her Fiction Fails to Convince

Impact

I dreaded having to listen to Sandra Fluke's speech to the DNC. She's everything I loathe about old-school "feminism": single-issue, strident, fake, hammering away at straw-man problems no real person ever has. I ended up being mildly entertained, as Fluke presented an unconvincing future under fascist, woman-hating Republicans, a future could only be avoided by voting for Barack Obama.

Ms. Fluke established her feminist credentials by stating she had come onto the public scene because she had been hatefully insulted by Rush Limbaugh, and defended by President Obama. She then discussed the cruel future ahead of us if Mitt Romney achieved the presidency.

Worst of all, Fluke said, "Your president could be a man who stands by while women are silenced by the most hateful slurs."

Sandra! I thought that's what we had right now...

As to the rest of the futuristic predictions, Fluke's "if Mitt Romney won" world could have used more in the way of vile acts of terror.

In warning about totalitarianism, she could have taken some tips from V for Vendetta. In the original Alan Moore version of V for Vendetta, Evey (the young woman V falls in love with, played by Natalie Portman in the movie), isn't an "innocent" downtrodden orphan, she's a street prostitute that V rescues from rape.

Most fictional post-apocalyptic societies suffer under fascist, totalitarian governments, like the ominous Norsefire in V for Vendetta, which seems inspired by real-life National Socialists and Hitler, as well as the eponymous Party in George Orwell's prescient book 1984.

In this, fiction mirrors life — the world's real evil governments have arisen to provide a type of order, albeit a terrible type of order, after economic and social collapse. But America isn't in total economic and social collapse yet, it's just at-risk.

Fluke's predictions are colorless because they're simple attempts to inspire fear, not the products of a fully fleshed-out and imagined totalitarian society. Although people insist "it can't happen in America," if the nation's economy and society deteriorates further, it is possible that a real totalitarian threat could arise. Blind worship of a political figure like Barack Obama feels much farther along the totalitarian road to me than a rambunctious and uncooperative U.S. Congress, even if it is filled with fools and cretins.

Under a real totalitarian government, women would have a lot more to worry about than free contraception or buffoonish members of Congress confused about pregnancy and rape.

A real evil totalitarian U.S. government would not be led by Mitt Romney – or by Barack Obama. Totalitarians don't bother with elections or anyone's rights.