The Expected WorldCLOSING: 2032
WRITTEN: 1998
Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches. Jarret's people have been known to shoot or to burn anyone who seems different from them... Jarret condemns the burnings, but he does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear.
Written: 1998
Addressed to: 2032
Source: Parable of the Talents (New York: Seven Stories Press
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Category: Governance & Power
Annotation
In Butler's sequel, the fictional President Jarret wins on the slogan 'Make America Great Again' and presides over an America where religious extremism and nativist violence are tacitly endorsed from the top. Butler invented this slogan sixteen years before it entered real American politics. The novel's depiction of a leader who disavows violence while using language that licenses it has made this passage one of the most-cited examples of literary prescience in recent American fiction.
What Actually Happened
The slogan 'Make America Great Again' was trademarked by Donald Trump in 2012 and became central to his 2016 presidential campaign. Butler's estate and literary critics have extensively documented the parallel.