I have decided to post up my novel, Hands of The Ignorant in a few pieces as I know that no one will buy it. So, here it is, the first installment, the foreword of the novel, Chapter 1 soon to follow! Hope you all enjoy.
Foreword
This is a rather interesting work for me because I have never before written anything so massive and involved. Hands Of The Ignorant came about for me through many years of wondering. I had always wondered how the demise and fall of America would come about and what would lead up to it, what would it be like? Many before me have written many other- and far better- works on the subject, not necessarily about America’s downfall in particular, but in the end totalitarianism has no boundaries.
George Orwell with 1984, Aldous Huxley with Brave New World, and Ray Bradbury with Fahrenheit 451 just to name a few. Many great works have been written mirroring these now considered classic novels and many people have been inspired by their words. There was one essential flaw- if I dare call it that- that I found in these novels, a flaw that inspired the one you are now reading.
These novels all dealt with life after the fact, after the oppression and enslavement of the government had already happened. None of them explored how it happened, or the ones that did ran through it quickly and with little detail, they essentially just accept it as it is. Hands Of The Ignorant, on the other hand, hopes to capture that interim world, the lives that are lived inbetween the free world and the totalitarian one.
To me it felt as if the authors previously mentioned- along with others- were scared to delve too deeply into the how of any totalitarian downfall. And to be fair, it is not easy, I had a difficult time trying to devise how it would work myself, trying to foresee all the mechanisms that would have to be put into motion in order to form a total tyranny in America.
The problem is that in order to truly get it spot on, to tell the future, I would have to be a prophet, which I clearly am not. There are too many variables involved in trying to get it right, which is why I came about with the idea of a fictional America, a clone of the one we are now in, to use.
1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 were all written as warnings. Hands Of The Ignorant is as well, simply with a focal shift on the timing of events. These novels are Americas stern warning to guard and protect freedom at all costs because once it is erased it will be gone forever.
The start of this novel was simple; I remember being on a forum for gun owners and someone posted on it an interesting question. Are there any good books about the second amendment out there? Now, there are plenty of books on gun facts, for example John Lott’s More guns, Less Crime, a book laying out the now rather well known axiom that guns do in fact prevent and stop more crimes than they ever are used to commit.
There are also a few other books out there that are pro second Amendment in nature, but to me never seemed to catch on to the actual essence, the true meaning, of the second Amendment. Yes, self-defense is important, and could in all likely hood be made into a fairly interesting novel, but the fact that the second Amendment is the one amendment that guarantees people the right- and more importantly, the power- to abolish any tyrannical government, this was too good of a story to pass up.
So I thought right then and there, can I write a book that would accurately portray that essence, that truth? To write a book about self-defense, yes it would be in great favor of the second Amendment, but would also be rather short and perhaps more likely than not, boring.
So I thought about it, and finally realized that I could do a multilevel book, a political novel of sorts, one that wholly encompassed the second Amendment and its worth. I thus sat down and began to write Hands Of The Ignorant.
The origins of this novel lie in the true second Amendment of the United States constitution, which for any who do not know reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” There are two important elements of what this says and what it means to us as Americans. Firstly, people shall have the absolute right to be armed- and to bear those arms- and no one in government will tell them otherwise. Secondly, the absolute freedom of the state- or country as we know it today- lies in the fact that people have said right.
There has been much scrutiny and many attempts at ‘bending the rules’ as of late, many people wishing that the second Amendment had never been written, wishing that it could be whisked away off into history as a bad idea of mankind. The second Amendment refuses to die, however.
People often poke fun at me when I tell them that one of the first things that I look for in our elected leaders- thus those I’ll vote for- is a strong stand in support of the second Amendment as it is written and implied. Many people have told me throughout the years that this is a shallow and petty view; however, nothing could be further from the truth.
In reality, the second Amendment is the one amendment that protects and guarantees all of the others, in other words, the second Amendment secures our true freedom. Without a way to defend ourselves and our freedoms, the other amendments of the constitution are meaningless. In fact, the entire constitution itself becomes essentially worthless, nothing more than a well guarded parchment stored in the national archives.
Once the government starts hacking away at the second Amendment, there is no more freedom; we the people, the ones who were originally placed in charge, are now slaves to those in power over us. The erosion of the second Amendment- the right to keep and bear arms- is one of the few first steps into tyranny, a fact that has been seen throughout many countries of the world, its slow erosion is also a step that this novel will follow closely.
William O. Douglas once said that “...nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air-- however slight-- lest we become the unwitting victims of the darkness.” It is the twilight that he alludes to that I will explore in this novel, this story.
Hands Of The Ignorant will without doubt be an interesting read for all who dare to open it up and listen. It is not written quite like other novels of its kind nor the writing style commonly found today. It is an interesting mix of essentially my personal essay- for lack of a better term- of the state of America now and a work of fiction tracing the American downfall.
This novel will also attempt to blunder down- in some sort of imaginable fashion- one of the darkest avenues of history, revolution. This story will trace the cause, beginning, and hopeful outcome of a second American revolution. It is an idea that does not cross many a mind, but it is one that is not so distant as to not be discussed and thought about in our own modern context.
This will by far be the most intriguing and arduous part of this novel. To attempt to dictate and explain the downfall of the great nation of America is one thing, and can probably be predicted fairly well. However, to dictate and explain the next revolution will be, well, revolutionary.
Let me at this time reassure everyone reading this, this will be only a fictional account of such a frightful idea, and that is all, my one very limited view on the potential of a second revolutionary war in America. Though not strictly an impossibility, it is an idea still not here with us quite yet. Though, if the warnings that our founding fathers gave to us and the warnings found in this novel and the ones alluded to at the beginning of this foreword are not followed, then revolution will, without doubt, become a very real possibility if America is to live on in the world.
Now, let me at this point say, I am by no means any expert in the political science field or any other politically charged career field- at the time of this writing I am a college student with an interest in law enforcement and electrical engineering. I do not claim to possess any great knowledge on the future history of America- I can only hope that the things in this novel never come to pass. I do not claim to be over wise to things that other people do not know or cannot find out themselves. I do not claim to have miraculously stumbled upon some truth that others have never known, I am not a magician or fortune teller.
I am however, an average person, the kind that this novel will follow, the kind it was ultimately written for. I do firmly believe that when we reach the end of the road, that point when our government is no longer able to be called a republic, when freedom is a past, distant, and dying ideal, when tyranny and oppression become the new accepted ways of the land, it will be up to the ordinary citizen, the ordinary person, to stand up and fight for freedom and to fight with their whole lives, as that is what they stand to loose if they do not.
This is our warning America, it is time now to wake up, to stand up. Our founding fathers did the same for us, we must now do it for the generations to follow.