{"id":2856,"date":"2017-12-08T08:24:01","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T13:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/?p=2856"},"modified":"2017-12-08T09:16:22","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T14:16:22","slug":"this-dystopian-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=2856","title":{"rendered":"This Dystopian Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/?attachment_id=2857\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2857\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2857\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/JPA114.jpg\" alt=\"This Dystopian Future\" width=\"560\" height=\"415\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/JPA114.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/JPA114-300x222.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gdata.com\/?art=\/2017\/12\/JPA114.jpg&amp;name=This Dystopian Future...\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/buy.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Credit where credit is due. The punchline came from a friend. We were talking over lunch trying to reconcile the events of the past week: The Republican\/Trump tax bill, the Alabama Senate race, travel-ban decisions, North Korean missiles, the Mueller investigation, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>There is just so much to process, so much to, well, not to sound old, but growing up we just never would have anticipated this level craziness.<\/p>\n<p>For example, it&#8217;s bad enough that the Senate rammed through a huge national tax bill with no time provided for actually reading it; that it included handwritten notes directly from lobbyists; that it purposely adds to the national debt at a time of near full employment. But it&#8217;s the doublespeak and the pious assurances of our so-called leaders (with absolutely no real evidence) that is so unsettling.<\/p>\n<p>I said to my friend, &#8220;We seem to be heading toward a dystopian future.&#8221; He said, &#8220;This <strong>is<\/strong> a dystopian future!&#8221; Then we laughed. I&#8217;m not sure why.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve all read <em>Brave New World<\/em> and <em>1984<\/em>. We&#8217;ve all seen <em>The Matrix<\/em> and <em>Hunger Games<\/em> movies. As with most science fiction, these stories are cautionary tales \u2014 they are beginning to feel more like documentaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Credit where credit is due. The punchline came from a friend. We were talking over lunch trying to reconcile the events of the past week: The Republican\/Trump tax bill, the Alabama Senate race, travel-ban decisions, North Korean missiles, the Mueller investigation, and so on. There is just so much to process, so much to, well, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrewheller-com","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganpress-org","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2856"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2861,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions\/2861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}