Guest Column: Fighting Fiction with Fiction by Jeff Pedigo

Topic: Perspective

What’s up everybody? I’m Jeff. I do those maps for Captain K. (He does the real work). Seth was kind enough to let me hijack his SubStack so I could tell you about my book.

TLDR:

I wrote a novel called City Zoo. You should read it. It’s like Orwell’s Animal Farm. It could be taught in schools, I tell ya!

The reason I volunteered to help Seth with the maps in the first place was because he was trying to tell a story that was being all but ignored by the prevailing news media—a story they frustratingly continue to ignore today—and that is the tale of the most fraudulent Presidential election in US history. The way I see it, every map we do, every article Seth writes about it (even the articles about 2022 and 2024) is a way of fleshing out that story so that it can be properly understood in the future.

However, even after four years and everything that’s happened, including that silly debate, the prevailing news media still insists on telling us other stories, different stories, fairy tales...

In 1945, George Orwell wrote a book called Animal Farm because he wanted to tell a story that was not getting the attention it deserved. His animal fable was about the Russian Revolution and its devastating Soviet aftermath. My animal fable is based on us — the U.S.— all of us, and everything that we’ve been going through (or that we’ve “been put” through).

In charming anthropomorphic animal detail, City Zoo, an “unfairy” story mirrors the real life story of Donald Trump’s historic 2016 campaign, and the ridiculous opposition he faced from every quarter, enabled by a captured news media. It depicts events suspiciously similar to Trump’s “surprise” victory over an unbeatable opponent, and also the insane shenanigans perpetrated by the news media and the intelligence community throughout his Presidential administration: the hoaxes, the viruses (biological, psychological, cultural...) the “insurrection,” the bizarre fringe woke BS trends falsely presented as normal everyday Americana...

In short, it’s the tale of the greatest nation on Earth, beset with useful idiots.

Sure, you and I know this tale because we’ve been paying attention—but most people? No, they have no idea. They are demonstrably uninformed. Because the true story of Donald Trump’s first Presidential campaign and his first administration are not being told. And I think one of the primary reasons that it is not being told is that many of these uninformed people—“normies” some of you might call them—are under the delusion that they are in fact the opposite of uninformed. Because the prevailing news media told them they had all the facts worth having. And if you try to tell some of these mistakenly informed people the true story, you will be immediately labeled, ridiculed, laughed at, and written off as a brainless right wing Fox-News- watching MAGA jackass (they forget that our side is the elephant; their side is the jackass, no matter how many times they call it a donkey). So even now—even after all of the ridiculous Bidenomics and Biden-flation and now the Biden-coherency of that debate performance—it’s still a story that can be difficult to tell.

Unless...

Unless you give them the Animal Farm version of events — or in this case, the City Zoo version. The “unfairy tale.” The cautionary fable. The truth laid bare by quirky anthropomorphic animals and clever wordplay.

Orwell’s Animal Farm was my introduction to the Russian Revolution and stark realities of real-world communism. City Zoo is about communism, too, and a more recent history that may well yield to a great fall unless you—and you, and you, and all of us—tell everybody the true story of what’s been happening in our country. So I figured out a way for us to do it without having to deal with all of the childish bullying: just give them a childish book.

“It’s a novel,” you can tell them. “Harmless fiction.” Tell them it’s a funny animal book with funny animal characters and puns. Or tell them it’s a dense, sprawling, epic, tragical comedy, but only for smart people. Because it’s both of those. Tell them (ha, ha) that it makes fun of Donald Trump, depicting him as a former circus elephant named Gus, with gaudy golden caps on his tusks. And tell them the news media is represented by the zoo’s arrogant, shrieking, dung-flinging monkeys (because...well, yeah). Of course Brandon the sloth makes an appearance near the end, but you don’t have to tell them that if you think it will turn them off.

I’m just saying, the book is a lot of fun, and could be a great platform for examining Donald Trump’s first administration in the context of both pop culture and history(Homeschoolers take note). So I hope you’ll check out the Amazon listing to learn more about it—and please consider ordering the book. Perhaps extra copies for Christmas presents, maybe one or two for the Free Little Library down the block. The ebook is available now, but you can’t put that in the Free Little Library—that’s why we’ve got a hardcover hitting July 17th — if you enjoy fiction, please enjoy City Zoo: an Unfairy Story, by Jeff Pedigo.

And in the meantime, please tell a friend about Captain K’s Substack. Thank you Seth for letting me hawk my wares. Now back to the map!!

Cheers Everyone - Jeff