Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Republicans and Democrats have used accounting gimmicks and competing government analyses to deceive the public into believing that 2 + 2 = 6. If our leaders cannot agree on the numbers if 'facts' are fictional how can they possibly have a substantive debate on solutions?
What does it say about a president's policies when he has to use a cartoon character rather than real people to justify his record? What does it say about the fiction of old liberalism to insist that good jobs and good schools and good wages will result from policies that have failed us time and again?
Julia progresses from cradle to grave showing how government makes every good thing in her life possible. The weak economy high unemployment falling wages rising gas prices the national debt the insolvency of entitlements - all these are fictionally assumed away in a cartoon that is produced by a president who wants us to forget about them.
The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
Blade Runner appears regularly two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.
The claim made by Team Obama that every dollar in stimulus translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is economic fiction. The costs of stimulus reduce future growth. No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.
I don't write literary fiction - I write books that are entertaining but are also I hope well-constructed and thoughtful and funny and have things to say about men and women and families and children and life in America today.
When I was younger I wanted to be a big movie star who'd get to be funny on talk shows and then I wanted to retire and write science fiction.
It's funny with fiction - once you cut something it hasn't happened anymore.