The Death of Fiction

How made up stories are simply no match for actual news in Canada.

I used to like to write stories every now and then. In spring of 2020 I was feeling exceptionally clever and so I decided to write an allegory of sorts based on the absolute ridiculousness that is currently the Trudeau government. The story is called A Tale of Two Kingdoms and it's the story of a young King Justin navigating the perils of life in a Small Kingdom situated as it was, right next to the Large Kingdom.

It was a magical kingdom powered by rainbows and unicorn farts.

Anyway, you might want to check it out, if you'd care to reminisce the good ol’ days when King Justin was simply about banning assault-style weapons (he truly is the King of Style) and sneaking off to unauthorized costume parties on private islands. That was back when he still had the two faithful Billys by his side - Money Billy and Safety Billy. Of course, Money Billy has since moved on due to something about a villa in southern France and Safety Billy, well he did manage to survive the Freedom Convoy, but just barely.

I had so much fun writing the first one, I wrote a second one as well. That one is called A Tale of Two Kingdoms - Part Two if you can believe it. This one takes up where the first one left off - just as King Justin was returning from that aforementioned private island…

The kingdom was in the process of recovering from an imported plague that had taken the lives of thousands of the king’s subjects. On top of that, unicorn fart production was down and the people hadn’t seen a rainbow in months.

So yeah, that was a lot of fun too and I really felt like I was on a roll. Then came the whole Freedom Convoy thing in February, I thought: Wow - what perfect timing! This is great subject matter for Part 3! I started writing, slowly, and then there was the airport chaos, the passport debacle, the 54 million dollar ArriveCan app that never did work, Trudeau doubling down on his "science" of vaccine mandates. Then there was the debunking of the "confirmed remains of hundreds of murdered children" - a story that caused flags to be flown at half-mast for five months and caused even more unrest and incivility - not to mention statues toppled and churches burned to the ground. If I had been planning on writing a trilogy in five parts, or the Harry Potter franchise, it would've been great, but I really don't have that kind of time. It was just too much. Also, trans people are now burning Harry Potter books, so there's that…

Then I heard that the Trudeau government was giving money to an organization to set up some kind of "anti-racism action program" (whatever that is). I thought, well isn't that interesting? So I started checking that out and discovered it was an organization that's run by someone who appears to be, wait for it...

An actual racist.

Then came Prime Minister Trudeau's cringy Queen cover (as in Freddie Mercury) in a London bar while waiting for the Queen's (as in Elizabeth II) funeral and the $6,000 hotel room that the Prime Minister's Office simply refused to acknowledge until they were literally forced to.

I mean, it's not like literally everyone didn't already know who stayed in that room.

At first, they simply refused to answer, then in February they invoked national security to remove the name of the guest in the River Suite when it was requested through access to information.

National security, eh?

Then there was the whole election interference deal and Trudeau's “Special Rapporteur”. I suppose we can be thankful that it's not just a regular rapporteur, because that would be terribly underwhelming.

As always with King Justin, there's an interesting backstory on the "Special Rapporteur". Obviously we all assumed he was going to be an old family friend, and we were not disappointed. Like, you'd think that Trudeau would at least try to appear somewhat unbiased in this appointment...

And please let's not forget his International Women's Day tweet-fest:

To mark this International Women's Day, I want to be very clear about one more thing: transwomen are women.

And then the implied punchline that I heard (which of course he didn't say, or mean to imply):

And I'm a Prime Minister…

Like, WTF? Is this guy even a real person? Or is he really just a caricature of a real Prime Minister existing in an alternate universe? They say truth is stranger than fiction but I think in this country the truth is curb-stomping fiction, putting it in cement shoes and sinking it in the Ottawa River.

So I think I'm done with that one. Like, what's the point in writing clever and witty allegories when reality itself keeps eclipsing them more and more in previously unimagined ways every single week?

If you haven't read it yet (and if you actually want to) you can read Part 1 of A Tale of Two Kingdoms now, but I should probably warn you that it's no longer as wild or fantastical as it once was just a few years ago. Consider it a primer for 2023.

With even comedy under attack by the wailing fringe, it's not inconceivable that some would be “triggered” by allegories like these.

Not like I care much about triggering people. After all, your triggers aren't my responsibility. I just feel that my bullshit can't compete with the interminable bullshit that is the news cycle these days. Maybe I never could compete, and that's the real problem. I know there are those who can, so best leave it to them.

When Ricky Gervais was asked about his Netflix series, Afterlife, and whether his audience can “take this”, he replied:

Of course they can. Real life is much worse. These are just jokes. They don't mean anything. They're just for you to laugh for an hour or so. So that's why I deal in taboo subjects.

Of course Ricky is correct.

The other day I saw this headline:

Trans women can compete in USA Powerlifting, ruling says

And the money quote from Judge Patrick C. Diamond (whom we would presume is a knowledgeable, well-educated individual):

The harm is in making a person pretend to be something different, the implicit message being that who they are is less than.

Wow. Were I to attempt to translate this ruling, I'd probably have to say something like:

Making a man who is pretending to be a woman pretend to be something different (like a man) would be causing harm because it would imply that the woman he is already pretending to be is worth less than the man he doesn't have to pretend to be.

Okay, so that wasn't a lot better, was it?

Here's another one, and by the way, each one of these warrant their own 1200 word essay but like I said - I just don't have the time.

Remember that old white chick named Robin DiAngelo that wrote the book "White Fragility”? It's basically about how literally everything is racist (unless you're BIPOC) and how white people are just overly sensitive when it's pointed out over and over again.

Here's her latest truth-bomb:

People of color need to get away from White people and have some community with each other.

Good thing Robin DiAngelo is not an old, conservative white guy saying that, cuz that might be problematic…

One more before I go. I had never heard of trans activist Dylan Mulvaney a day ago, but now thanks to his face being imprinted on a can of Bud Light, I have.

I'll leave it to the The Babylon Bee to describe this one, because it’s exactly the way I would've done if I had the time. And I'm very disappointed that I didn't come up with it:

Long a staple drink of people who hate actual beer, Bud Light felt putting Dylan Mulvaney's face on a can would also attract people who hate actual women. "As a man acting out the most horrendously offensive stereotypes of women, Mulvaney taps into the soul of people who despise real women," said Mr. Whitworth.

In case you don't know, The Babylon Bee is satire. The other thing you might not know is they are bang-on with that assessment.

Once again, the phrase, “you can't make this shit up” assaulted my mind and I was immediately disgusted that it was that cheesy, overused phrase that I heard. And then I realized that the reason it is so overused is because of how mercilessly true it is. And because people are just too damn lazy to come up with a more interesting way to say it.

So, I'm not saying fiction is really dead, but it is for me. It's just way too much work to come up with original, interesting material when the actual news already reads like a dystopian novel. And with facts like these, who needs fiction anyway?