NEWT REX
PLOT: It is 2020 and Congress has just amended the Constitution, allowing President Gingrich to run for a third term, unchallenged. President Gingrich is also his own vice president, the only man he trusts. During his momentous run as President, Gingrich has narrowed the executive cabinet down to the Departments of War, Crime Fightin’, and Jesus. The “Soylent Green” program is both a profitable and successful way to feed the poor, who all have jobs digging graves for each other. The national debt is nonexistent, because the Federal government is a subsidiary of the largest company in the history of the world—Lockheed Exx-mart. After a brief and relatively harmless exchange of nuclear arms, China is now the 51st state. Gay marriage is against the law, but fashionable men may still brunch behind closed doors. Climate change, however, was confirmed as a national scientific fact, and it is now the official policy of the United States government to encourage the creation of new beach front property. ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” is the national anthem. The book ends with President Gingrich’s marriage to his fourth wife, his former intern.

The rational cortex … is the new kid on the block, presuming on the older wisdom of instinct and impulse. Well-dressed, clean, mannerly, the cortex becomes the natural target for the mind’s ruffians, who always taunt and bully someone who is not like them. So the older brain bullies the more refined cortex, as well as seducing it with nostalgia, the siren song of a simpler, less conscious existence.

People tend to explain such confusing behavior with stupidity, creepiness, neurosis, or any other traits we associate with the mentally ill. With Occam’s Razor in perspective, these careless judgers are statistically the mentally ill ones. Their model being flawed is much more probable than their housemate going insane.