Good fiction, especially science fiction, can be prophetic, not because the writer has some mystical way of reading the future, but because, as Southern Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “prophecy is a matter of seeing near things with their extensions of meaning and thus of seeing far things close up.” Audiences turned out in record numbers this past summer to see Jim Caviezel’s film Sound of Freedom, which exposed the tremendous global evil of child trafficking. But areas of domestic policy deserve similar concern, as American politics is currently suspended over an abyss, with a bipartisan board unwilling to recommend ending surveillance of US citizens despite noted partisan abuse by the FBI, and an executive order (apparently ghostwritten in part by Barack Obama) aimed at “harnessing [Artificial Intelligence] for good” by eliminating its potential use for “disinformation.” Americans looking for a bit of domestic political prophecy should watch Caviezel’s TV serial Person of Interest (2011–2016).
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