Literature Hamfisted antifa fanfiction
The story has devolved into a bit of a tantrum that Hilary didn't win in 2016 and fueled by misinformation about Republican lead states. While marginally well written at first it's insanely uninformed and down right nonsensical. The USA couldn't defeat farmers in nations 1/4 it's size yet a post Afghanistan withdrawal military facing massive shortages in men and material is going to take on over 75% of the American heartland.
If this is a story I fail to see any fiction besides some aliens and spaceships stolen from the now dead kill zone franchise. In all the writing glorifies the DNC demonized Republicans for the many failures of left wing politicians and other liberal cities.
Sean has a very love hate relationship with cops and soldiers. So long as cops allow whites and Christians to be raped and murder they are good. If they arrest or shoot brown people to stop crime they are evil. This is not so much a story but a love letter to AOC and her green new deal at time even though wind and solar fail almost universal outside desert regions.
The most agregious if not down right delusional takes are the maps. Almost all liberal strongholds are cut off from vital war industry. The city of Cleveland has Abrams tanks in the thousands despite the Republican owning all of America's oil, steel, and the lima tank plant. The only factory in where an Abrams can be made or rebuilt. Whatever interesting ideas he had went down the drain when he had to spite Trump as a way to deflect from many failures of Joe Biden. To call this literature is a child's vitriolic insult to literature.
Literature Intriguing but Flawed
It’s hard to review something like The Second Renaissance, because I’m not quite sure what frame of mind to approach it in. Technically, of course, it’s a work of fiction, and if I were to evaluate it as such I would consider it a very good one. The issue seems to lie more in Sean McKnight’s conviction that it is NOT simply a story, and—aside from certain details such as the existence of aliens— is what he genuinely believes the future will look like. And he implores his audience to view it the same way.
To put it bluntly, I don’t think the story entirely earns that. Many of the predictions it includes are based on those of George Friedman, but others seem to come from nowhere except McKnight’s own personal gut feelings. McKnight posits that a second American civil war will happen in the late 2020s, but provides no substantial evidence for this. This is probably a good place for me to point out that I do agree that America is headed for a major period of civil unrest, but not necessarily one that will look anything like what McKnight is picturing. He gives no reason, for example, how white-supremacist militias, even at their most ruthlessly effective, could overrun half of America; they simply do, no questions asked.
It’s difficult, in other words, to see where the educated guesses end and the outright fiction begins, or even if McKnight himself makes any distinction between the two. He asserts that faster-than-light space travel will be developed in the 2060s—again, no supporting evidence is given. I have a great deal of respect for McKnight’s knowledge of history, engineering, and geography, and that knowledge is on full display throughout this work. Unfortunately it is often overshadowed by his more questionable decisions.
And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe McKnight DOES have proof that these things are going to happen. But if he does, his energy would be much better spent helping make sure these worst-case scenarios don’t come true than writing alarmist science-fiction stories.