The 15% Solution: How the Republican Christian Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel

By Steven Jonas (Brewster, NY: Trepper & Katz Impact Books, an imprint of Punto Press Publishing; 3rd version, 2013).  Originally published in 1996.  Available at Amazon.com: The 15% Solution.

In the 1990’s the Republicans told us what they would do if they ever got significant control of the Federal and State governments.  They now have it.  Under Donald Trump they are steadily moving in the direction of establishing what I have termed “21st Century Functional Fascism” (1). From the perspective of 1994-95, the book describes a fictional religious/authoritarian future that for the nation that was predictable back then.  Under the Trumpites, a version of it could still well become reality.  Again, from the perspective of the mid-90s, the book, purportedly published in 2048 on the 25th anniversary of the restoration of Constitutional Democracy that occurred at the conclusion of the Second Civil War.

The book has been called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of its time. Another commentator has said: "Highly detailed, [it's] a roadmap to the craziness of a powerful and fanatical segment of the population that is unlikely to fold any time soon." A third has called Dr. Jonas the Cassandra of our time, for the U.S.

"The 15% Solution" itself refers to an electoral strategy to ensure victory for the Republican Christian Right which was developed by in the 1980s (see the current GOP voter suppression campaign). Written as "fictional non-fiction," the book is focused on the threat of developing fascism "American style," that was posed by the Right-wing Christian fundamentalist movement operating in close alliance with the Republican Party. The book's primary purpose is to show how a theocratic authoritarianism can be gradually introduced into any country, even the "world's greatest democracy," behind a facade of Constitutional legality no less. That is, if there is no awareness in some significant sectors of the population and opposition elected and party officials nationally of what might happen and is happening. 

 

In that sense, it follows in the tradition established by its major forebears: Jack London's The Iron Heel (1908) and Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here (1936). The former predicted the rise of a fascist-type state in the United States, before the first one of its type appeared in Hungary under the dictatorship of Admiral Miklos Horthy in 1919.  The latter predicted the development of one in the U.S., originally as the result of the 1936 elections (see also the 2016 elections).  The fictional author of the book, as published in 2048, is ”Jonathan Westminster,” which is a play on the name Jack London.

 

When originally published in 1996 the book was a warning about what might happen in the U.S. as a result of the alliance between the Christian Right and the Republican Party.  With its re-issue in 2013, the book warned about the consequences of what was then happening, which by 2018 has become an ever more threatening reality, under the Trumpites, with their ever-increasing support among the Christian Right.  Projected in the book in 1996 was that the Republican Party would trans-mogrify into a then-fictional "Republican-Christian Alliance." By 2012, Howard Fineman of The Huffington Post and MSNBC had determined that the Republican Party had really become what he termed the "American Faith Party" (2). The book takes it from there.

 
 

Selected Chapters

Featured
The 15% Solution: What it Was --- and Is
The 15% Solution: Chapter 2: “Fascism in America: An Overview”
The 15% Solution: Chapter 20: “What Might Have Been Done”