* This novel reads like Andy Nowicki’s fantasy of a woman coming along and inspiring him to save the world.
* I’m struck by how Andy writes like he talks (wordy, meandering, conspiratorial). He badly needed an editor. I would have liked more vivid scene-by-scene construction using realistic dialogue, multiple points of view, and paying close attention to status details.
* I didn’t experience much emotion while reading the book except for some mild amusement at times — Nowicki has a good ear for how news is disconnected from truth, how religion often sells out to the status quo, and the absurd ways our betters lecture us.
* There are three types of characters in the book — the good guys, the bad guys and the indifferent. There’s not much nuance and not much empathy. All truth and righteousness lies with one side (those out of power).
* A turning point in the story is an interview that goes off script, a bit like the one Andy and I did July 15.
* The book concludes with a noble rebellion in progress against the globalists. “…a sleeping giant seems to have been awakened. And that sleeper’s hate exceeds all bounds; indeed, it can scarcely be contained. Great Lucifer, beneficent ally, please have mercy upon us in our time of need!”
* At just 67 pages, I was able to read the book in less than an hour.
* Like Brave New World, it’s a novel primarily about ideas rather than story. If you liked Brave New World, and if you think Covid is some kind of sinister hoax perpetrated by our elites to amass power, then you’ll like The Insurrectionist. I don’t think most readers were mesmerized by the story in Brave New World, but those who loved the book were stimulated by the ideas in it. Similarly, nobody is going to be thrilled by the story in The Insurrectionist, but you might like the ideas and you may be amused by its commentary on life in 2021.
Here are some highlights from this novel by Andy Nowicki:
* You stood on my door that day (whatever day it was), wearing a resplendent smile that caught me up short. Despite my unprepossessing appearance and slovenly disposition, I somehow felt bold enough to invite you to come inside, though not without lowering my eyes with a certain mortification, painfully aware that my hovel-like apartment was not a fit resting place for such a creature as you, not even for the span of a moment…
* It was revealed to me then, how puny and ineffectual I had proven to be in most respects.
* …I had opted to visit a friend of mine in Nashville. He dwelt in a squalid little apartment, worked a series of menial retail jobs, and in his spare time dreamed of making it big in the country music industry…I too had musical aspirations… We would craft a type of music that could finally bring people together after years of engineered crises had everyone at one another’s throats.
* Global Government Quorum… had managed to forge a historic alliance between nations across the world as a culmination of a proclaimed need for “greater federated authority” in the wake of the social unrest which had grown exponentially during the present “age of plague,” with one mysterious virus after another breaking upon the populace for the span of nearly a decade, creating a crescendo of panic that seemed to be ever-cresting and never receding…
Eventually, there came to be a great clamoring, at least among many holding official positions in federal, state, and municipal bodies of governance, for humanity to “finally to answer the perennial call to unite and centralize” so that the problems of perpetual pandemics and sporadic rioting in cities, based on one inexplicable upheaval after another, might finally be brought under control, in order that the much sought after principle of world peace might at long last become reality, and a reign of righteous order could be summoned forth after all these uneasy years of chaos and revolt.
* I had, after all, always been the misfit of my family; they had never understood, nor even cared to attempt to understand me…I had long resented how they had tended to view me with a combination of concern and annoyance. I was, after all, a college dropout, never able to hold down a decent job, trying but so far failing to be a writer/musician…
* I was now tormented, feeling that my anger and contempt, having been aroused by my family’s general rejection of my ideas and ambitions, had somehow, in some way, played a role in igniting their destruction. My parents and my sisters had been practical people, with concrete minds, while I gravitated toward more of an ethereality of temperament.
* Earlier that day, my friend and I had joined others in the streets for what amounted to one desperate, collective cry for our earthly rulers to level with us for once, concerning what was really going on…
* …a sector-wide edict had been issued, solemnly instructing people to remain inside for an indefinite period in order to prevent further unrest. Once more, the many and varied major media outlets sang an identical tune, using the exact same words and phrases, with only minor variations; they all implied strongly that the best decision for us to make as a human race was simply to “stay put” in our homes and “wait for further instructions,” which “would be dispensed at the appropriate time.”
* What I was seeing on the news bore little to any resemblance to reality…
* People wanted to join in the war effort against the Overlords in any and every way possible, yet the rulership of the world refused even to field a war effort; moreover, they depicted such a notion as pathological and destructive, even subversive and treasonous.
* “Such self-appointed ‘militias’ fetishize the concept of freedom and shamelessly weaponize the grief, anger, and sense of loss that many humans share during this time of unprecedented difficulty. “According to Dr. Rebecca Schlossberg, a well-regarded practicing psychiatrist and professor at McGill University in Montreal, such incidents as these are commonly driven by ‘men who feel themselves possessed of a kind of savior complex. “’They think that the world needs to be ‘rescued from ruin,’ and that they are the ones who need to do the rescuing…such people, while believing strongly in their own righteousness, are also prone to adopting a simplistic, binary, black-and-white, ‘us-against-them’ mentality,’ Dr. Schlossberg explained. ‘They see themselves as self-sacrificing would-be heroes. Yet at the same time, they clearly operate from grandiose motivations that are actually quite selfish and self-centered at heart.’
* “Yes, you lost so much,” she allowed, with a trained facade of pseudo-sympathy, “but, perhaps you could just sit with the possibility that these ‘theories’ you have developed about the government and so forth could simply be an outgrowth of your trauma?”
* Having grown up Catholic, albeit in a lax if not lapsed family, my attention at times had been drawn to occasions in history when the Church had stood boldly against novel impositions of unholy customs…
* I had quite naively believed that I would find refuge from the barrage of indoctrination and lies within the hallowed halls of Mother Church…
* …I felt stirred by the notion that I almost seemed to be playing a different character, as an actor might in a movie or a play. And I thought to myself: might it indeed be possible to become an entirely different person under different circumstances?
* I had rarely taken to social media, for example, and when I did, it was only for personal, not political ends. I hadn’t transformed into a dissident until the post-catastrophe days, during which I didn’t bother with such pathetic trifles as social media; as a result, I would have no electronic paper trail testifying against me should I emerge as one claiming to be friendly to the principalities and powers in the age of the Overlords.
* In no time, I became a playboy and a player…
* I hated, despised, and loathed all of this “in crowd” that I now courted so successfully. They were supposed to be the crème de la crème, but in fact they were mostly dumb as dust. True, a few brains hovered amongst this horde of elite trash, and naturally enough, they were the ones to whom I devoted most of my attention. I learned to speak their language while at the same time to refrain from seeming to pander; in short, it was simply a matter of “letting the game come to me,” and not being overly anxious about attempting to accelerate the process of my ascendency.
* At this point, everyone on the transmission team had become aware that something was afoot, that things had gone astray. Yet all felt strangely paralyzed. If they abruptly called off the interview, the damage done would be incalculable. The PM had been challenged, and the challenger, having been quite insolent and underhanded in his method and manner, would certainly have to be dealt with. Yet in order to salvage things, the PM had to show herself to be equal to the challenge.