The Plot Heard 'Round the World

The book opens to reveal an America in the nearest of futures as it becomes a theocracy caused by the stealth investments of the radical conservative political right. The saga follows the adventures of Rip Pizzard a jazz musician and closet mystic. His humane doctrine (based on Buddhist principles for enlightenment) opposes the rigid dogma of the conservative hierarchy. The text merges traditional settings with exotic locales with tongue-in-cheek themes to satirize society’s views on religion, multiculturalism, politics, frivolous metaphysics and liberal versus conservative conflicts. The story is framed with wry sentiments, expressive dialogue and provocative concepts.

This novel was written in the prosperous and less partisan late 1990s. Bill Clinton was the President at that time. This story was considered, by me, to be an impossible nightmare worst case scenario in the American timeline. Then came the Bush-Cheney Dark Years and the 9-11 event that through lack of vigilance happened on their watch. Fear became the new currency. A new issue of Discounted Americans emerged from the low and faux informational citizenry. Unbelievable, but The Discounted were convinced by the rich business class to rage and vote against their own wellbeing. Surely this started as a joke….but it bloomed into the new Republican Party. Hear Wall Street laughing? The “Post Truth, Anti Intellectual” era is here; I hope it will be short. But, at last it is cool to be dumb. Businessman- statesman- politicians are for sale. Bigotry is barely concealed. Curiosity is an unknown trait. The Discounted Individual’s fearful worldview is validated by Fox “News”, his/her church, resistance to change and like type friends. That worldview typically limited to RV trips to the Grand Canyon and Branson. Paris? A city in Texas and a few other states. On the upside….where I live, ‘you don’t have to be very good to be excellent’.

John E. (Johnny) Pepper hails from a small town, Dadeville, nestled in low kudzu sculptured clay hills of Alabama. His teenage years coincided in time and place with the birth of the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery. This was also the time that the music changed. In 1976, Johnny and his wife, Carol, established the Still Waters Foundation, Inc. to “Promote the Ancient Lost Art of Individual Thinking in the Higher Realms’. Through 20 years of public activity (study and discussion groups, unique lecturers, library, animal sanctuary, astronomical observatory, book store, international travel and networking) most of this pioneering effort is now mainstream. Then there is the other side of the author that is the musician. Johnny sings, plays lead guitar and synthesizer in his Silvertone Summer Band which performs in Pensacola and along the Gulf Coast. He also collects Les Paul guitars.