In the February 22 New York Times Book Review, p. 35, Mohsin Hamid and Francine Prose discuss the question, “Does fiction have the power to sway politics?” Ms. Prose mentions political fictions published as fictions, such as The Jungle, while Mr. Hamid calls our attention to fictions that are ostensibly non-fictional, such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the media releases about weapons of mass destruction that were published in the runup to the Iraq War. Both essayists also mention Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and either of them could have mentioned that Mark Twain blamed Sir Walter Scott for convincing a bunch of slave-rapists that they were lairds possessed of an honor worth dying for. And I wonder, too:

Wouldn’t San Francisco in particular, wouldn’t the United States in general, be healthier and happier if its oligarchs hadn’t been taught by the didactic fictions of Ayn Rand that they really, non-fictionally, are Nietzschean supermen, jenseits von Gut und Böse and as sound as a dollar?