A “Fable” Of Vermont Resistance: Or Is It? (BOOK REVIEW)

“Ah Mary, she’ll bake you cookies then she’ll burn your town.

Ah Mary, ashes to ashes, but she won’t fall down.” – Grace Potter + the Nocturnals

Full disclosure.

I picked up Bill McKibben’s new novel RADIO FREE VERMONT prepared not to like it. After all, it’s a NOVEL, and McKibben, a gentleman journalist known for his dark prophetic prognostications about NASA-explained climate change and the end of the Planet as we know it, pitches his very first attempt at writing a novel as a “fable” of Vermont resistance. A fable? WTF?

Let me explain. I’ve devoted the past 12 years of my life to exploring the real deal – peaceable secession and the creation of a 2nd Vermont Republic (2VR), in the company of some remarkable thinkers and doers across the Green Mountains, and beyond. We haven’t always gotten it right, and we’e made our fair share of strategic mistakes over the past 13 years, as all nascent cultural and political change movements do. But we’ve played the long game, knowing that the one sure thing about all Empires throughout history is that they fall, and much faster than anyone expects in the moment. Together, our 2VR think tank has been asking (as the United States of Empire trundles towards collapse) how might we Vermonters best position ourselves to finance, fuel, and feed ourselves and our communities, and create a more humane, compassionate and communitarian culture along the way? In short – how do we Vermonters joyfully, lawfully and peaceably “absent” ourselves from the U.S. – not by building a wall around Vermont, but by engaging the rest of the world on our own terms, as Vermonters, and urging other Americans in other states to do the same?

The answer to the ‘secession” question, for McKibben, begins with beer. Craft beer, to be precise. Locally brewed craft beer – so many options to choose from, and he name drops some of our favorites! – serves as a metaphor for McKibben’s rollicking tale, in which four strangely familiar seeming Vermont characters kickstart a nonviolent secession revolution in the Green Mountains, outsmarting state and federal officials, foiling the bad guys, and quaffing gallons of the good stuff along the way. Once I picked up the novel, I couldn’t put it down. McKibben is a gifted writer, but what’s fun about RADIO FREE VERMONT is how he brews into his tale a wonderful mix of real life Vermont places (our own Harwood Union High School gets a mention) and recognizable Vermonters (Grace Potter and Kat Wright, two of our most prominent flesh-and-blood songstresses, have cameos of sorts). This name dropping, combined with hilarious and poignant insights into the nature of small-town rural Vermont life, set against an all-too-familiar backdrop of a warming planet, aggressive federal activity, and Deep State manufactured “terrorist” threats, makes for a page turner. At least, for this independent-minded Vermonter. Thrill seekers even get a climactic snowmobile chase. To say any more would ruin the fun.

In his “fable,” McKibben also picks up on an initiative we began to pioneer with “Vermont Commons” news journal several years ago – the idea of using Vermont’s time-honored town meeting tradition as a springboard for engaging neighbors in the “secession” conversation – neither pro nor con, mind you, but conversation. 2017 marks the 240th anniversary of the creation of the original Republic of Vermont (1777-1791), and coincidentally, a number of us around Vermont have been planning to mark this historic occasion by bringing back our 2VR town meeting initiative in March of 2018. Whether he intended it to or not, McKibben’s novel appears at just the right time.

Big picture, one might quibble with McKibben’s emphasis on Trump’s grotesqueries as prime mover for independence. After all, the Democratic Party under the Clinton/Obama reign is revealing the rot within, as it becomes clear to many that the Dems abandoned ordinary working people decades ago, throwing in their lot with TNCs and the Deep State. The past 8 years saw the Democrats aggressively expand US military activity around the globe, curtail American civil liberties at home, and throw McKibben’s hero Bernie Sanders under the bus, or perhaps Senator Sanders has been ‘sheep dogging” for the Dems the entire time? $220 million later, 2 book deals and several Sanders “foundations” later, many are #feelingthebern. But lay this quibble aside. With RADIO FREE VERMONT, McKibben has performed a valuable fictional service for Vermonters (and the world) at just the right time.

Support for exploring the creation of a 2VR is now polling over 20% here in the Green Mountains, according to a 2017 University of Vermont Center for Rural Studies statewide poll. Independence-minded Vermonters, you know who you are. Hoist your tankards, give McKibben’s new novel a read, and then get busy.

Free Vermont, and long live the UNtied States!