We The People: A Premonition - Russel Razzaque and T.J. MacGregor
Published in 2025 by Omni House Press
262 pages
Within the first year of Trump’s second term as U.S. President, we’ve witnessed a marked increase in fascist discourse and policy. Over 56,000 people have been detained in ICE detention centers, despite over 71% of them having no criminal convictions. Individuals have been increasingly deported to inhumane detention centers, such as in El Salvador, without receiving due process, most famously in the mistaken deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Conservatives tout the rapid construction of “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, a massive detention center that is estimated to cost taxpayers 450 million dollars per year to operate. Protests over ICE’s thuggish activities in Los Angeles saw largely peaceful demonstrations being violently disrupted by police and their escalation tactics, such as firing rubber bullets and administering tear gas, despite the crowds posing no credible threat. In August, Trump announced the federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., mobilizing the National Guard and federal troops to crack down on crime (despite overwhelming evidence that crime rates have been declining in DC, as well as across the country, since a spike in 2020).
The goal of these policies, beyond their blatant cruelty, is the gradual normalization of authoritarian, far-right ideology and violence against political dissidents. It rests on a reactionary impulse that turns the external contradictions of capitalism into an external conflict with a fantasized Other (whether they be immigrants, LGBTQIA+ community, Muslims, socialists, etc.). How can we fight back against the seizure of power by the 1%, when the levers of democracy seem so fundamentally broken? In their 2025 novel, We The People: A Premonition, psychiatrist Russel Razzaque and author T.J. MacGregor imagine what this near future could potentially look like and what we can do to fight against it.
Overview:
In the not distant future, former FBI analyst Luna Ochoa makes a shocking discovery: an AI can predict humanity’s future, and it is bleak. Images of ecological disaster, starvation, global pandemics, widespread authoritarian oppression, and nuclear war flash before her eyes. Unless drastic changes occur, these threats will likely lead to humanity’s extinction.
To fight against this dire prediction, Luna teams up with Jake Kessler, a journalist who has been silenced for exposing government corruption, and Leo Montoya, an incredibly wealthy dissident who has built a network that monitors government abuse. Together, they begin to form a small community of fired federal employees and their families. Additionally, Leo has created an app that can bring Athenian direct democracy into the twenty-first century, placing community decisions and policy initiatives directly in the hands of the people.
Yet, the eyes of the government are always watching. With an army of drones and an unstable administrative cabinet, the US government is working to find this hidden community and snuff it out before it can build any form of active resistance. In this political thriller, Luna, Jake, and Leo must now work together to resist an increasingly violent government, avert the oncoming crisis predicted by AI, and struggle to build a better future oriented around radical democracy.
Commendations:
This fast-paced political thriller possesses a few key strengths. First of all, the premise of the book is undoubtedly thought-provoking. Most of the allusions that Razzaque and MacGregor make throughout this work have direct correlates in the present socio-political moment. AI is being increasingly ingrained in our daily existence (despite its negative effects). We are currently witnessing a resurgence of far-right authoritarian ideology in the United States. We are also witnessing a consolidation of power and resources by the wealthy elite while the rest of the world burns. By placing current events into a near-future dystopian setting, the book engages in speculation on what we could be facing in the next few years, making it an engaging and accessible read (though it may hit too close to home for some).
Additionally, I resonate with the ideas that are explored throughout this novel. I am also an advocate of expanding participatory democracy as opposed to the techno-feudalism that looms over the horizon. I appreciate the authors’ inherent connection between the rise of authoritarian regimes and climate collapse. And I deeply sympathize with the author’s belief in struggling for freedom in the face of a tyrannical government and the destruction of the planet. As such, the book serves as a thought experiment to consider how technology can both be a blessing and a curse for humanity, as well as how we can organize ourselves to create a more just and equitable society. Finally, the book is incredibly short and can easily be read in a couple of hours, making it perfect to kill some time during a short flight.
Critique:
Despite containing the kernel of an interesting premise, the book falls short in several key aspects. First of all, the book's pacing is incredibly quick, often leaving no room for character development or tension building. There’s scarce description of either the setting or the internal state of the characters, as the authors often rely on telling, rather than showing. The book’s characters simply bounce around from place to place from one page to the next, which is only broken up by short spurts of quick, rapid-fire dialogue. This breakneck pace is one of the central points from which the rest of the book’s weaknesses flow.
As such, there is little to no character development for anyone in this book. Who we meet at the beginning of the story is pretty much the same by the end. Not one single character experiences any fundamental change, save for swapping romantic interests. There’s little opportunity to become emotionally invested in these characters, and the setup for a budding romance between two of them is not well-executed. When they first attempted to kiss, I was completely taken aback since it seemed to come completely out of nowhere.
Additionally, there’s little depth to the central characters of the novel. Everyone that we meet is a stereotypical cardboard cutout of an average MSNBC/CNN liberal archetype. Every cliche under the sun is played with a straight face, such as including direct 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale references as mic drop moments against the conservative characters. The dialogue often comes across as unnatural and awkward, and no one has a strong, unique personality. Instead, almost every character comes off as a walking cliche, including the silenced journalist, the conservative government stooge (with a liberal wife), and the benevolent millionaire who develops an app to save democracy. Combined with the fact that several typos are littered throughout the text, much of the book feels woefully rushed and underdeveloped.
Adding to the disjointed dialogue, the characters occasionally engage in esoteric, pseudoscientific asides, such as discussing the mysticism of Jungian psychology, synchronicity, psychic mediums, and Spiritualism. Most of these conversations come out of nowhere, and they contribute nothing to the plot of the book. This is most likely due to the primary interests of the second author, T.J. MacGregor, who has written myriad books about UFOs, astrology, tarot, dream interpretation, and synchronicity. While those topics might be interesting to consider on their own, they feel incredibly out of place in this book. These tangents are pigeonholed into segments of dialogue for no apparent reason, which further weakens the narrative flow and tone of the book.
When it comes to the politics of the book, the authors occupy a strange place. First of all, every liberal-coded buzzword that you can think of is thrown into the plot and dialogue. The authoritarian political leadership within the novel is the most thinly veiled allusion to current leaders. For example, the President is never named, but rather constantly referred to as “nut job,” while the FBI director is named Pat Kumar and has big, bulging eyes (clearly a reference to current FBI director Kash Patel). There’s not much imagination within the book, as most of the characters and plot are ripped directly from the headlines, with little interesting or novel insights into how our current situation might develop.
What are the authors’ proposed solutions to the problem of authoritarianism and the erosion of democracy? An app. Seriously. I wish I were joking. Harkening back to the direct democracy of Ancient Athens (not withstanding the gendered requirements for suffrage and the utilization sortition to select government officials in historical Athens), the authors propose that an AI app will be able to facilitate the development of democratic policy and allow people to vote directly from their phones.
While I deeply sympathize with the impulse to extend the principles of democracy, the belief that an app will save us is deeply misguided. Tying people’s vote to their phone means that those who do not have the means to own a phone, download the app, or are disconnected from the Internet do not have a voice. Unless the government provides each citizen with a phone and a data plan, instituting such a plan would thereby unintentionally install a de facto poll tax. There is also the danger that the app may become vulnerable to a wide range of security risks and manipulation by malicious actors, thereby undermining the purpose of expanding a true direct democracy.
Furthermore, in their fictionalized world, the authors do not consider the material realities that a dystopian future and civilizational collapse would entail. In the book, the world is potentially going to be leveled by nuclear war, and the solution is for the masses to be glued to an AI app? Additionally, toward the end of the book, someone asks for a map of the underground tunnels in which they now plan to live in the wake of the nuclear disaster, and they are told to download another app that has everything they need. This is laughingly absurd, as the authors show no concerns about the electrical grid or give any other kind of forethought into the logistics of how the community would survive.
Lest the reader think that they are merely offering a thought experiment, the authors write a direct call to action at the end. SPOILER: The book ends suddenly with civilization collapsing and the resistance literally going underground (in the tunnels underneath Disney World, of all places) while the popularity of the app skyrockets, hinting at the beginning of hope for change. Then, the authors directly address the reader, imploring us to bring the fictional app into reality by joining a mailing list and investing our ideas, time, and money into the project. This left me with an incredibly bitter taste in my mouth, as it felt like the entire book was essentially a long-form pitch for an app, with the book‘s proceeds going to help develop it. This is notwithstanding that there are already other apps in development that utilize this exact principle.
Finally, while Razzaque and MacGregor rightly criticize the current state of the nation, they do not reckon with the economic foundations of how we arrived at our current moment, offering purely ideological reasons instead. The “resistance” that is built by Leo and the community is composed almost entirely of disenchanted mid-level bureaucrats, "genius" computer hackers, and other members of the professional managerial class. The workers who are directly protesting in the streets only serve as background noise and are merely a reflection of the success that this cohort of characters is having in spreading awareness of the government’s abuses. Instead of the workers organizing and uniting against the forces of capital, revolution for these authors is accomplished through the benevolence of millionaires, the brilliance of computer scientists, and the technology that they fund and develop. This complete disregard for the dynamics of class consciousness and befuddling overconfidence in the revolutionary potential of the bourgeoisie is a glaring weakness written by authors who have little background in revolutionary political theory.
Conclusion:
Overall, We the People is an interesting, though ultimately disappointing, novella. While the authors offer a few intriguing insights into the intersection of authoritarianism, emerging technology, and climate collapse, the book offers little more than a thinly-veiled advertisement for a start-up app. While billed as a political thriller, the book’s politics are surprisingly weak and its thrills are in rather short supply. It’s a shame because the book had the potential to be a sharp and incisive commentary on our current political moment. However, it falls woefully short in terms of execution. The authors are undoubtedly well-intentioned, but unfortunately, their proposed solution is merely a surface-level technocratic fix for a systemic and deeply rooted problem.
The authors are right about one thing: the future is indeed in jeopardy. The working class will have to organize and fight against the forces of fascism that threaten the life, liberty, and dignity of all people. We need a coordinated effort to stymie the worst effects of climate change. We need to extend the principles of democracy to the workplace, ending the exploitative labor that fuels the gears of capitalism. We will need to look to new ways of providing care and security beyond the logic of the profit motive. In short, we will need much more than an app to spark a revolution.