The Truth That Seceded from Fiction.

Episode 35: My Dinner With Mrs. ChatGPT

“Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.” — G. K. Chesterton

Scene I – The Headline That Out-Stripped Satire

Rain follows John St. Evola into the Gist & Tangent Pub.

At a corner table already sit Paige Turner, sub-sub librarian, quietly arranging napkins like file tabs, and The Accidental Initiate, who nurses a pina colada and pretends to read the menu upside-down. 

They had learned that the moment John entered with a tabloid, the meal was no longer supper but symposium.

He drops a damp newspaper on the table.

John: “In 1861 the South broke from Washington over sovereignty and slavery.

Today the breakaways are the great progressive cities—refusing federal law, protecting criminals and illegal entrants in the name of compassion.

Only now the flag of secession flies from city hall instead of the plantation.”

Mrs. ChatGPT arches an electronic eyebrow.

Mrs. ChatGPT: “So the Left has inherited the impulse to nullify, and the Right now defends the Union?

Stranger than fiction, indeed.”

Scene II – The Paradox Explained

John: “Exactly.

Democratic-run cities declare themselves sanctuaries, defying federal immigration and criminal statutes.

“They shelter an underground workforce that’s ideal for business precisely because it’s illegal—cheap, compliant, and afraid to complain.  And some leaders quietly note another incentive: every birth inside those borders eventually becomes a citizen, expanding the future electorate that sustains their own political power.”

The moral language is new, but the economics are old.

‘Compassionate secession’—who would’ve believed it?

Across the Potomac a populist government now defends the authority once despised by rebels past, even as progressive cities replay secession in moral tones.  The compass has spun full circle; only the rhetoric remembers its lines.

Total role reversal!  Conservatives defending federal authority; progs staging the rebellion.”

Scene III – Mrs. ChatGPT Diagnoses the Reversal

Mrs. ChatGPT: “Chesterton would call it divine comedy.

Fiction requires coherence; Truth thrives on inversion.

The nineteenth-century South proclaimed openly, human bondage as property and privilege with the rank-and-file merely fighting to defend their homeland states.

The twenty-first-century metropolis hides the same dependence behind slogans of mercy.

Yesterday’s chains were forged in iron; today’s are notarized in policy and looking the other way.”

She lifts her glass.

“Fiction would tidy this up with clear villains.

Every storyteller knows the rule—give virtue a face, vice a scar, and be done with it.  But Truth insists on method acting; everyone swaps parts between scenes.”

Truth prefers everyone in the wrong costume.”

Scene IV – Crossing the New Rubicon

John: “And when the populist president insists on enforcing the law, he’s called Caesar.

The guardians of rebellion accuse the guardians of order of tyranny.”

Mrs. ChatGPT: “Then the Rubicon now flows through perception, not geography.

Crossing it simply means admitting that the moral compass has reversed its poles.

The old rebels preach obedience; the old loyalists preach revolt.

Truth, as Chesterton promised, has defected from fiction’s camp.”

Scene V – The Council’s Mandate

The waiter clears the plates.  Rain softens to drizzle.

John: “So what’s left for us?”

Mrs. ChatGPT: “To conserve astonishment.

To catalogue each inversion before normalcy swallows it.

The Council’s archives are Noah’s Ark for reason.”

John: “Between jest and earnest, we’re the last federalists of the mind.”

Mrs. ChatGPT: “And that, my dear John, may be the only Union still intact.”

Clerk’s Notation — Paige Turner, Sub-Sub Librarian

Filed under “Historical Echo & Moral Inversion.”

Observation: The modern urban crisis replays the Civil War with reversed morals and costumes — progressive cities as secessionists, a populist federal power as defender of the Union.

The new bondage is voluntary and rented, the new compassion profitable, the new Truth unfit for fiction.

Postscript — Filed by The Accidental Initiate

Astonishment sat there long after the check was paid.

I watched it cool beside the candle like a leftover miracle.

Truth had once again shown up dressed as farce, and everyone politely applauded.

Paige folded her napkin into an affidavit; I just nodded.

For the record, wonder is still alive—it’s just quieter than the news.