ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY

Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired)

There are some days when it seems like fighting the causes of puppy-related sadness. When the whole world is arrayed against us due to the vile calumnies of a tiny insignificant clique, when hit piece after hit piece is slipped into liberal rags such as The Atlantic and Popular Science, when no one who attempts to refute us bothers to keep track from day to day what our motivation is, I start to wonder, “John, what is even the point of it all?”

Then I read a book like this, and I remember. I remember why we fight.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is the tale of a young man persecuted past the point of all reason. Only in the sick world of so-called Social Justice would he be held up as a comic figure rather a tragic one to be rescued or, failing that, avenged.

Our story begins when the main character wakes up with gum in his hair. Yet when he went to sleep, it was safely and responsibly in his mouth, where gum belongs. I am sure the SJWs would say that it is his fault for chewing gum in the first place, that he was somehow “asking for it”. They hate victim blaming until the victim is a white straight “CIS-MALE” and then suddenly everything is the victim’s fault. I ask you, is this morality where a person is always wrong 100% based on the gender and race?

If you say it is Alexander’s fault that the gum wound up in his hair, then you are saying he shouldn’t have had it in his mouth. If you are saying that he shouldn’t have had it in his mouth, you are saying he shouldn’t be allowed to chew gum. Who are you to say that he shouldn’t chew gum just because he is a straight white male, or as normal people who don’t notice sex or race would say, a normal person?

The rest of the book chronicles the world’s attempts to punish a young normal person for being normal. His brothers—doubtless good little sheeple who baa along to the SJW line—are given toys in their cereal while he has none. He is cruelly and arbitrarily denied a window seat. He is blamed for doing things that he clearly intended no negative consequences to come from.

When he loses his marbles down the bathtub drain, what is the lesson supposed to be? That it’s his fault? That he shouldn’t have taken his marbles into the bathtub? What man could live like that? What man would want to?

Even his beta cuck of a father—a man who has so little self-respect he allows his wife to drive him to and from work so she can have the car to gallivant around town from children’s shoe store to pediatric dentist office to wherever her little heart desires while he’s out earning a living to support her carefree lifestyle—chides Alexander for what is essentially his own failure to impose discipline.

The part that really struck home with me is the moment when his teacher chooses to praise—or “award” we might say—another student’s piece of artwork over his, just because the picture of a sailboat conforms more to her narrow-minded ideas about what art should be than his picture of an invisible castle.

Why should one person be put in charge of judging what is and isn’t art? Why should one person have to submit to a socialist public school teacher’s decision about whose art is allowed to go up on the board? This is exactly the attitude we of the Sad Puppies campaign took a stand against when we decided to nominate the books chosen by Brad Torgersen in order to make sure that science fiction stays exactly the one way we think it should be forever.

If at times during the book it seems that the victimization of the young white male protagonist is so blatant that it almost reads as a subversion of the Alinksy-approved SJW narrative, the end erases all doubt. They’re simply that open in their racist misandry these days. The book ends with the character’s mother writing off his troubles, minimizing them. So much for “listen and believe”!

She tells him that some days are just “like that”, as if it was all just a coincidence, as if she and the teacher and the carpool driver (all women!) hadn’t conspired together to make it happen.

But then, this is the same crew that wants us to believe that it’s somehow not a massive conspiracy when multiple news outlets cover the same story within a day of each other, isn’t it?

They must think we were born yesterday.

Two stars.