America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic by Phillip Freedenberg

An author and an illustrator, Phillip Freedenberg and Jeff Walton, work on a book. While doing so, they excitedly await the arrival of The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas by author and publisher Rick Harsch. Harsch’s book will help them, they think, complete their own, and Harsch-as-publisher will complete the logistical loop to release the (Cactus) book to the masses. These three (Freedenberg, Walton, Harsch) form the nucleus of what is referred to as the Cult of the Cactus Boots, which is a group that exists in some unspecified point in the future under the banner of creative freedom, striving for true release from oppression, to help unify humanity and collective thought within the unified field. The overall setting is grim, post apocalyptic, reflective of our own in that all thought, word, and creativity have been actively stamped out by a government organization called TICI (Total Information Control Initiative), which uses screens to brainwash people, storing their thoughts and replacing them with ones approved by the oppressors. Prescient, no?