Trigger Warning Chapter 41: Jake Makes More Frenemies

Hello, readers! Sorry for the unexpected delay on this post. Over the past two weeks I got sick (not with coronavirus), moved, and then nothing else notable happened in world events.

Previously, Matthias Foster’s college campus hostage plan is going to shit with astonishing narrative speed, having basically gone wrong as possible from the get-go after taking forever for shit to pop off, between Jake Goddamn American Hero Rivers fighting back in exactly the way he worried Jake would, his spy Natalie betraying his cause because she’s fallen in love with Jake, and a completely new overpowered character named Dog showing up out of nowhere to also fight back. So as far as narrative pacing goes, Trigger Warning has felt a little bit less like…

And more like…

But as we hit the 86% mark of Trigger Warning, I do think it’s really important to reflect on how Jake’s journey has yet to feature him growing as a person. Not that I quite knew what to expect from a book so bald-faced about its worldview that it’s titled “Trigger Warning”, but three hundred pages of a man being proven right as soon once a wildly inept villain shows up is… not especially compelling?

Speaking of which, let’s talk about our villain, the evil far-left terrorist with crazy far-left heroes like (checks notes) …Osama bin Laden?

Taking over an entire college campus and threatening to blow it off the face of the earth . . . ! That was the sort of thing legends were made of. If he was able to pull this off, his name would go down in the annals of terrorism, right next to Osama bin Laden.

And now, with a mere four chapters left, it’s time to watch things continue to go exactly the way they have been this whole book as nobody learns anything.

Trigger Warning: Chapter 41

Jake frees another group of hostages from a floor of the library, including Cal Granderson, a man who leans so far left in opposition to Jake that he’s a cop who loves to give traffic tickets and pull his stun gun on civilians (rereads sentence, sighs, keeps summarizing book).

Granderson and his opponent were twisting and staggering around, Jake couldn’t risk taking a shot in their direction. But the second guard was a different story, so he called, “Hey!”
The man turned his head first, to look over his shoulder, and then his eyes widened as he spotted Jake standing there drawing a bead on him. He tried to jerk around and bring his gun to bear, but the Glock in Jake’s hands had already spouted flame.

Why would shouting “hey” make this less risky?

This would have been a good time for the now-unguarded hostages to rush forward and overwhelm the gunman through sheer force of numbers. Considering the way that most of them were hiding under the snack bar tables, though, whimpering and crying because guns were going off, Jake knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Wait, wait, wait, now Jake is arguing that collective action is a good thing? Pick a lane, Jake!

Cal Granderson finishes off the other guard and the inevitable happens as Jake and Cal realize they both have the same goal, the skills to do it, and need to put their differences aside to work together for the greater good.

“You’re not going to suggest that we work together, are you?”
“That might be better than getting killed,” Jake said. “Might be.”

I can’t argue with that.

Jake and Cal decide the first thing to do is get the others out of the building in case the bomb threat is real. Trigger Warning continues to have its cast of lefty strawmen really push the boundaries of believable stupidity.

[Cal] turned and waved the hand holding the gun at the hostages. “Come on, you people. Get out of here while you can.” […]
“The administration needs to issue a statement and address this,” added a middle-aged man who Jake pegged as a professor. “This campus is supposed to be a safe space and a gun-free zone.” He looked pointedly at the pistols Jake and Granderson held. “Neither of you should have those. You should turn them in to the authorities immediately.”

Just seems like kind of a weird hill to think that other people want to die on is all.

Meanwhile at FBI/begrudging campus cops headquarters, reports are coming in that the extra protagonist who showed up to do the same thing Jake is doing but better is still doing the same thing Jake is doing but better. This section doesn’t actually add anything to the story, but Graham does refer to Dog as “the legendary Dog” at one point just so we all get a chance to remember how insane this is.

Also meanwhile, Matthias Foster is having a totally normal one that his hostage plan gone about as badly as it could have. And by that I mean he’s taking a minute to be mad at a woman for not fucking him.

Too much time had passed. Matthias Foster had a very strong hunch that Natalie wasn’t coming back, and neither was the man he had sent to follow her.
He hoped she was still alive. At least, he thought he hoped that. But he wasn’t really sure. She was beautiful, no doubt about that, and she had seemed devoted to their cause. Not devoted enough to go ahead and fall in bed with him, as he had assumed she would

Wow, is Trigger Warning coming dangerously close to saying something with merit about false male allies hidden in progressive communities?

I mean, the answer is no; this is the same book that accidentally has a surprisingly nuanced critique of white feel-good liberalism through a white professor who “identifies as black” out of a wild missense mutation of performative wokeness. But how wild would that have been if this was the one thing that it kind of had a real point about?

“maybe we’d better start trying to come up with some sort of exit strategy–”
“There are only two exits from this, you know that. Victory or death.” Foster laughed. […] Foster’s hand stole into his pocket. The fingers curled around the detonator. This one was separate. None of the others in the group, not even Natalie, knew about it.

Having such a normal one.

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This is the point where we suggest throwing a little bit of money our way for running the blog, but obviously times are a little wild right now, so you can also turn your amused frustration at a regressive tome like Trigger Warning into something useful with community action. Do you have some spare cash (or time)? Donate to a local mutual aid network (such as this Brooklyn-based one) to help service workers financially affected by self-quarantining. Are you a nerd with a gaming computer? You can contribute your GPU’s processing power to Folding@home to collectively help model proteins and identify drug targets and (science science etc). You don’t even necessarily need a fancy gaming PC for this; I’ve had this running on my MacBook while writing this post you just read!