Professor Slater has always held what he thought to be progressive beliefs — racial equality, gender equality, religious equality, and so on. How could he have expected that three decades of uninterrupted rule by the left-wing Progressive Party would make him feel so trapped? In the modern “Progressive World,” there is no tolerance for intolerant views. When intolerance is an arrestable offence, however, and society collectively assumes that people of a certain race, a certain gender, and a certain age are inherently intolerant, to what lengths will Professor Slater go to protect his right to free speech?
Maika Perez-Okpik was born into the “Progressive World,” benefitting from all the rights afforded to young homosexual women of colour. When Maika is fired from her job due to a realignment of her company’s “Equality Quota,” however, she begins to question how free and progressive her society really is. Through her introduction to an underground network of deplorables, Maika is confronted by the reality that her entire livelihood might be challenged by revolutionaries threatening to topple the system.
“A Cage Called Freedom” is a cautionary tale, warning against extremism and identity politics and advocating for responsible political discourse. It attempts to demonstrate how one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia, and how the corruptibility of power knows no ideology.
