When I realized libertarians can relate better to Jess Ballard than Harry Potter

I can’t believe it’s been nearly 22 years since J.K. Rowling released Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and I also can’t believe I didn’t become a libertarian right then and there. But then again, I was 12 years old and in the middle of government school “education,” even if I wasn’t that good at ‘playing school.’

But hey, in hindsight, everything worked itself out and that continues to be the case, as it does with a lot of people. Anyway, I went ahead and, like a contingent of those who the State raised via coercion, embraced left-wing leanings until my early twenties when I finally snapped out of it as an economics teacher dropped the term ‘Austrian School.’

Yet, I had the book right in front of me, along with an entire series that happens to criticize government intervention. My favorite series, no doubt.

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Fast-forward to October 2020 when most of the world was still facing unlawful COVID restrictions, I wanted to read something paranormal. That brought me to the Gateway Trilogy and Jess Ballard. After blowing through Spirit Legacy, I read Spirit Prophecy for the first time, where Jess and her sister Hannah realized they were outcasts.

And while I saw the corruption in the system, thanks to an overreaching Council, I realized some of us in libertarian circles could relate to Jess. But it wasn’t until this most recent readthrough did I discover something else: libertarians could relate to her better than Harry during his fifth year at Hogwarts.

One group wants to imprison Jess, the other wants her dead

One of my favorite scenes in Spirit Prophecy contains a thriller element when some random dude follows her and Savannah (Savvy) through the streets of London. A dude who, even when a few Samaritans try to hold him up, refuses to end his pursuit.

But before things get out of hand, Finn, who followed Jess and Savvy from Fairhaven Hall, arrives and rescues them from this creep. Still, it wouldn’t be a good scene unless there was more action going on. And that’s when another vehicle pulls behind theirs.

It’s not long before the trio (four of them if you count their spirit guide, Milo) realize this latest pursuer wants to run them off the road. And here’s when things get good: Their pursuer, despite Milo’s best efforts to distract said pursuer, succeeds, sending their vehicle tumbling down a bank.

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Jess, Finn, and Savvy all walk away from the wreck and are punished when they arrive back at Fairhaven. After she’s free to return to her dorm, Milo tells Jess he saw the driver, and it was none other than the last man who saw her former mentor, Dr. David Pierce, alive.

At this point, Jess comes to a strong realization: The Necromancers are indeed back, even if the Durupinen refuse to believe it.

Wanted by two powerful factions renders Jess a complete outcast

The Necromancers have one goal in mind: To reverse the Gateway, which is bad news for those spirits trapped in the aether, thanks to the Durupinen Leeching energy from them as they attempted to cross over. Leeching may have allowed the Durupinen to halt their own aging, something their Council was more than fine with, but the practice caused an even bigger problem.

Yep, the Necromancers have firepower at their disposal that makes it easy for them to carry out what they want. Plus, with some knowledge of the Isherwood Prophecy, which Jess and Hannah are the ultimate subjects of, getting rid of Jess would mean there’d be nobody capable of preventing what would be an outright catastrophe from occurring.

It’s bad enough that Jess and Hannah have paid for their mother’s mistakes, which they are blamed for even if they had nothing to do with them. And it gets even worse when over half the Council wants to see them jailed when it becomes clearer they’re the prophecy’s subjects.

In short, the Durupinen may have tried to thwart the prophecy, but their relentless lust for using a spirit’s aether to give them that supermodel look helped contribute to its fulfillment. Still, they’d rather keep looking like supermodels and throw a couple of teens in the dungeons than mull over how they could be responsible for seeing this debacle fulfilled.

Spirit Ascendency depicts Jess living a fugitive lifestyle

If you love books that contain thriller elements, Spirit Ascendency has plenty of it while Spirit Prophecy scratches the surface. And it drives home what I finally realized in Spirit Prophecy: That Jess is the true outlier here in a ‘world’ that features two major ideological factions. While there is a ‘lesser of the two evils,’ neither is particularly decent.

It’s something we’ve long seen in today’s world of politics, where it seems like both major sides of the political spectrum are so bent on disagreeing with one another, it’s almost like when one group takes a stance on an issue, the other group is bound to take the opposite stance. Or at least, that’s what it seems like.

These days, I’ve noticed that libertarians seem less like outcasts in the realm of mainstream politics, with some of Donald Trump’s moves at least looking okay on the surface - freezing USAID, freezing military aid to Ukraine, and… potentially setting the stage for leaving NATO?

But, the realization I came up with recently made Jess quite the relatable character she should’ve been back in 2020. Those of us who flat-out refused to follow any mandate or restriction weren’t always the most popular people at the grocery store. But hey, dirty looks where only one’s eyes are exposed have never hurt anyone, right?

Then, there’s the laundry list of other aspects others may not have taken the most kindly with, including, but not limited to:

Critique of Intel communities

Critique of government schools

Pushing for sound currency

Pushing for pardons of people like Ross Ulbricht

Critique of programs like social security

One could go on and on here, but you get the gist. That said, Jess Ballard, pursued by multiple powerful factions, probably would’ve fit, at more of a thriller-level pace, in with libertarians when it became clearer that she was a threat to the establishment of both.