Ms. Ono designs a graphic symbol she calls the “Seventh Generation Eye,” intended t o represent “the principle that leaders must weigh all their decisions in terms of their impact on the future as far as the seventh generation to come.” Not to be upstaged, the irrepressible Mr. Turner organizes Sun God festivals where attractive young women lead celebrations of the sun as a clean energy source.

Under the banner “Everybody a Corporation,” Mr. Gates encourages people to incorporate themselves because corporations “had more freedom to sue, to go bankrupt, to pay lower taxes, to receive welfare; they could create overseas subsidiaries and holding companies, and they could avoid being jailed because they were artificial entities.”

Mr. Gates and the Houston tort lawyer Joe Jamail deliberately inflame and distract right-wing opponents by starting “decoy” campaigns, one of which calls for rewriting the last words of the Pledge of Allegiance to read “with liberty and justice for some.”

The Meliorists, meanwhile, organize the Clean Elections Party, dedicated to reforming campaign finance laws and throwing corrupt politicians out of office. They educate the public on how citizens’ utility boards, once confined to matters involving gas and electric companies, can be used to address almost any issue. They lead a successful campaign to unionize Wal-Mart as part of a larger effort to reform a “low-wage business economy.”

In response to the Meliorist threat, the establishment powers hire a pit-bull-carrying former corporate raider, the fictional Lancelot Lobo, to counterattack. Lobo enlists detectives to bug the Hawaiian hotel and spends millions on negative media ads. But his efforts are thwarted when he unexpectedly falls in love with Ms. Ono.

The Meliorists achieve most of their seven-point agenda. The American citizenry celebrates Labor Day with joyous parades, serious discussions about films like “Norma Rae” and demands for “a new economic order where the people would be supreme over corporations and sovereign over their government.” Mr. Newman proclaims to Phil Donahue, “It’s truly a Hollywood ending, except that it’s real.”