My Time Has Come

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", muttered Shelley, probably while peering through an absinthe fog and wearing Mary Wollstonecraft-Godwin's teenaged thighs for earmuffs. Such things may fill a man with hubris and make him think he can go sailing in a thunderstorm or walk on water.

Until today, I have avoided the call to the dusty arena of politics. My hat was never in the ring. If nominated, I would not serve, if elected, I would move and change my name to Osbert Fleadick. Anyone who wants power over other human beings probably shouldn't be trusted with power.

An unfeeling public would almost certainly reject my plan to bring back the buffalo west of the Mississippi and restore the forests east of the Mississipi to pre-1850 numbers. They say a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic to the Mississippi in the trees without ever touching the ground. Swimming the river, he could travel on the backs of the buffalo herds to the Rocky Mountains, again without touching the ground.

I admit there were provisions in my platform that some found troubling. The call to re-establish grizzly bears to their former range "because Americans need a large dangerous animal in their environment to knock the snot-nose out of them" could probably have been phrased differently. The red states aren't ready to vote for a candidate who's come out in FAVOR of pornography, and the blue states don't see the need to purge all advertising agencies with a guillotine set up on Madison Avenue.

But now my time has come!

Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology Michael Wynne wants to test "nonlethal" microwave devices on American citizens, to see if they really ARE non-lethal. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," says Wynne. "... if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

Never mind the world press, Wynne. The first concern will be my foot up your ass, as soon as the tremors wear off.

Candidate for governor Richard "Dick" DeVos ("Dick DeVos before he dicks you") wants Creationism-- excuse me, "intelligent design" taught in science class to "expose our students to more ideas, not less."

Ideas that once would have been derided as stark raving batshit are now in the mainstream. A once skeptical media, afraid of being "partisan" (that's what happens when you whore after advertisers or sell out to a conglomerate) now reports this stuff with a straight face.

America! I have heard your call!

America! I'm putting my loony shoulder to the wheel!