Politically Incoherent with the Shameless Geek
Here we go. It's just about time for another election. Time for people to argue about who they think should run the country for the next four years. They'll argue about how one guy will save the world, but the other guy will destroy it. They'll discuss and debate, they'll argue and fight. They'll even threaten to leave the country if the wrong guy wins. The only thing they will fail to do is agree. My opinion: They're both politicians. The thing they do best is generate fertilizer.
Now I'm not the most politically active guy in the world, but I see a problem here. People who are usually mature, even-tempered, and logical, become raging lunatics at election time. Their eyes roll back into their head. They grunt incoherently, and they throw food out the door. Maybe we should just call it what it is: Amok Time. Pictures of a wild eyed Vulcan with a big blade in his hand come to mind... and they aren't far from how some of our "candidates" look. Remember that they are politicians. Greasy enough to lube your car with, but not worth fighting over.
God help us if we have another tie like we did last time. Four years ago the country was so indecisive that we had to bring in the heffalumps and woozles... er... I mean judges and lawyers to decide who we voted for. Then, of course, half of us got mad about it. Which half, I can't recall right now. I have no idea what the politicians will do for an encore if this happens again. I think they've run out of woozles to enlist. Remember that they are politicians. Just like heffalumps and woozles, they are very confusle.
I have two foolproof ideas for how to fix this problem. The first is to add an entry marked "They're both idiots!" to the ballot. If you can't bring yourself to vote for either Mr. Ed or Alfred E. Newman , you just declare that they are both idiots! This isn't the old "none of the above" entry from the old Brewsters Millions movie. No way. If "They're both idiots!" gets the most votes, we re-run the election in a month with a completely new set of idiots. Sooner or later, one political party or the other will get the idea that they can win easily if they nominate someone who is NOT an idiot.
Or... maybe they won't. They are politicians after all. Politicians are the kind of idiots who think we believe them when they say "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". That kind of statement is lost on geeks. We have trouble remembering what "sexual relations" means.
The only fly in the ointment with the "idiots" theory is the very real possibility that both parties have actually nominated their best. Can you imagine what kind of morons would be in the next round? We would end up with the type of person who can't win a nomination on the first try. These are the people who endorse other politicians and who claim to believe what other politicians say. Could you take someone like that seriously? He's either lying, or worse, dumb enough to really believe. And they call us geeks!
OK. New theory. If no candidate wins by at least 2%, and neither candidate concedes defeat, we take the Star Trek analogy to it's conclusion. We put both of them in a really hot place, (oooh tempting) give them deadly weapons, and let them duel to the death. The winner becomes president, the loser becomes fertilizer for the White House Rose Garden. Never happen of course. If the vote ended up that close, both guys would be tripping over each other to concede.
Wouldn't it be fun though? I could just see it. Thump! Whack! Thats for the swift boats! Hack! Slice! So what if I can't say nucular! Stab! Jab! Still think I'm weak on defense, cowboy? Bang! Boom! Umm.. Uh.. So what if I can't say nucular! We could have the Supreme Court as referees... like last time. After 4 hours of flailing away at each other and lots of attempts to talk their way out of it, the whole thing would be declared a tie, and both candidates would be planted in the rose garden. We could all watch it on 60 Minutes II with that guy who would 'rather' not check his sources! He could interview witnesses who never really were there about how they wrote memos about something that didn't actually happen! And when the whole thing is over, and we realize that we have just eliminated a couple of politicians, we could finally say what we are all thinking:
Mission Accomplished
-- Shameless