The Mandate



Slow beat swift. Regressive beat progressive. Comic books beat textbooks. Propaganda beat analysis. Stammering beat articulation. Spin beat logic. Oil beat solar. Nukular beat nuclear. A 2.0 beat a 4.0. Preemption beat prudence. The Second Amendment beat the other 26. Toby Keith beat Bruce Springsteen. Britney Spears beat Eminem. The Factor beat Hardball. The Patriot Act beat patriotism. The white cream in the middle beat the black cookie sandwich. Leaves of absence beat purple hearts. Landing on carriers beat fighting on PCF94s. Diebold beat the exit polls.

Belligerence beat diplomacy. Cheap labor beat border control. C&W beat R&B. Deficit spending beat fiscal responsibility. Strip mining beat fuel cells. Corporate welfare beat the minimum wage. Ralph Nader beat himself. A1 Steak Sauce beat Heinz. Crawford beat Kyoto. CO2 beat O. However, fear and loathing tied.

Fresh off a Yankee collapse that hurt like poison sumac, I decide, just once, to root for Boston and wind up with a curse of my own. After watching another big lead disappear, I have to hear the pundits call it a blowout. This was a blowout like the 2001 World Series. The only landslide you see is the tops of mountains being blown off in Utah. What we have here is a homophobic three percent mandate.

Along with 57 million other flaming radicals, I am on the fringe. Karl Rove had us all pegged, and now we have our collective tail between our legs. So, it’s back to drawing pentagrams on my wall with goat’s blood. Back to passing around the bong at swingers meetings. Back to a life of 24/7 man-boy love. Back to my closet to pick out a dress. Back to my tent to plot a skyjacking. Back to the Western Union machine to send my Mujahideen friends $9,999. Back to a steady cuisine of Bordeaux, brie, and crepe suzettes. Back to mixing down that gangsta rap album with my Crip homies. Back to producing snuff films in my garage.

I’m praying for a draft just so I can dodge it. The only war I’m fighting in is the culture war, and I’m armed with a pastie on my right nipple. It’s going to be a long, cold winter, but I’ll get through it burning flags. You can send two percent of my Social Security payments to Michael Moore’s next project. Your state may be red, but check out the Communist Party membership card in my wallet.

My own legislative agenda includes legalizing marriage between humans and four-legged creatures, a variety of three-ways, and Earthlings with aliens--all direct logical consequences of the gay rights movement. You don’t happen to know of a clinic that does fourth trimester abortions, do you? Parenthood has become such a hassle. I’m thinking of taking the remains, selling the stem cells, and going windsurfing.

To tell the truth, I don’t sweat the divided nation stuff much. Folks on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line in 1861 had conviction. Folks today have GameCube. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get a little queasy when I take a sober look at the next 49 months. George W. Bush is just finishing his first term but has already done two terms worth of damage. I haven’t seen so many secretaries quit since IBM came out with the PC. Colin Powell left skid marks. While ex-cabinet members try to write history before it judges them, the United States is like John Kerry’s early numbers—it’s all downhill from here. I’m afraid we are about to be screwed again. Yes, technically it’s consensual. But the country is half asleep.



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©2003 by Rich Herschlag. All rights reserved.