The Mad King
The American experiment was an unlikely success. Benjamin Franklin said so, and he helped create the thing. "A republic, if you can keep it," he said, and to everyone's surprise, we did keep it for quite a while.
For some reason, our revolution didn't eat its children. We ate the children of other nations. Maybe that's what staved it off. There are far more myths about why it worked and what it meant than what we really know about why it worked. Maybe part of why it worked was that we didn't look too closely, so long as we could keep expanding to the West.
Nothing lasts forever. If it fails and breaks in my lifetime, that will be unfortunate. But not altogether surprising.
I had good teachers. They worked hard to teach me civics and history. You kind of need the two together to understand either. I'm lucky, most of my teachers are still alive to see me suffer and struggle with what they taught me. I think we're meant to struggle with it. A man's reach should exceed his grasp and all that.
I won't go down without a fight, but that doesn't mean I won't go down. At dawn, look to the east, the man said, but will our salvation be there? On May Day, the people will stand up. Let's see how well it goes.
In Margaret Atwood's Handmaid books, an epidemic causes a fertility crisis in the United States that leads to a civil war where a cabal of protestant evangelists takes control of most of the United States. It's just a book, of course. Canadian science fiction. It can't happen here.
A month ago. The President of the United States announced a plan to annex Canada as the fifty-first state. Last week, he announced plans for his government to fight a crisis in fertility that doesn't actually exist. In the same week, at the funeral of a much-loved Pope, the same president was filmed openly sleeping while defiantly wearing a blue suit when specifically asked to wear black.
They say it's derangement to point these things out. Blonde women who started getting plastic surgery when they were twenty, then marry sixty-three-year-old men, tell us that everything is fine. The president's plan just needs time to work. Oh. And we're kicking legitimate journalists out of the White House and replacing them with a blonde woman from the My Pillow Guys Podcast.
The My Pillow Guy. This is America. Don't let me catch you slippin, now. Don't let me catch you trippin, now. This is America.
They can count on us though. We've been faithful to the Confederacy for more than a hundred years, just a waitin' for it to come around again. We bees ready, boss. This is America.
I joined a group called "witches against MAGA". I'm not much of a witch, but I'll take my friends where I find them. Ironically, they're closer to what Jesus describes as a Christian than the president. That's ironic, huh?
In Atwood's books, the Christian radicals actually went to church, even though they distorted the message. I guess she couldn't have predicted everything accurately. In a fight for what's decent, I'm gonna side with whoever has the least food, and the least gold. That's just something Jesus said.
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Hey, Caesar! Come get this shit will you? Maybe you can use it in your war with China. They're kind of laughing at you. I wish I could.
This is America. Don't let me catch you, now.