I have very little hope for our upcoming presidential election. While surely America is not going to vote for the current dimwit again, I'm not all that thrilled with the slate of the Dems who are running. Most of them either are running so far to the far left as to be unelectable (not to mention the insanity of the policies), but they are also playing right into the Far Right's hands whereby their own insanity is still insane, but comparable.
So I have been having this heated fantasy popping into my head while mowing the yard or driving the bus or playing video game, and it's to my blog that I turn when I have stupid ideas that needs to be disposed of.
Here's how it goes: the presidential election debates of 2020 get opened up to a third person on stage. A random American, somebody with no desire for public office but who is drawn by lottery to stand on the stage with Trump and Sanders/Warren/Booker/Biden whoever. Who knows how it happens? Maybe a network decides to spice things up, maybe Trump demands a third person be on the ballots to draw off votes from his opponents. And someday, next September, I get a call saying, "Sir, we need you to come to Columbus next week. You have been drafted to be in the Presidential debate."
I feel so contradictory about being in the limelight. I am a preacher, after all...and so I stand before audiences several times a week and hope to impress for the sake of the gospel. I've never been fully comfortable before others, but I've done it long enough now that I can do this, and I'm arrogant enough to think that I'm smarter than most everybody else. But at the same time being up in front of a stage, becoming famous, horrifies me, because I know that a)I'm not charismatic or telegenic, at all b)I would stumble over my words and become the new meme generator for the 20s, and c)I really, really don't want the responsibility of representing the half of the American population who is sick of both sides.
Yet I'm drafted into this fantasy. And there I am, standing before Chuck Todd and Megan Kelly to give my answers at the great debates of the presidency. I picture myself on the one hand being respectful of the Democrats while at the same time pointing out their message is not being accepted because it is, well, impractical. Cancelling college debt for 17th century French literature majors? Providing 'free' health care for the morbidly obese? Seriously. I know you have good intentions...but do you have any idea how dumb and unrealistic these ideas are?
But my bigger anger turns towards Trump. I imagine myself looking over at the big orange blob known as Mr. President and blasting away. 'Sir, you're a disgrace, an embarassment, a serial adulterer and perhaps a serial rapist...please, for the love of all that's good, resign. I promise, I'll ensure that somebody comes over to you and kisses your butt everyday, since that's what you want. Just go away, and nobody else gets hurt.' And on and on it goes.
Overall, I do my best, dodge the particulars of policy, and I collapse at the end of the night, glad that it's over. But of course my words have sparked a scandal. How dare he! Who does he think he is? Learn to be respectful! You're a preacher of the gospel, and this is God's chosen man? The whole establishment, both left and right, are infuriated (or secretly delighted).
And then three days later the polls come out: Trump, 38% (because he's got 38% of Americans who will never leave him, I'm convinced, until the next paragraph's turn of events). Sanders/Warren/Booker/Biden, 36%. Me, 22%. Other, 4%. People go crazy. Wait, is there a third alternative? Can we get out of the stupidity of this two party system that is destroying America? Yes! Ballot initiatives to get me on the ballots are begun out of nowhere by grassroots people who are equally as frustrated and I find myself on the presidential ballot in 46 states. My high school friend Derek agrees to be my VP running mate, 'cuz he's smart and business-like and he has lived in Iowa long enough to pull those votes. I don't really do anything, except being featured in the Atlantic and occasionally being talked about on late night talk shows. But I've hit a nerve.
And then late September rolls around: the stock market crashes. Sean Hannity breaks down on air. Trump's two oldest sons are indicted for paying millions to the Russians to purchase a tape of their father in a Russian hotel room doing unmentionable things. Mike Pence is overheard on a video saying that the last four years have been a disaster. Trump's support vanishes overnight, and people wake up long enough to recognize that he's the moron that he has always been. Sanders/Warren/Booker/Biden has no plan to get us through this except Spend and Hold Hands.
On a random Thursday evening I finish my bus route and eat dinner with my family and then appear on Wolf Blitzer's show and state the obvious, that the bill has come due for our profligate spending, and we have to suck it up and ride out the next four years, and hey, I'll do my best and then leave, whatever. Immedately people find that I'm the least of three evils, and I'm now polling in late October at 53%. The media swarms my little town, talks to people at church and the kids on my bus route, and I'm suddenly the frontrunner. America's sweetheart, perhaps.
And then suddenly every bad thing I've ever done or thought of doing is now featured in Breitbert News and then picked up on Fox News. Once I underpaid my state income taxes by $200 (honest mistake). I have taken a housing allowance and not paid into social security. In college I once broke up with a girl because I said I was 'bored'. I worked at a pawn shop. I watched I Dream of Jeannie when I was younger because Barbara Eden was HOT. I once posted on a message board about the how Americans are in love too much with a flag and not enough with righteousness, and another time I posted on my blog about how many Americans are just fat and stupid.
All true, I finally announce, three days before the election. At my press conference I have a large bruise and bandage on my forehead where I scraped my bald head on the kitchen cabinet door and look like a complete dork. I get asked a few questions that trap me into saying that too many Americans are privileged and that we haven't been a Christian nation recently, if ever, and that we pay far too much attention to our 'brave men and women in uniform' and not enough to the garbage collectors and custodians and fast-food workers who really make this country run.
And here the fantasy ends.
On the Sunday evening before the election Trump launches some missiles into Iran and North Korea and the Patriotic Defense Rationalization kicks in to give him the votes. Sanders/Warren/Booker/Biden's tour bus crashes somewhere in the Appalachins, and suddenly it's over. Trump wins again, puts me in jail for dissent and unAmerican behavior, and three months later nuclear missiles are detonated under the ice caps and 90% of humanity dies within a week.
I never did figure out how the story would end differently.
