Mark Hooglats lives inside Obamacare, don’t ask him how. He voted for Trump. He will vote for Trump again, maybe up to ten times if he does the thing with the economy. He is excited that Trump has said “God” out loud for what he believes is the first time in the past eight years. (It isn’t.)
In the corner, under a picture of George Washington that is cracked and broken and stained with tobacco juice, lies Herm Slabornik. Herm is encased in a cryogenic tube that will be unplugged if Trump gets his way. According to a note on his cryotube, he knows what Trump said about unplugging tubes but he does not think Trump would unplug him personally. He will vote for Trump again in 2020, provided he is not unplugged. Also, he hates Obamacare.
Glom Pfeffernitz lives in a rusty kettle. Trump’s plan will definitely repossess his kettle, but he does not believe me when I tell him this. “I just don’t think he’d do that,” Glom repeats. Glom’s priority is filling the lakes with waste because he remembers when he was a kid and the lakes used to glow, and he wants to get back to those great days. He says his number one priority is keeping telephones away from the undeserving poor.
Claudia Barknappen, the owner of the diner, wipes her hands on her faded God Bless America apron. She is taken aback to see that Trump’s budget would replace her home with a sinkhole, but she says that she is reserving judgment and likes how much he hates immigrants. “We’ve got to give him a chance,” she observes. She says that one time Trump showed up at her home and hit her dog with a broom, but in her mind this amounts to no more than one strike. She knows that she can change Trump with love, not that he needs to change at all. Behind her, an eagle falls out of a tree and dies.
April 4, 2017
This Is Not a Crisis, Republicans Say, as a Large Spider Slowly Devours Them
I WOULD RECOGNIZE A CRISIS if it were happening.
When the president seized me, stunned me with his venom, and covered me with digestive fluid from his chelicerae, I was initially taken aback, but I reassured myself with this thought: President Richard Nixon never did that.
I know history.
This is clearly not the end of the world. That would be more clearly labeled and would be brought about by the other party. And the weather would be more ominous. Ravens would squawk, and the sky would turn red. It would not occur on a Tuesday when I had made other plans.
Okay, the firing of FBI Director James Comey looked bad. And when the president stunned him, pierced him with his fangs, wrapped him in a thick cocoon of impenetrable webbing, and left him to hang there for days, that timing was also poor. It doesn’t seem as though it was what the FBI wanted or what the deputy attorney general wanted, either. But the American people voted for change! And the president is not Nixon. Nixon fired people on a Saturday, whereas this happened on a Tuesday.
He does not sweat and look pale on TV, which Nixon always did. Also, history plainly states that Nixon was born in 1913, one of several siblings, whereas the president was born in 1946, one of 3,000 eggs. Already we are seeing huge discrepancies! Nixon had only two legs.
Nixon was married to a woman named Pat who wore Republican cloth coats. I think we can agree that we are talking about someone different. Come back when our leader has adopted a small dog named Checkers, and then we will see where we stand.
This has none of the historical signs of a crisis. We still believe in small government, and that doesn’t have to change because the person or entity presiding over it happens to be a giant spider.
I think of the many norms that are still going strong as the digestive acid begins to eat its way through my flag pin.
We got an appointee for the Supreme Court! That, already, is a great accomplishment.
If this were a real crisis, there would be no other news. An alert would go over the TV. It would say, “Democracy Alert!” and make an unpleasant sound. In the meantime, I’m glad those Unicorn Frappuccinos are gone.
But the background music has not crescendoed. I look out the window, and the sun is shining. On the television the colorful heads are speaking as they have always spoken, and they are still not in agreement. I think. It is getting harder to see in here, and I feel a curious warmth spreading through all my appendages. I would not feel this way if something really serious were going on. The polls would reflect it, too.
I am still getting what I wanted. It is good to have someone in the Oval Office who shares my values: covering everything with giant webs, eating flies, and restoring our relationship with Russia. I think I once had other values but, well, winning is winning.
Also, we have yet to see what this will become.
It is quite possible that the thing spewing its webbing everywhere in the Oval Office is not in its final form. Perhaps it will ultimately look like Merrick Garland. We should wait. Really, everything depends on the next move. Which will, of course, set the terms for the move after that. All of which we must contemplate and look into.
It’s very dark.
If we are ever in a point of real crisis, I will be the hero the country requires. I know that about myself. But in the meantime, I stand behind the president, who I am positive is not literally Nixon.
Besides, if it were really bad, Paul Ryan would say something.
I want to sleep.
If this were a
