It’s got to be hard being an authoritarian dickwad these days. Your heroes Gee Dub and Dick Cheney are draft dodgers, your war’s going badly, your baseball stars are all whiny titty babies who argue about the definition of “use” with regards to their chemical coping strategies, and the one football player who did abandon his career to go to war now has a family that’s denying you the right to use him to lull you to sleep at night by insisting the government stop lying about his death. Congressional candidates are paying you NOT to blow them. Jessica Lynch thinks you suck. Jessica Simpson wouldn’t fuck you with Britney Spears’ pussy. And your field of candidates is like a kindergarten crossed with the finale of Jesus Christ Superstar, only less heterosexual. It’s not that I don’t sympathize, in a way.
But here’s the thing. If you’re looking at the vast and terrible anger that’s consumed you for the past seven years and going, “feh,” it is not that hard to find something else to do. For example, there is crochet. I’ve suddenly become a big collector of bath and body products, for instance. I’m on this quest for the perfect marshmallow scent. I’m thinking of starting a novel. Playing Scrabble has become a big thing. There are puzzles in Target that you can get that will take HOURS to put together. Also, even the most loathesome among you have families; attempt to call them now and again.
If you want to leave your house, I can suggest several homeless shelters that need people to work in them. You could mentor a child in your community, work in an animal shelter (and consequently end up with new pets with whom you could spend your time), volunteer at the local library reading to the elderly. I’ll bet you all the money in my pockets against all the money in yours that your church has some sort of service program to which your vast amounts of expertise could contribute.
If none of that compares to the badass glory of posting on the Internet or writing columns for the LA Times, if you really want to go out there and fulfill your dreams of being Jack Bauer or the Marlboro Soldier, you can actually join the CIA or, you know, enlist and volunteer for duty in Iraq. I have vastly more respect for people who actually go and do that than I have for these mouthbreathing asstards who sit around rubbing their junk while dreaming of the day they can point to the angry brown hordes outside their bay windows and say, “See? I was RIGHT!”
Plus, WTF, honestly? If your ultimate fantasy involves being some 28 Days Later holdout against the uprising, there’s not going to be a lot of people around to, you know, appreciate your prescience and good judgement in stockpiling baked beans and ammo.
A.