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It is early 2024.
President Biden has just announced a new “mandated” booster shot via televised nationwide address. It is to address COVID variant Z. Don’t worry Dr. Fauci, COVID-fans, MSM, Pharmaceutical companies, hypochondriacs, and general alarmists. There will be a variant after “Z.” It will be COVID “&.” And after that? Well, there will always be an entirely new virus with which to scare, control, and poison the public. This booster for Z applies to everything from sole-proprietorships to companies/organizations comprising two or more people. Oh - kids, too.
As President Biden faces the cameras and reads off his teleprompter, any audience would be alarmed at his dress: He is wearing sweat pants stained with various flavors of ice cream and foodstuffs. Same for his sweatshirt. He has a three-day growth of white beard and he is devoid of the makeup he wore when making public or television appearances in the past. His mottled face is scarier than ever.
He is actually on his fake “White House” set, constructed for him at his Delaware estate which has been converted into a nursing home with doctors, nurses, and medical staff in constant rotating residency in providing care to the former President. He believes himself to still be President - where’s the harm? - and has the occasional meeting with “Putin,” “Xi,” “Pelosi,” (herself gone too, in reality), “Schumer,” etc., all played by people willing to act the part(s). They don’t even have to look or sound the part - Biden doesn’t know the difference; they’re simply announced as who they are supposed to be.
And of course he gives far more “press conferences” now. The puppeteers who controlled him in the past, corralling him with policy, talking points, and (in)frequency-of-appearance are gone - swung over to President Harris. Thus, he can “appear” to the press any time he likes. He is escorted from his room to the podium; in front of lights, cameras, and a small contingent of medical personnel playing the part of the media.
Biden was involuntarily “retired,” removed via the 25th Amendment, when he began speaking gibberish on a routine basis (that is to say, even worse than his 2020 to 2023 gibberish; he now spoke in something akin to scat - without the musical intonations or charm of the latter). His near constant farting didn’t help matters either. He was oblivious to these farts as they sometimes lasted for five to ten seconds, with another ‘in the barrel,’ so-to-speak.
And they were LOUD and noxious - no way to even politely ignore their occurrence, as even the most decorous and stately of staff and world leaders transitioned from sideways glances-to-colleagues, to grimaces, to wrinkling and even holding of noses. “Mask mandates” took on a whole new level of (legitimate) need. Their recurrence was quite alarming too - how could anyone hold so much gas?… well, he’s only a politician, after all; passing gas has a multitude of meanings in that context.
His staff, and wife Dr. Jill, are not without sympathy, of course. They engage him in the stories Joe relishes telling and re-telling. His retrogression includes new vignettes of standing down the infamous “Cornpop.” Staff invents new triumphs for him, too. Remember the time you beat up “Apple Struddle”? That was epic. And that toughy “Beef Broth”? And perhaps the most feared street-bully ever… Joe’s biggest triumph: the mighty and universally-feared “Fruit Loop.”
President Harris, while not speaking in running wordless syllables, doesn’t make any better sense than Biden. Her most recent pronouncement, the launch of the Mirror Force, hasn’t helped her approval rating of 3%. (Who are those people??). The Mirror Force joins the other branches of the U.S. military: Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, and Space Force. The Mirror Force comes pre-loaded with “woke” servicemembers, and is charged with launching and maintaining giant mirrors into the stratosphere to deflect light, and heat, from the earth, in combatting anthropogenic global climate change and, specifically, global warming.
Getting President Harris ready for her step-up from the Vice Presidency was daunting to various agencies. When someone who believes the Sun orbits the Earth, and who doesn’t know her troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere from one of Joe’s gaseous clouds… well, there’s a lot of work to be done between giggles.
President Harris has her own gas problem. Impacting her approval rating is the current average of gasoline prices at the pump, at $12.99 a gallon. (Tip: A Kroger rewards card gets you to $12.59, and Sam’s Club membership is $11.99 per, with a qualifier: You have to buy $1,200 in groceries in any given month).
There are other problems, too.
Local “Defund the Police” movements have given birth to a Federal rollout of a Police Replacement Program (the PRP, mandated on the states). The dismantling of police departments is happening in tandem with the institution of new social programs and amplified CRT initiatives. Black Lives Matter (BLM) has ascended to Black Lives Transcend (BLT). Subway has announced their “Half-price BLT for BLT.”
Another Harris Admin initiative has raised alarm in certain (sane) quarters too: The Youth Education, Esteem and Launch to Life Infrastructure program (YEELLI - pronounced “YEEELEEE” - Harris giggles every time she references it, which doesn’t help). Its cost of $9.99 trillion adds nothing to the debt and deficit, according to Harris. The “Build Back Better” meme was to be re-cycled as “Build Our Youth” until someone realized the acronym, “BOY,” stoked toxic masculinity, was exclusionary, and lent gravity to the notion that there are boys and girls, as opposed to the gender continuum, and ignored “new” genders, which the Harris Admin is quick to remind us as always having been around - they’ve simply been disrespected and unacknowledged.
Crime and murder rates are skyrocketing but, as the new woke YEELLI graduates comprise more and more of society, education will allow awareness: crime is the fault of law-abiding citizens, bathed and swaddled in their ignorance, arrogance, privilege, assumptions, prejudices, and over-emphasis on values, ethics, and hard work.
As President Harris admonishes, “Standards, morals, principles… these are outmoded relics of the past.” A sustained giggle fit follows.
It seems gravitas and bearing are outmoded too.
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NP: Patti Austin, How High the Moon - a fine example of scat (wait for it). Also check out Ella sometime.
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David Scott Strain is a U.S. Army veteran and a retired Fortune500 I.T. executive. He is also the author of the novel The Grim Grind of Life: A PI’s strange bounces through a surfeit of eateries, juke joints, and dark doorways - his first foray into fiction. Prior, he authored the MBA-text (UofW, UofMD, more than a dozen others) I.T. WARS: Managing the Business-Technology Weave in the New Millennium. Books and expanded bio are available on Amazon.