America the Dysfunctional

It has become increasingly obvious that nothing works in America anymore. This may be due to fifty years of declining academic rigor in favor of niceness, the slacker mentality that makes heroes of Seth Rogen characters, laissez faire run amok that prefers to profit by investing abroad rather than by building here, and the conservative “starve the beast” philosophy that seeks to reduce the size of government through malign neglect. We used to be a can-do country. Now we are a why-bother country. This is bad enough, but pretending otherwise is even worse. The solution is obvious. The tell-it-like-it-is press conference.

The Head of the Secret Service: We sure regret that an armed guy got on an elevator with the president, another shot up the White House and a third jumped the fence and wandered around inside hunting someone to stab.

But, hey, we’ve caught quite a few crazies. We escort the first family all over the world where our guys can get acquainted with local ladies. Budget cuts mean there are fewer of us working longer hours, so we occasionally doze off. Also, the folks who work in the White House hate those noisy alarms so they made us turn them down. And we don’t like to use the attack dogs for fear they will chew up our own guys. Still, our won/loss percentage is pretty high. No president has actually taken a bullet in over thirty years, so quit being so mean. You’re hurting our feelings.

The President on ISIS: These guys are really disgusting, worse than Boehner and McConnell. I wouldn’t want them running my country. ISIS, I mean. And we have shown ourselves willing to drop exploding stuff on them from the air. I’ve also tried to talk some Muslim countries into rejecting the fanatical religious extremists who dominate the Middle East, but don’t count on it. They like to shoot guns into the air on holidays, but are afraid to aim them at terrorists. As long as they’ve got oil revenues and a get away plan, the guys in charge don’t care what kind of loons make trouble next door.

And let’s face it, nobody in this country except John McCain and Lindsey Graham really want to go marching back into the Middle East. It would be really expensive and thanks to TV people will no longer put up with a lot of dead and wounded Americans. They don’t even like to see dead civilians, even if they are foreign. No wonder we haven’t won a war since 1945. And if you get in and don’t win, you never hear the end of it.

So I’m going to promise to degrade and destroy and denigrate and discombobulate ISIS, but don’t worry. Your taxes won’t go up and the risks will be minimal. In short, I will speak really loudly and carry a teensy weensy stick and let Rand or Hillary figure it out in 2017.

The Head of the CDC: Because of global warming which we aren’t allowed to believe in and jet air travel and our patchwork medical system and cuts to the public health budget, more weird plagues from abroad are going to show up here. Like this Ebola thing in Dallas. That city has excellent hospitals, if you are a rich oil man. True, they didn’t catch Ebola at the emergency room, but you know what emergency rooms are like, not a profit center, overworked and understaffed. A guy with a tummy ache doesn’t get much attention amid all the gunshot wounds, traffic accidents, drug overdoses and domestic violence.

We sent out a flyer and an email to doctors and nurses, but nobody wastes time that could be spent through-putting more paying patients reading crap from the government. No profit in that. Still, we’ll probably catch most of the cases of Ebola before it can spread too widely. Unfortunately, since it isn’t politically correct to screen people by country of origin or quarantine them, nor economically viable to seal our borders, we my all die. But it’s a really small risk. And we continue to hand out leaflets at the airport telling people to see a doctor is they feel sick, if they can afford it. Those who can’t….Well, this is America. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Quit expecting a government handout all the time. We gave you a leaflet; you want healthcare too?

Luckily, in a swamp of laxity and incompetence, there is one bright spot. Cable News. When they see a story, do they dawdle or navel gaze or seek the facts? No. They act. They are all over it. No hesitation, no holding back, no moderation.

Fox News: Were the men attacking the White House terrorists? Were they illegal immigrants? Were they liberals? Did they think Reagan still lived there? How fast can we close the border and issue weapons to every white, native-born man, woman and child in a Republican state? How soon can we replace our African president with a military overlord from a Red State? The chilling details and the simple solutions next from our team of award-winning paranoiacs: Fairly Balanced and Afraid. Very Afraid.

CNN: (In the voice of Darth Vader in an echo chamber) Ebola. Even the word is scary. Now it has come to America. Will Texas live or die? Should you wrap your child in Saran Wrap and lock him in his room? Can nature shows about Africa safaris spread the disease. Lots of scary music and flashy graphics, next – on CNN.

MSNBC: Chris and Ed and the Reverend Al are out tonight with Ebola, I’m Rachel Maddow. Our top story, are the Koch brothers behind the Ray Rice wife beating scandal? And later, a special report on voter suppression in Hong Kong. Are the Koch brothers involved? And what about Coke, is it a Koch brothers plot to give liberals diabetes? Tonight on MSNBC, the place for leaning over backwards politics.

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