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October 1, 2008 Fred Throws Sombrero in Ring The Only thing We Have to Be Afred of is Fred Hisself by Fred Reed
I see that I shall have to come out of retirement and become President. It is the only hope for the country and the world. That I am willing to undergo the humiliation of the office is a measure of the depth of my sense of duty. Though perhaps I will do it under an assumed name. First things first. I will need a stirring bumper sticker, this being the key to high office. What? I'm considering "Fred! Piss Poor but Look at the Rest." Or "A Fred in Every Pot," or perhaps "Better Fred than Dead"? Or "Tippecanoe and Frederick Too." The possibilities are endless. In any event, election is a mere detail. Given the competition, the country will flock to my standard. Or wish it had. Next I'll need some promises. How about :When in office, I will do the following wholesome things:" Education. Put a bounty on members of the teachers unions. The season will start with a week for bow hunters and black powder and then be open to all. No bag limit, Think stuffed heads over the mantle. "Ah, yes, Miss Grundy. I knew her well." That accomplished, I will require a score of 1200 on the old SATs, before the dumbing-down, for teaching positions. I will then raise salaries until such people take the job. The schools today are in the hands of people too dim to know what schooling is, and resentful of people who have it or might want it. They remind me of vegetarian butchers. Then I will have everyone in the Department of Education strangled (possible electoral slogan: "Strangulation in the Common Interest"). Local governments will run their schools as they damned well please. Ha. Ha ha! The military: I will support a constitutional amendment requiring that Congress declare all wars. (I know, but it doesn't work.) This would have spared us Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and perhaps Afghanistan. The first urge of Congress is reelection, and the second, the avoidance of responsibility. They will never spawn a war they have to admit to. Further (an old favorite of mine), I will require that the mothers of the graduating class at Harvard be strapped to the glacis plates of any tanks sent to foreign wars. Joan Baez will be my Chairman of the JCS. She's a decent woman, sane, and has a nice voice. I bet the incumbent can't sing at all. Under my guidance, the military will assume a new mission of defending the United States rather than being a presidential hobby. I know: This is radical, but radical times require radical solutions. I will put the defense contractors under Apple Computer. They will then beaver away making groovy if unnecessary gadgets to sell to bored teenagers. This will at least do no harm, and perhaps allow the US to compete with Japan in consumer electronics. Though I doubt it. Energy. I will issue a cyanide pill to all Americans. When vines begin growing through the fan belts of the SUVs, because there is no gas, they will pop the pill. This will reduce the consumption of energy, and for that matter drop the population to a reasonable level -- say, twenty people. Suicide really is the only practical solution. Democracies have the foresight of retarded rabbits and never notice the inescapable, such as that the world's demand for oil grows and the supply doesn't. Anyone who points this out is called a commie, anti-market, un-American, a green, and accused of links to the Sierra Club. Pills on the way. Social policy. I will end affirmative action, zap. It does noting but inspire division and resentment. Well, it also prevents its beneficiaries from doing anything to better themselves, since they don't have to. Like all federal do-goodery, it is a magnet for grifters, crooked lobbies, charlatans, shysters, and bus-station rabble. If you need affirmative action, you aren't good enough; if you if you are good enough, you don't need it; and if you take it anyway, you are a freeloader. Foreign policy. I will end the embargo of Cuba. It's stupid, gives the US a terrible rep in Latin America, accomplishes noting of use, and makes life hard for eleven million perfectly good Cubans. If the professional pseudo-Cubans in Miami object, I'll have the frauds freeze-dried and air-dropped on some starving country in Africa. (Possible slogan: "Every cloud has a protein lining.") Cannibalism gets a bum rap. I will tell the Israelis to get back inside the 1967 borders, be a Jewish state, and shut up -- especially the latter -- or they will never see another American dollar or F16. I will then give the Palestinians exorbitant aid to build a country unless they attack Israel again, at which point I'd spray anthrax on the whole place. This probably won't work, but it has a better chance than anything else. I pledge to end the lamebrain policy of looking for a war with Russia. The US has now put NATO, an anti-Russian military alliance, in the Baltics, on the Russian border; in Poland, on the Russian border, and is trying to bring Georgia, on the Russian border, into NATO. The US and NATO have large combat forces in Afghanistan, o the Russian border, and want to colonize it. Not smart.Think Canada, Mexico, and Cuba in the Warsaw Pact. There are three levels of military stupidity: stupid, really and truly stupid, and war with Russia. Right now we're going for the brass ring. I will bring the GIs home from Korea. If South Korea wants to defend itself, it easily can. If it doesn't, I don't care. Further, (I'm really getting into this) I will bring the GIs home from Europe. There's nobody there we need to fight. As for Bosnia and suchlike geographic trash, last time I looked they were in Europe. Europe can worry about them. The US is not Europe's mother. Purple-haired dyke feminists: These venomous lynxes have done enough harm that I shall have to be firm. All public doorways will have a spectrophotometer to detect purpleness at hair level. When this happens, a laser will light up and, ssssssssPOP! her head will explode. The entire membership of NOW will be sent to Bangladesh to work in a jute factory. Since most of them look like fire plugs with leprosy, on their return they will be required to wear burqas. The economy. I am against compulsory redistribution of wealth. This usually means taking money from those who earn it, and giving it to the federal government. If federal employees want to eat, they can plant corn. Or eat their cyanide pills. I will encourage the latter as simpler. Finally, patriotism will become a capital offense. It serves chiefly as a mechanism allowing rogues and pathological short men to send our puzzled teenagers to kill someone else's. Iraq can kill its own damn teenagers if it likes. I understand the urge, having had teenagers, but it isn't my job. How can I lose? The Age of Fred dawns.
Copyright 2008 by Fred Reed and reproduced here by permission of the author.
Fred Reed is a Marine combat veteran, police reporter, amateur biochemist, former long-haul hitchhiker, and part-time sociopath living in Mexico. Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times. He has been published in Playboy, Soldier of Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Harper's, National Review, Signal, Air&Space, and suchlike. He has worked as a police writer, technology editor, military specialist, and authority on mercenary soldiers. He is by all accounts as looney as a tune. Visit the "Fred on Everything" website to read his previous columns and sign up for his regular e-mail feature.
Because The Radical Academy publishes essays and articles on its website does not imply acceptance or approval of the comments or opinions expressed by the author of the material. Nor is the Academy responsible for any misrepresentation of the facts included. It is your job to be a critical reader.
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