Vote Now, Lest We All Go Mad

by Micah Tillman

A classmate found our professor, Dr. Paul Streveler, looking pensive in his office a few years back. “Do you think Evil exists just to make Good look better?” the doctor asked.

I’m starting to wonder whether the Dream McPalin I keep encountering on the radio and internet exists for the same reason.

Or, rather, the opposite reason. The more I hear about Dream McPalin, the worse the real one looks.

Before each debate, hosts and pundits tell me what McPalin should say. Then McPalin doesn’t say it.

Afterwards, I hear (or read) commentators saying what McPalin should have said. Some even go so far as to reenact scenes that never happened.

“And when Obama/Lehrer/Ifill/Brokaw/etc. said ___________, wouldn’t it have been great if McPalin had said ___________, and then ___________, and then topped it off with a ___________?”

And it’s obvious. It would have been great for McPalin if it had said ___________ and ___________ and ___________.

McPalin should have known to say ___________ and ___________ and ___________.

But McPalin didn’t say it. McPalin never says it. It’s McPalin’s nature not to say it.

Dream McPalin always says the right thing, however. And that makes the Real McPalin look worse and worse.

The pro-McPalin pundits keep trotting out Dream McPalin, however. In their desperation for McPalin to not be awful, they make the awfulness all the more obvious.

There’s another Dream McPalin out there, of course. There’s the McPalin of Eve Ensler and Daniel Chun’s nightmares.

If the Dream McPalin makes the Real McPalin look terrible, Nightmare McPalin should make Real McPalin look better. Right?

But it doesn’t. It just makes everything more creepy. Not only is McPalin awful, but its opponents are going nuts. And the opponents that aren’t going nuts are singing worship songs to their leader.

So, I have a proposal: Hold the elections today. Stop the creepiness before we all take Chun’s advice and come mentally unglued.

If the election were held today, McPalin would lose and we wouldn’t have to listen to it be so much worse than it should be. It will shut up and go away. (Right? Tell me it will!)

Obama will win and finally have to put his promises and rhetoric into action. He won’t do it, because no politician ever does.

The world won’t change, the seas won’t fall, the partisanship won’t end.

But people will stop singing about him. They’ll realize he’s human, just like the rest of us. (Right? Tell me they will!)

Oh, and did I mention Biden?

No, I didn’t. The man is a cringe waiting to happen. And so much of the time he isn’t waiting.

But my plan would have Biden roaming the Naval Observatory grounds, followed by an army of reporters waiting for him to say something else stupid.

That’s no good.

But it would be better than the insanity McPalin, Obiden, and their dreamers/worshipers are putting the rest of us through.

It’s time to bail out the voter before he goes mad. Hold the elections today!

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America