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When I need help understanding a complex issue, I often call my favorite high-level source, Ananias Ziegler, media-relations director of the Committee That Really Runs America. Until last week, though, he never called me for advice.
I thought things were going great for you guys,
I
began. The Berlin Wall is coming down, there are
contested elections in Marxist nations, the economy is
holding up, Dan Quayle remains invisible -- what's the
problem?
Forget about Quayle, which should be easy, and you've
just explained the problem. We've got to find a new enemy
for America, and I hope you can help.
A new enemy?
Right. Since about 1920, when Attorney General A.
Mitchell Palmer rounded up a few loud-mouthed Bolsheviks,
we've had this perfect enemy -- the haunting specter of
international godless communism. And now the damn glasnost
Russkies are ruining a good thing.
My list of good things did not include the Cold War, brinksmanship and mccarthyism, so I pressed Ziegler for an explanation.
Look at the great system we've built to protect you
from the Reds while enriching ourselves. First we get you
so scared that you're willing to pay any price. After that,
the rest is easy. We can run up the national deficit, which
pleases the bankers when you all have to work two jobs so
that you have enough to live on after the interest payments
are deducted from your paychecks.
We buy lots of over-priced weapons systems that don't
work, so defense contractors prosper. Every congressional
district gets a few military bases, each of which is of
course absolutely vital to the national security, and that
insures re-election for your senators and representatives.
As long as there's a big enemy lurking out there,
everybody's happy.
Wait a minute,
I protested. Nobody I know
personally was getting rich or happy that way.
Ziegler snorted. Everybody that matters was doing
fine. You citizens don't count. You just get to provide the
money and the manpower. Learn your place.
And it's our place to believe that there's a big
dangerous enemy out there?
Precisely,
Ziegler agreed.
How about Colombian cocaine cartels, Asian ice
exporters, Burmese poppy growers, that sort of thing? That
always plays pretty well.
We've already tried that,
Ziegler sighed, and
it isn't working. Americans will give lip service to a
fight against drugs, but they're not going to spend any
$300 billion a year, and certainly not for year after year.
Drug pushers simply won't replace commie rats.
There's always the Japanese economic threat,
I
suggested. Bad enough when they took on General Motors,
and now they've got Columbia Pictures and the Rockefeller
Center.
That dog won't hunt, either. They have more sense
than to bomb Pearl Harbor again, and you can't get
Americans fired up about the threat from a nation of people
who save their money, educate their children, work hard,
produce quality goods efficiently -- after all, those are
supposed to be bedrock American virtues.
That would be a problem,
I agreed. Have you
looked into illiteracy, hunger and homelessness?
Those might work, up to a point,
he conceded.
The HUD consultants certainly figured out that helping
the poor can be as lucrative as defending the nation. But
face it, we already had a War on Poverty, and poverty
won.
An inspiration struck me. Have you guys checked with
President Bush? Maybe he has an idea.
George Bush hasn't had an idea since kindergarten,
when he learned the Pledge of Allegiance. Why do you think
we're calling people like you?
But I just can't think of an enemy that will be as
compelling as communism.
Neither can we. But if we don't come up with
something soon, America as we know it might well
collapse.
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