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This year's campaign buzzphrase calls for a return to
traditional values.
However, no office-seeker will
provide specifics, so we must join a traditional family as
they visit a new theme park, American Traditional Value
Land.
Okay, kids, which section of the park do you want to
visit first? Colonial, Gilded Age, or Tailfin?
Let's start with Colonial, Dad.
They pass through a log gate into in a dark warehouse where smallpox-ridden blankets are being prepared for shipment to an Indian tribe. Fearing infection, they step out to join a mob in looting a Tory's house. Then they stop for a few minutes to catch their breath and watch as a suspected witch is crushed to death under a pile of stones.
Totally disgusting,
Sis complains. How could
that be a traditional value?
Mom consults her guidebook. The woman was convicted
of witchcraft because she used herbs to induce abortions,
and so she's being punished. Isn't it exciting to see how
traditional values are returning?
I want to leave,
Sis says, and they exit to
Gilded Age. The roar of gunfire is deafening as
professional hunters bring down egrets, buffalo and
passenger pigeons.
Utterly gross,
Junior says. And don't they
know that those animals could become extinct?
Dad laughs. The hunters don't care, as long as
they've got work. It's just like the spotted owl today --
see how we're returning to traditional values, kids? Maybe
we should go over to Paul Bunyan Camp.
Not a good idea,
Mom cautions. The trees were
all clearcut the first week after the park opened, and
there won't be much to see for another century.
They walk for a long time along a country road lined with small farmsteads plagued variously by drought, locusts, foreclosure, high rail rates or low commodity prices. The illiterate farm children toil with scythes and hoes from dawn to dusk. At one farm, the mule died, so the woman pulls the plow. The men look gaunt and hopeless.
Gee, it would be great to go back to when most
Americans lived on farms -- NOT,
Sis says. Otherwise,
they are silent until they get to town.
Why are there so many drunks here?
Junior
asks.
We've really fallen away from traditional values,
Mom explains. Back then, the average American swilled
1.76 gallons of hard liquor. Now it's down to three
pints.
I'm thirsty. Let's stop at the soda fountain in the
drugstore,
Sis suggests. Junior observes that morphine
and hemp are sold over the counter to all comers, and Sis
comments on the potency of the Coca-Cola.
That's because it had real cocaine in it,
Dad
says. You know, it looks like this modern War on Drugs
is an assault on Traditional Values.
Dad, if you keep talking like that, I'll tell my
school DARE counselor, and then they'll arrest you,
Sis
warns. It's a family value now to turn in your
parents.
The mecca of Tailfin Land lies ahead, the place where Mom could greet the children after school with milk and cookies because an ordinary working stiff like dad made enough to support the family. But to get there, they had to pass through a labor war between the militia and striking miners, and they got caught in the crossfire. They bled to death because they didn't have enough money with them -- the triumph of another traditional American value.
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