The Monkey In The Race

Any relation to actual people or events is purely coincidental:

Like a lot of people, I was amused when the monkey got up on stage at the first Republican Debate and started flinging his own filth at the other candidates. Sure, it was a guilty pleasure, like watching Jerry Springer, but it was hard not to enjoy watching the way the other candidates reacted. You couldn’t help enjoy seeing Jeb Bush covered in the bloody stool of his brother’s ill-advised war. And to see Marco Rubio climbing his podium in imitation of the monkey and getting filth on his own paws was priceless.

You see, politicians always try to act like they’re in charge, like they are above any kind of criticism. But put a monkey in the room and it’s hard for anyone to seem dignified, especially when the monkey hits you where it hurts. And the monkey was not afraid to hit anyone where it hurt, even women and old prisoners of war. The monkey wasn’t playing the game usual politicians play. Most politicians like to play up the differences between each other, as if there was real consequences whether you voted for Coke instead of Pepsi, when neither one of them is good for you. So politicians play up the little differences, what Sigmund Freud referred to as der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen, in order to pretend like the voter has a choice. In truth, the politicians are all working for a few special interests. Those differences that do exist, they’re just there to distract you.

Politicians don’t talk about the big issues, which they mostly agree on, issues like shipping your job oversees or voting for disastrous wars. But the monkey has no such scruples. The monkey will do anything to get a rise out of others. The monkey will poop onstage if it gets everyone’s attention. He was willing to poke his Republican rivals in areas even the Democrats would not poke, because after all, the Democrats also have very vulnerable areas, many of the same ones as the Republicans.

So the monkey made the politicians look ridiculous, and rightly so. And a lot of us cheered the monkey for exposing them for what they were, just like the little child who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes.

But nobody thought the little boy who pointed out the emperor’s nakedness should take his place; after all, he was just a child. And yet somehow we think that the monkey who pointed out the flaws in all the presidential hopefuls should now be elected to the highest position on the planet. But he’s just a monkey! No matter how hard he bangs on his chest it doesn’t make him a gorilla. In fact, once he gets done throwing his poop and poking people in the privates, he really doesn’t have that much left in his box of tricks.

But, you say, he is an incredibly wealthy businessmonkey. Surely that qualifies him to be president of the United States. Yes, I would say, but he acts like a monkey. To which you would reply, that’s just an act he puts on in order to advance his agenda. Well, I would ask, don’t you think if he had some genuine talent beyond the ability to poop tremendous quantities and fling it all around that we would have seen some of it first-hand by now? For all the time he’s been on television wouldn’t we have caught a glimmer of the intelligence behind the monkey façade, if a façade it is? And even if there was an intelligent man hiding within the monkey costume, doesn’t it make you wonder what kind of person would dress up in a monkey costume and fling poop at others?

We’re all hopeful when it comes to voting. We couldn’t do it otherwise. They say no one is so foolishly optimistic as they are when buying a lottery ticket or voting for a political candidate. But there have to be limits to the lies we tell ourselves even though there are none on what politicians are willing to tell us. We never got a kinder and gentler nation, we never got a thousand points of light, and we never got hope or change. And whatever you are willing to believe, sometimes a monkey is just a monkey. Look at the matted hair and the OOH OOH expression on his face if there’s any question.

Caligula has been known through history as an example of an insane emperor. He had incestuous relationships with his sisters, forced parents to witness the execution of their sons, and conversed with the moon. So insane was he, according to Suetonius, that he attempted to make his horse a senator. But we the American electorate are about to do him one better, by attempting to elect a monkey to the office of President of the United States. If we do so, we are destined to go down in history along with the maddest of the mad. And that’s something only a monkey could be amused at.