Mitch BERG is walking on the sidewalk past the “Safe Space” – a Saint Paul bar catering to “progressives”, featuring free-range beer, organic locally-sourced chips and pretzels, and gluten-free “everyone wins” dart boards.

Suddenly, Avery LIBRELLE gets off the bus, and removes a set of Apple earbuds connected to an iPhone.  LIBRELLE notices BERG.  

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!

BERG:   Ugh.  I mean, hi, Avery.

LIBRELLE:   So.  Donald Drumpf’s speech was dark and dystopian.

BERG:   Well, that was quick.  The speech ended literally a minute ago.   So you listened to it.

LIBRELLE:   Oh, hell no.  I listened to NPR’s wrapup after I heard on Snapchat that the actual speech was over.

BERG:   So – less than thirty seconds after the speech was over, NPR and the rest of the media, more or less at the same time, labelled the speech “dark and dystopian?”

LIBRELLE:  Yep!  Because it was!

BERG:  And you don’t think these are dark and dystopian times for a lot of the people who’ve come out of the woodwork to support Trump?

LIBRELLE:  Mark Shields and Gwen Ifill and David Brooks said it’s a great time to be optimistic!

BERG:  Sure.  It’s a great time to be part of the DC echo chamber, with an inflated, legacy-media salary.  But if you’re a WalMart assistant manager in Mississippi, or a machinist in Milwaukee, or a coal miner in West Virginia, it’s kinda scary out there.

LIBRELLE:  Bla bla bla.  After eight years of Barack Obama, America is a wonderous place!  Drumpf is a traitor for accentuating the negative!

BERG:  So you’re saying it’s wrong to accentuate the negative…

LIBRELLE:  Yes!

BERG:  …when things are either positive or kinda in between, overall?

LIBRELLE:  Absolutely!  It’s utterly and completely dishonest!

BERG:   Ah.  So in general, when someone talks about something that’s improved as if it’s been going the wrong way, it’s a lie?  Or even something that’s been net-neutral as if it’s been a complete negative?

LIBRELLE:  Lies, lies, lies!

BERG:    So when a candidate says “gun crime is out of control” when it’s dropped 50% in 20 years?   Or that “women get paid 76% of what men make” when it’s actually pretty close to even when you compare men and women with the same backgrounds in the same fields, and women under 30 are actually starting to out-earn men?  Or that “one in five women in college will be raped” or “black men are astronomically more likely to be shot by the police, and it’s because of racism”?

LIBRELLE:  Yeah!

BERG:  (Waits two beats)

LIBRELLE:  Heyyyyyy!

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is working on the potato boxes in his backyard.    Avery LIBRELLE walks through the back gate into BERG’s back yard.

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!  The case of workplace violence in Orlando proves that it’s time for America to get serious about guns.

BERG:    We did.  Or at least parts of the country did; the parts that ratcheted up the penalties for gun crimes, and seriously prosecuted straw buyers, saw a marked decrease in gun crimes.   Of course, that wasn’t “sexy” enough for the Democrat-run governments of most major cities – so while the rest of the nation’s crime rate plummets, in major Democrat-run cities it’s rising…

LIBRELLE:  I’m already bored.   The Orlando workplace violence episode proves that guns are no defense.

BERG:   It showed that a cop working security was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that Mateen, unlike most mass shooters, didn’t fold up when he ran into resistance.   As might befit someone who was carrying out a terror attack, as opposed to someone just seeking immortality as a spree killer.  That’s just a theory…

LIBRELLE:  …I’m still bored.

BERG:  Well, bore yourself with this; had a any person in that club had a legal, permitted firearm, they could have stopped the shooting.

LIBRELLE:  Can you guarantee that?

BERG:   There are no guarantees in life.  But I’d like to talk you through three hypothetical scenarios.

LIBRELLE:  Don’t make me bored!

BERG:   What’s with the boredo…oh, never mind .

Scenario 1:  You’re out at a bar.  Someone starts shooting.   People around you are getting hit left and right.

Suddenly, a schlub nearby sees an opportunity while the shooter is shooting the other way; they draw their legal handgun, and they kill the attacker.

LIBRELLE:  That’s unrealistic.

BERG:  Why?

LIBRELLE:  The attacker would shoot them first.    They’d sense they were about to be attacked, and turn and kill them.  Which would just make it worse for everyone else in the club.

BERG:  What, you think mass shooters are superman ninja warriors or something?

LIBRELLE:  Doesn’t matter.  That never happens.

BERG:   By my count, it’s happened at least sixteen times in recent years.

But that  brings us to the second scenario.  Let’s say a citizen draws, and misses, or doesn’t kill the shooter, and the shooter kills the citizen.  That’d be tragic – but it’d throw the shooter’s plan off, and give people time to escape in the confusion, and probably safe at least a few lives.

LIBRELLE:  You’re dreaming.

BERG:   Well, it’s happened.  But it probably beats the third scenario.

LIBRELLE:  Which is?

BERG:  (Very, very quietly, with an air of fervent, quiet concentration).  You’re at a bar.  (LIBRELLE listens intently; BERG continues, quietly).  Shooting rings out.  People are dying left and right.  But the bar is a gun-free zone, and everyone in the bar followed the law tonight.  So there’s exactly one armed person in the joint – the mass shooter, motivated by hate, or desire for immortality, or on a terror mission.  And the shooter keeps on going, blasting away, killing defenseless person after defenseless person (BERG grows quieter, leaning toward LIBRELLE, who leans closer as well), killing everyone around you until…

(BERG stops)

LIBRELLE:  Until wha…

BERG:  (At a whisper) he lifts his gun, and (BERG yells at the top of his lungs) BOOM!  RIGHT AFTER YOU PROJECTILE CRAP YOURSELF WITH FEAR, HE BLOWS YOUR F****NG HEAD INTO A MILLION F****NG PIECES ALL OVER THE WALL!

LIBRELLE:  (Leaps backward eyes, wide  with fear, transfixed, hyperventilating).

BERG:  Your choice.

LIBRELLE:  (Quickly shuffles out of BERG’s back yard).

BERG:  Seriously, Avery.  It is your choice.

(And SCENE).

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is buying topsoil at Kern Landscaping in Saint Paul.    Busily loading his car, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE climbing out of an oil-belching Subaru wagon to make a deposit.  

LIBRELLE:  Merg!  If we elect Hillary, we’ll get Bill Clinton for co-president!

BERG:  So?

LIBRELLE:  That means the economy will boom!

BERG:  Wait – didn’t NPR tell me the economy is already booming?

LIBRELLE:  It’ll boom even more!

BERG:  OK.  So we’ll get Bill Clinton.  Will we also get Newt Gingrich?

LIBRELLE:  No.  Why?  Hisssssssssssssss!

BERG:  Because it was the Gingrich Congress’s enforcement of fiscal discipline on the Clinton Administration after the 1994 Republican Wave that kept the Feds out of the way of the economic boom.  By the way, speaking of boom – will there be any empires falling, paving the way for a massive transfer of resources from the military?

LIBRELLE:  Huh?

BERG:  The “Peace Dividend”.  When the USSR collapsed – thanks to Ronald Reagan – the US was able to move a lot of defense spending to civilian uses.  Which dumped a ton of money, skill and technology into the civilian market.   Which led, after a brief recession, to the beginning of a boom that ran until 9/11.

So – if Hillary plans to bring back a conservative Congress and has another “peace dividend” in her purse, we might have ourselves a deal.

LIBRELLE:  (Stands, mutely flapping jaw)

BERG:  Have a nice day, Avery.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is trimming weeds by his driveway with a grass whip.  

Before he can react, Avery LIBRELLE – who is walking through the alley making notes about people who aren’t separating their recycling – surprises him.  

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!   Why are you people so panicky about transgenders picking their own restrooms?

BERG:  I’m not.  The whole thing is a tempest in a teapot – except of course for the Feds stepping in to make, literally, a federal issue about something that is really no issue at all.

LIBRELLE:  But you Republicans are all angry and scared!

BERG:  Enh.  Not me.  I’ve worked around some transgendered people.  It’s really no big deal.

LIBRELLE:   Ha ha ha ha ha!  Hah!  You should know that transgender people are very very unlikely to commit any crime at all!

BERG:  Right.  I know that.  But let me ask you, Avery – since transgendered people have a very very very low crime rate, we shouldn’t be imposing all sorts of pointless regulations on who goes into what restroom?

LIBRELLE:   Right!  That would be bigoted and transphobic!

BERG:  Bigotry and a design-your-own phobia!  Exactly!  Being mortally afraid of, and imposing pointless regulations that will have absolutely no affect on crime, on populations that have essentially negligible offense rates, is bigotry and phobia!

LIBRELLE:  Exactly!

BERG:  (Getting excited)  In fact, we should never impose pointless rules and regulations on people who commit vastly fewer crimes than the general population, because such regulations are rooted in bigotry and fear!

LIBRELLE:  Yes!  Absolutely!

BERG:  All of them!

LIBRELLE:  All of them! (LIBRELLE leaps up, kicks heels in glee)

BERG:  So background checks for law-abiding citizens transferring guns are…

LIBRELLE:  (Not quite realizing the change in subject) Phobic and bigo…HEY!

And SCENE. 

Joe Doakes convenes a meeting of the Immigration Integration Advisory Task Force, via email:

C: This session of the Immigration Integration Advisory Task Force will come to order. The Secretary will call the roll:
S: Madam Chairman . . .
C: Excuse me. I find that offensive. I prefer a gender-neutral title.
S: Certainly Madame Chair.
C: I am not a “Chair,” I am a human being. And I am offended by “Madame.” I prefer a gender-neutral title for that, too, in case I change my mind about my gender while we’re in session. You can address me as “Mix.”

(more…)

SCENE: The prairie.  It’s the dead of winter.  The sky sweeps above in 180 degrees of piercing blue, studded with a few isolated scudding clouds, pale with the reflections of frozen ice crystals in the air, as the very humidity itself is frozen.  The wind is light – 10 mph – as it sweeps across the plains.   As far as the eye can see, there is snow.  

A squad car rolls up a four lane freeway.  Behind the wheel, Officer Tom CHRISTIANSON, a Barnes County sheriff’s deputy, sails briskly up the road, his whoopie lights turned off.  CHRISTIANSON, a trim, purposeful man in his late thirties, looks tired, even a little haggard, but his eyes are focused and fierce.    The camera briefly focuses on a green freeway sign:  “Fargo 72; Valley City 12”.  And then another:  “Exit 288 – No Services”.

CHRISTIANSON slows and pulls up behind a Ford F150 Club Cab, which is idling on the shoulder of the eastbound lane just east of the exit  He climbs out of his squad car, dons his stetson, and walks up to the pickup, his breath steaming in the bitter cold as it blows away.  

Jake and Donna STADEL, a thirty-something couple, are standing by the tailgate.  Jake is carrying a hunting rifle; Donna, a long-barreled hunting shotgun.   CHRISTIANSON shakes Jake and then Donna’s hands.  

CHRISTIANSON:  Jake.  Donna.

J STADEL:   Deputy.

D STADEL:   Tom.

J STADEL:   So is it true what they’ve been saying?

CHRISTIANSON:  (Shakes head in a way that says “just a little numb from fatigue and confusion”).  No idea.  Last thing anyone knows is that all the TV and cable networks went off the air.

J STADEL:   Did you see that one live newscast where they…

D STADEL:  …overran the news crew live on the air, on camera…

J STADEL:  In the middle of that riot?

(All three go silent, shaking their heads, wincing in horror at the horrid memory).

CHRISTIANSON:   Yep.  I did.

J STADEL:   So they’re saying they (thumb points over shoulder, off-camera to the right) are pretty much everywhere these days?

CHRISTIANSON:   The whole east coast.  All of California.  The whole deep south.  Even the desert southwest.  The last ham-radio transmissions say they’re pretty much the only thing left walking in those parts of the country.   There’s a few survivors, I suppose, but they’re few and far between.

J STADEL:  Jeez.

D STADEL:  God.

CHRISTIANSON:  Yep.

J STADEL:  So we’re…

CHRISTIANSON:  Us and South Dakota, northern Minnesota, Montana, the U.P,. Alaska, Manitoba and Saskatchewan and parts of Alberta, Russia, Finland…

(All three shake their heads as the thought trails off).

CHRISTIANSON:  Well, thanks for calling this in.  Let’s get to it.

(Camera pulls back and pans right, and we see a large herd of zombies trailing off to the east, perhaps two hundred of them – all of them frozen stiff; a few jerk fitfully about and hack and gack feebly; most are utterly frozen.  The three grab machetes and axes, and walk toward group and start hacking).

CHRISTIANSON:  You still doing poker on Friday, Jake?  (Grunts has he hacks off a frozen head)

J STADEL:  Oh, ya.  You betcha. Won’t be there until after Shania’s basketball game.  (Plunges knife into zombie skull)

CHRISTIANSON:  How’s the team doing this year?

D STADEL:  She’s finally getting enough playing time.  Now we just gotta get her chemistry grade up…  (Smashes a head with an axe)

CHRISTIANSON:  I had to take away Ashley’s X-box…

(Fade to black over mundane small talk as the three matter-of-factly go about lopping off frozen zombies).  

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is shopping in the dairy aisle at Target in Roseville.  

Suddenly, Avery LIBRELLE rounds the corner.  With LIBRELLE is Ashley FIGG, a young woman of apparently mixed but minority-ish ethnicity.  

LIBRELLE:   Merg!  It’s time for you to admit your privilege!

BERG:  OK.  I was born into an intact family who made sure I stayed in school, kept my pants zipped until I could support a family, and ensured I grew up knowing that actions had consequences.

LIBRELLE:   No, no, no.  You’re white!  I want to introduce you to Ashley Figg.  She is a student at Macalester College.

BERG:  Ms. Figg.

(FIGG glowers at BERG)

LIBRELLE:  We’re going to have a debate!

BERG:  A debate?

LIBRELLE:  Yes.  First, Ms. Figg.

BERG:  …I”m not really…

FIGG:   You are white.  You have privilege.

LIBRELLE:  Your turn, Merg.

BERG:  Um, OK.  Ms. Figg, what is it you would have us do about this “privilege” you talk about.

FIGG:  The fact that you even ask is racist.

BERG:  Um, how do you figure?

FIGG:  That’s racist, too.

BERG:  Seeking clarity in the discussion is “racist?”

FIGG:   You’re using your power over me.  That’s racist.

BERG:  That’s just bizarre.

FIGG:  F**k you.  I hate you.  I hope you die.

BERG:  (Turns to LIBRELLE):  Er, Avery?  What’s the…

LIBRELLE:  We should stop the debate…

BERG:  …um, yeah?

LIBRELLE:  Because clearly, Merg, you are racist.

BERG:  What, now?  I never mentioned race.

LIBRELLE:   You were using your power, being a racist.   Being a racist, race is endemic in everything you say, and do, and don’t say, and don’t do.  Right, Ashley?

(FIGG glowers)

BERG:  Lavrentiy Beria called.  He said “dial back the kangaroo”.

LIBRELLE:   And now you’re mansplaining.

BERG:  (Looks beyond FIGG and LIBRELLE).  Hey, look – it’s Hillary Clinton!  And she’s giving out suckers!

(LIBRELLE and FIGG wheel around, as BERG slips away)

(And SCENE)

(LIghts fade up in screening room.  BERG is sitting in the middle of the room.  A few rows behind, covered in popcorn debris and spilled soda, are Edmund DUCHEY and CAT SCAT, bloggers with “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com” a possibly fictional Minnesota liberal blog.  )

(DUCHEY leaps to his feet, scattering popcorn debris in all directions)

DUCHEY:  Merg!  Unless you can prove every word in that film short was true, you’re a liar!.  (Pauses to wipe drool from his chin).

BERG:  It’s satire.  It’s meant to illustrate larger truths through a caricature of people and events.  In this case, that the left’s social justice warrior class has become simultaneously obsessed with virtue-signaling, McCarthyistic witch-hunting and public shaming of dissenters, while simultaneously becoming less able to state a coherent case.

SCAT:  The fact is, the law says you have to have a degree in satire from an Ivy League school to practice it!

BERG:  You’re making that up.

DUCHEY:  So you’re saying it never happened?  Hah!

BERG:  Actually, of the dozens and dozens of these “dramatization” scenarios I’ve written in recent years, this one may be the least fictional of all.

DEUS (EX MACHINA, via thunderstorm).  You’re kidding?

(Urine stain appears on DUCHEY’s pants)

BERG:  (Looking upward)  Nope.    It pretty much happened.

DEUS EX MACHINA:  Wow.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  At the offices of Kornbluth Chadwick Communications – a big Democrat-leaning PR firm in Boston.   A tastefully spare room furnished in the Danish style, with a full-height window overlooking downtown Boston, includes a number of people in just-ahead-of-the-fashion-curve PR-wear.  

Hanna EPSTEIN-FAEGER, director of the firm’s political communications practice, sits at the head of a glass table and calls the meeting to order. 

EPSTEIN-FAEGER:  We’re here to find out what went wrong with the independent expenditure ad we did against Ted Cruz.  Ruth?

Ruth LOWENSTEIN-NEDZVINSKI, an assistant project manager, picks up a sleek, buttonless remote, and presses “play”

EPSTEIN-FAEGER: I think we can all agree it was brilliant.  Joshua?

Joshua-Micah KORN-FLEEBER, the ad’s producer – a slight man in a lumberjack beard wearing a “Feel The Bern” t-shirt under his hemp sports jacket, speaks up.

KORN-FLEEBER:  That’s correct, Hanna.  The ad includes all the things that we believe that the vast majority of voters respond to:  belief in the need to reinterpret the Constitution, the throbbing desire throughout the country to repeal the Second Amendment and the traditional view of marriage and remove all reference to faith from public life – and, of course, Robert Reich himself.

LOWENSTEIN-NEDSVINSKI:  Americans  love Robert Reich!\

(Entire table nods assent)

EPSTEIN-FAEGER:  And yet the focus groups, one after the other, showed that representative voters from west of the Hudson River and east of the Sierra Madre unanimously thought it was an ad for Ted Cruz?

KORN-FLEEBER:  I’m sorry.  I just don’t get it.

LOWESNSTEIN-NEDSVINSKI:  One quote from one focus group said “this is a fiendish parody of the east-coast liberal echo chamber”.

EPSTEIN-FAEGER:  The what?

LOWENSTEIN-NEDSVINSKI:  No idea.

(Muted chuckling)

EPSTAIN-FAEGER:  So – middle-Americans unanimously thought it was a pro-Cruz ad, and some thought it was a parody of how the left thinks?

(General nodding)

EPSTEIN-FAEGER:  I say it’s a blip in the data.  Let’s run it!

(Everyone nods and gathers their notebooks, phones and tablets and moves to their next meeting)

And SCENE

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is at a hardware store, shopping for a chainsaw sharpener, when around the corner steps Bud GUNKEL, chairman of the CD2 chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”.  

GUNKEL:  Hey, Merg.  The only way to fix the system is…

BERG:  …yeah, I heard it.  To “withhold your consent from it“.   Feel free to tell the IRS, the BATFE and the Minnesota Department of Revenue you’ve “withheld your consent”; I’m sure everyone will get a good laugh but you.

GUNKEL:  He who would trade freedom for security…

BERG:  …deserves neither.  Good Lord, Bill, do you people ever communicate in anything but the form of clichés?   I mean, do you even know what that means?

GUNKEL:  It means he who would trade liberty for security deserves…

BERG:  …neither.  Yep, I got that.  Again.  I mean, have you thought through what it means?

GUNKEL:   What are you talking about?  What else could there be?

BERG:  Here’s another quote for you; without order, prosperity is impossible.  Without prosperity, liberty is pointless.

GUNKEL:  So you’d give up…

BERG:  …no, no, no, stop right there.   Here’s a quote back atcha; without order, prosperity is impossible.

GUNKEL:  So you want to be like a herd animal…

BERG:  No.  “Order” is a very broad term!   It just means that there’s a general understanding that everyone is playing by the same rules, and that if you bring you product to market, there’ll be consequences for people who try to steal it on the way to the market, or swindle you when they get there.

“Order” can mean “a voluntary agreement that whose end of, everyone holds up”, like the anarchists say; that’s perfectly legitimate.  And it can mean full-blown Danish bureaucracy regulating the transaction, or a medieval baron making sure everyone upholds their end of the bargain for the good of his fiefdom.   And the whole American experiement was built around the idea that order should be maintained with the minimum amount of government and force possible – while allowing for the inevitability, given human nature, that some was likely to be needed at some point.

GUNKEL:  So you mean government!  Government is theft!  Nothing but!

BERG:  Sure, if you let it get out of control.  And we in the US largely have, and that’s a very valid discussion to have.  But the fact is, human nature being what it is, it’s inevitable that if the means of keeping order disappear, while 99% of the people will be just fine, there’s that 1% who’ll decide that what they want is what you got.  It can be a mugger, it can be those accursed Methodists, it can be that whole group of people over the ridge that think your ancestors stole from their ancestors, whatever.

GUNKEL:  So you’re a warvangelical?

BERG:  No – I merely observe human nature.  As I observed in my book, while the vast majority of humans are perfectly content to live and work and produce and interact peacefully, there are some that prefer to take what others produce.  It’s just easier.

GUNKEL: So  you’d give up freedom for thirteen pieces of silver?

BERG:  Wow – way to mix milieus.  Here’s another quote for you:  without prosperity, freedom is irrelevant.  If you don’t have prosperity – if you’re a hunter-gatherer or a subsistence farmer – “freedom” is a very relative thing.  You’re free to speak and worship and assemble – but you’re busy seeing to your survival from dawn to dusk, year-round, like a medieval fyrd.  Which means not only are your more abstruse freedoms irrelevant, but you have neither the time nor the energy to see to things like prosperity and order – making you ripe pickings for anyone who wants to take what you’ve worked for.  And this time you’ll have no surplus to see to your very survival!   Which is, by the way, a condition that also makes you ripe pickings for whomever would call himself your king, either against your will or, as tired and close to starvation as you are by this point, with your full consent.

GUNKEL:  So you will trade freedom for security!  Hah!

BERG:  You make it sound like a binary, black or white thing.

GUNKEL:  It is!    If you don’t have all the freedom, you have none of it!

BERG:   That’s just madness.  You say because the American people have given up some freedom, we’re no different than North Korea?

And no.  I won’t trade my freedom, all or nothing, for security – not while I have anything to say about it.   I will, as a constituent of a limited government that has a few carefully-enumerated jobs, engage some agents to keep the order we all need.  And no more.

GUNKEL:  That’s not how government works today!

BERG:  You’re telling me!  Y’see, that’s the problem with “libertarians”; they take poli-sci class absolutes and try to apply them to the real world.   So I’ll do it back atcha:  without prosperity, freedom is academic; without order, prosperity is impossible.  Therefore, without order, paradoxically, freedom is impossible.

GUNKEL:  So you say freedom is impossible?

BERG:   Nope.  I am saying that while absolute tyranny is very possible, absolute freedom cannot exist in a world where others have the “will to power” to become tyrants.

There is a trade-off; it’s the job of a free people to simultaneously see to the order that enables the prosperity that makes freedom possible, and make sure the “order” they create doesn’t become oppressive.

GUNKEL:  All involuntary order is oppressive!

BERG:  So you throw off a “government” that governs by consent of the governed…

GUNKEL:  Yes!

BERG:   And live in a world with only “gentlemens agreements” for order…

GUNKEL:  Yes!

BERG:   So that you can be conquered or killed by someone who took advantage of the fact that you have no means to see to public order?

GUNKEL:  Er…yes!  Better dead than…er…

BERG:  Naturally.

And SCENE

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is getting a cup of coffee.  Aaron ROSTON, a writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, walks up behind him in the line, looking for a free refill.  ROSTON is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist – mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of conservatives.

ROSTON:  Merg! The economy is doing great!  Look at all the new jobs!

BERG:  2/3 of the new jobs are minimum wage.    Times are OK, so far – provided you’re a college educated professional.  If you’re poor, or black, or low-skilled, not so much.

ROSTON:  So it’s time to raise the minimum wage.

BERG:  Raising the minimum wage just rewards some workers by causing others to get laid off.  Prosperity is the only real minimum wage hike.  Here’s the alarming part; the best measure of an economy is how fast people move up and out of the lowest economic quintile.  We used to be among the best in the worlds.  Now, most of the Western world is better than we are.

ROSTON:  Well, funny you should mention that.  Income mobility was pretty good back under the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, when the tax rates were much higher.  Hmmmmmmmmm.

BERG:  Wait, what’s with the theatrical “hmmmmmmmm”?

ROSTON:  It proves you have been outfoxed.

BERG:  Well, no.  It’s a false correlation.  In the fifties and sixties, the US had the world’s only functional economy.  Japan and Germany were still recovering from the war; Singapore and South Korea and Taiwan were third-world hellholes; China was an Orwellian  dystopia; India was still at the bottom of its experiment with “democratic socialism”.

The US was the only place where things actually could get built; it was the world’s only functional market.  We could afford high taxes, and cushy union jobs, because we were the only place actually building things.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation.  Ascribing mobility to higher taxes is the same as chalking them up to the fact that “laws against sexual harassment and racism were more lax in the fifties”; they were facts that corresponded in time, but weren’t related.

ROSTON:   What?  You’re a racist!

BERG:  Um, no.  That was an illustration…

ROSTON:  I will not interact with racists and sexists!

(ROSTON winds up and throws his coffee cup toward BERG from a range of three feet.  And misses.  ROSTON stomps away in a huff – grabbing a handful of sugar packets from the credenza on his way out).

BERG: (Sotto voce) Never let it be said that liberals suck at economics.

And SCENE.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is at a large gas station in Minnetonka, MN.  Having just bought gas, he’s looking for a new windshield wiper.  He turns down the aisle marked “Windshield Wipers/Condiments/Magazines Showing People Getting Hit In The Groin”, and notices Gutterball GARY – a blogger at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, who describes his hobbies as bowling, heckling people, and shouting really loud – reading a magazine.  

BERG tries to backpedal out of the aisle, but GARY notices him. 

GARY:  Hey, Merg!   You’re stupid!

BERG:  Nothing my mother doesn’t say.

GARY:  The Second Amendment is not an individual right!

BERG:  Well, the Supreme Court in the Heller and McDonald cases disagreed, and made it both a precedent and incorporated it to the states.

GARY:   You’re stupid and you have no idea what you’re talking about!  Justice Burger said the Second Amendment was “a fraud on the American public.”

BERG:  So?

GARY:  He was a conservative!

BERG:  Maybe compared to Nixon, who appointed him, but not really.   And he was really arguing a strawman; he was saying the Second Amendment doesn’t preclude regulation…

GARY:  Burger disagrees with you!  And he’s from Minnesota! It’s further proof you don’t know what you’re talking about!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

BERG:  Um,…

GARY:  …ha ha ha ha ha!

BERG:  Say, Gary?  In what case did Burger  write that opinion?

GARY:  Huh?

BERG:  Was that statement from a Supreme Court, or even an appelate, case?

GARY:  Huh?

BERG:  The thing Burger said?

GARY:  You’re stupid!

BERG:  Right.  It wasn’t part of a case.  It was a personal opinion, in a 1990 PBS interview.  It was of no more legal weight than you or me talking to PBS.

GARY:  He was a conservative, and he disagrees with you, and he’s a Supreme Court judge, so you’re stupid!

BERG:  Huh.  So because a “conservative” SCOTUS justice had a personal, private opinion that dissents from conservative and libertarian orthodoxy, I’m stupid.

GARY:  Yeah!  Ha ha ha ha…

BERG:  um…

GARY:  …ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

BERG:  So who said this:  “Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. … The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”

GARY:  That sounds like Ted Nugent!  Which means you’re an anti-semite!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…

BERG: Actually…

GARY:  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

BERG:  Actually it was Hubert H. Humphrey.  A “progressive”, a former Vice President and Senator, and the greatest politician Minnesota ever produced.  And it’d seem he disagrees with  Justice Burger.

GARY:  Who cares what an anti-semite thinks?

BERG:  Oh, the Nugent thing?  Pfft.  I didn’t even like Ted Nugent as a guitar player all that much; I certainly never appointed him my spokesperson.

GARY:  Nope!   Nugent is on your side, so you’re an antisemite!

BERG:  Ah.  So if someone were to say “With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel. . . . [S]preading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.”

GARY:  Sounds like Nugent or some other ReTHUGliCON.

BERG:  First – I’m always amazed to hear people actually talking in caps.  Second – no.  It was Democrat senator Fritz Hollings.

So – does that make you anti-semitic?

GARY:  You’re stupid.

BERG:  Natch.

And SCENE.  

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is in his car, at the drive-through at Taco John’s in Little Canada.

Suddenly, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK steps around the corner and up to BERG’s driver window.

BIRKENSTOCK:  Merg! Stop the cultural appropriation!

BERG:  What are you talking about?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Places like Taco Johns that prepare ethnic food outside its original cultural context are practicing cultural appropriation!

BERG:  So?  All cultures practice appropriation.  And by the way, who are you – a twenty-something graduate of Saint Olaf, and of Camp Wellstone, who works as a telemarketer for “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”, and is as white as the driven snow – doing jabbering about “cultural appropriation”, anyway?

BIRKENSTOCK:  I identify as a wise Latina!

BERG: Huh.  OK.  So no member of a culture can use anything from another culture without, what?  An accompanying certificate of authenticity?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Don’t be a smart-aleck, Berg.   Appropriating other cultures diminishes them!

BERG:  Huh.  Well, OK, then.  In for a dime, in for a dollar.

BIRKENSTOCK:  What does that mean?

BERG:  Well, people from other cultures should stop appropriating things that are identified with a European cultural context.  Universities.  Voting.  The emphasis on the rights of the individual.  The idea of democratic government and one-person, one-vote rule and equality of all people of all classes before a law that is written by consent of those governed.  The ideals of free speech, the right to petition for the redress of grievances, fair trials, enumerated powers and unenumerated rights – all of them are Western, “white” ideals, most of them American.

BIRKENSTOCK:  Nonsense.  All of them were invented by the Iroquois.

BERG:  And are you Iroquis?

BIRKENSTOCK:  I have always identified as Iroquis.

BERG:  Iroquis and Latina?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Don’t mansplain!

BERG:  Do you also identify as Hindi?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Huh?

BERG: That toe ring you’re wearing is “appropriated” from South Asia.

BIRKENSTOCK:  Check your privilege!  You’re a white male who’s trying to mansplain!

BERG:  Now you’re appropriating elements of our linguistic heritage; “Privilege” is from the Norman French, while “Check” comes from Saxon roots.

DRIVE-THRU SPEAKER:  May I take your order?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Just a small Potato Olé, please.

BERG:  Hey – I was in line.

BIRKENSTOCK:  I identified as ahead of you, so I appropriated your spot.

And SCENE.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is out running his snowblower down the block.  BILL GUNKEL, former Republican who is now chairmain of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”, pulls up to the curb.  

GUNKEL:  Hey, Merg!

BERG:  Oh, hey, Bill.  What’s up?

GUNKEL:  Elections are a sham.  The best way to “participate” in elections is withdrawing your consent by refusing to vote.

BERG:  Huh.  Well, feel free to tell the Minnesota Department of Revenue “I have withdrawn my consent” when they come for your money and property after the DFL wins.

GUNKEL:  Hah.  So what?  Your participation makes absolutely no difference.  In fact, settled science has shown us that your chance of dying on your way to the polls is greater than your chance of affecting the outcome of an election.

BERG:  That’s absurd!

GUNKEL:   It’s science!  Why do you hate science?

BERG:  It’s not science.  It’s arithmetic.  The writer – apparently a barrista who contributes to “Forbes” – calculated your chance of being the single vote that decides an election versus your chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the polls.

GUNKEL:  So?

BERG:  So nothing.  Of course your chances of being the single vote that decides an election are small – although if you think they’re nonexistent, tell it to her.

GUNKEL:  Hah.  That’s just the religion you were taught in high school civics class.

BERG:  Right.  And all of you “libertarians” who sit resplendently above it all snarking at the commoners are so much better than that.  I get it. Look – it was a stupid article, and it reinforces an even dumber point.  It’s not about tipping elections yourself.  It’s about bringing a lot of people who believe the way you do to the polls to help you tip it.  Which, to be fair, is something your crowd has never been good at.

GUNKEL:  Pffft. That never happens.  If it did, you’d see election results change significantly.

BERG:  It most certainly does.  Thirty and forty years ago, support for gun control was extremely common at the state and federal levels.  Over the course of thirty years, Human Rights advocates in ones and twos voted, and convinced others to vote, for rather than against the Second Amendment.  Today, those regular schnooks voting by their ones and twos have flipped that issue 180 degrees.

And you “liberty” people could do it too, if you ever stopped purity-testing each other to a fine sheen and started trying to convince people, instead of bellowing about “principles” to rooms full of people just like you.

GUNKEL:  Oooh, look – a city snow plow!  (Forms a snowball, begins the stalk)

And SCENE

SCENE:  The Saint Paul City Council chambers.  Present are:

• Mayor Chris COLEMAN
• Ward 1 councilor Bernadette SANDERS
• Ward 2 councilor Benny TOMUSOLLINI
• Ward 3 councilor Francine BURNS
• Ward 4 councilor Evita P. EVITA
• Ward 5 councilor Hugh GOCHAVEZ
• Ward 6 councilor L. A. PDOG
• Ward 7 councilor Katherine ANTSY

COLEMAN gavels the meeting to order.

COLEMAN:  May the meeting come to order.

BURNS: (loudly clears her throat)

COLEMAN:  Sorry.  May the meeting please come to order, by your indulgent leave?

(more…)

SCENE: Mitch BERG is waiting in line at the Rack Shack on South Robert.   Stephanie Marie ANNAN – Community organizer for the 5th CD Libertarian Party – enters with a great clatter, vigorously stomps off her boots, and gets in line, finally noticing BERG. 

ANNAN:  Hey, Merg!  I don’t like all that stuff you’ve been saying about how us Ron Paul people just like to throw…what do you call it?”

BERG:  “Turd bombs”.

ANNAN:  Yeah!  The GOP did it first, back in 2008!

BERG:  Yeah, so I’ve been told.  That was about three years before I got involved in the GOP beyond going to caucuses, by the way.  I know there’s been going on eight years of tit-for-tat between the Ron Paul clicque and the “establishment”, which I’m told I’m part of, even though I got involved in the party after the Tea Party.

ANNAN:  You’re already boring me.

BERG:  That seems to happen a lot.  You all apprently got “bored” with Kurt Bills after you you all went to Tampa in 2012…

ANNAN:  Hey – there’s a special primary coming up in a house district 68B!

BERG:  Yeah, it’s been in all the papers.

ANNAN:  I suppose you’re supporting the Republican candidate, like some mindless sheeple?

BERG: No, I support the endorsed Republican candidate because I’m an intelligent, informed voter. I think the endorsed candidate, Mindy Pilph, is an excellent choice.  Although I don’t actually live in the district.

ANNAN:  I plan on supporting her primary opponent!

BERG:  Who?  Jesse Duff?

ANNAN:  Yes!

BERG:  Duff supports doubling the gas tax, banning civilian firearm ownership, rolling back school choice and instituting an entirely grievance-based curriculum, and adopting the North Korean style socialist philosophy of “Juche“, an isolationist firm of Stalinism based on all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipotent state.  Which seems – pardon me for saying so – counterintuitive for someone who was a high ranking functionary in the Ron Paul campaign four years ago.  Since Duff would seem to be the polar opposite of Libertarian, I gotta say, that’s a zig when I expected a zag.

ANNAN:  But he’s independent from the Minnesota Republican Party.

BERG:  Well, with good reason. He stands for everything the party rejects.

ANNAN:  But he’s independent!

BERG:  But he’s the exact opposite of Libertarian.

ANNAN:  So?

BERG:  So yet again, it seems that “libertarian principle” isn’t really as big a deal as trying to TP the MNGOP….

ANNAN:   Squirrel!

(ANNAN leaves the room.  And SCENE)

SCENE:  Avery LIBRELLE is sitting in a dilapidated Subaru outside Mitch Berg’s house.  LIBRELLE is peering through binoculars, and starts visibly when a glimpse of BERG is visible through the door window. 

Shortly, BERG emerges, walking his golden retriever. 

LIBRELLE:  (Leaps from car).  Merg!

BERG:  (Turns sharply, then relaxes as alarm turns to a groaning acceptance) Oh, hi, Avery.  (BERG notes the windows of LIBRELLE’s car).  Um, been waiting long?

LIBRELLE:  There’ve been seventeen killed in Chicago in the past ten days!

BERG:  Right.  And 117 total shot.  So…?

LIBRELLE:  By guns!

BERG:  Right.  It’s been in all the papers for years.  Parts of Chicago are incredibly violent,l even with all of the celebrated gun control they have.

LIBRELLE:  Hah!  But those guns come from rural red states!

BERG:  Come again?

LIBRELLE:  You heard the President in his Town Hall meeting!  All the guns used in urban shootings come from guys in vans selling them from their trunk in parking lots in rural red states!

BERG:  Well, for starters, no, they’re mostly stolen.  Often sold to others after being stolen.   Some come from straw buyers.  Almost none come from people selling otherwise legal guns.

LIBRELLE:  But if guns weren’t so available in the neighboring areas, urban crime wouldn’t be so high.

BERG:  If access to guns were the problem, wouldn’t the crime rate in rural Indiana be higher than in the middle of Chicago?

LIBRELLE:  (Mouth flaps open and shut a few times, like a boated bass).

(BERG continues on his walk)

(And SCENE).

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is walking out of the downtown Saint Paul Dunn Brothers coffee. He runs into Chuck DUUUUHHHH,  third-shift Twitter operator for “Minnesotans for Rand Paul”.

DUUUUHHHH:  Hey, Merg!  Did you seen the NEWS of the hotel FIRE in DOOBBAI?

BERG:   Well, yeah – but before we get to that, I gotta say I’m amazed that you actually talk like you type on Facebook and Twitter, with occasional interjections in all caps.

DUUUUHHHH:   Ha HAH.  So there was a building fire, but it wasn’t hot ENOUGH to melt STEEL.  Why DIDN’T the hotel fall TO the ground?

BERG:  Because the fire was apparently in the cladding, on the facade, and never had a chance to weaken the structural steel.

DUUUUHHHH:  Because steel melts at 2000 DEGREES FARRENHEIGHT, and so it didn’t LIQUIFY the GIRDLES.

BERG:  Girders.

DUUUUHHHH:  THAT is your opinion!

BERG:  Sure, whatever.

DUUUUHHHH:  So by your logic, since it wasn’t not enough TO liquify steel, the HOTEL should HAVE fallen to the ground! Like Building SEVEN!

BERG:  That’s kinda a non-sequitur.

DUUUUHHHH:  That’s JUST your opinion!  You’re not an engineer!

BERG:  No, that’s true.  But I have some command of basic logic.   Look – you see to be of the opinion that if every skyscraper fire doesn’t end in a complete implosion, then 9/11 was an inside job.

DUUUUHHHH:  Don’t be a sheeple!   The GOVERNMENT lies to people all THE time!  Why would a building fall when jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel?

BERG:  Sure, government lies. No argument

But steel doesn’t have to melt to be a problem. Steel loses its strength and becomes basically pliable hundreds of degrees below its melting point:

DUUUUHHHH: He’s no engineer!~ And that doesn’t explain why all three BUILDINGS fell inside their FOOTPRINCE.

BERG: All three buildings transferred their weight via a web of girders to their central cores, which transferred the weight to the ground. Since the weight is all going down the middle of the building, where would you expect them to fall?

DUUUUHHHH:  That’s just your opinion!  You’re JUST closing your mind to all the engineers AND physicists who QUESTION the OFFFICIAL 9/11 story!

BERG:  And you’re closing yours to the many engineers who point out that steel bends at a lower temp than jet fuel burns, and that buildings fall in the direction their weight transfers, absent some other force.

DUUUUHHHH:  But you’re ignoring the fact THAT steel melts at 2000 degrees!

BERG: I answered that above.

DUUUUHHHH:  And why did all three buildings FALL INSIDE their own footprint?

BERG:  We just talked about that.

DUUUUHHHH:  And why DID THE buildings collapse when the TEMPERATURE wasn’t enough TO LIQUIFY steel?

BERG:  Um…?

DUUUUHHHH:  And without getting STEEL UP to 2000 degrees, it had to be a controlled demolition, OTHERWISE how do you explain the building FALLING IN its footprint?

BERG slowly tiptoes away. 

And SCENE.

Mitch BERG is walking through a pet food store.  He rounds a corner and runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is plastering “Simulated Meat Is Murder!” stickers on bags of dog food.   Although BERG tries to evade, LIBRELLE sees him.  

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Aaaagh.  Er…hi, Avery.

LIBRELLE:  It’s time to institute universal background checks, ban clips that shoot thirty assault bullets a second, and get rid of assault AR47s.

BERG:  Two of those things don’t exist, and one of them will have no effect on crime but burden the law-abiding citizen exclusively.

LIBRELLE:  But if we save just one life, it’ll be worth it.

BERG:  So saving “just one life”, no matter how improbably, should be the basis for policy?

LIBRELLE:  Yep.  Human life is sacred.

BERG:  So then we should shut down the Green and Blue lines – about ten dead?  Or perhaps get rid of Obamacare?  Or for that matter, shutting down Planned Parenthood?

LIBRELLE:  Nooooo!  Some things are more important than human life!

(LIBRELLE puts bags of dog food around ears, runs from the store)

(And SCENE)

(SCENE:  Major Thomas ASHTON and Sergeant Major Iain MACTAGGART, members of the British 22nd SAS Regiment – Britain’s premiere Special Forces unit – are standing by a helicopter pad.  Both are suited up for a mission that nobody will confirm is a hostage rescue mission deep into ISIS territory; guns, ammunition, grenades, radios, and survival gear)

ASHTON: Should be a bit of a dustup, eh, MacTaggart?

MACTAGGART:  Aye.  Not the first bloody time, Major.

ASHTON: True.   All right, Sergeant-Major.  Let’s check the men’s kit.  This is going to be a nasty one.

(An orderly – Royal Air Force communications specialist Aircraftman Sheila O’RIORDAN – jogs up to ASHTON with a piece of paper.  She stands at attention and salutes the Major)

ASHTON (taking the paper):  Yes?

O’RIORDAN:  Flash message from Ministry of Defense, sir.

ASHTON:  Thank you.  Dismissed.

(O’RIORDAN salutes.  ASHTON returns the salute.  O’RIORDAN jogs back to the radio tent)

MACTAGGART:  So w`hat’s MOD say, Major?

ASHTON:  President Obama has declared a climate conference.  ISIS has surrendered.

MACTAGGART:  ISIS couldn’t face the onlaught of Powerpoint, eh?

ASHTON:  Sounds like the mission’s off.

MACTAGGART:  Peace has broken out?

ASHTON:  Yes, Sergeant-Major.

(Both men stand for a beat – and then erupt in laughter)

MACTAGGART:  I’ll tell the helos to spool up.

ASHTON:  Right.  Wheels up in ten.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  Abu Bakr AL-BAGHDADI, leader of ISIS and self-proclaimed “caliph” of the new “Khelifa” or Caliphate, is in a conference with a group of his lieutenants, including Sheikh Abu Ali HABIB.

AL-BAGHDADI:  Reports from the front look good.  We’re holding the Kurds, we’re gaining ground in Syria, and the Iraqis are folding like  a Salafist end-table.

LIEUTENANTS:  Allahu Akbar!

AL-BAGHDADI:  And the Great Satan is reacting as we expected; with dithering disguised as grand pronouncements.

LIEUTENANTS:  Insh’allah!

HABIB:  Caliph, I have some bad news.

AL-BAGHDADI:  What is it, Sheikh?

HABIB:   Little Miss Satanette – President Obama (group snickers) is holding a…

(HABIB pauses, catches breath)

….climate change conference.

(Entire group cringes in horror)

AL-BAGHDADI:  That does it.  Let’s give up.  Find an evangelist; I’ll devote my life to Christ.

(Entire group pauses for a silent beat – then breaks into uproarious laughter)

And SCENE

(SCENE:  Two Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Ali and Sayid, are manning a Russian-built machine gun, scanning a valley warily, watching for ISIS movement.  Suddenly, the radio crackles)

RADIO:   Kebab Six to all Kebab.   President Obama is holding a climate change conference.  Six out.

ALI:  (scanning with binoculars)  Well, I’ll be.

SAYID:   What?

ALI:   (Hands Sayid the binoculars)  Look!

SAYID:  (Looks through binoculars)  Wow.

(Cut to scene through binoculars.  ISIS troops are climbing out of foxholes, hurling their weapons, ammunition and webgear into the distance, and running away, leaving a cloud of dust behind them)

ALI:  Huh.  Don’t see that every day.

SAYID:  Like I’ve been telling you, Ali – it’s all about the climate.

ALI:  Gotta hand it to you.  When you’re right, you’re right.

And SCENE

SCENE:  December 8, 1941, in the well of the House of Representatives – in an alternate universe.    President Barack Delano Obama is addressing a joint emergency session of Congress.

OBAMA:  Yesterday, December Seventh, 1941, is a day which will live in infamy.

Now, let me be clear:  this attack did not represent the Real Japan.  Japan is an ancient, honorable culture, dating back over 2,000 years; Shinto is a religion of peace, famous for its pastoral scenes and transcendental poetry.

And this attack does not represent the real Japanese people; a people who invented sushi, and baseball, and the number zero, named after their fighter plane.

We know the attackers were the junior varsity; who even knew the Japanese had aircraft carriers?

The lesson of yesterday?  We must not give in to fear, or bigotry, in framing our response to this attack.  We must not let fear drive us to launching an air raid on Tokyo, or a two-pronged offensive through the Solomon Islands, or an island-jumping campaign through the Central Pacific, because that is exactly what the attackers want.  If they force us to attack them, we are playing their game, their way.

We must respond to the parts we control – to the National Rifle Association, which has, through the intransigence of Congressional Republicans,  made it easier for criminals like the attackers to buy bombs than books in Tokyo.

I urge Congress also to accelerate passage of the Affordable Defense Act.

Thank you, and let’s not waste this crisis.

SCENE:  Interior shot at local hardware store. Mitch BERG is grabbing a bag of sidewalk salt.  Suddenly, Avery LIBRELLE, holding a bag of various parts, steps around the corner.

LIBRELLE:  Hah, Merg!  Your statistical analysis is shit!

BERG:  Say that again like you’re having a civil conversation in polite company.

LIBRELLE:  Your statistical analysis is bad.

BERG:  That’s a little more like it.  Care to get more specific?

LIBRELLE:  Tuesday on your blog, you said that urban gun violence correlates with Democrat-controlled cities.

BERG:  Yep.  Because when you run through the numbers, both homicide and violent crime rates are statistically much higher in cities controlled by Democrats.

LIBRELLE:  Hah!  Those were crap statistics.

BERG:  They were from the Department of Justice.

LIBRELLE:  Well, look at this!  Stats from the CDC!  And lookie there!  All those red counties with higher gun death rates than all those blue cities!  Hah!  You are an idiot and stupid and your head is full of poop!  Hahahahahaahahahahahaahaha!

BERG:  Yeah, Avery – we’ve dealt with this same exact chart on this blog before.  You don’t see how this is a non-sequitur, don’t you?

LIBRELLE!  It’s science!

BERG:  Yeah – it’s also comparing apples to axles.  My story yesterday covered homicide and violent crime rates.  This chart covers all gun deaths.  You do see the difference, don’t you?

LIBRELLE:  I see that you are a stupid idiot.

BERG:  “All gun deaths” also counts suicides, Avery. Suicides are between 65-70% of the gun deaths in this country. And it’s a form of suicide “preferred” by rural, white men, mostly lonely and socially isolated, very frequently deeply depressed and/or terminally ill. It’s especially prevalent in…the rural west.  And, being prevalent in lots of sparsely populated rural western and southern counties, it means that the gun death rate will look very high – and it comparably will be.  But that’s not the homicide rate.  Which, you will note, is almost nonexistent in most of those rural, western counties with a high “gun death rate”.

Suicide is a tragedy – but no worse than any other form of suicide (the US’s suicide rate is much lower than many countries that control guns strictly).   And it’s morally not the same as murder – which is taking someone else’s life, by definition against their will.  Which was what my story covered.

So, Avery – what does this mean.

LIBRELLE:  It means that you hate women and science and are a racist…

(LIBRELLE, gesturing expansively, knocks an elbow against a shelf.  A gallon can full of paint falls, conking LIBRELLE on the head)

BERG:  (Rushing to LIBRELLE’s assistance)  Are you OK?

LIBRELLE:  (head lolling about in mild delirium) What it really means is that it’s my statistical analysis that is “shit”, and that I should really stop playing at being a “fact checker” until I learn how to do the job, because I make myself look like an ignorant laughingstock.

HARDWARE STORE ATTENDANT:  (Rushing from the counter) Is h…,er sh…is this person OK?

BERG:  Just having a moment of clarity.  It’ll pass.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  The handheld camera walks to the door of the basement headquarters of “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com”.  A crudely hand-lettered sign on the door reads “Wingnuts NOT ALOUD”.   

The camera steps down the stairs into the hidden lair where the magic happens.  Around a table, eyes glued to TV in an entertainment center along the wall, are MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com’s writing staff; Aaron Roston, Gutterball Gary, Cat Scat, Leaky The Beagle, Betty Rae Torstengaardsen and Avery Librelle.   At the head of the table, slouching in a folding chair, nervously running his hand through his hair, is Edmund DuChey, wearing a name-tag that identifies himself as the “Publisher” and “Senior Managing Executive Editor” of MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com.  

The assembled group is watching as the closing credits roll on the Democrat debate.  Starting with DuChey, the group breaks into wan applause.  

GUTTERBALL GARY:  YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!  (Nobody bats an eye)

LEAKY THE BEAGLE:  (Speaking in an absurd phony German accent)  Very intereshtink.

CAT SCAT:  And every word was entirely true!  I Googled it!

AARON ROSTON:  Stupid wingnuts won’t know what hit them.

BETTY RAE TORSTENGAARDSEN:  You know what I liked about Bernie Sanders?  The positions he was talking about were almost identical to the positions of Nelson Rockefeller…

DUCHEY:  (hissing, making “puke” symbol with his finger) He was a Republican

GARY:  Rerthuglicon!

TORSTENGAARDSEN:  Right – the point is, the Democratic party of today is right about where the Republican party was in 1968.

ROSTON:  Right.  And not that different from President Johnson.

DUCHEY:  Peace be unto him.

LIBRELLE:  And that was a time when the US was at its political and economic peak.

SCAT: Let me Google that…yes.  It says so right here on “SmirkingChimp.com!”  It’s a fact!

DUCHEY: I just wanna tell the stupid ignorant wingnuts to suck on that:  when the US government was at its most progressive, we were at our economic and political peak.

BEAGLE:  Very intereschtink.

(A brief burst of static and feedback erupts.   A VOICE FROM ABOVE breaks in)

VOICE FROM ABOVE:  Oh, that’s just stupid, people.  Use your brains.  In 1968, the US was the world’s only significant economy.  Japan and Germany were just barely recovered from World War II.  South Korea was trailing North Korea, economically.   Singapore was a poverty-stricken third-world hellhole.  Russia and China were gangster playgrounds that could barely feed their own people – indeed, China was still suffering famines.  India was just descending into the nadir of its experience with socialism, and there was speculation that half of its people would starve to death by 1980.   And we were able to import whatever oil that we didn’t produce, at incredibly favorable rates from impoverished countries that were happy for the business.

In 1968, the US was one of two military superpowers – but it was the only economic superpower.  The entire world was its market.  So the likes of LBJ and Nelson Rockefeller could feel free to  write post-dated checks for fripperies like bottomless entitlement programs and count on the Growth Fairy to let future generations pay for them – because it’d worked just fine for…the previous 20 years or so.

We were like someone who’d just won the lottery, and was spending like there was no tomorrow.

ROSTON:  Who is that?

SCAT:  Let me google that…

TORSTENGAARDSEN:  It’s a voice from above…

SCAT:  Hah!  Johnson wasn’t president until 1972!  It says so on Crooks and Liars.com!

VOICE:  In the seventies, Germany and Japan’s economies became competitive with ours, and OPEC and Iran sent tremors through our economy by jiggling the oil market on  us.  In the 1980s, South Korea and Singapore became significant players.  In the 1990s, India threw off the worst excesses of socialism, and China pragmatically moved into state cartel capitalism, and suddenly they were legitimate competitors, too.

In other words, the US is no longer an economic hegemon.  Extremely powerful, yes – but not dominant in the way we were in 1968.  Which means we actually have to compete, and be smart.

So it’s fair and accurate to say that the US was at its political and economic peak in 1968 in spite of the likes of Rockefeller and LBJ, not because of them.  And that our position of extreme economic dominance made their variety of entitlement-based government sustainable, for a while, provided that we retained absolute economic supremacy over the entire world.

ROSTON:  This is freaky.

BEAGLE:  Yezz, it izzz

GUTTERBALL:  IT’S A SIGN!

TORSTENGAARDSEN:  What the…

(Camera cuts to exterior shot.  Mitch BERG, holding a bullhorn up to a window casing, looks into the camera lens, as he stands up to walk away)

BERG:  What?  I don’t get to have a little fun, too?

(BERG walks away to a waiting car, as the scene in the basement descends into panicky pandemonium)

(And SCENE)

I thought I’d post a quick guide to every single debate every single Real American has with every single gun-grabber.

Note that not all Grabbers go through all four rounds; the less-depraved and less-vacuous they are as people, the earlier they drop out.

Round 1:

GUN CONTROLLER:  <Starts with a round of “facts” that may or may not be in context, or even remotely true>

2ND AMENDENT ADVOCATE: <Debunks the first round of “facts” with actual facts, without breaking much of a sweat if it’s not their first time at the rodeo>

Round 2

GUN CONTROLLER:  “But we’ve got to doooooooooooooo something”

2ND AMENDMENT ADVOCATE:  “Crime is down 50% in 20 years; no single problem in society has responded as quickly and effectively as crime has responded to what we’re already doooooooing – which is liberalize gun laws for the law-abiding, and increase penalties for the criminals”.

Round 3

GUN CONTROLLER:  <Insert one of the following>:

• Ad Hominem: “You’re paranoid”
• Strawman:  “You care more for your guns than the lives of children!”
• Non-Sequitur:  “What’s wrong with common sense gun control?”

2ND AMENDMENT ADVOCATE:  <Points out that each is not only a logical fallacy, but still easily debunked on factual grounds>

Round 4

(Note:  Only the most logically depraved Grabbers get to this point).

GUN CONTROLLER:  “Clearly you’re compensating for something”

2ND AMENDMENT ADVOCATE:  “Yes – the presence of evil in this world”, usually followed by checking out of the “Debate”.

And SCENE.