“Dark out tonight,” said Screwloose. She shakes her flashlight to make the dim
light turn bright again for a few seconds.
“Brutal,” agrees Libjones.
He inhales and hold his breath as he offers Screwloose a toke.
She waves it away and shakes her head. Something rattles as she says, “Smoking is
bad for humans, although I support your right to get stoned, of course.”
“Right on, right on sister!”
Screwloose spins around, sweeping the dim beam of her
flashlight up and down the empty street.
An old newspaper tumbles past and she nearly wets herself. “The nerve of someone to litter like that!”
“Yeah,” that’s a bummer.
Libjones takes another toke.
Screwloose lowers her voice, “Do you think we’ll run into
any of . . . them?”
Libjones explosively exhales and then coughs. He wipes tears from his eyes and says
hoarsely. “Them? Our brothers and
sisters of the press insist that they are all gone and dead and buried. Nobody out here anymore but gays looking to
marry and Cubans wanting to return to Cuba. <link>
Screwloose shivers. “I
dream about them sometimes. They give me
bad dreams. I still recall it shouting out what it did and how
that immediately destroyed them again.”
Libjones was smiling at the pretty glowing neon sign across the street advertising free pot for medical conditions. This reminded him that he needed to invent a new medical condition. Even the rent-a-docs on duty at these places were hinting that having a hangnail wasn’t quite coming up to the mark as a justifiable need for medicinal weed. Screwloose’s words filtered through the smoke circulating between his ears and he shook his head to focus. “Hey don’t worry about that stuff! He killed their party after their party was already dead. I read it on Slate and there never wrong about anything.” <link>
“Of course they are gone forever. I know that, but I wonder when they will come back again.” Her voice goes small. “Sometimes I even wonder what would have happened if we had elected HER instead.” <link>
“Oh now that’s just crazy talk. I mean she had a spine and everything. What would a good liberal be doing with one
of those things?” Libjones again offered
a hit from his joint. “Try this
girlfriend. You really need to lighten
up. We put the right dude inside the
Oval Office. The press tells us that
nearly every day and they were the same ones who told us that the conservatives
were forever destroyed as a political force in this nation. You gotta learn to trust them. They would never lie to us.”
“No! Smoking is bad .
. . “ she trailed off and thought about her fears and the haunting suspicion
that the press might just have been wrong this time about a great number of
things. She considered how disappointing
the movement’s political messiah had turned out to be once it was time to set
aside campaign speeches and actually be the president and how he just couldn’t
do it. All there was to him was a
beautiful voice and talk, talk, talk. “Oh
screw it!” she snapped and expertly reached out for the joint. “At least I can alter my perceptions if I can’t
change reality.”
We pull back from this odd couple convinced in part that an
entire political party and movement died the moment that their president
entered the Oval Office and convinced that a mass media that accepted embedded
reporting slot bribes to cheerlead for the Iraqi War Venture would NEVER lie to
them about important matters and convinced that they put the right politician
into the presidency – someone who had no meaningful national level or
international experiences.
We pull back enough to see an expensive van drive by while
their backs are turned and they are trying to relight their joint. On the side of the van is a glossy photograph
of a smiling representative Joe Wilson and the words; Joe for President. He doesn’t LIE.
This is the Twilight Zone and you, too, might as well have a
toke or two or three if you are a liberal, because the bumpy political ride is
just beginning.
