by Don Hall

Remember the Kevin Kline film Dave?

The set up was simple in those halcyon days of political life. A regular guy is a dead ringer for the president. The president has a stroke and becomes a brain dead vegetable, the administration taps this look-a-like to come in and be the president and his common sense, aw-shucks perspective leads him to enact some common sense, aw-shucks pragmatism to the bureaucracy of Washington D.C. He even brings in Charles Grodin, his accountant, to balance the budget.

While I look nothing like Joe Biden (I've been told I look like Al Franken, which is the closest to any former political seat of power I'll ever be, I suppose) I believe that most of our cultural and political issues are easily solved with some common sense, aw-shucks pragmatism.

Problem: Kids today have undergone a few massive changes that have, in many ways, crippled them. Public schools are fucked and have been for some time. The COVID shutdowns and Zoom classes have left them even less prepared for life outside of the institutionalized system of American living than ever before. They're fat and addicted to the alcoholism of social media.

Solutions: First, revoke child labor laws and put these little fuckers to work. They're less likely to die from COVID so put them in restaurants and washing dishes, prepping food, taking out the trash. Give them shovels and vocational training and have them fix the crumbling bridges and failing electrical grids.

Second, revoke corporal punishment restrictions because their parents have become far more acquainted with what kinds of monsters they spawned and need to seriously spank some ass. This teaches them to act right and gives their helicopter parents a release valve without shooting up a mosque.

Third, place an age restriction on smartphones. Under eighteen years old? Flip phone. Messages, phone calls, email. Very limited internet, no video. No social media. OMG—no more making millions on TikTok? Tough shit. Go get a real job, Monica.

Problem: Transgender discrimination when it comes to bathrooms.

Solution: Eliminate all multi-hole bathrooms. Every public restroom is a single use facility, all bathrooms become genderless. Shut up and pee already.

Problem: Republicans passing massive voting restrictions everywhere mostly requiring some sort of government identification to legally vote.

Solution: We aren't going to pass much legislation that makes it easier to vote. If we do, it should be a national holiday to allow those workers who traditionally cannot afford to take the day an easier time. Follow that by funding a huge "get an I.D." movement. Make sure everyone has a day off to vote and a legal form of identification and it guts the GOP attempts to subvert elections by preventing the poor from voting.

Problem: We're a big, fat country filled with people so heavy they need electric scooters to get through a Home Depot plus a pandemic that focuses on the obese.

Solution: Offer Universal Healthcare for people who demonstrate at least an attempt at nominal exercise. Use the Fitbit/Apple Watch craze and connect it to an app that proves the work is being done and grant Medicare to those, you know, walking a few miles a day or riding a bike.

Also tax sugar the same way Chicago taxes cigarettes. I mean, everything has sugar in it except healthy vegetables and steaks. Tax sugar consumption and the planet will thank us all.

Problem: Partisan polarization and incessant predictions of an impending civil war between the factions.

Solution: Netflix produces Uncivil Wars, a Squid Game reality show that pits the Michigan militia types against the Critical Race Theorists, QAnon fabulists vs. Antifa kids, Oil executives in open combat with Greta Thunberg. Put 'em in bikinis on a beautiful tropical location and give them weapons. Hell, you know you'd watch it.

Problem: We're destroying the planet with our addiction to fossil fuels.

Solution: Artificially make the cost of using fossil fuels so much more expensive than green energy that it becomes much more profitable to save the environment. See? Capitalism as a power for good!

Problem: Income inequality is as severe as it has been in the history of written history, the bottom three-quarters of the American public is struggling to thrive in any meaningful way, the very social programs necessary to stem crime, addiction, and mental health are hobbled by lack of substantive financing, and the government argument consistently falls on the the question “How do we pay for solutions?”

Solution: Elect politicians committed to cutting the American military budget by 50% and divert the savings into the very things we all know need to be funded.

Let's be frank—if we really wanted to solve these problems in lieu of bitching about them without restraint, we would and we could.

Common sense, aw-shucks pragmatism is out of vogue these days so we'll likely just boil in our own juices and take to eating each other like the teenage girls in Yellowjackets.