The Tragedy of Humpty Dumpty
Royal Order of the Rear Ends of Horses (Rootreohs)
First war planning meeting Sept. 12th, 2001
A reconstruction drawn from the semi-official minutes
King Twig gathered his advisors. Vic Chumpy, Rumpots, Hogowitz, Rank and Corni Flakes. Scooter (some names you just can’t improve on) had just left but was due back soon.
“We are the most powerful country in the history of the world and have just been attacked by twenty guys with sharpened sticks and bad attitudes. I’m afraid. What’ll we do?
Corni replied, “Our spies know who did this. It’s a madman who lives in a hole in the ground. They call him Moleman.”
“That’s what scares me most. Moles. I see ‘em everywhere though they can’t see me. I can hardly walk around. They make me all poopy in my drawers.”
Vic Chumpy – “So I take it that’s why you have taken to hopping across the lawn first on one leg then the other?”
“Right, confuses them. Plus when my underwear rides up that hopping action frees ‘em right up, so there’s a double benefit to the country. And I hate to ride my bicycle because I’m afraid one of those moles might attack me and get all caught up in my spokes. Man, that’d really be spooky. I can’t bear the thought of spooky spokes.”
“As for me I refuse to let them see how afraid of them I am,” Chumpy said. “That’s why I have chosen to spend most of my time underground – only come out at night – because they’ll never think to look for me there.”
“Shrewd.”
Rumpots whispered to Hogowitz, “Brave, too. Word is that Chumpy’s so jumpy he’s had missile strikes ordered against his own shadow when it was following too close.”
“Our advisors suggest we attack the Mole people where they live. In the holes they’ve crawled into in the mountains.”
“What do you think about that Rumpots?”
“Henny Penny. Henny Penny,” shrieked Rumpots. “All you chicken littles are just little chickens. You all think the sky is falling. Duck. Quack. It’s just a canard. I’ve never heard such namby pambys in all my life. After just one little attack most people in this town are still hiding under their desks. But mountains, you say? It can’t be done. We haven’t the technological expertise to find someone clever enough to crawl into a hole. And what in the world I want to know does that have to do with restructuring the army? Besides how can you tell a crater from a hole in the ground? Bombing a hole is a redundancy, isn’t it? Can’t tell me can you? Can’t tell me can you? Besides my tanks don’t work in mountains. When I put the toy ones in my office on my table and tilt it to pretend like they’re in the mountains, they just all roll off onto the floor. We don’t want that. So I suggest we attack them somewhere else where the terrain suits our predilections and lets us keep all our tanks on the table.”
“Yeah, right, I don’t want to attack the Hole either. I want to attack the Hump. He’s my mortal enemy. I hate that guy ‘cause he hates my Daddy. Besides he’s closer and easy to beat.”
“The terrain’s great in Humpty land,” Rumpots agreed. “Tanks go like fury there.”
“But are you really saying that you would take two countries to war to settle an old score on the basis of a personal family vendetta and because we want to fight this war where we want rather than fight the one we need to where we have to?” Corni asked, incredulous at the thought.
“Sure. Why not? Besides we can say he’s got of lot of weapons and is an imminent threat to attack us though we just bombed him back to the dark ages twelve years ago.”
“Isn’t this reasoning a little like the old joke: A man comes upon a drunk at three a.m. under a street lamp crawling on his hands and knees looking for his car keys. Taking pity on him the guy offers to help. But after an hour of fruitless searching the guy asks the drunk if he’s absolutely sure this was where he lost his keys. ‘Oh no, heck no. I dropped them way over there by my car. I’m just looking over here because the light’s a lot better’. ”
“So? It’s what I want to do. I’m always right. Besides I’m scared of mole holes in the mountains. I’d rather beat somebody that’s already been beat before, all softened up. My daddy beat this guy to a pulp already so he should be weaker and older now so even I oughta be able to beat him more and pretend I’m better.”
“But isn’t this odd reasoning, to avoid the real danger while we invent and attack a phony one. But you’d be starting an unnecessary second war which doesn’t have anything to do with the first one which would remain unfinished. Won’t that risk us losing both of them?
“No nothing odd about it at all, Corni,” Chumpy soothed avuncularly, “this is the bully’s code. This increases your chance of victory. You never take on anyone who may be strong. You always find the weakest, nerdiest kid on the block and pick a fight with him in order to pretend how mean and brave you are. Of course any one could beat this guy but only a bully will be mean and calculating and emasculating enough to bother, that’s the genius of the bully, that’s what they teach first day at bully school. Beat up weak kids to pretend you’re strong.” He gazed fondly on King Twig as he said this, proud that the boy had learned his playground lessons so well.
“What about world opinion? And you know, rationality? Because there are no mole people in Humpty’s land.”
“Actually,” interrupted Hogowitz, “if we work at it I think we can convince ourselves that Moleman wasn’t the perpetrator of the attack at all. I want to believe it was the Humpster, too. The farther away you are the more even little bits of nothing can be fashioned into something that looks like little mole hills. Then we can propagandize the faux mole hills into huge, fantastic mountains and claim we are attacking the mole people in the mountains even while we’re not attacking anybody on the plains.”
“That’s a genius plan and oh so true. The public don’t know nothing ‘cause we control all the sources,” Rank responded. They’ll have to have the opinion we tell ‘em to have.”
“Well you’re the opinionator,” King Twig replied.
“Right. We’ll get snow job Tony on it. Some people will say anything for a pat on the head and a buck on the side.” Then Rank couldn’t resist adding smugly, “You know we’ve actually convinced some of the public that the world is getting snowier even though it’s harder and harder for them to see eye to eye with us on this due to all the sweat dripping into their eyes from the heat.”
“Right,” Hogowitz replied, “right. Truth is its own reality and reality is where we manufacture it and what we say it is.”
“How ‘bout you Victor?” King Twit asked slyly.
“I’ve told you, sir, that my name is not short for victor or victory but for Vice.”
“I know that Vic, I was just having you on there a bit,” King Twig chortled and snorted as if this was the height of wit, and so did everybody else. “Hey there, Corni, babe, how bout bringing us guys some coffee or something, huh?”
Vice Chumpy added, “I for one am willing to go public and push this, push it hard. Any half truth can be made whole. Any lie can be made to stand up straight. And even a hump can look to be shaped like a hole if looked at from inside out.”
“I don’t care what it takes,” King Twig emphasized. He had a perverse and disarming way about him, quite unlike anyone else in the world, that the less certain about something he was the more certain of it he became. The less he knew about the topic on which he was talking the more belligerent he got in supporting it. Overcompensation, exaggeration and bluster for a life of inadequacy was the only thing he had ever truly mastered in life. It was an uncanny trait and strange. Because this incredible weakness of his had actually became his sole source of strength. This was because no one could bring themselves to believe that anyone would ever have purposely cultivated such a duplicitous and self-defeating talent.
“I don’t care what it takes,” he repeated. “Let’s do it. Even my daddy, King Tree couldn’t do it, and I’m a twig off that limb, a chip off that old stump. So let’s do it, let’s fall in love with this idea. Remember, to me sounding decisive during and after is always much more important than making the right decision before.”
Corni returned with the coffee. She had put on her maid’s outfit and apron. When she got to Rumpots, to display the loveable gruff disrespect he had for everyone, he first spit in the urn and then cuffed her behind the ear with a quick shot of his elbow when she leaned forward to pour, knocking her to the floor. Everybody laughed at this horseplay, none more than King Twig.
“God, I love this kind of meeting with my advisors. When the give and the take and take and the give among the wits and the witless starts up and becomes the rob and con, you can really tell the meeting’s making good progress. But let’s hurry up, OK, ‘cause I’m already getting bored. Let’s say just a little more work and we call it a day and tap that little kegger I got on ice. God this is almost as fun as fraternity life. We need a road trip, let’s go to bomb Korea or somewhere next, OK?” Then he snorted and guffawed like a turnip in a kind of laughing sound and then, of course, since he was in charge, everybody else had to join in too as obscenely phony laughter filled the hall.
Actually all of his advisors thought the Twig was an idiot but played along with his buffoonery for their own advantage. They knew that if they kept the child in him happy, - and no one knew where the adult was - they could pretty well do anything they wanted.
His was a minority inheritance of the monarchy from his father. He got the job by default and was so poorly raised that he had never properly grown up. He had been pampered and protected his whole life and shielded from the results of all his mistakes. For a time he had been allowed to play at business but no matter how badly he did they let him win and rewarded him with a lot of money. They finally put him in charge of a sports team, thinking no one could screw that up.
It was probably watching that sports team, sitting high in a sky box drinking beer and eating peanuts while others did all the work on the playing field far below, that had given him his peculiar and unrealistic view of the world. He seemed to think it was some kind of fantasy, a kind of game, from which he himself was far removed yet somehow in charge. Oddly this gave him a feeling of omniscience and irresponsibility all at the same time. The irony is that he was only given that job because it was the easiest job in the country and therefore the only one that suited his lack of talent. Even if his team lost, and it did, people still made money.
Unfortunately, this plan backfired and only served to reinforce all his bad habits. Rather than make him harmless it had made him think he was invincible and led him to the dangerous and bizarre conclusion that he must actually be more capable than anyone else in the world. Even a tortoise, if artificially allowed to win every race, may come to the mistaken conclusion that it’s extremely fast.
Knowing his immaturity and incompetence, some of his father’s old advisors, the same people whose mysterious vote rigging, fund raising, string pulling and packaging got him the job in the first place, maneuvered to place themselves in control of him. Seeing him as a malleable fool they decided to flatter and use him while they enriched themselves and furthered all their own interests at the country’s expense.
One of these twisted, cynical manipulators, Rumpots, casually looked over his shoulder at the waitress who was just struggling to her feet and profusely apologized to Corni Flakes.
“Oh sorry there, Miss, for the misshit. But some misses get hit and misshits happen.” But of course he made his apology in such a superciliously insincere way that everyone could see his attack had been intentional. This was one of the ways power guys like him had of ensuring that everyone beneath them (they thought everyone was beneath them) kept their place. “Tanks you very much, tanks a lot. Which reminds me…”
“Tanks. All I need is tanks. If I only had a million tanks I might be finally able to discover that which I don’t already know about all I already do. Because in life there are some things you know that you don’t know you know and other things you wish you knew that you just don’t quite but when you finally get to know them you wish you didn’t know you knew and so no new news is really new at all and none of it is good and only God knows when kingdoms come, if even then, if you know what I mean.”
“See,” King Twig said, “even crazy old Rumpots agrees with me.” He said this even though no one but he and Chumpy ever had the faintest idea what the old Rummy was talking about, especially, needless to say, Rumpots himself.
“What in the world is wrong with that guy, anyway,” Corni asked Hogowitz when she got a chance, though she hardly regarded him as the essence of mental stability either.
“He’s got a rare degenerative venereal disease. It’s the love that always dares shout its name. It’s self love, egomanical incest or whatever you want to call it. The technical name for it is rather eccentric (obviously given to it by someone who had the disease): venereal mirrorhowmytoesitch. It’s where selflessness is replaced with self-fulsomeness which means that nothing can be viewed except through the distorting prism of self lust. Rumpots had it so bad that any shiny surface that could hold his pale reflection for even a moment was soon steamed up with his unnatural desire to possess it. He began stalking himself. They had to segregate him from mirrors altogether because he would molest his own reflection in the glass. Finally he went totally berserk in a hall of mirrors and what was once an innocent infatuation finally turned to serial mirror rape. When they finally peeled him off the walls and got all the splintered glass picked out of him from all the shattered mirrors - in addition to all the bad luck from all the broken glass - they were afraid that some unnatural progeny might ensue. The very idea that offspring from such a disgusting and unholy union might mutate into an endless ghastly mirror reproduction of an ego-incestous, auto-erotically cloned reflection of Rumpots was thought to be too much of a danger for the world to risk. The courts prohibited him from coming within five hundred feet of any reflective surface and decreed that he must wear a condom for the rest of his life. At parties he usually wears them on his head.
“Still even with these precautions the doctors were afraid that the disease had already progressed too far and warned that unless a cure were found, Rumpots might eventually become a sort of a selfish, bullying, glassy eyed zombie monster mumbling inanities. Watching him today I don’t think we can be sure that that isn’t exactly what has happened. And, just between you and me, he’s not the only one around who suffers from the telltale signs of the same disease.” As Hogowitz concluded this confidentially, leaning closer to her, Corni noticed him trying to catch his own leering reflection in the coffee cup she was carrying and quickly pulled away before he tried to mount her cup.
Just then the guy named Scooter returned riding on well, a little red scooter. “Yes but, remember, always remember this,” he preached in the manner of Patrick Henry, “some scoundrels may want to try to tell the truth about the lies we tell. I’d say we smear them. Just smear ‘em. Give us lies or give them death. Let’s lie about these dirty truthtellers who dare tell the truth about our lies. What do you say, men?”
They all rose, solemnly and as if in the manner of a sacred pledge, agreed in unison, “Yes, let’s.”
Then they all sat back down and Scooter, who’d never figured out where the brake on his scooter was (actually Rummy had cut the line), scooted out the door opposite the one he came in through. “Rrrr, Rrrrr, vroom,vroom,” he could be heard saying, gamely trying to emulate the sound of a real motor just like he was four years old, as he flew through the door and disappeared.
“Bye bye, Scoots,” some one said in farewell. In another hour or so, if the past was any indicator, he might be recirculate back by their way again.
“The main thing is, the main thing,” King Twig resumed after these interruptions, “that concerns me is that I wanna do everything all different. All great leaders I heard of do things different from average people so if I start doing things differently that means I’ll be above average.”
“I don’t think it generally works like that sire, opposite that maybe; but for sake of argument what, for instance, would you like to do different?”
“Don’t care. My head hasn’t thunk that far ahead yet. But my daddy did wars but he did ‘em traditional like and didn’t really be different enough and besides I’m better than my daddy because I wanna be better than my daddy. And he, he and my mommy…, well maybe I won’t get into all that mommy stuff now. But I do want to do more than my daddy did and do it sort of different so it’s kind of like I’m my own – and better – man. And bigger. Bigger and better. And different.”
Rank advised. “First strut more. And preen a lot. And brag and if somebody does something take credit for it and, oh and call everybody names if they disagree with you and give ‘em nicknames if they do agree and if they screw up say you don’t know how it happened and if you screw up deny it and then blame them for it. Never hold meetings or accept advice or read. Vacation a lot. Oversimplify complexity always and repeat, I repeat, repeat. This is the true lesson of leadership and how ordinary people get to be legends. Even if just in their own minds for a short time.”
“Goody, goody a legend. I wanna be one of those. My daddy was just so-so, you know. So I at least want to be sooo-sooo, with even more ohs after my essess. I figure ‘cause I’m younger than my dad I should only have to work half as hard to be twice as good.”
Vice Chumpy said: “Righto sir. I’m sure that’s true. You are undoubtedly the smartest and bravest king ever. Oh and did I tell you I’m a liar? I mean it. I have no character at all. After all, Vice is my middle name.”
King Twig: “No Vic. Actually Vice is your first name.”
“See what I mean, I’ll lie about anything.
“Wait,” Hogowitz asked, “I thought Vice was a title that came with your job?”
”Nope, it was a title but I’ve turned it into a descriptive adjective. I think I’ve
earned it. It’s who I am. Some people may have titles that become them, but I’ve become my title until it’s now become me.”
“And you’re proud of this?”
“Exceedingly.”
“How odd for you.”
“But what about me guys?” Corni asked plaintively. I’m supposed to be pretending that we want to talk to make things better rather than war to make them worse and that we are really going to attack the ones who attacked us rather than wildly attack everybody that didn’t.” Then she mentioned the name of her mentor Esophagus Pow-wow. There was a gasp and then the room grew deathly quiet.
Esophagus Pow-wow wasn’t really one of them, they all knew. He still occasionally had dealings with (gasp) outsiders to their own inner circle. This meant that Esophagus actually spoke with people who occasionally might have different opinions and might actually dare to try to refute the fantastical advice his advisors were giving the man-child king. This was heresy to Rumpots and Hogowitz and all the rest of them and they were apoplectic at the mention of Pow-wow’s name.
“We all served our time in warfare getting out of serving in warfare except for Esophagus who actually went to war. How can we trust a guy like? Though he’s a military general who fought in combat he’s too soft and too big a coward to know anything about what war is really about. We who weaseled and scraped and bought and begged our way out of service are the only ones who still have enough gumption to send other peoples’ kids off to war to die needlessly.”
“Now, now,” Vic replied soothingly, “don’t worry, I can handle Pow-wow. He wants too much to be an insider to stay an outsider for long. When shove comes to pushing and truth to lies you watch, he’ll be there for us taking orders and stretching surmises. I’m taking him duck hunting with me next week. That ought to persuade him.”
“Duck hunting? Is it bird season? How will that persuade him?”
“Who said anything about birds? Duck hunting with me means I hunt and everybody else ducks. If ‘duck’ hunting doesn’t work, the week after I’ll take him ‘you got five seconds to run boy’ hunting.”
“But then what,” Corni asked? “Even if he complies for now how can we be sure he’ll be a real team player later?”
“We can’t. That’s why once we get him to do this, we’ll get rid of him and give you his job, Ms. Flakes,” Rank replied. And then it’ll be your turn to prevaricate your tail off. But in return you get a title and get to fly around the world in a big plane and be served good dinners.”
“Oh,” Corni nodded, pleased and approving, “OK, then, well I guess I’m in, I can sure do that.”
“Besides we can hire old maid Kissingmire to give us cover, he’ll kowtow and scrape his way into any disaster he can find. The man’s a walking quagmire, never seen a war he couldn’t lose. They say he could step in an inch deep mud puddle and not be able to figure a way out for ten years. We’ll tell him it’s Vietnam all over again.”
“Vietnam, Vietnam,” they all shouted in mayhem and confusion pulling their hair and drooling at the sound of the name. “We really won that war we lost,” one said. “Yeah, if we’d only had fifeteen or sixteen years more we could have done it,” exclaimed another. “That’s for damn sure.” “Exactly, we had ‘em right where we wanted ‘em, pouring like a sieve into the South. It was that actress, that Jane Fondue chick, who made us lose it if you ask me.” “Me too, imagine after just nine years of futility it was those damn realists and a few protesters in the streets in America that dared question our invisible strategy and made us lose the war on the ground over there.” “Right. Right.” Then all at once they shouted, “We’ve never made a mistake we’ve admitted and never learned from a mistake we’ve made and we never will.” “So let’s say we make a pact right here and now to do it to the country all over again.” “OK, that’ll teach this stupid country to disagree with us.” They were all too foaming at the mouth by then to continue and let the conversation spittle and sputter to a stop.
They were touchy on this topic because this actually exposed a nasty truth about all these people. They avoided all responsibility for everything, never learned the lessons of history and so doomed everybody else to repeat them over and over. From Vietnam to Iran-Contra they were walking epitaphs, written on others’ gravestones, to their own incompetence. Like rats running in mazes chasing their own tails they adopted stupidity as both a virtue and a way of life, kept nursing their own delusions and vowed to never change or learn a thing.
“But you know, getting back to me, let’s get back to me,” King Twig whined. “Loyalty to me is all that matters. I don’t trust military people to fight wars. I don’t like intelligence people analyzing intelligence. And I can’t stand democrats telling me about democracy. I don’t like these so called experts who know so much more than I do. Heck, I don’t know nothing and I bet I can be better at everything than them. So I want to use this war to bring out new ideas, and see the world all over again as if someone was looking at these things through rose colored glasses for the first time. Which as a matter of fact, I guess I really am. I didn’t miss all those classes at school for nothing. I did it intentional. I wanted to keep my mind free of all taint of prior knowledge.”
“At that sir,” Chumpy praised, “I think you have succeeded masterfully.”
“Good. I was like you know, show me the quickest way from the frat house to the most primo bar and there I was.”
“But enough of my educational prowesses,” he went on. “We have to think different. We need to start thinking outside of our boxers here. Take wheels. Are they round because that’s the most efficient way for them to be or are they rounded because of overuse. Bet you never thought of that before did ya? I mean wheels were invented a long time ago and maybe the edges have just got worn off over time and then people just forgot and then kept using ‘em that way instead of how they were intended. What do you think? I had a dream once where all the wheels were octagons. Why not? In my dream they went really, really fast and some were made out of wood and other feathers. Why can’t we make some of those? They looked really cool. By the way in my dream the world wasn’t round either but started out as a polyhedron before it turned into a triangle.”
The Vice Chump was enthusiastic. “If you want to do it I say yes sir. Emphatically, yes by all means, absolutely. Let’s get that done. Let’s give a huge cost plus contract with no bidding or oversight to a company to get right on that and make us a few million of those for a few gazillion dollars. I know a company run by a friend of mine that…”
He was interrupted with laughter. “We bet you do,” some said. Vic Chumpy was notorious for his relationship with a company called Brownroots (with a proud and unbroken record of corruption that went all the way back to the ancient times of good King Lyndon), because everything they undertook except the profit turned to dust and blew away by the time they were done building it. It was owned by an alter ego of Chumpy named Hal E. Burton with whom Vic was thick as a thief. So thick were they word was that after a long day of really dirty, grimy political hack work they’d climb in the shower together and wash each other’s back.”
“OK. Good. Let’s do it,” King Twig agreed enthusiastically. “Let’s start laying in the lies on this baby too. I’m just sorry that my old favorite company, Endrun, run by my old buddy Ken Lies, bit the big one so hard. Think how much money they could’ve sucked up from this whole war business. I would of let ‘em too. We’d all be Midases by now.”
“Mufflers? Why’s he talking about mufflers?” Rumpots wondered.
“But Sire, sir,” Corni asked with a wrinkled brow, “are you sure that at the same time we’re supposedly engaged in a life and death struggle with the mole people, while we’re going off to fight a preemptive, unnecessary and dishonest war that’s not even against the mole people, that this is really the optimum time to try reinvent the wheel too?”
“Natch, of course it is, Missy.” Rumpots interjected. “Sometimes the things you think you know are new aren’t new and the old things aren’t so new after all. My brilliant rearranging of the military is the main thing, much more important than losing a few little wars here and there along the way. See what I mean? Stuffed shirts happen. It’s not what I say, it’s what I mean what I mean I mean, see? Now we got our naysayers and our no-no Nanettes, and our dead-enders who always cry whenever anyone dares try anything outmoded and absurd. What do they want? Progress all the time? Why that would just be crazy and tire us all out. Why go forward when you can sometimes circle back? Ask Scooter the next time he comes through. So you see sometimes the way back is really forward and, speaking circuitously, some time the back of a turtle is really its forehead. See where I’m aiming? Why just today I was talking to generals asking questions I already had the answers to and I was as amazed as summer hay how often when someone said something I disagreed with, how uncannily often it was I knew I already knew I was right even before they disagreed with me. I didn’t even have to bother listening to them to know how much less right than me they would be before they disagreed. And I mean both before hands and after words. And these were on things that they surreptitiously knew a lot more about than I thought I did, too. And I thought I knew an awful lot quite awfully. So I told them over and over that the less large your army is the more it can get done. I’m sure I’m right. More is always less. Why they don’t understand something that simple I’ll never know, though I already know the answer to that too.”
“Yeah, yeah, now me too, me too, my turn.” Everyone groaned then as Hogowitz, the infamous swine ‘o war himself, was obviously anxious to regale them with one of his own pet theories. Perhaps one reason (among many) nobody liked him was because he had a curious physical habit. When he spoke to someone he customarily turned his back to them and bent over forward until his head appeared from between his legs upside down (meaning he was more flexible physically than in his opinions) which made it always appear as if he was talking to you – you guessed it - straight out of his ass.
“I know you know the domino theory is thought to be a load of crap. We’ve used it to justify fiascos from Vietnam to Iran-Contra and it always wrecks our foreign policy for the next decade or two. That’s why all we who were all so completely wrong about those wars have invented a new theory. I call this the reverse domino theory. Instead of looking for dominos about to fall over like we used to and then try to prop them now we need to find dominos already fallen over and think real hard until we make them stand up and then begin to fall over against each other in the opposite direction. I personally think it would really be cute if maybe we could eventually even train these dominos once we get them up to do a little dance before they fall over again, like kind of a domino conga line.”
Getting carried away, he even began to try to act this out. “Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, BUM; bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, BUM. You know how they do.” This was particularly ludricous given that he was still bent over forward with his head sticking out between his legs behind. “Ouch, Ouch,” he said with every passing gyration as he kept getting his head squeezed between his thighs.
“And then, and I admit this is a little out there, even for me, but eventually I think maybe all these little dancing dominos – can’t you just picture them, they’re just so cute - will all just one day fly away and the world will be perfect again because then it’ll be free of dominos forever. It will become a uh, uh, a perfect polyhedron again, like the king says, or I mean, as I guess we’re calling it now, a uh, triangle.”
“That’s lucid ol’ Hog, that’s just the kind of magical, out of the boxers thinking I like to hear. Who needs books and experts and history and intellectuals when we’ve got deep thinks like this? Only one thing worries me. I know we all say I’m king and I know I forget sometimes that I’m not, but I know way down deep this is really meant to be what? Some kind of democracy or representative government of some kind we’re in, isn’t it? I missed that coupla years in school when they covered gummint. I was busy doing cheerleaders, in more ways than one if you know what I mean.” He cackled and screeched at his own joke so naturally everyone else had to to. “So what I mean to say is, is this Cong-ressy thingy I keep hearing about going to be any trouble to my grand designs?”
There was an uncomfortable, nervous pause for a moment and then as if it were an earthquake rumbling up from below, the guffaw began to build among them all simultaneously until it erupted like Mount St. Helen into a mountainous lava of laughter. It was genuinely the biggest laugh of the day that had otherwise been so rich in opportunity.
Vituperation followed. “No Sire, Congress is what doormats use to wipe their feet on, or their arses.” Or, “you don’t even need a sheepdog, I heard a sheep in sheep’s clothing could herd that herd of sheep.” “Yeah, yeah and a simple rubber stamp only cost three bucks at the store and yet our nitwit citizens pay those guys a hundred and fifty grand a year? Believe me sire they are the ink pad to the rubber stamp of your illusions. Stamp on ‘em all you want.” “Yeah and believe me a rubber stamp is going to leave a clearer mark on history than these people will.” And finally, “Heck, give me a quarter and I could buy up every conscience in Congress and bring you back change.”
They had a good old time laughing about that and it went on for quite some time. Funny how they had tried to tell each other jokes all day long and all the time just across town Congress was the biggest joke of all.
And so King Twig did invade the laceType w:st="on">landlaceType> of laceName w:st="on">Humpty DumptylaceName>. They were all around watching television when Humpty fell. The whole nation watched. The whole world. No one liked Humpty yet it was still strangely moving when he fell. The familiar smug look on his face slowly turned to one of surprise and then into alarm before finally settling into wide eyed fear. Sitting on his wall he wobbled a bit first, back and forth, side to side. Then Humpty Dumpty has his big fall, and a thousand clips and millions of TV and videos the world over replayed it again and again in slow motion, twisting and turning through the air, rotating slowly toward the ground, mouth open wide, and when he hit the ground the world exploded all around him.
At first King Twig and his advisors were mighty pleased for having toppled the weak and unarmed Humpty Dumpty. The King, as Rank told him to do, strutted like mad and preened like a little girl and pretended to be a great military man. He assiduously aped the speeches of actual leaders of the past who’d been far better than him and bragged mercilessly about how different he’d done it, bigger and better and different. And the nation reveled with him - for a while.
As time passed the unreal game this had started out as slowly began to turn. Emerging like a foreign landscape from a heavy morning fog, it slowly started to look like something quite different from what it had originally seemed. It began to look something very much like reality after all. Soon Twig realized this wasn’t quite as much fun as he thought it’d be. He imagined he’d just been attacking one man, Humpty, instead it was a whole country he’d destroyed and now had to deal with. He got angry. He said he’d been told it’d be easy.
“Adman Yucan Trustame, the Baghdad part time used car dealer, clearly told me it’d be easy as snot and here it is hard as the other end. He said his people would be happy to be bombed and occupied.”
Still even as the nation shattered like Humpty Dumpty into millions of little pieces and all the tragedy and suffering, hunger and grief, pestilence and civil war unfolded in all its grim and inexorable horror, King Twig tried to be upset. He wasn’t though. He really didn’t care ‘cause he wasn’t there.
The mole people, meanwhile, unchecked and even energized, began to proliferate and spread through out the region. Other nations, emboldened by King Twig’s misrule, began to grow restless and disloyal and ignore his edicts. Even that didn’t bother King Twig as he and his kitschy cabinet gathered secretly at night to enjoy the torture sessions of prisoners they had had taped for their amusement. “What good is sadism if isn’t shared with friends?” Vic Chumpy asked.
King Twig really only started to care about the results of his actions when he was told that his popularity had begun to wane. “Why this is really serious,” he said. Then and only then, finally, did he decided he wanted it all to stop.
“OK, let’s stop it now. I’m bored with this. That’s enough. Time out. Do it. I command you put it all back together again.”
“Sire, all your horses and all your men can never put Humpty Dumpty land back together again. Besides if we are to pretend that we’ve never made any mistakes we have to stay there and keep making them over and over. Otherwise we’ll have to admit we were wrong.”
“Wow, that’s really a dilemma because that’s something I will never do.”
“Yes, we know.”
Moral: Like pride with humans, war is the world’s great leveler of nations. It brings great nations down and raises weak ones up.
