Let's Be Swell!

[from 12/1/10]

I think I have finally figured out my own country. For 61 years I have been trying to understand what has seemed at times as a death wish among my fellow countrypersons, at other times as a rather very-long-nap-time wish, at other times as a prolonged-stupidity wish. I now realize how wrong I’ve been.

Americans really are idealists in the truest sense. In the sense of wanting the ideal life, regardless of what it takes. It’s just that, the ideal American life is something we saw on television and in the movies.

The dawn of my awakening came when I saw the recent Seattle Times headline, “Washington drivers are spending less time in traffic,” along with the sentence further down, “People drove less because of economic recession, the state says.” My first thought was, “Wow, the state is smart today. Give the state a cookie!"

Then I thought, “Wait a minute, Wes” (I like to think to myself in the third-person, to keep in mind who I’m thinking to) “breezy traffic is the American Dream.” When has a James Bond Lotus or Aston Martin ever been stuck in traffic? I can’t even remember a traffic jam on Dragnet. That was set in Los Angeles! We’ve been taught to think that’s the way it should be!

Well, if that’s the way it should be, there should never be traffic congestion. So then, let’s bring that about. Let’s totally ignore the poor in our country. Pay them so little they can’t afford good food, much less drive to work. Take away health benefits and hope as many as possible are disabled and have to pay their gas money for oxygen instead of gasoline. If that doesn’t clear the roads, ship their jobs overseas.

And we’re doing it. The ideal American Dream Driving Experience, for all the drivers left. The day isn’t far off, when Paul Allen will have the highways to himself. I’m sure he’ll tell us all about it, how wonderful and freeing it feels.

It’s a little like the way we figured out how to solve the housing crisis. Kick everyone out of their homes. What crisis? But I digress.

The coolest thing we’re doing is rebooting the Korean War. The Korean War, as anyone who has seen M*A*S*H knows, was the ideal war. It was funny without being cloyingly sentimental. It was tragic-comical, just the way a war should be. It followed closely after the invention of Groucho glasses and the Tiki bar, which set the tone. Best of all, it never actually ended, so it was the Peter Pan, or the Saturday Night Live, of wars.

Don’t let anybody fool you. The Korean War isn’t restarting just because Kim Jongs are all nuts and because the North Koreans already have enough plutonium to do to Japan what we did, 8 times over.

The Korean War is restarting because America has always wanted it to restart. We’ve sat back and encouraged policies that would isolate North Korea economically and breed and feed nutty dictators there, and our passive-aggressive codependent diplomacy has trained North Korea to threaten us periodically to get concessions.

By the way, here’s a fun true fact for all you boys and girls: Kim Jong-il’s dead Dad Kim Il-sung is the incumbent Eternal President of North Korea. I think that sends a very clear message to the world, “Back off, we’ve been off our meds since 1994.”

Questions just to be asking questions

1.    Suppose you think the author of this column is wrong. How wrong is he? Is he Jeopardy wrong? Is he Who Wants to be a Millionaire wrong? Or is he Gong Show wrong? Punctuate your answer with an appropriate sound effect. (If you can’t do the sound effect -- no credit for you! Wah wah.)

2.    Estimate the number of Posthumous Medals of Honor it would take to get North Korea to surrender, first, assuming China enters the war on our side this time, and second, assuming they go with North Korea again. How long would you wait in line for that movie?