Once every four years about this time many newspapers endorse their pick for President. You’ll never see me doing that, for a variety of reasons. First, I don’t own the periodical you’re reading and I wouldn’t want to run off any readers with my choice. The second reason is that I’m disgusted with the whole selection process. Thirdly, why would anyone want my opinion when my very own wife doesn’t listen to what I say? The fact that anyone would listen to me shows just how far we’ve fallen in this country.
The process has become so expensive and corrupt I believe we should change the way we select our President. Instead of debates I think we should bring back duels, which were common in this country until the mid 1800’s when states began outlawing them. I don’t know why, it seems to be a good way to clean out the riffraff.
The only thing most of our citizens know about duels is that Vice President Aaron Burr once killed a former Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in one. The modern day equivalent would be Joe Biden killing John Connally. This would be very hard to do because Mr. Connally has been dead for over 20 years, but I couldn’t think of any other Treasury Secretary, which shows just how much I know about what transpires in Washington DC.
Duels usually took place at first light in an out-of-the-way location so as to avoid the cops, CNN reporters and any Facebook friends a duelist might have. Usually the two adversaries would stand back to back, walk a predetermined number of paces, turn and fire. I’ve always wondered about the prospect of one guy pulling up a few paces short and pulling the trigger. What’s the winner going to say to the dying loser, “Whoops. I’m sorry but I thought you said four paces!”
For the squeamish amongst you I should point out that the person challenged to a duel had the choice of weapons and the list was not limited to firearms. In one case the chosen weapon was sausages. That’s right, the German Chancellor Bismarck once picked a fight with Professor Rudolf Virchano who selected sausages, one normal and the other fully loaded with deadly trichinosis. The professor explained that Bismarck could choose one sausage and eat it and he’d eat the other. Bismarck reportedly begged his way out of the fight… “Ha, ha I was just kidding.”
The point is, politicians could select BB guns, rocks, bows and arrows, meat cleavers, water balloons, fists, feathers, knives, whips, you name it. Can you imagine the TV ratings if Presidential debates erupted into wars involving water pistols, paint guns or leaf blowers? All these political buffoons have made us suffer for so long, now it’s our turn and we want carnage. Which brings up another point. Each duelist had to have a “second” who was usually a surgeon. This would be a great part for Dr. Ben Carson to play, whose campaign ended because he was presumed to be too quiet, nice, sincere and intelligent to ever win.
If the debates between Christie, Rubio, Trump and Hilary versus Bernie would have involved fully charged firemen’s hoses dialed up to 250 psi I’d have paid almost anything to watch. Can’t you just envision Hilary’s pants suit or Trump’s hair being blown off? On second thought, let me clear my head of that mental image. With the money from pay-per-view from such battles we could start to pay off the national debt and ABC, PBS, MSNBC and CNN would go broke bidding for the TV rights, which is another BIG extra added benefit.
Several times in the debates I saw candidates who looked like they wanted to kill another candidate. Well guess what, now they can. Let’s see how many of them want to serve their country now! Even better, what I’d really like to see are duels between these political pundits who squirm out of the sewer every four years. Can’t you just envision a World Wrestling-style main event between Carl Rove and James Carvel, or Lanny Davis versus Judge Jeanine?
