The Free Radical

He won??? He fucking won?!

Dean was sitting in front of the computer, slack-jawed and drooling, the spittle of naive incredulity plummeting to his pajamaed lap. It was November 9th, 2016 and the morning’s coffee was brewing in the kitchen while Dean had cheerfully gone to the computer to learn of Hillary’s final margin of victory in the election spectacle of the century. But… but… how could it be? Hillary hadn’t won at all! Despite the steady assurances of months of polling, despite the insouciant media and their specialized training as sycophantic barking seals, slapping their fins together incessantly for dear Hillary, despite the twisted mangled wreck of ‘progressive’ common sense everywhere– despite all that, in and to the face of all reasonable expectation, the results were a stinging slap… to everything Dean had ever stood for– or rather, to everything Dean had imagined himself to stand for.

The Donald, the Big D, the Giant Douche had won the presidency… and they were calling it a landslide. Dean was incapable of understanding such a result… at all.

(There was a great deal which Dean was incapable of understanding… at all.)

“He won???” Dean had to say it out loud to himself in a begging, whiny, sniveling tone, as though that might somehow still undo the reality of it. Dean could not, however, bring himself to complete the old Eddie Murphy quote aloud– the ‘He fucking won?’ part. Dean would never utter such profanity aloud. He could silently think it to himself; in fact, ‘fuck’ was one of his most favouritest words within the private vacuity of his mind. But out in the world, where people shared their run-of-the-mill ideas and opinions responsibly, Dean used surrogates like ‘frick’ and ‘fiddlesticks’ and ‘shoot’– extensively. Dean was scrupulous about his personal political correctness.

He had to be. Dean was a professor, the dean actually, of the Political Science department of a major liberal college. Oops, the word ‘liberal’ was currently unfashionable, so let’s make that a major ‘progressive’ college. (Presumably, the word ‘liberal’ was misleading in that it could mistakenly be thought of as having something to do with liberty… and well, in this day and age, that’s just silly.)

Accepting the promotion, four years ago, to become the dean– when his actual name was also Dean– well that, that was about the cleverest thing professor Dean had ever been a part of… and he wasn’t shy about pointing out the hilarity of it to each and every new person he met. He seemed to genuinely enjoy the forced snickers and the effort required for each polite smile received. Somehow, it made him feel good about himself. And that’s all that fricken mattered, gosh-darn-it!

So, of course, Dean, the dean of the Poli-Sci department– haha– was all about political correctness. As far as he was concerned, political correctness was the greatest export to have come out of Canada since Justin Bieber or Nickelback. Oh, but now there was that new prime minister of theirs, the other Justin, who even on a really bad hair day was drastically more fuckable than Hillary had ever been. (Right Bill?) Canada seemed to really have it going on in Dean’s honest estimation… much in keeping with the vapid opinions of faggot retards everywhere.

Ah, political correctness, the ultimate civilizing principle; it was something marking a certain degree of social development, an important milestone alongside the sacredness of comfort zones and maintaining property values. For Dean it was nothing less than the meaning of life. After all, it was so simple, and logical. If you wanted to eliminate evil forever in a civilized society, all you had to do was ban all hate-speech. What is hate-speech? Well, anything that could be construed as hurtful, of course. Easy-peazy. Fuck yeah! thought Dean. “Frick yeah!” he said pretentiously out loud.

Oh, but wait. He’d already forgotten the lamentability of the present moment. Poor Hillary had lost. He needed to do something in order to process such a result, but really didn’t have a clue as to what he might do. How could any rational person make sense of something like that? He had cast his vote last evening in sure confidence in the inherent goodness of the world, or at least in the exceptional goodness of his fellow americans. Generations of redundant programming to domesticate every expression of ingenuity, imagination or inspiration, and forever pandering to the lowest common denominator among the masses– an education system fully committed to that– how could it possibly fail to deliver exceptionalism? We are a nation of exceptionals, he affirmed to himself. And then he got up from the computer momentarily to fetch himself a coffee; you know, to kick-start the old brain…

As he stood, he immediately noticed the handi-bus rolling by his window as it did every morning… a little more dilapidated, a little more crowded, but still a real inspiration… in a nihilistic sorta way. He hurried to get that coffee from the kitchen.

When he sat back down at the computer, steaming mug in hand, his first thought was that maybe there had been a problem with the overall voter turnout… but the early indications had been good. He pulled up an article from CNN. Nope. It said it right there: ‘best voter turnout ever.’ Nearly everyone, it seemed, had come out to cast his– or her– lot within the circus tent of electoral frivolity. And they’d overwhelmingly chosen the clown! (Most had had quite enough of the freak-show Hildebeast long ago. They’d given clear signals all along, but no one had noticed, least of all, Dean.)

Yes, professor Dean was actually well aware that it was mostly just bread and circuses anyway. Really, the popular vote for POTUS was mostly about putting the appropriate interim face on the enduring facade of Authority, nothing more. And the majority had elected to put the orange-haired buffoon forward as the newest face of Authority. Dean couldn’t imagine how that could possibly end well. (But then, Dean couldn’t really imagine much at all.)

The thread from which the wet blanket of american democracy was sewn was assuredly Authority. Dean had been enthusiastically licking at the asshole of Authority all his life… and he was a downright success! He had taught his children at a very young age to also lick the asshole of Authority at every opportunity. It’s how you got ahead… or how you gave head… or, er, something like that. Anyway, Authority was important, most important, to a man like Dean… and his unfortunate offspring… not to mention his hapless students.

Authority, yes… it couldn’t be freedom– no, certainly not. Dean had been so glad– in a secret, shh-don’t-tell-anyone kinda way– that day, early in the new millennium, when the towers had come down, and with them, the last of freedom’s dogged credibility. Freedom was hardly a thing to base a society around… a civilization, for gosh-sakes!

How much freedom did people really think they needed anyway? Dean could go, right now, to any one of three different Walmarts within driving distance, and choose from among literally thousands, maybe even millions, of cheap non-essential products– the very best that chinese labour could assemble. And then after shopping, he could have a Big Mac or a Whopper, or heck, maybe even a pizza. Choices man… that’s freedom. What more could a rational person want? No, any kinda freedom beyond that just wasn’t fair. What about the poor dullards? The ones without originality, with no imagination? No, any broader concept of freedom than that would be an affront to their self-esteem. Freedom was a thing of the past; it belonged to the gruff old cowboys of the wild west… and America had SO grown beyond that!

And now they’d voted for the crazy maverick. Dean figured that Trump hadn’t licked a single heartfelt lap at the true asshole of Authority in his life. Hillary, he was sure, had licked plenty of asshole in her day– granting her the proper perspective. But how in the heck was prudish Trump now suddenly supposed to pull off being president? How could he be expected to have a reasonable grasp of Authority at all? He was the asshole, and as far as that dimwit Trump knew, assholes were for just spewing shit. How could this be?

It was beginning to dawn on Dean that his fellow americans were perhaps something different from what he’d always imagined them to be. If they could vote for Trump– overwhelmingly– then Dean didn’t understand the first thing about all these people he’d never dare speak to– you know, the nut-jobs. Who knew there could be so many of them… still?

This might be a good place to expound on one of those many things Dean could never understand: in particular, the fuck-you vote, the middle-finger ballot. Only rebels and losers, people without proper haircuts, could ever give the finger to the status quo in Dean’s professional estimation. Sane and rational persons accepted the establishment, embracing its ample teat of opportunity. Indeed, the State was a thing to suckle on, to take comfort in. And the casting of a fuck-you vote was like talking back to your valium-sedated mother who was doing her darned best to just cope with the unending challenges of modern life. That just wasn’t very nice, was it?

Hillary was a symbol… or more accurately, now, she had been a symbol. Dean would have to admit that it was over for Hillary. And though he wouldn’t be the one to stick the proverbial fork up her ass, turn her over… cuz she’s done, somebody would nevertheless have to do it. Maybe Bill, but he was more than likely already busy poking someone else’s ass with his ex-presidential prick. So, anyway, Hillary had been a symbol for the american people. For some, like Dean, she represented the plasticine face of respectable self-sacrificing public service, a real champion of the people, albeit one without any significant accomplishments, unless destroying countries and raping their leaders with a bayonet counts… or maybe just laughing about it on national television could be considered a worthy shit-covered feather in her cap– and that took real balls, and Hillary didn’t mind one bit hanging hers out for all to see. And then to others, those whose sentiments might align more with those of the irascible narrator of this tale, think of Hitlery more as the embodied representation of endless steaming piles of corruption in the politicking whorehouse that is Washington’s vile business on the one day that the sewers completely backed up. (And I’m trying to be nice!)

Dean could never see it that way. Strangely, Dean– the academician– had never learned that in order to actually see, one had to actually look. Go figure.

How could the media have possibly gotten it so wrong? How could the polls be so misaligned with reality? Those primped and coiffed and teleprompted celebrity bobble-heads knew darned near everything! Heck, they presumably even knew why the Kardashians were so consistently popular. Clearly, their databanks were full… so why didn’t they see this coming? It was their constitutional duty to inform righteous folk like Dean of just such impending unpleasantries… before they came to pass. No, this wasn’t right; these election results were uncomfortable; they pressed at the temples of reality’s sudden migraine… and Dean had little sympathy or tolerance when he was forced outside of his comfort zone like this.

It had been ubiquitous, across the entire spectrum of popular media, Hillary’s impending victory. All of the many thousands of independent outlets of news media had agreed– as though with a singular voice, like they all knew the same special secret or something– that the presidency would be hers. And now they were all wrong. Impossible! Something smelled rotten here, but Dean had the discernment skills of a broke one-eyed drunk looking for more liquor. His investigative skills had been squeezed out of him like over-fluoridated toothpaste way back in elementary school, when he mostly only had baby teeth and an unnatural desire to always bite his tongue. Dean absolutely needed the media to tell him what was what… and exactly what he should think about it all. They had failed him… and now he literally didn’t know what to think.

What would his students think? What would they think of him? They positively knew that professor Dean was tongued into the Authority train… and now the kneeling train had gone completely off its rails! Oh, it might be like that day, that day when the impudent boy, that self-proclaimed critical thinker, had marched right into the lecture hall wearing that loathsome ball cap. ‘Trump: Make America great again’ is what it said in all its hateful glory. What could be more vile and pernicious than hate-speech of such an obvious and unmitigated variety? He had asked the boy– politely– to remove the hat and put it away. He had refused, claiming– quite absurdly– that free speech was somehow more important than the possibility of hurting someone’s feelings. And then he started going off about the basic requirements for democracy, and all that… to the dean of the Poli-Sci department, no less! Dean had interrupted him– a little less politely this time, but not much– to ask the boy if he actually intended to vote for the braying orange trumpet. He’d answered no… but not for the reason anyone might possibly ever think. He’d said “No, I don’t vote, lest such reckless behaviour be construed as consent for, or in any way legitimizes, the whole stupid farce of our sham democracy. I won’t be a party to it, nor will I merely pretend to complain about its woeful inadequacies; rather, I’ll fight it to the death!”

Dean hadn’t known what to say to that. How does one prepare for something like that? And now, it might happen again. Surely some, perhaps many, of his students had actually voted for Trump… in clear defiance of professor Dean’s intellectual snobbery. Somewhere the logic of it all had broken down, and now they were all lost together in the land of unforeseeable consequences. America was now officially off-script.

The pundits were calling the election results a wake-up call. But what might a guy like Dean actually wake up to? Was he really expected now to trade a lifetime of happy delusion for a bucket of cold reality and the promise of never sleeping soundly again? People like Dean, folks who are perfectly rational yet utterly impervious to reason, made up perhaps 40% of the country’s population. Judging from the election results, only about half of them had managed to get out and vote. Dean, and all the cardboard cutouts just like him, were now facing an acute crisis, an existential one.

Fortunately, the crisis– that particular one, unique to Dean and his commiserating conformist ilk– didn’t last long though. Right on that very morning that Dean was desperately trying to make sense of those inconceivable election results, there suddenly popped up, on every news site in the free (extorted/exploited) world, some very important breaking news: President-Elect Trump had just been assassinated! This too was rather perplexing for Dean… for it meant that one of his fellow ass-lickers actually owned a gun… and knew how to use it.

How wonderful! Thank God! (Don’t worry; Dean would never ever say the G-word out loud.) And just like that it was pretty much over just as soon as it had begun. Dean imagined that the insipid ‘equilibrium’ of routine american life would assuredly be restored.

Remember, I told you that Dean’s imagination was somewhat lacking in colour, texture and anything resembling accuracy. Immediately after Trump’s assassination, it seemed, all the people who had voted for him– the vast majority of which owned guns, lots and lots of guns– kicked off the American Civil War 2.0. The first thing they did was to go after the magic negro in the White House.

Dean, the magic negro, all of Dean’s children, and nearly all of Dean’s favourite students were dead before the end of the week.

Was America great again? No, not really… but now it had a fighting chance.