Rule by Frat Boys

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Rule by Fraternitaspuerate

Remember Joel Fleischman, Northern Exposure’s lead whose sense of entitlement clashed with his obligations to the taxpayers who funded his medical school? Our government at present seems to consist of an oligarchy of Joel Fleischmans, and we the people elected them.

In high school civics class we were told about the basic forms of governance: oligarchy, monarchy, democracy, republic, dictatorship, and so on, and some of the murderous variants such as the concept of the soviet, committee of public safety, and triumvirate.

In our time we have a new form of government, rule by fraernitaspuerate – rule by frat boy, by Joel Fleischman and his partners in perceived privilege.

When Britain stood alone against the Nazi menace, Churchill did not don knee pants and take to the golf course to yuck it up with King George in a baseball cap while England was being bombed. Crockett, Travis, and Bowie did not compromise their differences during 18 rounds on the Alamo’s golf course (officers only, except for Wednesdays and Thursdays). There is no report of a golf course on Masada, but perhaps the Chinese will have built one by next week, along with a luxury hotel near the western gate.

In the news we read of our military operations all over the world, operations of dubious legality that even Emperor Vespasian would find pointless, and on the same page we also read about our President and our Speaker of the House playing golf in the midst of economic and moral crises. Our Merovingian Congress squeaks harmlessly, left leaderless by the knee-pants abdication of John Boehner, R-Ohio, who sacrificed his ethics at the first tee.

Well into the 1970s the leadership of this country, locally and nationally, consisted of folks who suffered through the Depression and World War II, and who worked at real jobs. The question was not “What fraternity did you belong to?” but “What was your outfit?” Some of them had some college but few of them had four-year degrees.

Our leaders now seem to be superannuated frat boys with little sense of responsibility: John Kerry, John Edwards, Anthony Weiner, and now Congressman Boehner and his new-found golfing buddy. Heck, even Sarah Palin has not really explained why she abandoned the Alaskan voters. The lack of gravitas, the nonexistent sense of duty, and the inability to discern between right and wrong seem to be defining characteristics of our leadership and, thus, of the electorate who empowered them.

Perhaps we should asked future prospective candidates to electoral office to respond to the following prompts:

1. Tell us all about your social network issues.
2. Have you ever heard of the Constitution? Does Section 8 of Article 1 mean anything to you? How about the 4th Amendment?
3. Does your church have a history leading further back than, say, last week, and a leadership that consists of more than the pastor’s extended family? Codicil: is your copy of the Bible larger than Bill Clinton’s?
4. Have you misrepresented your military history?
5. Have you ever belonged to a fraternity – that is, have you paid people to humiliate you so they’d be your friends?
6. Have you ever had a job that required you to sweat? (Not going populist on ya here, folks, but all these 4.0-GPA-idea-men are wrecking us)
7. Do you solemnly vow never to use a screen-thingie during your speeches?
8. Do you solemnly vow never to wear a white tie with a dinner jacket?
9. Do you solemnly vow never to wear knee pants / pedal-pushers?
10. Do you solemnly vow never to wear lumberjack shirts while campaigning?
11. Do you play golf? Why? Explain yourself.
12. Do you wear those dime-store wraparound sunglasses that make you look like a dragonfly with glaucoma? Why?
13. Do you understand that if we elect you to office, the airplane, the house, the cars, the staff, the money – they’re not yours; they’re ours?
14. No more soft/pop 1960s rock at the conventions. Seriously. As a codicil, no Republicans trying to dance; there’s enough sorrow in the world already.
15. You ain’t the Queen. If you ever, ever, ever lapse into the first-person plural, you will be required to resign immediately and will lose your citizenship for cause.

Now, then, agree to these terms and one or two of us might consider you for public office; the rest of the electorate are too busy listening to Rush Limbaugh or Oprah Winfrey to vote.

-30-