A Spectrum is Haunting America

Look. Politics isn’t easy.  It’s terribly difficult, enormously frustrating, full of compromise and defeat.  And even though it’s subtle and complex, suffused with gray areas and uncertainty, we still have to define it by its ability to conform to four sections of a lazily drawn grid.

We understand.  We are here to help.

1. Access to a college education should be determined by:

(a) How much money your parents have.

(b) How much money your parents don’t have.

(c) Your birth order following the sibling who will enter the priesthood.

(d) A brutal series of life-or-death lacrosse matches.

(e) College is for recidivist intellectuals who will all be put to the sword in the Great Purge.

2. In order to insure quality care, America’s health care policy should be based on:

(a) Which insurance company’s logo you have tattooed on your lower back.

(b) Your total number of current open wounds.

(c) Your ability to swallow excruciating pain and say “It’s nothing, just working out the kinks.”

(d) How valuable your organs might be to a sick person who has more money.

(e) Health care is a privilege, not a right, like pornography and deli meat slicer.

3. The best way to deal with rising unemployment is:

(a) Building smarter robots.

(b) Building stupider robots.

(c) Teaching people in Kyrgyzstan to code.

(d) Overcoming our arbitrary distaste for the flesh of the elderly.

(e) The reinstitution of slavery.

4. America’s crumbling infrastructure!  Whoo boy, am I right, folks?:

(a) Buddy you said a mouthful.

(b) Tell me about it.

(c) Infrastructure!

(d) It’s a complicated question to be sure, offsetting our need for fiscal responsibility with the necessity of maintaining a public works program that serves both the people and the demands of commerce, but it’s nothing that we can’t solve with the addition of a few hundred thousand more Chinese political prisoners with a high tolerance for tar.

(e) The infrastructure is a lie the Grays tell you to keep you from learning crypto-astronomy.

5. Foreign policy is an important factor in our global standing.  What are your thoughts on imperialism?

(a) Good work if you can get it.

(b) It’s my eighth-favorite kind of ism.

(c) Imperialism is the reason I got my foot stuck in that bucket of soap before church.

(d) Foreign countries should just voluntarily give us their money and resources and not force us to bomb them to get it all.

(e) I think whatever Bob Avakian gave me this cool tote bag to think.

6. Which is more important to a functioning democracy — federalism or state’s rights?

(a) Federalism, as long as you have a strong leader who has killed at least one gorilla in verified combat.

(b) State’s rights, provided that the state does not have a lot of (((you-know-whos))) in it.

(c) I prefer a balanced system where the federal government dictates policy and the states ignore it.

(d) All hail the Soviet and/or all decisions should be made by a Ouija board.

(e) It depends on what the computer I have programmed to brutally gerrymander my state comes up with.

7. Gay marriage should be legal only under the following circumstances:

(a) It is conducted in a ceremony presided over by God of a same-sex couple who has died and gone to Hell.

(b) All of the country’s other problems have been solved first.

(c) The President is herself gay, and a woman, and hot, and lets me watch.

(d) The couple has gotten bored with having hot sex with strangers and decided to spend the rest of their lives antiquing or whatever.

(e) The participants have their own reality show/competition based on dancing, fashion, or real estate.

8. I would support equal pay for women doing the same job as a man, provided that:

(a) The job is ‘getting pregnant’.

(b) The women are paid in a special crypto-currency known as “pretty pennies” and are only used for be shoppin’.

(c) The previous generation of laborers have already been beaten so badly they can no longer work.

(d) They are constantly having abortions throughout the day, whether they want them or not.

(e) They do the job in another room, where their bosomly carrying-on does not cause a man to become distracted by his uncontrollable erections.

9. Unless we act quickly to use alternative fuels and preserve the environment, we can look forward to a future of:

(a) Stealing water from that one country to the south, Mexilvania or the Bananos Islands or whatever.

(b) Spending as much as 22 hours a day in our climate-controlled mini-mansions instead of just 18.

(c) Jesus giving us some really shitty looks when he comes back and sees the mess.

(d) Losing our cleaning deposit when the Chinese rent the place out to new tenants.

(e) More commercials where an earnest-looking person of indeterminate ethnic origin cries tastefully.

10. In order to preserve our culture and our economy, we must build an immigration policy that values:

(a) The willingness and ability to bribe customs agents.

(b) People who know exactly how I want my lawn to look.

(c) Coming from countries that haven’t had any really bad problems since, oh, I dunno, let’s just pull the number ‘1945’ out of a hat and leave it there.

(d) Easily-pronounced first names.

(e) Being willing to work at least six jobs, one of which is as a troop, so that people know that you’re a ‘good’ immigrant and not one who wants to be treated with dignity or respect or any of that bullshit.

11. America’s future is in space!  That’s why I fully support:

(a) Letting Elon Musk do whatever he wants up to and including drinking the blood of toddlers.

(b) Getting incredibly high all the time.

(c) Watching the DVDs of Firefly and telling everyone who will listen that it was canceled before its time and, come on, the theme song isn’t that stupid if you understand the context.

(d) Sex orgies.  Wait, what was the question?

(e) Blasting certain people into the Sun, you know the ones I mean, and not because of their skin color, but because of their saggy pants

12. A strong social safety net should begin with:

(a) Being extremely wealthy so that you don’t ever need a strong social safety net.

(b) Food stamps, but you can only cash them for raw ingredients at farms, ranches, or dairies.

(c) Full reparations for Oompa-Loompas, contingent on Wonkaville being granted statehood.

(d) Preferential hiring at state jobs for people who have felony drug convictions for horse tranquilizer crimes.

(e) An actual net with “SAFETY FIRST” written on it.  That couldn’t be too expensive, right?

13. My role model for good governance would be:

(a) Zachary Taylor.

(b) Pol Pot, but with “fiscal discipline” instead of “genocide”.

(c) George Clinton (the former vice-president).

(d) George Clinton (the funk musician).

(e) Lenin/Stalin/Khrushchev/Brezhnev/Andropov/Chernenko/Gorbachev/Millie Perkins (tie).

14. If there is a role for religion in the sphere of politics, it consists of:

(a) Dowsing.

(b) A huge prayer-breakfast competition to see once and for all what religion is “right”  (makes the best breakfast foods).

(c) Exorcising demons from the Office of Management and Budget.

(d) Tedious flying spaghetti monster references.

(e) Invoking sharia law to terrify knuckleheads in Nebraska who have never met a Muslim in their entire lives.

15. I guess, in the end, I would describe myself as a plain-speaking, hard-working, good old American…:

(a) Full-Nuclear Posadaist.

(b) Liberal Centrist Who Mistakenly Self-Identifies as “Leftist”.

(c) Neo-Maxi-Zoom-Nazi.

(d) Socially Aberrant, Fiscally Psychotic.

(e) Whatever we have now but with more women and gay people.