And God said, “This world I have created is good. It is very good. In fact, it is too good. We must balance the good with evil.”
Then God took a ball of elephant dung and created Republicans.
“You see, beloved ones, if the world is too good,” said God, “Then when I get full of wrath, there will be no one to smite. You don’t want me too full of wrath. I may pop like an overfilled balloon. So someone needs to get struck by lightning to let off some of the pressure that has built up through the hard work of being God.”
So God took up a ball of old chicken guts and created Democrats.
“Why do you always seem to let the evil ones get away with lying and deceit?” a prophet dared to ask. “They cheat and steal and become wealthy, and then use that wealth to cover over their crimes, yet you do not smite them with lightning bolts?”
God threw a bolt of lightning and incinerated the prophet.
“I did say in the Bible somewhere that God helps those who help themselves. I’m sure I remembered to put that in there somewhere. God doesn’t make mistakes. Or if He does, they are perfect mistakes.”
“So you authorize the wealthy, who became wealthy by exploiting others, to commit further acts of exploitation until they virtually control the government and say that any crime is not a crime because they are now in charge of making the laws and deciding the consequences?” asked another brave but stupid prophet.
God immediately sent a plague of locusts to eat the prophet’s flesh down to the bone.
“The Bible says that all governments are put in place by God. No government exists except with my approval. If I don’t like them, I will remove them. So if the government of the United States is to be run by my evil Republican creations, I merely have to create a lot of very stupid citizens who will vote to give everything to the rich and exploit everyone else, including those who basically voted against their own best interests.”
Another rather stupid prophet got up to ask a question of God. He raised one finger, opened his mouth, and was immediately turned into a pillar of salt.
“I have anticipated your question. I do have a plan for mankind. Remember the Greek myth of Sisyphus? That old Greek idiot who has to labor for eternity rolling a heavy rock up a hill, and just as he almost reaches the top, it rolls back down on top of him and he has to start over at the bottom of the hill? That is a metaphor for all human life and accomplishment. Income inequality becomes a heavier and heavier burden as you near the goal of getting rid of it. You have a Great Depression, then FDR comes along to fix things and help common people. Then Reagan takes over with “trickle-down economics” and rolls you all back to the bottom of the hill. It ends in Junior Bush’s Great Recession of ’08. Obama comes along to fix that. Then, in a sudden political reversal, the party of pure evil takes over again. Back to the bottom of the hill we go.”
And so, no further prophet got up to speak. It was not because prophets had gotten any smarter. No, it was because there were no prophets left.
Catch a Falling Star 
Politics in an Alien World
I am working on the end of my sci-fi comedy novel, Stardusters and Space Lizards. It is about an alien world that is dying from too much warfare and ignoring of pollution-created climate change. So today, after personally declaring war on the Trumpinator yesterday, I want to talk about politics. Not Earth politics. Alien politics. Any resemblance to real-world politics will be coincidental, or the result of truth being far stranger than fiction.
Let’s be thoughtful for a moment and analyze the way politics works on an alien planet. The political world always seems to devolve into two sides. Remember, we are talking made-up alien worlds here. So let’s give the two sides completely made up names. Let’s call them Dumbocrats and Ratpublicans. They are nothing like we have here on Earth. These are aliens, remember, nothing like us.
On one side you have the party that is totally self-centered and cares more about business and profits and what the individual can gain from those than it does about anything else, even insignificant things like other alien people’s lives. These are the conservative, me-party folks who try to maximize benefits for themselves and the relatively small circle of alien people they care about and think of as their own. We’ll call them Ratpublicans, again, totally randomly, for no particular reason.
Then, on the other side, you have the selfless ones, the ones who are more interested in making everybody happy, an exercise in futility that invariably leaves no one happy in the long run. I mean, if you give everything away to help others, eventually you are left with nothing. It is the reason liberal alien people often starve to death. It is also the reason that these selfless beings get so used to being poor and having nothing of their own. We’ll call them Dumbocrats, only because it is the name we have left over.
What always works best is when neither side gets everything they want. It is far better that the two sides grab the Enchilada of Happiness from opposite sides and pull with relatively equal force. That way it stays about in the middle and no one gets the whole enchilada. If the Ratpublicans get the whole thing, then the most powerful, ruthless, and evil among them will selfishly eat what they want and horde the rest, letting everyone else, even less-powerful Ratpublicans starve. If the Dumbocrats get the whole thing, they will give small bits to everyone, even the space rats and space pigeons, and visiting Space Goons from other planets, and no one will have as much as they want. Keeping the whole enchilada in the middle of the great political tug-of-war is the whole trick to making things stay balanced and under control.
If something throws the whole system out of balance, say an orange-headed alien in a gold-colored fright wig suddenly uses the magic of corrupt business practices to seize control of the Enchilada of Happiness, then the whole system starts to break down.
Now, you may have noticed already that instead of outer space aliens, I have used old movie clowns to illustrate this essay. I think it is entirely possible that the best people to listen to when it comes to the matter of politics and what to do about them are the clowns, the comedians, the mockers, and the fools. They have looked at the way things are with a keen eye to find what they can make fun of and make us laugh about. But because they are looking with a keen eye, often they are seeing the truth for what it is. Did you ever hear what Charlie Chaplin had to say?
Of course, we all know this whole discussion is about aliens on other planets. It doesn’t apply here. How could it? We are nothing like them. We’re smarter and better and have all the answers… if only we would take a moment to realize that we do.
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