You’re Fired!

Ole is stranded on a desert island. Years later, a boat docks on the island. Excited to see another human being, Ole invites the rescuers to view the structures he’s made. During the tour, Ole says, “And here’s my house, and here’s my barn, and here’s my church.” The rescuers ask, “And what’s that other building?” “Oh, that’s the church I USED to go to,” says Ole.

Citizens, we are Ole. We are convinced we can cleanse the system by flushing its members out to sea. Donald Trump is the spokesman for these voters, because his most famous quotable words are “You’re fired!” We are determined to elect a candidate without the contamination of our diseased system.

In today’s “Pretty Good Joke,” Ole speaks for us and our ruthless rejection of the institution. Even when he is the institution himself he finds a way to reject it and sever himself from it. It is both an amusing and pathetic response to disappointment. We refuse to look within ourselves or to interrogate the system that gives rise to the corruption.

Instead we entrust ourselves to the least-principled class of Americans, the business sector, represented by Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina. Their only qualifications beyond management in the private sector are their failures to win public office in the past. They have the capacity to say, “You’re fired,” and “You’re lying” to their enemies, and this they offer as evidence they can govern the world’s largest democratic nation. Not much of a gambit for negotiations, domestic or foreign.

We are Ole. We are indignant that our leaders have failed us, and we know we have the power of the ballot and can move them out, just as Ole moved out of his incorrigible church. But who built this government, citizens? Did we not elect them with our own ballots and with our own voices cheer on these pretenders? Like Ole, are we not in a church of our own making?

Or maybe you elected the only wise and temperate politicians in the federal government, and the rest of us were duped. Maybe you are leaving us behind to struggle with the fractious church of our own making. Or maybe you will be grieving the representatives you elected next year in the year after that.

Citizens, we are Ole, and we need to realize it before it’s too late.

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