In McSweeney’s, Dan Cluchey plumbs the depths of Poe’s law with an indistinguishable-from-satire article analyzing the “winners and losers of the recent nuclear holocaust.”
On the plus side, the thermonuclear exchange brought together the divided GOP, allowed CNN to engage in its signature brand of storytelling, and cemented “the public impression of Trump as a man of action.”
On the minus side, the fact that Hillary survived because she was at a meeting in Tanzania about women’s lives in the world’s fastest growing economies shows that she can’t “relate to the now-quintessential American experience of being instantaneously vaporized into ash by a 500 kiloton wall of unsparing white light that — unlike some people we know — actually deigns to visit blue collar communities in every state.”
Decorum: One of the lasting images of western civilization will surely be that of Democratic lawmakers shouting “what the h*ll are you doing?!” at their colleagues from across the aisle during the decisive vote that emboldened President Trump to make good on his nuclear promises. Though it may be considered old-fashioned by some, plenty of Americans still cringe at crude language, and this latest episode is another sad reflection of the coarsening of our public life. The well of the House of Representatives is no place for curse words, no matter how frustrated you are by a vote that went the other way — but try telling that to the handful of irate Dems who, seemingly unaware that C-SPAN was there to capture every moment, hurled expletive after expletive at pragmatic adults-in-the-room Darrell Issa (R-CA), Justin Amash (R-MI), and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as they cast the votes that clinched a much-needed victory for Speaker Ryan. Here’s hoping that crass behavior on both sides soon gets eradicated along with all carbon-based life forms.All of those people who died: It can be easy to forget given how exciting the political implications are, but one underreported result of the nuclear holocaust is that hundreds of millions of human beings were killed, the unique symphonies of their lives silenced forever, never again to know the sweet breath of existence.
WINNERS AND LOSERS OF THE RECENT NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST [Dan Cluchey/McSweeney’s]
(Image: Tao Wu, CC-BY)
(via Making Light)