Forget the Brothers Grimm. Tortured Texts™ presents...

...the tale of the despicable despots

Once upon a time, there was a country known as the land of the free and the home of the brave. It had earned this title because some very wise and courageous men, residents of several small neighboring realms, fought valiantly to free it from the tyrannical rule of a faraway king. This rag-tag band of citizen-soldiers daringly defeated the kings armies and set about creating a new form of government, a system that would join the realms into a larger domain, and would protect the liberty they so deeply valued. They believed that the God who created them endowed them with many rights, and that whatever structure of political authority they established should first and foremost be charged with protecting those rights as a knight would protect a princess from a fire-breathing dragon.

So these resolute and rational men created a relatively short document they called The Constitution to define the bounds within which their new leaders would work, because they would no longer be ruled but served and protected. To ensure many of their rights were clearly defined and protected from the new officeholders, they shrewdly laid out ten additional stipulations to The Constitution that they deemed their Bill of Rights. These clauses would ensure that the people’s liberties would not be infringed by the new government, and that the government’s power would remain quite limited, while the people retained the purview of self-governance both individually and within each of the smaller realms being joined into this larger union.

Their first head official, a gentleman named George Washington, had been a general, heroic in the battles that won the land. Though a prudent leader, he had been in office only a very short time before petitioning their parliament, called Congress, to violate the Constitution. This served as the beginning of a long line of contraventions to the documents that those sage souls signed to secure their self-sovereignty.

Since then, those inaugurating instruments have been worn thin through abuse, almost to the likeness of toilet tissue, and treated almost as dismally. You see, over time, with each successive generation, the servant-leaders elected to Congress have grown progressively transgressive; that is to say, they grew to detest those venerable pieces of parchment as well as the forebears who penned them and the virtues they espoused. Instead, these despicable despots inject themselves into aspects of life where they do not belong. These once noble knights are no longer. They have run headlong down a path from which their predecessors departed. Treacherous taxes, malicious mandates, deleterious diktats, and abominable authoritarianism are the order of the day.

Now these delegates legislate using titles for their laws that are oxymoronic. They believed that if the names were appealing, the people would accept them without question. First came the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Though touted as a bill to make healthcare affordable to all and to provide insurance for those who did not have, it was cruel and overbearing in nature. Contrary to its name, the ACA caused the cost of insurance to rise for the masses, increasing as well the deductibles to which they would be subject. These same commoners, through the taxes they paid, would subsidize insurance for others who could not afford such luxury plans as they themselves possessed. Such would be unfair to those who did not have the means to pay, and inequity was forbidden in the kingdom. Why should some have and others not? Or so thought these representatives who clearly did not understand, nor did they care to understand, that the framers were ruggedly independent and expected the same of all who would follow. They knew that taking from one to give to another was theft, and though they would not tolerate such behavior from their government, the new leadership took no issue with looting.

Next came the American Rescue Plan Act. Though purported to serve the purpose of propelling America out of the poverty caused by government reaction to an invisible foe, it appears the true foil this was intended to fight is The Constitution. Unlike the founders whose forms boasted of brevity, this bill sought to outdo works like War and Peace in its wordiness. At a full 243 pages, even the title section could act as a sleep aid for the most indefatigable insomniac princess who could sense a pea under her mattress. Lines at the DMV to renew a driver’s license would take less time to traverse than the horde of headings contained herein. This legal brief contains some overtly racist (yeah, the “r” word - it actually fits the definition here) policies, and mainly benefits government entities and corporations. Much like Robin Hood’s infamous nemesis, Prince John, these royals would steal from the poor to give to the rich. How else can one explain an appropriation of $135,000,000 for the National Endowment for the Arts? Could this recover the realm? Is the country suffering an oil paint famine? Is there a major strike of plant workers for making charcoal pencils? It is comical to consider the $200,000,000 allocated for the Institute of Museum and Library Services could help save The Constitution, unless perhaps people were by this “Institute” educated on its contents. If only fairy godmother would bring her wand to bear, because the spell has worn off, and the beautiful carriage is now merely a smashed pumpkin, and the political rats now scurry away.

Not content with the lack of results from the American Rescue Plan Act, the overlords took to writing the Inflation Reduction Act. Alice’s potion would be better suited to reducing inflation than this act. Rather than slaying the increases with Excalibur, this bill levies new taxes on certain corporations (expect these costs to be passed on to consumers), makes several provisions for renegotiation and coverage of particular (single source) medications, and provides subsidies and regulations for green energy solutions. Not to be surpassed by the American Rescue Plan Act, this bill boasts 274 pages, has a pirate’s booty of external references, and contains nothing that lives up to the title. If anything, the provisions of this bill stand to inflate prices for consumer goods and services. One must believe that the authors of this atrocity realized that when they dubbed it as such, and only did so to make it more palatable to the proles, the vast majority of whom will never see any text but the appellation. One would have to be smoking the caterpillars hookah to have faith in this fantasy.

Now these corrupt Congress-critters have created the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. The Senate has voted twice in favor of two flavors of this bill, and it now heads back once again to the House of Representatives. Perhaps the most pertinent piece of this putrid prescription is the repeal of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which affirmed the traditional definition of marriage, added this denotation to the US legal code, and left to the States how such unions would be treated. DOMA actually showed respect for marriage. The Respect for Marriage Act, like a poison apple meant for a beautiful princess, seeks to overturn the definition of marriage and to force each state to adopt a mythical merger as a moral model of matrimony. This is not respecting marriage - it is explicitly disrespecting an institution that the God of whom the founders stood in awe established almost immediately after creating the first man and woman. The Evil Queen herself could not foist upon her fiefdom a more despicable decree.

I would like to tell you that this fairytale has a happily ever after ending, but even the Brothers Grimm could not put a positive spin on this one. Unless men of valor, much like those who pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to one another some 250 years ago, once again rise up to battle the oligarchical ogres we now face, the realm will be relegated to retrenchment and repression. Dictatorial despots seek to devour the domain, and only a party of plucky paladins will topple the traitorous transgressors.

©2022 by Chad Uretsky