THE FRONT DOOR – It’s a dark and gloomy night, yet someone is knocking on my door. I open it and there stands a guy in a trench coat, collar turned up, Fedora pulled down low, dark glasses. “The dog waddles in the cumquat,” he whispers. Huh? “Ossie brings bacon from the lug nut.” I start to close the door. “Wait,” he whispers. “Is this 123 Toxic Pit Drive?” I shake my head. “That’s across the street, the Billy Bob Bin Laden house.” He frowns. “Sorry, my mistake, but now you know too much about Deep State. I’ll have to kill you.” He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a stapler. “Oops, wrong pocket.”
I slam the door and return to the den to resume my reading. “White House blames Deep State for leaks.” That’s interesting. “Congress is helpless before Deep State.” Odd, that’s the term that guy at the door was using. Later I turn on Fox News. “Obama is still in control, because of Deep State,” says a panelist, both arms secured in a straitjacket.
As your intrepid reporter, it is my duty to find out just who, or what, this new term means. I go to the Democratic National Committee Building, formerly the Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Underpass. “Deep State is everywhere, but you can’t see it, and that’s all I can tell you. Say, do you think this conversation is being recorded?” That was not much help, so I go to the Republican National Committee Bunker. “Halt!” shouts a guard from his watchtower. “What’s the password?” I think for a moment: “Locker room talk,” I reply. He lets down the drawbridge and I enter the offices of He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken, but he looks a lot like Stephen Bannon. He checks to see if I’m wired, especially my teeth. “What is deep state?” I ask. “You didn’t hear it from me, but Deep State – incidentally, slime ball journalist and son of a coyote, you didn’t capitalize the name – is all that stands between America and utter chaos that would give us a crazed leader who tells lies, changes his policies and says he didn’t, hires his relatives and insults our allies.”
“Wow, we couldn’t survive that,” I reply. At that point I am tossed out. Thus far I am getting nowhere, so my next stop is my political guru, Margin d’Error, who predicted that Hillary would win. “You really messed up on that one,” I say by phone as he looks through the glass. He replies, “I was right by almost 3 million votes. I forgot about the Electoral College. You wrote me about Deep State. It means a shadow government within a government, like they have in Pakistan where the military and the secret police actually run the country. Egypt and Iran have it, too.” Margin looks furtively around, and continues: “Here in America, there is no such thing, but that doesn’t keep the paranoid alt-rights and kooks from spreading it about, like our Ego-in-Chief. Donald Trump believes we have a Deep State and it’s the former Obama administration. Poor guy, in a world of tuxes, he’s a pair of brown shoes, but there still are those who want to spread false news and prevent people like me from telling the truth. Even here….” Before I can ask him another question, a guard slaps tape over Margin’s mouth, puts a bag over his head, and hustles him away.
Reading the reliable Breitbart News, I discover the real reason Barack Obama and his family stayed in Washington after his last term expired: His code name is Hacker Backer, and he and his people still control the federal government while posing as Wall Street billionaires. Maybe so, because I noticed, despite the changes in administrations and wholesale firings in the federal government, my mailman is the same person. Wonder if he is reading my Hustler looking for hidden codes? Later, watching TV, there is Kellyanne Conway explaining that Trump is being sabotaged by Deep State, holdovers from the Obama administration. She also claims that the President is above both the law and the Constitution. When the interviewer begs to differ, Conway notes she is simply citing indisputable “alternative facts.”
At 3:30 a.m. I receive a Tweet. “You have been digging into the President’s administration. Who are you really working for? I’ll set you straight, and it’s HUGE! Meet me at the next meeting of the West Wing, aka Paranoids Unanimous, and watch out for the black helicopters. # Tax Dodger.” I show up at the meeting and see a man wearing an orange wig and a spray-on tan. He leads me aside. “You can’t be too careful. Now, let me explain that what some shrinks call ‘extreme narcissism, secretiveness and delusions of mediocrity’ are simply the art of the deal, which I read. First, there really were five million illegal aliens voting in the election to give Hillary the popular vote. They were disguised as Hillary voters. My inauguration audience was a record 100 million, but Obama’s people doctored the aerial photographs. As for releasing my federal income tax returns, I will as soon as Deep State lets George Washington release his. And I have no conflict of interests in being both President and a world-wide business mogul. I’m interested in them all.”
I reply, “There are rumors that the Russians were behind your election, they have infiltrated your staff and have information to blackmail you.” Tax Dodger laughs. “That’s ridiculous, and you can ask the head of Russia. I call him Pootie.”
It’s late at night and I am back in my home, having nothing to show for my work. There’s a knock at the door. I open it. “Pootie says the mud flaps are made of tangerines.” I start to slam the door. “Wait. I have something for you.” He hands me a package. “What is it?” I ask. He replies: “George Washington’s tax returns.”
Ashby is hacked at ashby2@comcast.net
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