The Cynic Express(ed) 3.04: Against the Children!

     Were I to run for a political office, I can assure you, friend citizens, that I would be the candidate that would serve as a benchmark for every other pretty preening Macaw, cocking their heads emphatically and issuing the sound bites that the media taught them. No, friends and donors, The Cynic does not fear taking a stand, and I stand against The Children.

     Before I go too far into my rant, I would like to reiterate that I like some kids. Unlike my colleagues up for re-election who like all tikes and toddlers, I cannot stand some spoiled little rats and would rather kiss a pregnant chameleon on the lips than show a sign of pseudo-affection to them. I prefer the children who better resemble myself at their ages-intelligent, precocious, quick-witted, and well tempered. It's these children I think of when I hit the Toys for Tots barrel at Christmas, loading it up with educational games and chess sets.

     It's not the regular kids I am against. I am against The Children. I do not know what sort of grain to which these Children belong, but I do know I fear them. Either they have a mighty powerful lobbying arm or they are mind-controlling pods in a basement near Washington.

     Our powerful and thoughtless legislators and executives in Washington serve them. Whenever some new piece of legislation or novel, spurious, and unconstitutional lawsuit is introduced, the leaders whom we have elected tell us whom they serve-The Children.

     Take, for instance, the two hundred and fifty million dollar tobacco settlement recently tendered to the cigarette companies by several states. The plantiffs carried the banner of The Children into the fraying justice system and triumphed. Now the children have two hundred and fifty million dollars over the course of twenty years, divided among more than a dozen states. They can't even build a decent publicly-funded sports facility for a beer company to come along and tag with a corporate graffito.

     Or, for another instance, every time some government official holds the paddles over the unmoving body of Social Security and yells, "Clear!" with some proposal or another to make Social Security solvent until sometime next month. He, she, or it wants to keep Social Security's legacy alive for The Children. Would someone pull this congressman aside and explain that more of our young adults today believe in the existence of UFOs than the legacy of Social Security. The best thing we could do for kids and young people like me is to dismantle the punitive tax, but that's not the best thing for The Children.

     On the whole medical savings accounts thing, Steve Forbes explains he that his idea for socializing medicine is for The Children.

     The Children are afraid of guns and gangs. George W. Bush told Texas A&M so. Even though he did not say it, others have blatantly banged trash cans to draw attention to The Children's fear of dying in cross-fire somewhere. We should limit firearms to make The Children sleep better at night in their secret havens.

     The ultimate display of the power of the International Network of the Children, with their silent black big wheels, is the United States' foreign policy in the 1990s. After all, nothing draws military action like a threat to The Children. Whether The Children are starving in Somalia or being ethnically cleansed in Kosovo, if they have a strong local Children's 310, they can count on the aid and the fresh blood of Americans, not much older than kids, in their soylent green fatigues.

     Were it not for the power of The Children, we could create sensible policy, and the rhetoric of government officials could tell us about the way our society should be raising kids to be productive members of society, not lowering the bars of society to make the world safe for kids and the eternally adolescent people, like many of our over-sexed pubic offals. We could raise kids to be thoughtful and responsible. Instead, we make the nation safe and secure for The Children by building a nice, authoritarian schoolmaster like Mr. Johnson, the Vice Principal of Carleton Elementary, in our government.

     Maybe I am just cynical. But, maybe, in blue Missouri night, I shall be secreted away by a platoon of fourth graders in fatigues.