Fiction-Short Story-The Absurd Election

"The Absurd Election"


Richard Jefferson Craig was something of a young visionary to those in America who still agreed with his policies, and that is why the nearly one million official remaining members of the Democratic Party elected him to be their nominee for President of the United States in 2024. Those few Democrats who were not washed out with the cities or dead from starvation during the intense global and American poverty of the last decade once again fought to remain relevant in Washington’s political scope. They are the “old money” of our generation. Their money was in technical companies and what were called in the internet age “dot-com’s” and they made their money at a time when the common man could make money through ideas. Now, corporations that own corporations that own corporations make our ideas, and everyone is employed by at least one of those corporations. Those same corporations create the entertainment that the people choose to spend their money on, and everyone is happy. So even though there seems to be no true desire from the American people for a party system, the Democratic Party persists in its tireless quest to implement one, and even provokes others into making old Republican arguments, and setting old fires.

So when Richard Craig, a lanky and disheveled young white man from southern Illinois who was known to be a rather introverted political enthusiast, began to speak at Democratic party meetings all over the United States, many in the party saw his make-up and vision as a way to show the people in Washington that they had a candidate who could ‘cross over’ to get votes, all the while curing the blindness of the people. He was a tall man, and party members took note of the way his elbows reached his waist when he shook a person’s hand in the way that it did for all classic politicians. They tried to convince the public that this was a sign that one could trust a President. During that point, the public was not at all concerned with the election because elections are rarely relevant earlier than June of an election year, so the Democratic Party’s first mistake was planning their attack far too early.

For all of the people still remaining in the United States the idea that the people are a lone party within themselves, and that the corporations are here to fully serve that People’s Party and its many “Peoplists” as they are called, is dominant throughout. Peoplists control an extensive majority of our current government, and in 2024 there was no real question amongst the people that a third consecutive Peoplist president would be elected. The 2024 election went as elections involving Peoplist candidates always have, it was quite fast. So fast that the Teleview coverage on most nights of the week given to the election could be missed between a disclaimer about the dangers of happiness drugs and an advertisement for new eyes. It was the way people seemed to like their elections. There was the usual one debate the night before the election, where all of the contending politicians, their running mates, possible cabinet members and some supporters filled a room, and raised topics and argued points, but nothing noteworthy came of it. Many on Teleview programs sought to have the debate abolished entirely, but every year, the lone vote of the Democratic Party representative in Congress (their party is smaller in population than any one of the remaining thirty-five states, so it simply gets one representative) is what continues to keep the abolition of the mandatory presidential debate from unanimously passing.

Richard Craig’s campaign was poorly funded, even though many of his supporters were and are quite wealthy. Most were ‘in hiding’ as ex-Republican Peoplists have tagged those Democrats who did vote for him. What Craig did have was a way of connecting to what the elders in each community wanted. He was the first presidential candidate in some time to openly admit that he disagreed with the idea that pleasuring the people through a life of extreme convenience should be the basic principle of our government. He appeared on Teleview, our national information database, and broadcasted the first serious address to the American people in a decade. A great deal of the campaign budget was spent on that speech, and all who were near a Teleview screen on that evening in late October heard the dictation, the diatribe, condemning what we had become. Bold as he was, being on Teleview and explaining the social deterioration stemming from the things usually shown on Teleview, people all around the country, on Teleview programs and within families, openly agreed with Craig, although they would not directly renounce the Peoplist party.

Craig spoke directly to those who remember the early portion of the century, and some of those people’s old enthusiasm for the Democratic Party returned. Buttons were worn and it was fashionable for women in their twenties who saw supporting the Democratic party as something of a retro-fashion symbol of the century’s first decade, to be seen for the entire election week wearing ‘We Beg For Craig’ buttons on their vintage ‘No More War in 2004’ t-shirts. Peoplist leaders saw the backing of Craig to be a fad, internally understanding that fads were a product of the Peoplist lifestyle; one in which there is such a lack of true culture that popular culture dominates, and popular culture develops subcultures. In a Peoplist America, our Peoplist America, these subcultures can skate through cities in two days like a tornado of information and action, touching and involving every person so that they catch on and follow, and the Democratic Party’s second mistake was not continuing with the fads and possibly endless subcultures.

With those understandings of the people deep in the thoughts of the Peoplist leaders, the American people were told on the Teleview system the Sunday before the election that the person running against Craig (who was the only candidate from any party who still cared to run after the rigorous first four days of election week) would be popular Teleview personality and avid Peoplist Cynthia Travis, whose various “Face Talk” programs were the popular choice amongst all of the people who patronize Teleview. The announcement of her three-day candidacy came with a Sunday-night special Teleview presentation that involved fourteen musical performances by various popular artists including nine songs written originally for the election soundtrack (which is generally a musical celebration of the Peoplist nominee’s candidacy), an eighty-minute light show with voice overlays from eight of only the most popular Teleview personalities in which they recited a poem that told of the lights representing all of Cynthia Travis’ plans for ‘progressive happiness’ and that ended in them all exclaiming that they would be voting for her. The show concluded at midnight in what is left of the Eastern Time zone with a mock-execution of four Democrats by firing squad. The actors who played the Democrats wore the disheveled look of Democrats, with wigs to mock their mops of bushy hair, and clothes three sizes too large for their skinny frames. Only Democrats seemed to be outraged by the parody, and after a day, the outrage, like all other outrages, was forgotten.

What cooled the swirl of American emotions during election week was the debate, but the topics and structure that the Democrats called for were insignificant because it was the first time that most of the American people had seen an image Cynthia Travis below her neck, and all Teleview viewers kept an all-night replay of her moving through the crowded debate room with her exposed legs, her breasts visible in the cut of her specially-made Presidential Frock, as she called it. It was dark green, and invisible wires held the eighteen-inch slits at each side in place, and a longer slit shot down the middle of her body, splitting her breasts that quivered on any movement, and pointed like an arrow between her legs. She was an olive-skinned brunette woman whose smile always seemed to be making the last sound in the word ‘sex’ and that was all anyone who viewed the Teleview that night in America could think of. Men from both parties saw her and spoke to her and could no longer remember who they were or what they stood for or anything that did not have to do with Cynthia Travis and the true happiness that she brought everyone. Richard Craig moved about the crowd, throwing his hair back from his face, screaming for his constituents to focus on the arguments they’d prepared, but Cynthia Travis in one night became twice the celebrity she had ever been, and that meant that when the polls opened the next morning, Cynthia Travis would be the sexiest and most powerful woman in the country.

Richard Craig flew back to Illinois on election morning to spend twenty minutes in his bedroom alone, finally allowing himself to think about nothing but sex, and Cynthia Travis, and things that hadn’t made him feel good since he was a teenager. He examined the pictures he’d pasted to the walls of John Kennedy and Bill Clinton as he dressed and he wept, and thought deeply for five minutes about what he’d tell the American people that night and went to the airport to board a flight. He went to Madison, Wisconsin to speak in a building that is called a school (it is from the days before children were educated by Teleview) and was renovated by Craig and the Democratic Party to generate the idea that these places called schools should be brought back to educate the people and most importantly the people’s children. Members of the Peoplist party who were in the audience to hear Craig speak held signs that voiced their written disapproval of the idea of schooling, and many in the crowd who were Democrats even thought that putting a Peoplist nation back into school would be fully opposite of pleasuring the people and would require too many converts. There were jeers and screams from the crowd as Craig explained to everyone about to cast their vote that the American people had make some terrible mistakes in the fifteen years prior, and that educating the people, employing teachers, building government and generating prosperity, not happiness is the way to properly run a country. Men and women ground their teeth and made sexual gyrations every time he mentioned Cynthia Travis. While he was giving his plans for a new economic structure that would help the country to gain some monetary surplus as the country educated itself, a man called out to ask a question and when he acknowledged the man he was asked if he’d “drop the Democrats if he could get a piece of Miss Travis?” and the man grabbed at his genitals in such a lewd way that it caused raucous laughter in the school’s auditorium. Craig stood at the podium and breathed into the microphone for the people to calm their voices, and he said much louder,
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am running for President of your country because I respect you, now please respect me just the same…
I am speaking to you as many candidates do not-without the help of just my face on Teleview or anything fancy to catch your eyes. You are slaves to happiness, and I am here, seeking dedication and willpower from the American people to disregard happiness temporarily and focus on making this nation great once again.”
His speech ended with no applause or ire, only silence from the crowd and he left the school feeling satisfied in reaching a few people before the election ended.

In the end, he did not make the people feel good, and that is why even less people than expected voted for Richard Craig. In fact, according to Teleview touch polls, he made the people feel worse than they had ever felt since before the first Peoplist president, the great actor Edward Santiago was elected in 2016. Cynthia Travis won a landslide victory, winning all thirty-five states, and pictures of her were posted in every office and under every child’s bunk. The people were happy with her, and unhappy with the sight of Richard Craig, who exiled himself to his home state and received an honorary doctorate in political theory from the fledgling University of Illinois, who had to reopen its main library and dust off the books for the presentation. The next year he wrote an unpublished book about the current irrelevance of the presidency of the United States, comparing it to the dwindled and evaporated power of the British Monarchy called “The Shrinking Role” and a year after that, no one could find him anywhere and it was assumed that he’d gone somewhere to find happiness.