Me: "a blog post by noel mckeehan about president Washington?"
Bing: "Searching for: noel mckeehan president washington blog post"
Bing: "Generating answers for you…"
Bing: "I’m sorry, I couldn’t find any blog post by Noel McKeehan about President Washington. However, I found a page on The Washington Post website that provides the latest news on presidential candidates, polls, primaries, and more 1. You might find it interesting to read."
Bing: "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
Bing: "Learn more"
Bing: "css.washingtonpost.com"
Bing: "gofundme.com"
Me: "Washington has already been President. He was our first. He served from January 20, 1789, to January 20, 1797. Please look again for that blog post."
Bing: "Searching for: noel mckeehan president washington blog post"
Bing: "Generating answers for you…"
Bing: "I apologize for the confusion. I couldn’t find any blog post by Noel McKeehan about President Washington. However, I found a page on The Washington Post website that provides the latest news on presidential candidates, polls, primaries, and more. You might find it interesting to read."
Bing: "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
I abandoned the Bing Ship at that point; but I moved forward with my mission for the evening.
If you want to read that post, here is the URL; I got it from Stupid Bing, the one without AI.
So, all of that sets the stage for this day's little story.
I had been watching Glenn Kirschner explain how the Supreme Court was poised to fuck the country in relation to donnie and his part in the insurrection and, ultimately, in his imminent dictatorship, and I wanted to return briefly to the salving glow of President Washington.
So I wrote this.
**************************************************************
I am in Seattle which is one of the least favorite places that I know of to be; Portland, Jefferson City, Paris, Venice, Spokane, Avignon, St. Marcair, Sienna, Rome and Lewiston Idaho being among the more favorite.
I live every day with the impending doom of the country in which I have lived, for which I have served and for whose leaders I have faithfully voted since I became 21 in 1964.
I now live in that same, but tragically altered country.
It's now called donnieland by the impending winners in the "can we keep our Republic" contest in which we are currently embroiled.
donnie is the wanna-be-mafioso donnie the dildo.
He wants to be president again so he can wreak mayhem upon the rest of us.
*****************************************************************
I just heard a familiar sound: mouse skittering; and there he is, Jacques; I haven't seen him in years; it's so good to see him; he is a little older, and a little grayer, but he's still the mouse that I met at Deux Magots all those years ago.
We look at each other.
He speaks.
"We need to go".
"Where?"
"You know where, and you know why; and you know how; just give me your hand".
His name is Jacques.
I have had by now so many encounters with Jacques in his various forms – mouse, dog and house sparrow – that I no longer doubt his existence nor do I any longer question his oblique methods of getting to his various points.
So, when he continued mute I reciprocated in kind.
Jacques finally broke the silence.
“There has been a change of plan. I need to take you to him.”
“How are you going to do that.”
“The way I got here.”
And before I could even think of a reply, let alone vocalize one, I was elsewhere. Jacques stood next to me in a huge room with a table in its center and people seated at the table.
A doorman said to Jacques “Pardon me sir, who is your guest?”
“Noel from the Twenty First Century.”
“Ah, yes – a troubled time.”
“Just so.”
“So, take your seats in the chairs set out for the observers.
The meeting is just starting.”
And we seated ourselves and a voice rang out un-assisted by electronic amplification.
“Who called this meeting?”
The speaker was hunched over his writing desk set off to the side, as were our observer chairs – unlike almost all of the other Leaders he eschewed a place at the huge narrow, but, it seemed, infinitely long, rectangular table that filled the meeting room (although there were a few others who chose his type of workspace) – and he had just dipped his quill into his pot of ink when word had arrived that a meeting had been called.
He was fairly short and dumpy and was bald at the major central part of his head, the baldness being compensated by flowing locks down below the crown of his pate; it was a genuinely eighteenth-century look.
Indeed.
“I think it was The President” a short, trim fellow in the uniform of eighteenth-century artillery general’s uniform replied.
(Actually, he said something such as “je pense il etait le president”, and that statement was uttered with a heavy Corsican accent. But this apparently was a post-life group, and language had become subliminally understandable to all of its members.)
As if in support of that assertion, a very tall, very dignified man in a blue revolutionary war American uniform entered the room.
He had apparently heard the question - and the answer - because he said, “It has been coming to us that that which we had expected to happen in only a few years and that which Thomas had always said was necessary for the refreshment of our society - that we tear up the document and start over – has finally after much longer than we had thought has begun to happen”.
“Therefore, as a member of this Council – "we" being an aggregate of equals – The council of The Leaders, I have asked for a plenary session to summon a representative from the Twenty First Century (a mild rumble of sound accompanied the mention of that century) to explain the problem so that we may rectify it.”
“Here him, Here him” was the rising cry as the members took their seats, or in a few cases, their writing desks and prepared to discuss what should be done.
“Since you all know my discomfort with extensive public speaking, I ask that you allow me to delegate leadership of the discussion” said The President.
Since the Council of Leaders was, as The President had previously said, a council of equals, anyone could call a session, and the protocol followed that he, or she who called the meeting, chaired the meeting, and led any discussion that the meeting generated.
But that protocol also allowed for unusual cases to accommodate members’ unique requirements.
It allowed the delegation of a meeting’s leadership in special cases.
This was one of those cases. The President was not a speaker; he was a leader.
And he accomplished the things he accomplished through his influence on others, not on his rhetoric.
So the protocol was invoked.
The protocol said that once such a delegation request had been made, it followed that there would be an automatic and proforma unanimous agreement by vocal acclamation.
“Hear him, hear him” said the chorus of voices that rose from the assembled Council.
“I would like to ask Winston to chair for me, in that case.”
“Hear him, hear him.”
An older gentleman with something of a stooped posture, wearing what appeared to be a British naval uniform from the Twentieth Century left a writing desk and took has position at the rostrum in the dead middle of the vast meeting room – it was enclosed by that gigantic rectangular table that squared the room. A small opening in that table at its apparent head was the access point that had allowed Sir Winston to take his place.
“I am honored, Mr. President; let’s be on with it then, shall we?” he said.
“I once had a similar duty assigned to me in The House of Commons and I was confronted then, as I am now, with the need to ask this question: Mr. President, with all due deference to your aversion for public speaking, we nonetheless need to have some indication of the case you perceive to be at hand.
Could you, therefore enlighten us?
You, of course, may be succinct.”
“Succinct is good” seemed to be a murmur from the assembly.
The President stood, rising from his place at the huge table.
Then he put his right hand flat on the table; his left hand he put to his chin in what looked – initially - to be that gesture that always seems to imply a pondering mood – Rodin used it with The Thinker - on the part of the person employing the gesture.
But the hand didn’t remain at rest in place on The President’s chin.
It moved up briefly covering a major part of his mouth.
And he seemed to push something in backwards into place; then he removed the hand.
"I relinquished command of the army that defeated the King once we had defeated him".
"I relinquished executive authority of our young republic after two terms in office".
"I believe both of those acts to be intrinsically additive to our Constitution; they are implicit to our way of life."
"Peaceful and unquestioned transfer of power based on the results of election by the people is the cornerstone of our existence."
"Without it we have no continuity, no existence".
"So, Noel, from the 21st Century, what is this donnie the dildo, also called donnie the moron, doing?"
"Tell me; give me the details".
"And how did our people ever come to this sad state such that they could allow this?'
"Tell me".
I looked at Jacques; he shrugged; I shrugged; and then we were back in Seattle.
Jacques found some crumbs to eat; I found a beaker of rye; we both sang "If I Were Free".
Fade to white.
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