Heritage Day Festivus

Greetings, gentle readers.
In the words of the illustrious Trevor Noah, let's get right into it.

Politics

By and large, a lot of people tend to believe that university level degrees in philosophy are worthless pieces of paper that lend no credence to any kind of qualification, and give no indication as to employability.

• Number One - universities and colleges are not job-placement facilities.  If you don't understand the point of a liberal arts education, announce it loudly in public and someone will inform you.
• Number Two - philosophy grants people the luxury of a larger perspective.  What do you want from your government?
  No, not something like a 2.5% increase in GDP per annum.
  What does good government actually mean?  What values does a good government hold?  Should security be a greater consideration than privacy?  Is compassion a greater attribute of government than fiscal transparency?
• Number Three - philosophy transcends arbitrary political divisions.  It doesn't matter if you're a member of the Whigs or the Know-Nothing party, slavery is almost certainly a bad concept.  And yet, there are people today that would argue about that.  Republican Ben Carson seems to imply that slavers did human cargo a favour by transporting them to a place with new hope and new masters.

Process of Elimination

I don't want to dwell on the president of the United States, because it is psychologically unhealthy to give any sort of attention to narcissists, but I did want to have a bit of a yammer that ought to appeal to my age demographic.

Jack Klugman

If you can remember the television show "Quincy M.E." you're probably asking yourself  where your life went.  You should also remember the opening title sequence, in which Jack Klugman performs an autopsy in front of a class of medical students.  With each procedure, one or two students faint dead away out of shock or disgust.  Eventually, Quincy removes his latex gloves in an empty examination room, as all of the students lie collapsed unconscious.
My point is this:  let us create a thought experiment.  The 45th president of the United States currently enjoys a 30% approval rating amongst the polled American voting public.  Let us consider that segment of the American public to be the innocent and naïve medical students about to be exposed to some very raw and graphic scenes.
Considering that a lot of the current president's support comes from highly religious evangelical groups, this is of great interest to me.  People who whip themselves into a froth about bathrooms or what people do in the privacy of their own homes or any sort of transgressions against the code of conduct indicated by the biblical Book of Leviticus have seemingly identified with the 45th president to an overwhelming degree.  A man who is now on his third wife and proudly declares that he can go about doing anything to women like "grab them by the pussy" is now being lionized by the largest American body of self-righteous moralists.   When will they sheepishly admit that their hypocritical admonitions of others have finally come to rest on the lintels of their own henhouses?
I will now lay out a hypothetical timeline of events, each point resembling another medical examiner pathology procedure that might be considered shocking or traumatizing.  Instead of  autopsy slicing and sawing, I will create fictional American political events that have some speculative basis.  Create an imaginary supporter of the 45th president in your mind, and as you follow along the timeline, imagine when that construct will abandon the cause in disgust, much as Quincy's disciples succumbed to unconsciousness.
So... pick the spot when one of the 30% will jump the ship:

Executive Orders

• The president issues a direct edict decriminalizing polygamy, saying that it would be great for America to have bigger, more powerful family units.
• Roe v. Wade is overturned, and measures are drafted to ensure that expectant women will do nothing to endanger the foetus during gestation.  In unrelated news, medical insurance premiums for obstetrics triple in cost.
• A new presidential executive order increases powers of police units, including granting all police officers complete immunity from prosecution whilst in the process of performing their duties.
• After increasing American military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen, the president assigns Jared Kushner to personally assess the situation on the front lines and create policy recommendations for further Middle East intervention.
• The president issues an executive order that decriminalizes incest, saying that his presidency is one of love.  Voices of opposition are heard, and Tay-Sachs disease is mentioned, but the measure is implemented regardless.
• A bill in the House of Representatives regarding the price and availability of pharmaceutical products in the United States passes, to the astonishment of a large number of lobbyists on the Hill.  Bipartisan enthusiasm is highly publicized before the mid-term elections.
• A new executive order is released, mandating that all for-profit incarceration facilities must be kept at maximum capacity at all times.  State and federal judiciaries are instructed to add prison time for all offences.
• After Jared Kushner is hideously maimed by an IED in Madan, Syria, he is patched up in a veteran's hospital in Bethesda, MD and sent to a facility in Portland,OR to recover while his marriage to Ivanka Trump is annulled.
• The president announces plans to wed his own daughter, saying that he is the candidate (sic) that supports family values and that "Chinatown" is a great film because Jack Nicholson is tremendous.  The announcement is quickly followed by the announcement that Ivanka is already six months into her pregnancy.  The date of conception appears to be at a time when erectile dysfunction pharmaceutical remedies were made affordable, and when Jared Kushner was overseas on assignment.
• North Korea launches an ICBM toward Los Angeles.  While the space-based defence system is able to destroy the delivery cylinder before it could deploy its multiple, independently-targetable re-entry vehicular warheads, a North Korean submarine plants a 20 kiloton device in the waters near Miami and destroys most of South Florida.  The U.S. Navy cries that it will retaliate after it has finished spending its new trillion dollar budget increase on retrofitting every ship in the fleet in dry dock.
• Amidst a crisis involving an underfunded FEMA and the dying refugees from Florida, the president announces the birth of his new daughter/grand-daughter, whom he promises to be "Barron's new best friend."
• The United Nations decides that North Korea will surrender all of its weapons or face sharp military action.  Contemporaneously, the U.N. sets a worldwide schedule for the decommissioning of all coal-based power plants.  Citing American exceptionalism, the president declares open defiance of any international declarations and regulations.
• As the bulldozers and earth-movers finish a channel amputating the radioactive lower half of the Florida peninsula from the continental United States, the president announces that the nation is getting a huge circumcision, and that should make all Jews happy. "Shouldn't it make them happy, folks?  Shouldn't it?" he shouts at a bewildered crowd of refugees.
• Following the release of relevant statistics, the United Nations declares universal sanctions on the United States for violations of trade agreements, human rights, and national sovereignty.
• The president appears at a rally, clutching an infant.  Stroking it salaciously along the line of its diaper, he announces that this is the "greatest baby ever, the best" before licking it along the side of its head.

Now, consider all of the imaginary people standing at the beginning of the thought experiment.  At what point would they start to sit down?  How many are still standing at the end of the experiment?  I'm just curious where the threshold of nationalistic fervour that dictates the support of the Commander-in-Chief regardless of... well... anything, really... actually lies.  Would the POTUS have to physically throttle some of these voters to death personally before they begin to see some flaws in his decision-making skills?

Conclusion

I'm tired, and I've spent far too long writing this exhaustive piece of dreck.  I must go.  Until next time, from me it's good night England, and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS