Don't Quate Me, but I'm Excited

northdakotamonitor.com

Call me a fool but I just sent a hundred bucks to a guy named Trygve Hammer running as a Democrat for Congress in North Dakota, which is delusional like supporting an attempt to climb Niagara Falls, but the name Trygve tells me he’s Norwegian and he’s an ex-Marine and wasn’t the cellphone delusional at one time? You saw them in the comics, called walkie-talkies, and detectives had them and now every child five and older owns one and knows how to use all the apps including the one that locates the child’s parents and reads their texts.

I thought all the Democrats in North Dakota moved to Canada for the socialized medicine. The border wall is two strands of barbed wire. Lift one, put your foot on the other, you’re Canadian, you don’t have to pledge allegiance anymore or hit the high note on “free,” you just collect the government stipend that comes in the mail on the 15th.

My question about North Dakota is, “When 9/10ths of the state is owned by something called Alignment Rectangular Regulatory Trust, the stock of which is 95% held by Chinese investors, will the state still have two U.S. Senators and a seat in Congress? Are citizens allowed to serve in public office if employed by a foreign country? Or does this come under the heading of “None of your business”?

One could ask the same about South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

China is a thriving economy and a powerhouse in manufacturing as we see in videos of Chinese workers in blue uniforms performing intricate repetitive procedures accurately to maintain a steady flow of precision electronics and it’s no wonder our goliaths want to build factories there. Our kids don’t want to do that work; they want to be songwriters or get movie development deals. Who can blame them? Every morning I perform the repetitive act of shaving and after five minutes I open up the laptop and go back to work on “NoDak,” Act 2, scene 3:

HER: Can’t ya see I love ya, ya big palooka? Get down and give me thirteen hundred pushups, the ones that make ya bellow like a buffalo or else I’m gonna plant my right foot where the sun don’t shine.

What I’m saying is, “When our Leader calls Democrats communists, he is giving them too much credit. Democrats couldn’t run a factory to make Tootsie Rolls.

The polling I’ve seen from North Dakota tells me that seven out of eight wouldn’t vote for a Democrat if she were appareled in golden light and could levitate. Dakotans think of Democrats as people who saw The Nutcracker too many times as children and who get their political views from Norman Rockwell paintings. People who can’t drive a car without the government GPS telling them when to turn and which way.

But has anyone been to Bismarck lately? The pictures of the Capitol look photoshopped to me. Does the state actually exist?

Back to my screenplay: so he does the 1,300 pushups and bellows and he says:

HIM: America is the land of the impossible made easy. Bill Gates founded Microsoft on a smile and a shoeshine. Steve Jobs walked under an apple tree and it just struck him. North Dakota’s sending two Democrats to the Senate, you and me, thanks to the votes of 14 million workers in Wuhan. And along with other Democrats from Chinese subsidiary states, we’re gonna end the bombing of Iran, kick Israel out of Lebanon, pass Medicare for all, pay what we owe Native Americans, provide free child care, and create clean energy.

As automated implements five miles long roll across flat fields planting, irrigating, cultivating, harvesting corn and soybeans, operated by satellites, and immigrant slave labor manages herds of millions of cattle, hogs, turkeys, and factory chickens on steroids pop eggs onto conveyors at a rate of eight per minute, America’s rural Republicans will retire to resorts and their children will join the leftist churn of urban culture and take up lives in the arts, and someone will write a book about godless Communism taking over America by means of capitalism, but because we’re in a post-literate age, nobody will be aware of it.

There hasn’t been a Democratic Senator from North Dakota since I was in high school. If there’s another one, I want to go to the victory party. I won’t drink but I’ll stand near people who do.

Garrison Keillor © 08.03.26