Suddenly Last Tuesday a Bright Light Show

usatoday.com

I am an old man and quite aware of my earthly sojourn heading for Trail’s End, and me with much left to accomplish such as resume regular exercise and write a great American novel and set a new pole vault record for men over 80, but meanwhile I spend so much time searching for my glasses, my keys, my billfold, my cellphone, I probably could’ve written two or three great novels but then I wonder, “Does America really need another great novel?” Probably A.I. is taking over the field of fiction and soon we’ll see novels generated by ChatGPT such as The Great Moby-Dick in which Jay Gatsby sets out to impress Daisy Buchanan by water-skiing past her mansion on Long Island and is swallowed by the whale, or Grapes of War and Peace in which Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, disillusioned with capitalism, joins Ma Joad’s family on the road and is separated from Natasha who leads the Russian army against Napoleon and marries the wealthy Pierre, Andrei having fallen sick in the harsh winter, but is nursed back to health by Rose of Sharon.

A.I. would enable readers to get multiple novels for the price of one, such as Wuthering Eyre of Gulliver’s Expectations or Beloved Lolita on the Brave New Road, merging the best elements of each novel into a superior amalgamated mélange and save readers an enormous amount of time during which they could take up a program of regular exercise.

But meanwhile we saw the use of artificial intelligence in last week’s three-hour-fifteen-minute televised Cabinet meeting in which cabinet secretaries Rubio, Bondi, Kennedy, Rollins, Collins, Gabbard, Bessent, Burgum, Vought, McMahon, Hegseth, Noem, et cetera, sat around a long table and showered the boss with lavish compliments of a sort previously paid only to Divine Beings and dictators. They agreed that he was the greatest president in the history of America, without compare, whose perfect wisdom had led our country from the degradation and despair of Bidenism to the peak of such greatness beyond the power of language to describe.

There has never been a Cabinet meeting like it, I daresay, and the entire three hours is on YouTube for all to see over and over. You can hear Bondi say that the boss was “overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority.” You can hear Witkoff say that it’s time for the Nobel people to get their act together and give the boss the Nobel Peace Prize, pronouncing it “noble” instead of the way it’s been pronounced in the past. Bessent said the boss’s tariffs would bring in $500 billion a year. Hegseth said America was safer than ever before. The Labor lady invited him to come and view his “big beautiful face” on the banner hanging on the front of her building.

The questions remaining, when the three hours concluded, were: Why would the United States need a Congress? What role does the judiciary fill? Both seem more like unnecessary decorations than useful assets. And why would the country need to elect a new boss in 2028? What purpose would it serve?

Of course the meeting drew scorn from the usual sources, the New York Times and the Washington Post and their embittered Leninist opinion columnists who are still obsessed with the Russia Russia Russia hoax and the fiction of the boss’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and his sale of memberships in Mar-a-Lago to wealthy people who wish to make his acquaintance and his steady stream of executive orders.

What remains to be accomplished? For one, the 2024 election should be made unanimous, and the Democrats who claim election to Congress should be sent to re-education camps. The American press is creating unnecessary discord in our country that serves no useful purpose, and if the Times and Post and 30 or 40 other cynical and disgruntled publications were to disappear tomorrow, who would notice? Not many of us.

Now that the Army has made Washington safe, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco will likely be next, making cities safer for the general population to freely express their admiration of the Leader.

Meanwhile, I am starting a new system of keeping my billfold, keys, glasses, and cellphone in the pockets of yesterday’s trousers, which I hang on the doorknob of my closet, and this system has worked well for almost a week. I saved three hours and fifteen minutes by doing that and those 195 minutes were the highlight of not only last week but also the year so far.

Garrison Keillor © 09.01.25