Campaign For King- Platform 1

My first act as King will probably be to go on a bender that will last for several weeks. My second act will probably be to recover from that bender. Knowing me as I do, I expect that during the course of the bender I will enact several hellaciously foolish pieces of legislation that will seem to be either brilliant or hilarious at the time. Hopefully I won’t enact anything that causes irreparable harm except maybe to Yankee or Laker fans.
So, with that out of the way, we can focus on my first acts as King not fueled by alcohol, which, though accurate, is an unwieldy title, and so as king I’m choosing to call it ‘the first thing I’ll do in office’.

I will dissolve all national borders.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Some of you are thinking, “Oh great, we’ve elected one of those freakin’ One World hippie people” Some of you are thinking “Oh great, we’ve elected one of those freakin’ One World hippie people,” and yet you’re excited about it. An alarmingly high number of you are thinking “I can’t wait until Matlock starts,” a few are wondering if my blog would be funnier if they drank more, and a couple of you are thinking simply “huh?” (See, I really DO know what you’re thinking).

Gaining favor with the One World people is not my objective here, and really having their support is not all that wise a political move in any context, unless your primary objective is to have a number of weed sources and hang around with girls who don’t like bras. Not that there’s anything wrong with those goals, but the Village Idiot is shooting for something slightly higher here, as well as something smelling less like patchouli.

First of all, I’m trying to avoid embarrassment. Imagine this: one of my top advisors comes crashing into the room and announces that there’s a massive outbreak of scurvy in Hugeturdistann. Being embarrassed that I don’t know where that is, I will probably try to cover my ignorance by lashing out at my poor advisor for bursting into the room, and then I’ll ignore the scurvy crisis until Newsweek comes out and provides me with a map. A far better scenario would be this: one of my top advisors bursts in holding a globe, he points and says “there’s a huge scurvy epidemic here.” I smile and send several planes full of orange juice to the Hot Zone and the day is saved. My top advisor, who once gave the patrons of his club pencils and sketch books so that his dancers could appear nude, remains happy and loyal. The region formerly known as Hugeturdistann gets their much needed fix of OJ, and I don’t have to read Newsweek.
Win-win-win.

Aside from my own self-interest, I think that there could be a lot of benefit for mankind with this concept. On the smallest scale, parents who scold their finicky kids by telling them about all the starving kids in China can make the crisis seem a little more immediate, since all those little hungry Chinamen will be our countrymen. Secondly, If you’ve ever had a crappy passport picture haunt you from border to border, this ought to make your day. Thirdly, we’ll get all those holidays! Ever looked at a calendar and felt a little twinge of jealousy over the fact that you’re at work and those wacky New Zealanders are getting yet another banker’s holiday? Ever felt like taking Guy Fawkes Day? Well, here’s your chance, come St. Patrick’s day, everyone, literally, will be Irish and we’ll have more national holidays than you could have ever imagined. Finally, there seem to be a lot of wars fought over turf, from the Irish and the English to the Palestinians and the Israelis, this seems like it might do something to calm them down.

I can see where this will cause some problems, too. The biggest problem is that people will be scared by the idea of change, and the No Borders idea might scare them needlessly.
People like traditions, especially cultural traditions. Let me assuage your fears by stating that I intend to change very little in the everyday comings and goings of most people on the planet, (except that they should get a lot more days off and have far more money to spend).
Your village likes electing a chief because he’s the most fabulously endowed or knows the most synonyms for sparrow? That’s fine.
Your country has been run by the same royal family for eighteen generations? Keep ‘em.
National garb, national anthems, national birds, national quirks- none of that has to change. Form a soccer team called the American Eagles and have a blast playing the Canadian Maple Leafs. Start using those symbols and those songs to get people fired up for war and I’ll put you in time-out, but healthy sports rivalries will be encouraged and supported.

The Olympics will seemingly have to undergo some major changes. In fact, if you watch the Olympic coverage, most of the medalists do their training in the United States anyway. Swimmers, track athletes, figure skaters; all of ‘em live and train here anyway, so it’s not all that huge a change to have them represent an ethnicity instead of a country. In fact, this will make the Olympics slightly less irksome form me, as I’m really tired of hearing about figure skaters who live in Connecticut and who skate to represent Russia. (Now, if only we could convince the networks that we’d actually rather watch the games than the crappy human interest soap operas they produce, Olympic coverage would be perfect). Also, under my new system, as will be elucidated later, we’ll have lots of televised competitions (such as between religious leaders, political party leaders, etc). My guiding idea here is that competition is good, and I will foster and encourage the human sense of competitiveness in all areas except those that require actual warfare to settle the score. “Sudden death” is good in golf and football, bad in most other instances.