Give a man a fish, shut him up for a day. Punch a man hard enough in the face, keep him from whining about his lack of fish for life.
—Plato
Every so often, I’ll hear this from someone who followed all my advice: “I have a problem.”
To which I say, “How could you? Didn’t you do everything I said?”
And he’ll say, “Yes, I followed all your advice. I am now the embodiment of all that man can achieve. Nations bow before me. Mountains shudder in my presence. Squirrels scamper away if I get too close. But I still have a problem.”
“And what’s that?”
“Other people.”
Yes, once you follow all my advice, you’ll start to encounter the same problem I’ve had since an early age: complete disgust at the living failures who are all the people around you. Sure, you’ve met your full potential as an American, but there are still these useless blobs of goo called your fellow men standing around in your way or just offending your sight.
So what do you do? As you’ve probably learned, each man can only punch his own inner hippie—he can only ever punch the outer hippie of another but can never really strike the true hippie essence that needs a beating. So do we just put up with everyone else? That’s not an option, because I hate them too much; it pains me that they are around me, and I have a busy schedule and can’t spend all day punching hippies and dealing with the hassles that come with that, such as the legal problems. (I keep explaining to the juries that they’re hippies. How hard is that to understand?) So what we must do is take measures to try to improve this country as a whole, or as I call it, hippie-punching society.
Punching society is an appealing concept to lots of people. We often hear that society is to blame for so many things—crime, illiteracy, fat kids—and if society had a face, I’m sure people would punch it all the time. But society has no face, and thus it always seems to escape the proper punishment it’s due. Well, just like we had to get creative to punch our inner hippies, we’ll also need to use special measures to give society the smackdown it deserves. And the way to punch society is to take on the status quo.
Everyone acts like they don’t like the status quo. You usually only hear the term used negatively. “We need to change the status quo in Washington!” But the reason things never change meaningfully is that most people actually cling to the status quo. When a natural disaster like a hurricane hits a city and knocks out the power, you never hear people say, “Well, that sure shook up the status quo.” Because people love the status quo; they like everything in society to be predictable and expected, and they like to believe that all the important things are being handled. They don’t even really care if things are handled well as long as someone else is taking care of them. And it’s that collective attitude that got us this giant, bloated government that only ever gets larger and fatter. The government is now like one of those eight-hundred-pound people who are confined to a bed. Yet everyone is convinced that if we just feed it more chicken wings, education will improve, everyone will have good health care, and we’ll each receive a free pony.
Scientists estimate that at our current rate of government spending, in fifty years the entire earth will be rendered uninhabitable by debt, causing humanity to abandon the earth and try to set up a colony on Mars. Then the earth will be left in the hands of the monkeys we left behind (as they have no debt), and they’ll probably blow up the Statue of Liberty.* So is that the future we want? One where, when people ask, “How’s it look outside?” your answer will always be, “Pretty red”? We can individually be as awesome as we want, but eventually we’ll have little room to do it as big, fatty government takes up all the space, surrounded by useless blobs all going, “Hey, government, help us with stuff!” Those people will most likely die out in the first Martian war when we fight the natives of Mars who have remained hidden all this time.
So we need to hippie-punch society. We need people to see the potential they have if they break their habits of government reliance and dependency. In the least, I need people taking less of my money for their big, stupid government that I hate. I like my money. It and I would do beautiful things together. But instead you’re taking it for the government and then spending it stupid. It breaks my heart.
So it’s pretty obvious that society needs us to shake up the status quo. We really need to grab the status quo, slap it around a bit, shove it into a metal garbage can, and then put the lid on the can and just keep banging the can with a stick until the status quo eventually emerges, disoriented and partially deaf. Now, how do we accomplish this? Anytime there’s talk about cutting government and making people more self-reliant, people get all scared. “Without government programs, won’t people starve and die?” You’ll try to explain to them that we didn’t always have all these entitlements bloating the government, and people did just fine. And then they’ll ask, “But didn’t some people starve and stuff back then?” And you’ll say, “No one anyone really liked.” But they never consider that a satisfying answer.
Still, here are some ways to challenge that status quo and give society the hippie-punching it needs to reform itself.
Everyone looks up to the president of the United States like he’s the leader of our country. I don’t get that. It’s my understanding that he is in fact just the guy in charge of the country’s government, that is, he’s the head of the least part of this nation, the part that just gets in everyone’s way while the rest of us do all the actual work and innovation. So he’s basically the head idiot.
Still, people look to this guy to set the tone for the country, so one way to really shake things up for people would be to finally elect a proper president. What would be a proper president? Well, to demonstrate, here is what the inaugural address of a good president would be:
I have heard your complaints, people. The economy is horrible. Health care is expensive. Schools are failing our children. Unemployment is up. Monkeys have escaped from the zoo. And I have thought long and hard on these problems and have one thing to say:
Shut.
Up.
Really. I am sick and tired of hearing about your non-problems like it’s my job to do anything about them. What are you? Invalids? Take care of your own little problems and leave me alone.
Do you even understand who I am? I’m the leader of the government. You know the government, right? A place full of bureaucrats and other vindictive, incompetent idiots. And you want me to use these people to fix what’s wrong in your lives? That’s like tasking a bunch of toddlers hyped up on sugar to fix your car, you boneheads. Tell me what you want destroyed, and I’ll point them at that, because that’s about all you can count on them to do: destroy things.
You want to know what’s wrong with this country? It’s your whining. Because when you whine about your tiny little problems, then the politicians think they need to do something about them, and when this collection of nitwits we call the government tries to help, they just make things worse while costing us like a trillion bucks. And eventually we turn that little stuff you whine about into actual problems.
Well, no more. If you come to me and whine about your problems, I will punch you in the face. And then I will shove you into a crate and mail it to some third-world country so you can find out what actual problems are like. And I won’t be doing this in my capacity as president; I will be doing it as a concerned citizen who hates how hippies are ruining everything and who is stronger than you and can shove you into a crate. So whatever you think is wrong, figure it out yourself. Can’t afford gas. Can’t find a job. You’re starving. These are all things I don’t care about, and I will hurt you for acting like I’m supposed to do something about them.
This is the last you will see of me for my term. I’m going to go to the White House basement and smoke a cigar while watching old war movies. If you come and bother me for anything other than that another country is invading us, then may God have mercy on your souls.
Now, that would be a proper American president, one who makes it clear we are not supposed to rely on him, so people will finally learn to solve their own problems. Of course, it will be hard to get someone like that in office, since the people who run for office tend to be meddlesome nitwits. They all have these big ideas to help the country but only make big, expensive messes, since the best way for a politician to help the country is to do nothing.
Anyway, I’ll take the job of president if offered. I mean, it pays like $400,000 a year and includes room and board, and I won’t actually do much but play video games all day while everyone else handles their own crap. That’s pretty decent. Maybe then I could find some time to work on my rocket boots project. You see, I want to make rocket boots like Iron Man. We have the technology to make rockets and to make boots, so it seems like someone should be able to put them together. Anyone know where I can rent some orangutans to test them on?
What’s the biggest problem facing our nation? Childhood obesity, you say? Well, I hate fat kids as much as the next person, but whining is still a much bigger problem than even that.
As I’ve already discussed at length, whining is one of the worst things ever, and an essential part of being a hippie. If we are to hippie-punch society and obliterate the status quo, we need to strike out against whining in this country. In an ideal world, being accused of being a whiner would be worse than being accused of being a pedophile or a racist. Everywhere a whiner would go, people would shun him. And the whiner would probably say, “Stop being so mean to me!” . . . except he’d say it in a high-pitched, annoying voice. Whiners are the worst.
So maybe instead of all these ads trying to keep people from smoking cigarettes and doing meth, we should have some ads focused on telling people about the horrors of whining. Something like: “This is Edgar. At an early age, he got into whining and never stopped. Now he’s overweight, unemployed, and hated by everyone. Don’t let whining ruin your life, too. Whining: It makes you worse than Hitler.”
And we need to train kids from a young age that whining is terrible. Like half of children’s programming should be on the dangers of whining. And if you’ve ever been around little children, it’s actually pretty odd that that isn’t already the standard.
Can we stamp out whining in our time? Maybe, if we work hard at it. But if we can’t, and whining still abounds, let’s not complain too much about it. Because irony.
Do you know how many people starved to death in the United States of America last year? None. It’s almost impossible to do here. You really have to go out of your way to make it happen, like by getting trapped down a well for a month with no one knowing that you’re there. There are food stamps and dollar menus and ramen noodles—if you want food, it’s out there and easily available.
But throughout history, not starving to death has been an essential motivator of mankind. Like we came up with farming to avoid dying from hunger. Farming is not natural for man; we normally hate plants and find it funny when they wither and die. But with the threat of starving to death to inspire us, we’ve developed advanced farming techniques, and now you can get avocados at basically any grocery store. Can you imagine life before guacamole? It was short and brutal.
But now with the incentive of not starving to death gone, we’ve all gotten lazy. Man used to have to stalk and hunt a deer for hours for his dinner, and now we can just lie back in a recliner and have pizza delivered. And if that takes more than thirty minutes, we demand it for free (even though that particular policy ended decades ago).
So a great way to hippie-punch society and really shake things up would be to bring back the threat of starving to death. And I don’t mean it needs to be common, just that the possibility needs to be out there somewhere. We as a society need to just clearly define a certain point past which we will cease to give an able-bodied person free food. If you’re obviously capable of work and for some reason aren’t, there will be a point where no matter how much you beg or cry, we’ll just stand back and let you starve. Again, it probably won’t happen often, but think of what it will do for society if in the back of everyone’s minds they know they can starve to death if they become lazy hippies. It will be just a little extra motivation inside everyone to push them forward to work and achieve and innovate. Nothing spurs creativity like the threat of dying horribly.
Have you seen the other countries out there? They’re all like dictatorships or quasi-dictatorships or European. It’s awful. And even when America falters, none of them come even close to rivaling us. Luxembourg isn’t going to police the world. Chile isn’t going to lead in technological innovation. Uganda isn’t going to make the next hit fast-food chain. People get worried about China because it’s so big, but all they do is make our cheap plastic trinkets. I mean, that country is still run by the Communist Party. Did they not get the memo on what a dead end communism is? Do they also listen to eight-tracks over there? Come on.
You might be saying, “That’s great. I like that America is so much better than all other countries. And I like laughing at the misfortunes of foreigners.” And this is true, but part of what puts our country into a slump is not having a rival to spur us on to be better. There used to be countries nearly as good as we were that we had to best. And there used to be other countries out there with a realistic claim to being able to destroy us. Thus we worked hard here to compete with the other powerful countries and made ourselves stronger so we could fight off the countries that wanted to annihilate us. Like look at all the nukes we have. Do you think we would have built that many without something out there motivating us? I mean, sure, mushroom clouds are cool, but after seeing a dozen or so of them, they kind of get predictable and boring. So we probably would have only made a few nukes if it weren’t for some other nation like the Soviet Union that we had to show up. If it weren’t for them, we’d have barely any nukes lying around, and people wouldn’t take us seriously.
I’m not saying we need a new enemy like the Nazis or the commies, but it would be nice to at least have a decent rival. It’s like we’re the NFL, and everyone else is a high school team; we don’t even need to train hard to win. I mean, what do we have to do to be better than Canada? Exist. That’s it.
So to benefit ourselves, we need to try to improve the other countries out there and get them to not suck so much; in other words, we need to hippie-punch other countries. Here are some ideas on how to do that:
Probably the closest thing to hippie-punching a country is bombing it. Now, we don’t bomb our own allies (even though that really might help encourage them to do better), but there are plenty of awful countries out there filled with tyrants, terrorists, and soccer teams that could only be improved by a good bombing. The mistake we often make in bombing other countries is that we then go in to help them rebuild after the devastation, but helping them out like that will only reinforce their hippielike ways. The idea here is to help these countries improve themselves, and part of that is letting them figure out how to rebuild their bombed-out countries on their own.
The objection I often hear to this is “Won’t that make us a hegemon?” But I don’t know what that word means, and it sounds made up. The other objection I get is “What if when they rebuild their country they hate us and still want to do evil to us?” Well that’s simple: Then we just bomb them again. We have lots of bombs; we can keep doing this over and over and over until the country finally figures out what it’s doing wrong and fixes it. “Oh, that is why we keep getting bombed; if we just get rid of our dictatorship and stop hoarding chemical weapons, we’ll be a much nicer country. Thanks for helping us figure that out, America!” If you don’t think that will work, just remember all the countries the United States went to war with that we’re now friends with: Britain. Germany. Japan. Half of Korea. Bombing just shows we care enough about a country’s future to intervene.
It’s well known that the United States is the world’s police force. Basically, our country is the cop mustache of the planet. But aren’t police supposed to be supported by tax money from the community they police? So where are the contributions from the rest of the world to support America’s policing? Sounds to me like a bunch of lazy hippies just mooching off us and the security we provide to the world. Well, no more. It’s time we institute a property tax for living on Earth, since that is the place we police. Every foreign country out there is more work for us—we have to keep an eye on them and make embassies and whatnot—so it’s time those countries foot the bill for that. Normally I’m against new taxes, but this one only affects foreigners, so it’s not as objectionable.
And what about the costs we incur when we have to go to bomb a country? That’s for their betterment, yet we’re always the one paying for everything. Thus we need a “we had to bomb you” fine. Man, I would not want to be a country that gets nuked by us; nukes are really expensive.
So competition will help other countries improve, but the only real competition we commonly have between all nations is the Olympics. And the events we compete in there are utter nonsense. Running, swimming, luging—who cares about all that? No one ever said, “That country has a couple of people who can throw a disc really far; I bet they’ll be the next superpower.”
Instead, we need to change the Olympics to be a contest of things that actually matter for a country. Like there should be an event where countries create businesses and technology. And maybe a paintball tournament to see who’s better at military maneuvers. Perhaps some sort of freedom competition where each government watches its citizens go about doing whatever they want to do, and the winner is whichever government can keep itself from interfering for the longest.
In this chapter, we learned:
• If it wasn’t obvious already, Frank hates people.
• Something about a quo’s status and shaking it.
• A good president would just insult everybody and do nothing (haven’t we already had that president?).
• Starving people need to stop whining.
• We should bomb and tax other countries and then see if they’ll play paintball with us.
In the next chapter . . . oh, I think we’re about done.
As a concerned citizen, is it your duty to hippie-punch society? Or is it simply something to do because everyone else annoys you so much?
Is it the responsibility of the government and the president to do anything other than crush countries that annoy us? If you think the government’s role is more expansive than that, how long have you been a communist?
Why do we even have other countries than the United States?
Q. You say the perfect president would just yell at us and then not be seen for the rest of his term, but isn’t it also the job of the president to inspire the nation?
A. I don’t know where people got that idea. If you want to be inspired, hire a motivational speaker. I’m available, by the way. I get very good reviews . . . except by people who can’t take my awesome intensity. Which are most. You know, a lot of people can’t be motivated because they are awful people, and that’s not really my fault. And I warned everybody that the first two rows might be exposed to open flames.
Q. Aren’t there other things we should teach our kids than not to whine?
A. You’ve obviously never had kids.
Q. We won’t actually let anyone starve to death, right?
A. The question is whether a perfectly capable individual will let himself starve to death. If some lazy punk wants to play chicken, I’ll play chicken.
Q. What if your idea to hippie-punch other countries just angers them?
A. Then they’ll yell at us, call us names, and make impotent vows to do something about us, that is, it will be a day that ends in y.
Q. Instead of antagonizing other countries, shouldn’t you try to learn what you can of their culture and values so you can enrich yourself?
A. How did you make it this far in this book?