62 - Red or Blue...

11.9.06

ONE behind a desk. The OTHER with a ledger.

ONE
Dignity?

OTHER
Yup.

ONE
Honor?

OTHER
Oh yeah.

ONE
Wisdom?

OTHER
Yup.

ONE
Goodness?

OTHER
You better believe it.

ONE
Ok. What else?

OTHER
Not much. Do you have any ideas?

ONE
What about a sense of history?

OTHER
Umm…mmhmm, yeah.

ONE
Really?

OTHER
Yup.

ONE
All of it?

OTHER
Yeah, yes. All of it.

ONE
What about our myths?

OTHER
Well, we haven’t sold those yet, but they’re mostly on lease or rented out.

ONE
No…

OTHER
Yes, its true. Lets see…Freedom and Equality went to McDonalds, Manifest Destiny went to the war effort and The West myth went to Disney, presumably for a happy cartoon of some kind. Oh and we loaned democracy to cable news.

ONE
Damn. What else do we have left?

OTHER
Well, our borders seem like a hot ticket item right now. We could probably sell that local and get a pretty penny. State borders too, I bet we could find a way to generate some revenue there. Oh, and we still have our monuments. We could sell those.

ONE
True. Maybe real estate development. Look into that.

OTHER
Done and done.

ONE
Well shoot. I can’t really think of anything else of value that we haven’t sold out.

OTHER
Well, there is one other thing we could start selling. It’s a renewable resource too.

ONE
I thought we already got rid of the trees.

OTHER
I was talking about people.

ONE
What people?

OTHER
Our people.

ONE
Really? Isn’t that illegal?

OTHER
No, well, it depends. Slavery is illegal, yes.

ONE
So we can’t sell people.

OTHER
But what if we redefined slave? You know, to fit the times. In light of national interests.

ONE
I don’t know if I could be okay with that.

OTHER
There are three hundred million of them. At five bucks a head…

ONE
Whoa. Hadn’t thought of that. Okay. Let’s find a buyer. But not at once, we could probably find a way to inflate the cost once we start running low.

OTHER
Good thinking.

ONE
That’s why I’m sitting behind the desk, you know.

OTHER
True. True.

ONE
Oh! We could sell the desk!

OTHER
Anything else?

ONE
What about the American Dream?