NOTES FROM THE OLIGARCHY

Well, it’s over. No more campaign ads. No more lies and false promises. At least, not for another two years or so. Put "democracy" on the shelf. We’re back to an oligarchy pretending to be a republic pretending to be a democracy. Let’s get down to the real work of telling people how happy they are, while we do what we want to do anyway.

Of course, if it’s profitable to bring war or the threat of violence back into the picture, we’ll drag out the "democracy" and "protect freedom" slogans again. Maybe we ought to bring Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf back into the picture, just in case. Doesn’t hurt to drum up a little patriotism. You never know when "weapons of mass destruction" might be uncovered again. After all, we sure sold a bunch of them.

There are still a lot of nagging nuisances around, but if we can get our friends in the media to ask all the wrong questions, we won’t have to worry about answers. They’ve done a pretty good job so far.

Taking the money out of elections has been completely and successfully sidetracked by concentrating on who broke the system’s established rules last election. Now it’s as dead as term limits and we all survive unscathed, with our pocketbooks intact.

Bill’s getting all the credit for a sound economy and the old "it’s the economy, stupid" slogan is back. No one’s questioning the fact that people are working twice as hard, the whole family’s employed at jobs paying less, or that everyone on the old plantation also had a job.

Lawyers are debating the true meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and it’s even rumored that Catholic lawyers are questioning the meaning of "mortal and venial sin."

Women’s rights groups are keeping their mouths shut and the 6-to-1 ratio of women-to-men in Washington hasn’t changed a bit since Dr. Strangelove and might even be increasing. We’ll find out more about this after we make everyone stay home a week for the 2000 census.

The media’s having a field day with the fact that a former wrestler became governor of Minnesota and Nancy Reagan wants to sponsor him in a B-cowboy movie. She says that the fact he was once mayor of some little city in Minnesota doesn’t carry any more weight than the fact that her husband was president of the Actor’s Union before he became governor of California.

Social Security is still a problem and maybe Clinton should never have brought it up, but we’ve got to do something significant before the administration starts to draw upon its trust fund and we have to raise taxes a lot just to redeem all the promissory notes we left behind when we stole the cash.

So far, ideas of raising extra money from the tobacco industry (smokers) or computer users are not doing so well. The "baby boomer" story is running a little flat even with the full support of our allies in the credit card company down the street --- AARP usually has credibility posing as "lobbyist" for the elderly.

Maybe, before it’s too late, Moynihan, Greenspan and others from the commission that created this slush fund in 1983 will have ideas like raising the age of retirement, raising the fee-limits on the wealthy, or some other get-us-off-the-hook scam.

John Glenn has proven that men can work well into their seventies. It’s more than he ever accomplished in Congress.

Newt and Neuman bit the dust, but we might still salvage something from the Contract with America if we can get John Kasich to cut his bangs.

Social engineering and, particularly, changing values and ethics are doing well. The "dumbing of America" continues and "nepotism" is no longer a dirty word. In fact, promoting family members is so firmly entrenched in both Hollywood and Washington that we may have the "Bush Brothers" running for President and Vice President in 2000. The public might even accept the return of a dynasty. Just think of it, another King George in America.