So, as you can see there are pictures of two women at the top of this
blog. They are both American women in their late sixties. One of them
will be all too familiar. I am pretty certain the second woman will
be a complete unknown to the readers who make their way to these
words of mine. Because of the old death and taxes thing, it is
doubtful if either of these ladies will still be with us in twenty
years time. In twenty years time they will have departed the stage for the
final time leaving only memories of their lives and achievements.
And
when they are both dead and gone, one of these women will have changed
the world utterly and made a huge contribution to the whole of
mankind. I am pretty sure you will know well enough where I am headed
here. Well, I always was a bit obvious. And yes, you're absolutely
right. It won't be the woman we have all heard of who will be
remembered for doing something world changingly great. It will be the
other one. The one none of us have ever heard of.
So
where are we at. In the blue corner – literally – we have Hillary
Rodham Clinton who is fighting like a spitting, cornered cat to get
the nod to be the most powerful woman in the world. Or man for that
matter. Human being number one. And of course it is hard to argue
that particular fact. If she is indeed granted the keys to the Oval Office, she
will also be granted the chance to let all those American nukes fly
and thereby fulfill Robert Oppenheimer's prophetic words.
'Now
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.'
But if Hilary is to be the one to bring forth Armageddon, she won't
really be able to claim all that much of the credit. Fair enough she will be
the one to press the button, but the only reason there is a button in
the first place has nothing to do with her. The fact the American
President gets the chance to end civilisation as we know it is
entirely down to the likes of Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer
and their outsized brains.
Of
course Hillary isn't basing her campaign on claiming the right to
turn the planet into an irradiated wilderness. Obviously. It wouldn't
be much of a vote winner. Instead she is doing her damndest to focus
American minds on the dreaded Donald getting a shot at using his
fingers to do something rather more terminal than groping pussies. I
guess it is hard to disagree with her on that particular point.
But
Hillary is focusing on the positive stuff and all the big changes she
will make to the lives of 300,000,000 Americans. This is a familiar
story. It is told be every candidate who dreams of becoming the most
powerful human being on the planet. And when the prize is so huge, it
is hardly surprising the race gets a tad ferocious as the last two
standing splash hundreds of millions of dollars to slag each other
off.
In
2008 the prospect of the most powerful man in the world delivering
huge, life enhancing change seemed like it might be genuine. Barack
Obama looked like a man to change the world for the better. Well, he
tried his best but it only took a couple of months to see that the
most powerful man in the world wasn't actually so powerful at all. He
reckoned his huge win gave him the right to try out big stuff like
finally making sure poor Americans got the chance to see a doctor
when they got sick. It would have been nice if the Senate and the
Congress had agreed, but they didn't. Instead the Republicans chose to
put superglue under his feet and he remained stuck and hopeless for
eight long years.
Barack
never got the chance to use his so called power for anything good.
Instead all he was left with was the chance to be destructive. He was
never going to be allowed to use the the most powerful economy in the
world to treat poor people who had gotten sick, but he could have
invaded Iran any time he liked. Firing off Hellfire Missiles from his
drone fleet was on the table every single day. Bringing in new laws
to stop headbangers walking into Walmart to buy semi automatic
weapons was a complete pipe dream. I actually believe Barack would
have dearly loved to change the world for the better. To leave a
legacy. To genuinely earn a chance to get his mug up onto Mount
Rushmore. But in reality it was never going to happen. And it didn't
happen.
The
same fate awaits Hillary Clinton when she ends her life time quest to
reach the top of the ladder. She will have all the opportunities in
the world to do bad and virtually no opportunity whatsoever to do
good.
At
times I wonder why we get so carried away when election time comes
around. Those who are elected seldom manage to change anything. Well,
not for the good at least. In 1997 Tony Blair was the great white
hope as he bounced into Downing St like an over eager puppy dog. He was
granted over ten years to make things happen with a massive majority
behind him. Was that enough to leave a genuine legacy of making
things better? Nope. Instead he will be remembered for being party to
a historic mistake which left over a million Iraqis dead before their time.
Hillary
Rodham Clinton knows all this of course. She has been round the
block enough times to get real. There will be no point in wasting her
time trying to make nice. What would be the point? Instead she will
get her teeth into the nice juicy War on Terror. She is making it a
big selling point. Wanna a safe pair of hands to bomb those ISIS long
beards back into the Stone Age? Well, I'm your gal!
The
future isn't so hard to read. Barring unimaginable miracles, Hillary
will win and get the desk in the Oval Office. And she will spend a
minimum of four years firing off hellfire missiles around the world.
The Great War on Terror will drag on. Endless billions of tax payers
dollars will be wasted and in four years time a new cast of
characters will strut about the place and promise to be even tougher.
And
all the while the real change will happen elsewhere. Which brings me
to American lady number two. Loretta Mayer – the real change maker.
A few years ago Loretta joined another long running war. Unlike the Great War on Terror, this is a war that has raged for thousands of years. It
has been the most protracted and brutal war our planet has ever seen.
Casualties on both sides make even the Second World War seem like a
tea party.
Ladies
and gentlemen, I am talking about the real war of the ages. Man versus
rat.
As
wars go, this one is a bit like Vietnam - times about a million. In
Indochina it seemed like the Americans held all the high cards. They
had jets and B52's and aircraft carriers off the coast. They had
napalm and Agent Orange. They had the money and the finest weaponry
money could buy and when it came to their treasured 'Kill Ratio' they
won the thing hands down. The Americans lost just shy of 70,000 soldiers whilst
the Vietnamese lost millions. But in the end, the sheer sticking power
of the little guys won the day and the most powerful nation on the
planet was sent back home tae think again.
Our
war on the rats has always run on similar lines. We kill and kill and
kill and yet they never go away. We trap them and poison them and do
absolutely anything we can think of to get them, and yet they just
keep on coming. Worst of all, we have always known they will win in
the end no matter how hard we try. If Hillary succumbs to the
temptation to let all of her nukes fly, the era of man will probably
end as the radiation clouds roll across the earth. But our age old foe
will soon find a way to deal with it. Radiation? So what's the big
deal. We're rats. We can handle it. We can handle anything.
When
it comes to industrial killing, no animal comes close to human beings. We really,
really know how to kill and we get better at it with every year that
passes. In the end we will kill ourselves. We just can't help
ourselves. And when it comes to mega death, we have certainly killed
our share of rats over the ages. Trillions of them. But we have never
managed to kill enough. Because at the end of the day they are the
ones who hold the real high card. We have the nukes but they are
happy to play the long game because they will always outbreed us.
If
you put a mummy rat and a daddy rat into a perfect safe place where
there is plenty to eat and drink and no human beings to kill them, the
results are utterly jaw dropping. Mummy rat and daddy rat will live
for a about a year and during that time they will create a pretty
large extended family.
As
in 15,000.
As
in fifteen bloody thousand!
No wonder we can't kill them fast enough.
A female rat ovulates every three days and copulates every hour or
so. No wonder they evolve and adapt at such lightning speed. No
wonder they can shrug their shoulders at the prospect of an
irradiated world. They have always known one day they will
inherit the world. For the whole of history they have known all they
need to do is breed and wait.
And
all the while they nip at our heels like the Viet Cong once upon a
time nipped at the heels of the mighty US Marine Corps. They spread
diseases and steal our food. Every year 30% of the Indonesian rice
crop is eaten by rats. Once they have had their fill, we humans get the 75
million tonnes they have left for us. With no rats, the harvest would be well
over 100 million tonnes. In a hungry world, 30 million tonnes of rice
feeds and awful lot of mouths. If we were ever to find a way to win
our long war against the rats the prospect of hunger and famine would
be kicked a long way down the tracks.
And
here is where Loretta Mayer steps onto the stage as a genuine game
changing human being; as the kind of superhero to make Batman look
distinctly second rate.
Loretta joined the war on rats a decade ago and after thousands of years of failure, she has found a way to turn the
tide. Loretta's big thing is that she is a vegan who really likes
animals and hates the idea of killing them. She took a step back and
took a measured view of the great war. She took a look at the big
guns in the respective armouries of the two combatants. Our biggest
strength? We're smart. Their biggest strength? Their ability to
breed. And from that starting point it didn't take her so very long to find a
way to use our strength to finally find a way to win the war. She was
smart enough to discover the means to stop them breeding. She has
come up with a super sugary pink liquid that rats simply cannot
resist. Once they slurp it down they don't keel over and die and the
female rats are entirely unaffected. But the male rats lose their
sperm count and all of a sudden the whole game is changed completely.
If
a dish of Loretta's pink goo was added to the mummy rat, daddy rat
scenario, the outcome is an extended family of zero after a year
instead of a family of fifteen thousand. Finally it seems we are
about to finally win our long war. And why? Because an animal loving
vegan woke up to the fact that wholesale killing was never going to be the answer.
Over
the coming years, millions upon millions of human beings will owe
their lives to Loretta Mayer and the thousands of American fire
fighters who have invested their pension funds into her genius. She
is about to change the world for the better in a truly massive way.
She is about to become one of the very greatest human beings ever to
draw breath but we won't notice because we are all way too obsessed
with the Hillary/Donald show.
And
of course there is a moral to this particular tale. Politicians are
hugely over rated. If we want real change we need to look to the the
likes of Loretta Mayer and her firemen. The good stuff always comes
from the bottom. Only bad stuff tends to come from the top.
If there is one thing that freaks me out it's rats. I've never been the same since I read James Herbert's 'Rats' and then, to top it all off, that scene in Orwell's 1984. I shudder to even think of it. It's as well you didn't mention rats until well into this piece or I'd have been gone. 15,000 from two in one year! I just can't. Loretta Mayer is now my hero.
ReplyDeleteA hero indeed.
ReplyDelete