The Amaz­ing Race

First, the power is seized by a leader (a war­lord, an aris­to­crat or just some lucky bar­bar­ian). A new dynasty is founded. Its leader (in other words, Heaven Son, 天子), who was called at the head of the coun­try, had a great respon­si­bil­ity: he had the Heav­enly Man­date （天命） and there­for the right to rule China, the Heav­enly Empire.

Empow­ered by Heaven, the found­ing father now emperor would begin his work: a pop­u­la­tion cen­sus, new taxes, new roads or mean of com­mu­ni­ca­tion… Most impor­tant, the coun­try would be peace­ful for a while: bar­bar­ians would stay out of the coun­try — blurred — bor­ders and the coun­try would be some­what united. Golden age.

But with the death of the founder and mostly with time, the state would invari­ably decay. A cou­ple of cen­turies later (yeah, this is China…), there wouldn’t be much left of the golden state: taxes would sky­rocket and stopped being col­lected in some rebel provinces, droughts would leave peo­ple starv­ing and angry, floods would wash dams away, lead­ers would be eaten away by cor­rup­tion. This had noth­ing to do with back luck or eco­nom­ics, but rather was a sign that the descen­dants of the hero-founder of the dynasty were los­ing the virtue and wis­dom that gave them to right to rule the empire. This right was by no mean per­pet­ual… and Heaven would change the Man­date （革命） and give it to a new leader, who would him­self start a new dynasty empow­ered with the Heav­enly Man­date. A period of civil war would fol­low… from which would emerge a leader, start­ing his own dynasty and a new cycle would start.

A few thou­sand miles away and a few cen­turies later, Heaven (named Florida elec­tion recount in this part of the world) gave its man­date to a leader, Incu­ri­ous Georges. His plat­form what some­what unclear but included the “No Child Left Behind Act” (“Rarely is the ques­tion asked, is our chil­dren learn­ing?”, he won­dered), no nation build­ing (“I don’t think our troops should be used for what’s called nation build­ing” as said in 2000), mak­ing rich peo­ple richer (“This is an impres­sive crowd. The haves and the have-mores. Some peo­ple call you the elite. I call you my base”, he declared) and hav­ing fun (“I don’t give a god­damn, I’m the Pres­i­dent and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way. Stop throw­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion in my face, It’s just a god­damned piece of paper!”, said the decider-in-chief”),

Other than that, lucky Georgie was pretty quiet dur­ing his first months on the job until the event that would define his main man­date: 9/11. Sud­denly, there were a nation under attack, ene­mies to fight: “Our ene­mies are inno­v­a­tive and resource­ful, and so are we. They never stop think­ing about new ways to harm our coun­try and our peo­ple, and nei­ther do we”, as Georgie said.

Remem­ber what I said (or rather, what Men­cius said) about the Heaven Man­date and the fore­warn­ing of its rescis­sion? Do the worse secu­rity fail­ure in the US his­tory, the worse nat­ural dis­as­ter (Kat­rina), the biggest annual deficit, the biggest drop in the his­tory of stock mar­ket, the biggest energy crises, the biggest cor­po­rate stick mar­ket fraud ring a bell? Wasn’t it the time to say George good­bye and to start a new dynasty presidency?

Alright, don’t apol­o­gize, there is no short­age of elected idiots in this world and after all, you always get a sec­ond third chance. We “mis­un­der­es­ti­mated” this one though.

So, here we are. Eight years and two wars, lim­ited civil lib­er­ties, domes­tic bank­ruptcy, divided coun­try… later, the USA are given the chance to elect some­one not obsess with invad­ing other coun­tries. The race is on, right now.

Please South­ern neigh­bors, vote responsibly.

Related posts:

1. The Hill And Its Inhab­i­tants (10÷10)
2. … And The Gov­ern­ment Fell
3. The Tem­ple Of Heaven (天坛)
4. I Won’t Boy­cott The Olympic Games
5. See China Right In Front Of You