The Quantum Nature of Linguine

Right now, in the city of Montreal, there's a guy who thinks there is some kind of loony who breaks into cars, drops off doggie bags of food, rearranges the contents of the car, steals nothing, and walks away. Let me explain.

To celebrate the end of my ASL class, the students went out for a meal at Pizzadelic and I gave Jessica a ride. It was too much food for me to eat, so I took some of it to go. Jessica said she would take the bus, so we said our good-byes and I walked over to my my car. I unlocked the door, sat in the driver's seat, placed my food on the passenger seat, and noticed a bag with shoes on the floor. "Ah! Jessica must've forgotten her bag!" I picked it up, locked the door, and ran down the street, but Jessica was long gone.

So I returned to the car, but I couldn't open the driver door. That's when I realized that this particular Toyota Matrix was not my car. The owner of this car must've left the driver door unlocked, which is why I was able to get into it in the first place. But now the door was locked, my food was stuck inside, and I had a bag of shoes in my hand. I was stymied.

I tried the other doors, but they were all locked. Fortunately, the trunk was open, so I slid the bag of shoes into the back seat. Then I stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do next. I could've climbed into the car to unlock the other doors and get to my food, but what if the guy showed up? He would never believe me. So I went to my actual car and started writing a note, but when I got back to his spot, his Matrix was gone.

I'm sure that guy is at home, staring at the ceiling, and wondering who broke into his car, left a container of linguine with a bruschetta on top of it, re-locked all the doors, and walked away.

It must be driving him bonkers.

Republican Speech 2016

Right off the bat, let me say that I am not an American: I am definitely Canadian. However, the results of the American Presidential race would definitely affect me, so I do have a vested interest in what happens, even though I get no say in the matter.

Being a witness to the degradation of the American political climate over the last 8 years, I have formed opinions on what has gone wrong. Now faced with the very real possibility that Mr. Trump may lead the Republican party, I think the GOP must face the fact that they created this monster that is now rampaging across their constituents.

The only way they could regain the faith of the people now would be to come completely clean and own their mistakes in a public way. They would need the high-profile Republicans to make and stand by a very public statement of what they did and how we got here, someone like John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or Chris Christie.

This representative would need to get in front of a camera, deliver the following speech, broadcast it far and wide, and live with the consequences.

Fortunately, I wrote them this speech and in the interests of preserving World Peace, I offer it to them free of charge (although I would love to be invited to the White House to tell stories as Canada's Storytelling Ambassador, just sayin').

*deep breath*
Do not vote for Donald Trump. He is a fate you do not deserve. Do not vote Republican in this election. This is a fate we deserve. We did this.

Roughly 8 years ago, we were faced with a reality of which we could not conceive. For our Republican ideas to work, we came at our policies from a top-down perspective. It was Republicans over Democrats, Good over Evil, Right over Wrong, Men over Women, Whites over everyone else, and with us at the top and all the voters at the bottom.

But when Barack Hussein Obama became President, our comfortable world turned upside down. The Bottom was now the Top. This was unprecedented and we had nothing in our playbook to handle it. Obama's left-wing plans and liberal vision of equality would destroy everything we had understood to be true and right. In hindsight, our fears caused us to gravely over-react. 

We decided that we would reject this model outright. We decided that we would reject anything from this President because his very existence was a rejection of our reality. This type of man could not be President, and therefore, his word could not be law.
The only way we could make this work was if all Republicans were on-board with it. Sure, there were rebels here and there, and there were people who could not keep the edges of the plan secret, but by and large, the plan worked. The problem was that it worked too well.

To create and sustain this situation, we had to reveal the ugly underbelly of American culture and stoke its fires. We had to rile the people up, we had to amplify their fears, we had to raise the threat levels. This would encourage the people to perpetuate the message that Obama was a mistake, an insult to the natural order of the world, and that he was an abomination that needed to be stopped. Once Obama was removed, we could flip the beast back over again and get back to making the country work in the way we had become accustomed.

What we could not have known was how hot those first would burn, and not only could the beast not be flipped back over, but that the beast could be turned against us. This is where Donald Trump stepped in.

Mr. Trump has been watching this maelstrom that we created for the past 7 years. He could see the chaos we were engineering and he has the insight and the vision to see how he could step into that chaos and use it to his advantage. When the moment was right, he stepped into our playing field and took control of it. He added fuel to the fires we had stoked, he used our own rhetoric against us, and he refused to toe the Republican line. He is a wildcard that we cannot control because he owes no allegiance to anyone except himself.

Mr. Trump is not a fool. If he were a fool, he could not be the successful businessman that he is today. His strength comes from his ability to spot an opportunity, commit to pursuing that opportunity, and do everything in his power to make it work to his advantage. These are qualities that make for rich businessmen, but the collateral damage to the people around these men can be devastating, extensive, and irreversible. 

The main aspect that has made him palatable to a modern audience is that he purports to tell the truth, to "tell it like it is". In the political arena, we cannot always be 100% transparent, but we do need to balance our plans with the public's right to know. However, in this failed strategy we adopted in 2008, we lost sight of our responsibilities to the American people. Over time, these lies became more and more difficult to maintain to the point that we have lost all credibility with our voters. After so many years of double-talk, having a non-politician promise to tell you the hard truth heedless of any political consequences is intoxicating.

But now the situation has grown beyond our control. We created this Gollum and it is rampaging out of control, highlighting our failures and promising more destruction than we could have imagined. And we are the one who did this to ourselves and to you, the American people.

We took these actions from a place of patriotism. We did it because we were dedicated to the continuation of Republican American idealism and exceptionalism. Our critics may not believe this, but we also did this out of love for our families, our friends, our God, and our country. And now, we are still speaking from this place of love, even though it kills us to have to admit our wrong-doing.

For what we just did for the last 8 years, we deserve to lose this election. If you want to put another Democrat in the White House, we deserve that decision. To watch the GOP be destroyed in the next election is definitely what we deserve as justice for our actions.
But to elect Donald Trump as your Commander In Chief, this is a fate that you do not deserve. Your anger and frustration is a result of our actions and inactions over the last 8 years, but the destruction that Trump would bring to America is a fate that you do not deserve. This man is not a Republican. This man owes the American people nothing. This man is not the fate you deserve.

We did this to you. We did it. Do not destroy yourselves to punish us for what we did. Put a Democrat in the White House. Give us time to regroup and put ourselves back on the right track.

Do not vote for Donald Trump.

The American Republican Party 2016