Comrades, although I have been most assiduous in my pursuit of the Common Good, I realize that I have been slack and remiss because no matter how I sweat and strive, I do not feel that the Common Happiness is maximized. I have spared no expense, reimbursed of course, with suitable interest, it goes without saying, in my tireless pursuit of the progressive desire of the redistribution of wealth. I hold it as the first tenet of a progressive that none shall have what all cannot have, except of course for the people who determine who shall have what, for we have higher standards and needs. We cannot effect perfect justice if little trifling things bother us and if we are bothered, how can we dedicate our lives to the selfless advancement of the greatest happiness to the greatest number? Except, of course, us, for the reasons that I have just shown and will show further, lest there be a mistake.

I firmly believe, in my equalitarian way, except of course that some people are more equal than others, in equality of outcome. It is not enough that all shall have equal assets, party members excepted, of course: it is imperative that no matter what we're given by nature, we all have it turn out the same way, again, excepting Party Members, who, again, have special needs. Do you <i>know</i> how distracting it is to re-educate a prole when you run out of batteries for the cattle prod and you've maxed out your credit card? Talk about frustration. I could write a book.

I refer you to Kurt Vonnegut's utopian story Harrison Bergeron. In it we find a future utopian United States in which all differences are eliminated--all are as beautiful as the rest, as intelligent as the rest, and as a result there is a great increase in ugly and stupid people without the aid of beer. Which is a good thing.

~

But still there will be people who will not accept what is good for them. It is hard to imagine, but some people simply <i>will not accept</i> as Received Wisdom what the <i>New York Times</i> prints, nor will they believe, without quibble or discussion, everything that comes out of Harvard or Columbia or Antioch. I know that it is hard to believe it, but not everything believes even the throat-clearings of John Rawls.

I have found that some people, even after mockery, and even after the IRS, with just a little prodding, has decided to investigate their accounts, still are not happy, and since all that we do is for the use the maximum power of the state for the maximum happiness, then it logically follows that if people will not be happy, then the only way to have the maximum happiness is to eliminate the soreheads.


It is a brilliantly simple scheme. If, say, one hundred million people in America are content as things are, then their happiness is a wash. Eh--it doesn't do anything <i>for</i> me, but I can live with it, so they get a pass. If one hundred million are happy progressives with their hands where their hands ought to be--in others' lives and property, helping, toujours helping, that's a lot of happiness, so long as those progressives remember that there are progressives and Progressives and I'm a PROGRESSIVE. But if there are one hundred million people who are <i>not</i> happy, then we can increase by 50% the average happiness in America by sanctioning the one hundred million unhappy people.

Follow closely: you're one of the Elect, and didn't have public education. It's not that hard. We may decide, for the Common Good™, of course, to impose a tax or levy a fine or restrict a behavior, even if only we can see the good in it and if the good is rather more for us than for other people--we always need our little perks, you know, power weighs <i>so</i> heavily on my forehead and those damned wrinkles, what I <i>give</i> for the party, you know. How heavy lies the crown of authority, especially the one with all those crown jewels in it that Lilibet was happy to let me have just so that Hillary, Our Many Titted Empress, and I would just leave and quit busting up the furniture and peeing on the rugs. I think it was when we threw darts at the official portrait of Edward VIII and Hillary, who <i>had</i> had a few too many slurred out, "Well, you proved with that Simpson tart that you like American gash. Wanna see some more?" and exposed herself. Lilibet turned absolutely white and Phil ran for the shotgun but Tony had locked it up and so Lilibet took off her tiara and led Hills out the room, like a lapdog after a biscuit. And that's how I got the tiara, but that's the only time that Hills took the back seat to me. In the blood, you know.

So what do we do if these people who have to pay or do don't like it? After we've explained it to them, lovingly, pointing to them where their thinking is wrong, even putting them up in a people's hotel with very good security? And if they're housed, where no one can break in, or out--for perfect security, with food designed not to upset their GI tract with excessive taste or spiciness, and also designed to keep their weight under control--about 1200 calories a day will do, I think, less on any day that isn't May Day--and if their skin is not harmed by artificial chemicals like soap? (We will of course make sure that they is properly deloused for their Information Retrieval officers do not like lice, which are so hard to get out of the Mechelin lace.)

What if they <i>still</i> selfishly do not understand that we're doing it all for them, out of brotherly love and they <i>still</i> just won't be happy? If they refuse to work with us on this? If they <i>just won't be still</i> and realize that's really for their own good? And if they just won't shut up? All that whining and moaning and demanding makes me very cross. I <i>tell</i> them they have everything that a reasonable person needs to make themselves happy, and that their attachment to their property and family is merely bourgeois sentimentality, but they just can't get over their peasant attachments. And the very idea that they have a right to property and the pursuit of happiness on their own. Now I ask you. Just who is spreading this pernicious nonsense? I have heard it's Jefferson, whoever that is. A fatwah on Jefferson, by the way.

Some of these people are so difficult that it doesn't change things when tell them it's For The Children™. Not their children, of course; that would be selfish, but for other children. Mrs. Jellyby tells us how.

But what if an old sorehead doesn't see it our way?

Off with his head! He's unhappy and that <i>reduces</i> the total sum of happiness in Progressive Utopian Totalitarian America. PUTA must have the maximum happiness for the maximum number. But he can't be unhappy if he's dead, can he? I ask you, can he be unhappy if he's dead? No. No he cannot.

And think of the happiness his execution will cause the goon squads. I can't tell you how hard it is to keep my storm troopers' edge sharp. You know, all that cerveza in the cantinas across the Rio Grande, and all those putas--the penicillin alone is breaking me and I won't let Bruno go near them after pay day. And they just don't have the edge that I need them to have. And so this would be good field training for them, getting rid of soreheads so that they wouldn't contract more sore heads. And it would contribute to the Greater Happiness.

Do the math. It works.

Where does Hillary's WHOREs fit in to the PUTA scheme of things. Isn't there a "no competition" clause?

This is a most thoughtful and inspired paper Commissar. I was reminded early on of an old Twilight Zone episode where ugly people were eliminated by some science that gave everyone an option of 5 beautiful bodies to choose from once they hit a certain age. This one girl, and ugly one of course, decided that she didn't want to be like everyone else! The importance of this was explained to her repeatedly, yet she rebelled. Yes, we must work on this as well. Of course once the problem with looks is resolved, we will have to do something about aging.... what's the good having good looks when aging destroys it? Of course none of that would apply to the Party, for one can't expect us to do all the decision making etc and still worry about our looks.

Laika, there's room for everyone: PUTA and WHOREs. And of course this points up the diversity of the anointed: We now have that organization in Spanish and English and now if we create the Hillary Organization we have it in Urban. HO. And just with a little ringing the changes we can freight in French: <i>pute</i> or <i>putain</i>, Italian <i>puttana</i>. For after all, our Many Titted Empress must be represented with all peoples all the time.

And Pupovich, after you've been in the party longer, I believe that you'll find, as Henry Kissinger did, that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. How else do we explain David Geffen? It is also how I expect our Empress to be serviced, that is, if the lobotomies on the studs don't work.

So, the executions will continue until morale improves? I like where you're going with this, comrade. Remember to save plenty of these soreheads for me because mining uranium 18 hours a day, every day, in Wyoming tends to use up a lot of unhappy people pretty fast. Even if they refuse to be happy and accept the bounty of our Progressive Utopia, they can still serve the Greater Good™.

One problem here. As part of the Party's long range goals, we have spent decades fostering misery, anger, disaffection and addiction among our followers. The results have been wildly successful as a visit to any leftist message board or blog site or to most leading universities will demonstrate. Our most loyal followers are nihilistic, miserable people who can not take responsibilty for their own actions and show sign of deep psychological damage. We've literally conviced people that they are worse off living in America than, say, Cuba. Question is, after the Revolution, what do we do with these people? Is it possible that the glum, angry members of DKos and DU will suddenly become cheerful, fulfilled Citizens of our new Progressive Utopia? Or is it likely that they will remain as they are today, dragging us down in to the pit of despair they wallow in?

I think I know the answer to that already. Shall I request more ammunition and drum magazines from Mikhail?

Just look at the beautiful scenery those privileged thought criminals get at their re-education camps. We are much too nice to them.

Commissar M, that is an excellent point, and one we must not forget. Of course, I suppose that is where the saying about a revolution eating it's own comes from. Bon Appetit!

Comrade M, perhaps I did not explain myself correctly. I meant that we should execute the <i>refractory</i> people. Our revolutionary comrades are not unhappy by definition--they are engaged in a heroic class struggle. How can they be anything other than exhilarated? By definition, they <i>are</i> happy. Since reality is what we say it is, I decree that they are happy. I know, I know that the DKos appears to be full of spiteful, miserable, whining adolescents whose lives are a running argument with reality, but don't let phrases like "My head is exploding" and "I want to hit thing" fool you--these people are in a transport of ecstasy in their ability to serve the Common Good™. The fact that it changes from day to day doesn't matter one jot.

No, no, the people who are unhappy are those who insist on thinking for themselves. You know the sorry sort: independent people. Do you recall that most hideous of all fairy tells, the Emperor's New Clothes? I would rather a child of mine, like I'll have any except of course the Glorious Revolution, be given a crack needle than read that story. A boy who <i>goes against what other people are saying just on the evidence of his eyes and mind?</i> Now I ask you--have you ever heard a worse recipe for Maximum Happiness™?.

It's people who insist on defining their own happiness who are by definition unhappy. People who let us define their happiness are by definition happy.

I hope this clears things up.

Unless we say they are unhappy da? Cearly we must be able to go into a workplace where the workers are paid well etc, yet be able to point out that someone else gets something more and tell them they are unhappy.

Comrade Theocritus, thank you for your clarification. Indeed, you are correct in observing that self-defined happiness is not happiness at all. Only The Party can define happiness and indeed determine just who is happy.

I still need to borrow a couple hundred Kos Kids for a public works project at some point shortly after the election. Frankly, at times, their "passion" skirts very close to dissent against Her Highness and needs to be directed towards more useful endeavors in service to The Common Good™.

Yes, Commissar M, at times the Kos Kiddies do seem not to be sufficiently in thrall to Our Many Titted Empress but be patient, it is yet early times. Our MTE must bide her time and appear as more of a, how do I convey the shudder that I feel, er, <i>centrist</i>. There. I've said it.

But of course, after her elevation to the office of President and her assumption of the Rose Garden Throne for life, and her coronation as The Self-Chosen One, she can, like the thing in <i>Alien</i>, show her true colors.

And the Kos Kiddies will either love her for it, or they won't love anything at all for they won't <i>be</i> anything at all.

She don't mess around.

I suspect there will be a lot of the latter... but behind every cloud there is a red lining... and so we will have no lack of foundation material for our new progressive society.

"I'll grind their bones to make my bread." I love it when the revolution eats its children.

It also makes a fine concrete substitute as demonstrated by Uncle Iosef.