Monologue Of An Uncle Who Wants To Argue About Politics

Hey nephew! So I saw you standing awkwardly in the corner here, and I thought I’d take this time to talk to you about politics. No, you stay right there. Stay! This’ll only take a second. An hour or two at the most. Now I know it’s Easter, and you’re clearly apprehensive about discussing politics at a family gathering, but guess what? I have a passionate opinion. I have been accumulating knowledge to support my passionate opinion, filling the void in my soul with the sanctimonious views of a particular political commentator. Whenever this commentator makes a point that resonates with me, I stop and scorch it into my brain matter for later recall, specifically so that when I’m eventually confronted with someone like you, a person of conflicting views, an enemy of America, I can destroy you. I can destroy you utterly via rhetoric.

So I’m sorry, but I’m going to yell at you now. You would think with my high blood pressure, I’d be leery of becoming enraged by petty things like someone’s political opinion, but no. My anger is what propels me through this dark shimmering nightmare world I call a life. Witness the cinderblock of ham hunks on my plate, and believe me when I say that fear of death won’t stop the torrent of tirade rushing up my throat. My dear nephew, I’m going to yell at you until you understand I’m right and you’re wrong even as my face turns red and my blood barely oozes through arteries caked with fat from cake. Look at you, standing nonchalantly in Gamma’s sitting room, surrounded by teapots and ceramic geisha figurines, all self-righteous, as if your opinion has any validity. Your ego must be crushed until I can do the thing where I chuckle smugly and say, “If that’s what you wanna think.”

You’re ruining America. You and everyone like you are making the world a worse place every time you vote for the person who supports things I’m against. You’re a force of entropy. You’re a brainwashed partisan fool. You’re a weak minded victim of propaganda. Part of me wishes everyone who thought like you was wiped off the face of the earth in some sort of systematic genocide or at least stripped of your rights and put into camps (I’m thinking a Holocaust/ Age of Apocalypse scenario here) (How do I know what Age of Apocalypse is?). You’re my favorite nephew, but I would like to set you on fire, tear off bits of your still burning flesh, and gnash them up in my teeth like hot jerky. Crucify you, I’d like to crucify you. Drink the blood from your — Am I speaking aloud right now? I really got off track there. Whew, that sounded bad. Your uncle’s a little drunk right now, ha ha, so don’t take him too seriously.

But seriously, I hope you’ve been reading the emails I’ve sent you, the ones about how everything you believe is wrong. There’s one I sent you — ten pages, red comic sans font, sprinkled with gifs of fireworks and bulldogs winking — I thought refuted your opinion pretty conclusively. Did you read it? You didn’t? Well why not? If I take the time to email you an article, I expect you to at least give it a cursory glance so you might, if only for a moment, understand you’re wrong and dumb and ridiculous. I’m trying to help you become an enlightened member of society, and you insist on clinging steadfastly to ignorance. You’re looking at shadows on the cave wall, nephew. Flat colorless outlines of reality. But I’m here now, and I’ve unshackled your chains, so won’t you join me in the real world? I’m berating you because I love you, and I want you to believe true things and not nonsense.

You have to understand I’m furious about getting older. I’m an eighteen-year-old peering through the eyes of a monster like a reversal of the end of Jeepers Creepers. My body is deteriorating in the way I’ve seen other people’s bodies deteriorate but never imagined could happen to my own. My death is no longer some mythical concept but a very tangible force, like a tiny evil dwarf tugging harder and harder at my soul’s coattails. The anger, the fury over the inexorable fact I must one day cease to exist is so great and inarticulate, I need a template with which to express it, and that template is politics. Hold on while I shotgun this thing. Don’t go away. I have more to tell you.

You know, I have the answers to all the problems facing this country. If only those in charge listened to me, everything would be solved lickety split — national debt, gay rights, the crumbling infrastructure, the economy, etc. I’m so goddamn overflowing with precious pearls of wisdom. Anyone who disputes my opinions — which are actually facts, by the way — will receive a hearty supercilious chuckle because, oh dear, it’s so cute you think you’re right. I just don’t know what to do for you if you’re so indoctrinated into your cult. It can only inspire the sad laughter of the frustrated sensei. I’m older than you, so my years of experience make my opinions more valid.

We should have an egg hunt for cans of Keystone Light.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, so I hate my kids. Hate them. There’s the one with the fat head and the weird ears, and there’s the one with the, you know, the face. Where did that one come from? Not me, I’ll tell you that much. You wouldn’t think it, but I was a handsome man back in the day. Ask me how many women I had sex with in college. Go ahead. Hey, the egg hunt isn’t for an hour — just ask me the goddamn question! You idiot! Ask me! Stop looking away like a pussy and ask the question! The answer’s 40. 40 of the hottest women you ever laid eyes on, and meanwhile, I’m looking at you, and I’m thinking, ‘Wasted youth,’ cause I know you’re not the outgoing type. You don’t know how to enjoy life like I did.

Listen, I’m just going to come out and ask: you gay? We’ve never seen you bring a girl to holidays, and I mean, it’s a perfectly legitimate question based on the way you talk and dress. You and your button down shirts and corduroy pants. Your tiny hands. Your tiny goddamn hands, just look at them — like the hands of a pretty pretty princess. Like little white spiders. Like the hands of a toddler who’s also a poet and a seamstress. Gonna shotgun one more, whatcha think? I say if I’m still making mouth words and talkin’ the talky talk, then it’s down the hatch!

Eugh.

Don’t you go anywhere! You stay right here! I am not talking to my wife for two hours, no sir! That is not an option! We’re going to keep discussing politics, or I suppose you will just stay standing there, listening to me discuss politics until the egg hunt starts. No, you will stay until the party’s over, until the sun sets, until the arctic melts, the oceans rise, our cities turn to dust, the sun swells like a fiery red balloon, and the earth is consumed in a great cosmic inferno. And even then I will keep talking. My being will merge with the fabric of the universe, and my divine voice shall issue forth across the vastness of infinity, and you shall be the Eternal Listener, a celestial spirit existing only to hear my political rants. Forever.