To Tinker Forever With Chance

Dear simians,

This summer was spent in anticipation of several occurrences at FTM headquarters: my impending nuptials, the fall presidential election and the 100th year without a World Series victory for the Chicago Cubs. In a world where individuals and financial markets ‘game the probability’ of just about anything, you could say I had a lot of skin in the game.

In August, the wedding went off without a hitch, my horse was doing well in the presidential derby, and the Cubs had the best team since 1908. Would Theriot to DeRosa to Lee become the next Tinker to Evers to Chance? Would the ninety-nine year streak of futility end before reaching the triple digits? (Keep in mind that the next digit increase of this losing streak would be at 999 years—899 years from now, and who knows if baseball would even be played then?)

At the beginning of October, my Cubbies went down like baby lambs to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 3 games. Unfortunately, since half the known universe also placed big bets on the Cubs to win the World Series, the ensuing stock sell-off to cover their gambling losses eventually mushroomed into the CDS/Sub-prime/AIG/Lehman/World Banking meltdown that shook the very principles of free-market capitalism. The Cubs loss in the play-offs, and the resulting economic collapse, caused my preferred presidential candidate to surge ahead in the polls. Does chance take away with one hand and give with the other? Or is this yet another inscrutable layer of Billy Goat’s curse?

With the Cubs and wedding fates decided, the last is the fate of the presidency. Right now America is at a fork in the road—its choice of leaders will determine which path is taken, paths perhaps to never cross again. One candidate is like an ageing Roman General, mounting his final campaign. Bruised and battered from countless battles with the barbarians, he marches in front of his troops with his garish lover, a pretty young boy, at his side. With empty phrases and threats, he prods the exhausted soldiers on to an ever-elusive victory. His Empire is a few years from collapse, its ideology sclerotic, its advantages in technology and organization fading fast.
The other candidate signals a paradigm shift in the political history of this nation. His very being symbolizes the America of immigrants from countless nations who came here to transcend their miserable histories. His leadership of a nation that contains the blood of all nations, makes explicit what was until now only implicit in the American Dream. With his election, the paradigm shifts from America, a nation settled by Western European colonists and their slaves to: America, the nation of diversity and equality of opportunity for all human beings. It marks the next stage of expansion of a Universal American/Roman Empire—by selecting him as president, America takes one step closer to becoming a world and the world takes a step toward becoming an America.

The editors of Fecesthrowingmonkey prefer to live in a Universal All-Conquering Rome/America as opposed to a Rome/America about to be sacked by the Visigoths. We will vote accordingly. Please, also, do.