PRESIDENTIAL PALL-For Whom Does the Bell Toll? The Bell Tolls for You Rump!
Satan was angry, but he did not rage. A technicality would allow him to again present the world with an Antichrist. “It’s time.” His words reverberated softly in the emptiness of Mercury’s non-atmosphere.
Demons met him there. “I want chaos. Utter and complete chaos.” He looked at them. “Tell me how you will accomplish my wishes.”
“I will affect their minds,” said Irrationality. “I am good at chasing logic from the un-spiritual mind.” He snorted unpleasantly. “When they worship their own thinking, placing their conclusions above the God’s Word to them, they embrace error. They no longer recognize it. They are my children—irrational.”
Pride sniffed and flicked lint from his shoulder. “I infect each one of them already,” Pride intoned with a denasal quality. “I am a necessary presence for any of them even THINK of running.”
“Ahhhhhh, true ,” Satan agreed. “What about my true Antichrist? Is he full of you?”
“More than any of the others, master!” Pride grew in stature, his smile heating up the space between Mercury and the Sun. Earth observers detected a bloom of plasma grow between the heavenly bodies. “He will be full of himself, being full of me!”
Satan rotated to meet the eyes of his own offspring. “Deceit,” Satan said with a small smile. “He is equipped to delude, lie, distort, vilify, perjure…..?”
Deceit whispered a sniggle, eyes bright. “Even himself!”
All of the demons laughed at the conceit. They sailed away, back to Earth, to plot, plan, scheme, to kill, steal and destroy.
The candidates for President of the United Earth stood arrayed on the stage. The world stage. There was no election scheduled, yet candidates presented themselves. They did it because demons drove them.
“Are they crazy?” William mumbled aloud at no one in particular.
When it hit the newsfeeds that a prominent billionaire proposed an election for President of the United Earth, George and Grey went on red alert. They contacted the new Vice President, Rosa Machado. She met them in the Rose Garden.
“This is a lovely meeting place for such serious talk,” she said as she took her seat. “I have already met with a few of my friends.” Her “friends” were the wealthiest men and women who supported George’s administration. Since the death of Justin Foote, the family had looked around carefully for his replacement. Senora Machado was just the woman for the job.
Her family was old money from the old world. Nothing occurred among the nouveau riche that escaped her notice. “He is very wealthy, but a bumpkin. He made his own fortune in real estate.” Senora Machado sniffed with distaste. “He has no class. And no support.” She leaned toward George and looked him directly in the eye with her last three words.
Timma escorted Joy into the shade of the lovely rose arbor that Joy had installed in the Rose Garden. She tried to do something beautiful and attractive to the Rose Garden every decade or so. She held out her hand to Rosa, who stood to kiss Joy on both cheeks. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
George pulled out a chair for Joy. He caught the look of approval in Rosa’s eyes. “Not at all Miss Joy. I hoped I would get to see you.” She looked around her. “This arbor is classic. May I copy it for my own roses?”
“Of course Senora!” Joy laughed the laugh that sounded like a symphony to George. George let his appreciation for Joy’s laughter, reach his face with a warm smile.
“Please. Call me Rosa! I would be honored.” Senora Machado leaned toward Joy, placing her hand on Joy’s. “We must go shopping for rose garden furniture.”
“Yes!” Joy giggled and leaned in conspiratorially. “Just let me know when!”
Senora Machado stood and looked at George critically. He stood because she did. “This is not serious, Mr. President. You have nothing to fear from this pretender. I will see to it.” She looked at Joy. “I must go! But my people will talk to your people about our shopping trip very soon.” Without more, Senora Machado and her security fellow marched away from the Rose Garden arbor.
George pulled his chair up close to Joy’s. “You,” he breathed on her cheek, “are my very own secret weapon. She loves you.”
“And she supports you. You appeared to have everything well in hand before I arrived.” Joy looked in George’s eyes.
“Ahh, but you sealed the deal. Roses for Rosa. You are brilliant.” He kissed her hand.
She kissed his cheek. “And you are handsome. But I have to go.” The couple stood and smooched goodbye.
Michaels watched the transaction. Joyangel watched as well. “They no longer engage in long greetings and partings. When did that change?”
“In the last decade or so. Many unpleasant events affected their daytime passion.”
“Daytime? There is a difference?”
“Their nighttime passion is unabated.” Michaels smiled and looked away from Joyangel. She thought about his remarks with puzzle face, but finally shrugged and disincorporated.
Paul sat among them. The others did not know who he really was. To them, he was just another young, rich newcomer who wanted to get in on the latest challenge to the President of more than a century. They don’t have a chance of pulling this off without me, Paul thought.
The oldest of the challengers was a real estate mogul. He was a self-made billionaire. After many failures, his tenacity allowed him to hit the jackpot. Not just once, either. He proved that he knew how to make money for investors. Now, he had no dearth of people with old AND new money, who would bankroll his latest ideas.
And his latest idea was this run for the presidency. Yet, no one had filed a petition, or did anything other than issue bald-faced challenges. George ignored them.
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, William.” George’s feet were on the worktable, crossed at the ankles. He and Ives and Grey and William all watched the monitor, as the candidates arrayed themselves for a “debate.”
The camera panned the panel of would-be candidates.
Everyone, including George, leaned forward as the camera slowly moved over a tall, curly-haired candidate.
As if he knew the camera caught him, the tall contender looked up and smiled with familiarity. He was completely at ease. He followed the camera as it moved away from him.
George did not look around the room. It can’t be! It’s not! George just leaned back in his chair and took interest in the broadcast. Ives glanced furtively at George. Grey began tapping his tablet, but he didn’t look up at anyone.
William looked around the table. They know something’s off. I’ll get to the bottom of this. “What’s wrong with this guy’s hair?” William snorted. “He’s got enough money to get a new load of nanobots and a new BIODARCHIP every single day. Why does his hair look so cheesy?”
During the evening’s debates—which were more “interview” and less “debate”—someone asked the candidate why his hairstyle is so unusual, and why he had the tiny horns implanted. “Don’t you realize,” asked the moderator with moderation, “that some cultures will view this alteration as some kind of insult?”
His response was ascerbic. “I don’t have time for total political correctness.” Then he shook his head. “But they’re not implants. Born this way.” Everyone looked at everyone else with disbelief.
“Don’t you care what commentators and talking heads are saying about you in the world press?”
“It doesn’t really matter what’s written about you if you have a young and beautiful woman at your side.” Rump looked around at the other candidates. “They all know it’s true .” He chuckled, “But seriously, from a pure business perspective, the benefits of having either good OR bad things written about you is far outweighed by the drawbacks.”
“A former world president had horns, but he did a wonderful job of keeping the environment clean, saving the animals that might have gone extinct, and fighting off global warming. Will you take care of the Earth as well as he did?”
Rump responded. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the industrialists in order to make cutting edge manufacturing non-competitive.”
“You have had a rocky financial life, Mr. Rump. How do you watch over your finances now that you have had decades of success. Or do you watch it carefully? Tell us your secret.”
“By counting my money. The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day.”
“Well. That’s almost a racist remark.”
“I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”
“Okay, then, let’s talk about the migrations to Africa during the last environmental crisis. It’s considered the most pristine and unspoiled continent on Earth right now. Do you think the President was right to allow open borders onto the continent?”
“The President has got to like African migration because of his wife.”
“You certainly aren’t hinting that a man as powerful as the President of The United Earth—an entire planet—is moved by the emotional reactions of his wife? Because she happens to be African American?”
“Often, I was sleeping with one of the richest women in the world, and I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Podunk, ‘Can you believe what I’m getting?’” A rude noise issued from Rump. “He’s no different!”
“This president has been married to the same woman for more than a century. You have been married and divorced three times. Don’t you think it’s important for the president of the world to have a consistent marital relationship?”
“You don’t know anything about my last marriage, do you?”
“Perhaps not enough. Would you enlighten us?”
“I divorced her because she was only giving me 84 percent, and 16 percent was going towards taking care of our children.”
“Are you saying that it’s too much for a woman to spend significant time taking care of her children?”
“What I say is,” Rump shrugged and grinned, “you know, what I say.”
The” moderator” nodded. “Just a few more questions for you. And, I don’t mean to make light of your appearance, but, in addition to those horns, what has made you adopt such an unusual hairstyle?”
“My hair may not be perfect, but it’s mine. It’s not nanobot hair. Not saying that the President’s hair isn’t his….”
William stood up and shouted at the monitor. “Hey! That’s my hair too. And it’s not bot hair, you tadpole!”
The interviewer asked Rump about a business deal that went south early in his career. “Others have opined that that particular deal was just too complicated. Why do you like complicated transactions?”
“It’s always good to do things complicated so—hopefully—nobody figures out what you’re really up to. Part of the beauty of me is, frankly, I’m very rich. Even if the world goes to hell, I won’t lose a penny.”
“That’s good to know. I think. Mr. Rump, if there is an election, and you are elected, what are your priorities?”
“My first action as President of Earth will be to tax every German car and Japanese tiddly-wink. Why? They make so many. It will take the tax burden off the average person who just works to live.”
“My final question, Mr. Rump: would you be in favor of repealing the global criminal law that calls for execution for every crime? How do you feel about this President’s practice of pardoning criminals who have not committed capital crimes? Do you think this practice comports with the spirit of the World Charter?”
“I’m not going to answer that question because this isn’t principles of world politics class. The current President knows all of that crap and he is incapable of governing this planet.”
William guffawed loudly. He looked at George. “Dad, you haven’t said a word during this idiot’s tirade.”
George shrugged. “No one has filed a petition. There’s not even one being circulated. This is a circus. And he’s the clown in the middle ring.”
The interviewer asked Rump about his business success in recent decades.
“Virtually everything I’ve done has been a tremendous success. I want to put my ability into his planet and make it great, productive. And I can do it. I’m the only one in this group who can.”
“You believe that you’re the only candidate who has the potential to make this planet great.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t seem to have grassroots support. People have to vote. Some sector has to support you.”
“Look. It takes money to win. I have lots of money. And I’m running on my own money, with no financial help from anybody. I turned down $5 million from somebody.”
“Does that mean that you don’t really care what the people want? Or does it mean you’re aiming to try to please everyone?”
“In business, private business, it’s my job to get along with everybody.”
“Is it possible to get along with everyone when you run for office? Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln, a President of the former United States of America who said, ‘You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.’ With so many languages, ethnicities and cultural biases in the Earth’s population, how will you manage to get along with everyone?”
“To have a robust society, economy, we have to have assimilation.”
After the interview was over, the talking heads began their commentary. The other candidates chimed in.
“I think there’s a sophomoric quality about him. And it worries me to have him in charge of the planetary arsenal because he attacks people! He calls people short, tall, fat, ugly. I’d be worried that he’d insult us and turn the laser on us because he got up on the wrong side of the bed and didn’t like the RSS feed.”
“Me and you both,” George mumbled. H
THE THRONE ROOM – Revelation 7:9 “After these things I saw, and lo, a great multitude, which to number no one was able, out of all nations, an tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the Throne, and before the Lamb….”
“You…and You…and You,” Satan looked around the Throne Room with wide eyes, attempting to ascertain the whereabouts of the Holy Spirit, “…know what’s happening here, don’t You?”
The Father looked down at the Evil One with sympathy. The Son peered at him with triumph. “Of course We do.”
Satan was suddenly suspicious of Their willingness to agree with him. “What do You think is happening?” His eyes were tiny slits.
“You have hatched another scheme,” said the Father, “that you believe will lead to the conquest of my son, George, and the End of Times.”
“Another? It’s the same scheme I’ve been…..,” the Enemy paused to determine whether or not he was about to admit to acts that were nothing if not disobedient in the extreme, “…thinking about for a while. So, You know. I didn’t know you knew. So-now-I-don’t-have-to-tell-You-goodbye!” He disappeared from the Throne Room.
The Father looked at His Son. “Does he realize that this is just another variation on his evil theme?”
“Yes,” said the Son, “he does. But he is blinded by his disobedience…”
“…and his jealousy…”
“…and his desire to overcome them.”
“Which he cannot do.”
“Which I prevented by my death….”
“…and Your resurrection.” They smiled in warm agreement. The choir began another song of praise as Father and Son looked upon them.
