INOFFENSIVE COUNTRY
EPISODE SIX: THE NOTORIOUS RBG STRIKES BACK
The stranger, whose mother I had recently thrown off the train, was released despite having thrown a major Liberal Reich overlord off the train. The Notorious RBG was only interested in me, and she indicated as much by extending a gloved finger in my direction and making the "come here" gesture with her index finger the way my grandmother used to do. I could not resist, I walked slowly towards her, frightened, unable to do anything else. The liberalism was strong in her veins. It flowed through her like a creek through a rocky canyon. I could have tried to run, but she had two Liberal Walkers with her and they could shoot me with their weapons. They were now armed with the secret weapon technology developed at Pearl Harbor, the liberal conversion ray, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. That didn't matter so much now, though, because Notorious RBG had me under her spell.
"You are very tiresome, Harry Porter," she told me with a sigh after making me bow before her. "Your friends are all dead, which is very sad, and I grieve for them, but they aren't coming back for you. This absurd resistance movement of yours is now just you."
"They're coming back for me. I have faith that they will."
"Your faith in your friends is your weakness, Porter."
"Your overconfidence is your weakness, you know, if you had one that is. I am in awe of your greatness."
She shook her head and bowed it sadly while I grimaced from the realization that I was bowing before a woman who was wearing a doiley around her neck.
After a long silence she lifted her head again. "I want you to come with me, Harry Porter. And just to show there are no hard feelings, I will send a copy of Atlas Shrugged to Governor Smith in Sioux City, and yes that is his title and name. You will in all likelihood forget about the promise you made him but I will keep it for you, and yes, I do keep banned books in my library thank you very much."
"How did you know about all that?"
"I had him up to the Supreme Court for tea a few weeks ago. We talked. Now, walk this way," Notorious RBG told me before dismissing the Liberal Walkers and stepping towards the main building of the train station. She did a cartwheel just before we reached the door and then giggled while telling me, "You don't have to walk in exactly the same way I do. This isn't a sketch from Young Frankenstein."
Notorious RBG was a villain of almost comical dimensions. For one, she was a woman. For another, her threats and insinuations were pure evil, and her talk of torturing Indians for information was more than a little unsettling. Her powers of liberalism were from a dimension that even Chancellor Humphrey couldn't travel to. I finally caught a break when she sat down on a bench inside the railway station and said it was time to take a short break. I took that as an invitation to put my foot up on the bench next to her with my knee bent as I stood over her and began to explain how life really worked to Notorious RBG.
I should have realized it wasn't going to go well by the way she looked at me. I covered a number of important topics while she glared at me, slackjawed. I explained to her how free market economics worked, why abortion was murder, and the need to completely de-regulate the financial markets. Then, without a word, she stood up, told me the break was over and began walking again. We walked all the way to the Supreme Court without either of us saying another word and then she invited me inside and offered me tea. It was insidious.
"You know," she said as I sipped her tea. "I originally thought to bring you here because I miss discussing the merits of various cases with conservative justices. It helped keep my mind sharp. I thought maybe a conservative resistance fighter would have some idea about actual conservative thought, but you're just one of those people who regurgitates things he sees on the computer or someone told him once while he was milking a cow. I guess it was a stupid idea to begin with, and I have had one or two of those in my life, but you are just a moron. Would you like a piece of cake? I think my kitchen can bake something nice for you. How about... some steak? Hmm?"
"Wait... what... steak?"
"I get some flown in from the Sioux Nations whenever I get the urge. It is a secret vice of mine. Then again, I'm the only Justice on the Supreme Court so if the Liberal Reich tries to take legal action I can just keep bumping the case up from one court to the next until guess what? It gets decided by the Supreme Court. The Liberal Reich doesn't mess with Notorious RBG."
I couldn't remember where I'd left Gerald Ford, but I knew he was still around. He hadn't been killed when the secret volcano base was destroyed by the Seventh Fleet. If could somehow reach out to him, get in contact with him, he might be able to rescue me from my oppressive imprisonment.
"Excuse me, Mr. Porter? Your plan is Gerald Ford? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is?"
"How did you know..."
"You think out loud. You have no internal monologue. I thought you knew that."
"What?"
"Just joking with you, you're fine. I can read minds. Anyway, the idea of having Gerald Ford come up here and try to match wits with Notorious RBG is... well, it wouldn't be polite to say. Gerry is a good guy, mostly. I have no problem with him. Oh, and your friends from the beginning of the story are still around. The guy with the blue head is wandering around the country aimlessly and eating a lot of popcorn. He has decided it prolongs your life and makes you immortal because he saw a really old man eating popcorn somewhere. Your spirit friend is still hovering around you. I can see his face. Consternation, mostly. And your friend Hermione Taylor, who you've neglected to even mention, forcing other people to bring her up to keep her fresh in readers' minds, keeps coming by your apartment in New York City trying to figure out where you are. You can just go back to that life if you like."
"But I'm your prisoner!"
"No you're not. I don't have any eerie powers, other than mad gymnastic skills and the ability to read minds and a few other things... such as being able to reach into the mind of the person who is reading this, RIGHT NOW, and alter their thoughts. Not only can I get inside the heads of other characters in this story, I can get INSIDE THE HEAD of the actual living human being who is reading these words. I can get right into their mind and they won't be able to stop thinking about me all day. They'll keep wondering, 'Is Notorious RBG reading my thoughts right now? Is this for real?' and they will keep wondering. Some will become paranoid, wondering if I am seeing them walk down this street or go into the supermarket to buy groceries. I'll be there, and they'll feel me inside their thoughts, but they will never be completely sure if it is, or isn't, real."
"Shit."
"With the language, Mr. Potter. Not in these chambers."
"Sorry."
"It is a pity that you are the last conservative. I do appreciate constructive debate. If only there was something we could do about that."
"Maybe there is..."
"Go ahead, Mr. Porter."
"I could explain, but you could just read my mind instead and save us a lot of time."
"I've stopped reading your mind. Upon further consideration and internal debate, I have decided that reading your mind is intrusive and a violation of your rights. The same goes for any readers who were concerned about what I said earlier. I won't be doing any of that, but you'll still be thinking about it, and this is where I wink at you."
"Okay, well, I had this plan earlier that involved appealing to New Norway to intervene because both Chancellor Humphrey and Walter Mondale are from Minnesota, which is now mostly New Norway. And then when I exposed them as being illegal immigrants the people would turn against them and..."
"Wait, Mr. Porter. Hold on there a moment. Your master plan was to expose the chancellor and a high ranking government agent as being from New Norway and not Inoffensive Country? You realize this country is now populated entirely by liberals now, don't you?"
"Yeah, so?"
"This is why I said what I said earlier about you being a moron. I'm not going to bother trying to explain it because that would be like trying to teach a horse to juggle, which is something I say now. But, more importantly, how is that plan supposed to help me find intelligent conservative legal scholars to discuss things with?"
"It doesn't help with that issue at all."
"So, was there another plan? Did you mix your plans up a little bit?"
"I was hit in the head with a steel construction beam a while back."
"And?"
"I get confused easily since then. At one point I got so confused I was evaporating water in the desert, not that there is anything wrong with that."
"Mr. Potter, two years ago I was asked to make a legal decision on Original Conan Canon vs. Inoffensive Country. The case was to determine what year it actually was based on the end of the dominion of Conan the Barbarian. In the end I determined it was impossible to determine the year based on the story of a fictional character who is not in any way historically accurate in potraying any element of actual human history. This thrilled the Liberal Reich to no end, as they loved the idea of the year being whatever year you wanted it to be. I find that to be absurd, and yet as the only Supreme Court justice there is no mechanism in place for me to write a dissent of my own opinion, which was needed. This can't go on."
"I don't really understand what you said there, but okay."
"We need healthy debate in this country, which we haven't had in a very long time. You know, people think there are conservatives and liberals and you have to pick a side. That is such nonsense. One needs to review information, news as you will, from multiple sources and to make determinations as to the validity of that information based on intelligence and reason. Most people are actually moderates, but they get shoved aside as extremists jockey for position. This does not make for a healthy republic, nor does the single party system we have in place now. People need to listen to each other, to hear what the other is saying and not jump to conclusions based on their own entrenched beliefs. People need to talk to each other, not just try to yell over each other or try to 'zing' them with one of those 'This cartoon totally invalidates your argument and now I will devalue you as a person because of that.' That is nonsense."
"I don't really understand what you said there, but okay."
"How about that cake?" Notorious RBG asked with a smile.
"It sounds nice," I told her. "Can I get a cup of coffee with that?"
"I'll tell my footman," she said before picking up an old style princess phone and calling down to the kitchen. As she placed the order, using two coupons she'd gotten from the Supreme Court kitchen thanks to previous orders, I looked around the room at all the big legal books and felt intimidated. These were probably filled with oppressive regulations that needed to be eliminated in order to foster job creation. I wanted to pull them all down from the shelves and burn them, but I did not want to contemplate how the evil and cruel Notorious RBG would react to me doing such a thing.
There was a story told in certain circles about a Liberal Walker that malfunctioned. It had developed its own litmus test for liberalism and anyone who did not meet the requirements of the test was immediately terminated by the malfunctioning Liberal Walker. According to the story, Notorious RBG walked out of the Supreme Court and down to the Washington Monument, or what remained of it after it was destroyed by terrorists, and confronted the Liberal Walker. She had not passed its test and was judged not to be a liberal by the Liberal Walker, which then got ready to blow her away with its laser cannons, but Notorious RBG stood there, unmoved by its weapons going active. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the Liberal Walker as the coils from its laser cannons started to glow with the blue light of purpose and did not flinch. It warned her it was about to destroy her. Nevertheless, she persisted. The Liberal Walker never fired its laser cannons. And then it started heating up, the result of readying its laser cannons and not firing them, and then it overheated and blew up and Notorious RBG walked back to the Supreme Court without saying a word.
She was right. She would not be outwitted by Gerald Ford.
"Would you like to clerk for me, Mr. Potter? I need someone around here is who isn't just a 'Yes Woman' and I think that we could learn from each other. I say that while swallowing my own vomit, because while you may be the last conservative, you are a moron, but I need to get past that. The conclusions I've drawn about you are based on past experiences with frustratingly ignorant people and I need to learn to be more tolerant, to open my mind more, to be more willing to consider even the most inane opinions."
"I don't want to clerk for you, thanks."
"Then I have no choice but to turn you over to The Persecutor. I'm terribly sorry, I had hoped this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Now we're all doomed by our hubris."
I was taken to a train by a squad of elite LRP (Liberal Reich Police). The LRP were known to be the most evil and insidious of any law enforcement agency in the world. There would be no escaping these unarmed and overly solicitous cops. For the entire train ride I was subjected to massage on demand, having food brought to me, having a bath drawn for me, and other tortures too diabolical to put into words. We crossed the borders of Inoffensive Country, heading north, into the People's Republic of New England, a communist country. I had heard the legends of The Persecutor, but he was like a character from a dime store novel. He took it to the next level, and his methods were considered unsound, even by the Liberal Reich.
We stopped at a station inside the former state of Vermont, which allowed me to check off another former state in my travel logs, which I was using to document all the states I'd visited during my time with The Resistance. I'd been to Hawaii, California, some desert state, Montana, and more. I had photographs and memorabilia from all my stops and as we'd traveled, I took the time to flip through my scrap book and see all the pictures of friends old and new, coasters from different bars, and even a bottle of "Real Injun Sourmash" I'd gotten from the Sioux chief. "It's hilarious, I tell you, I call it Real Injun Sourmash because that really offends the liberals, but what are they going to do? I can call myself an Injun if it makes me big money! And what idiot actually thinks sourmash is a Native American thing anyway! Hahahahaha!"
When we stopped, I put my scrapbook away and hoped I would find time for more scrapbooking later on. When the LRP transferred me to the custody of the Minuteman Intelligence Services, or MIS, I was allowed to keep my pictures and my scrapbook, but I was taken to a holding cell in the side of a Vermont mountain that had once been part of a ski lodge.
It was seven days before I finally saw The Persecutor, not that I was looking forward to it or anything. This could be the last stop on my journey. This would be conservativism's last stand and I was not sure I was ready.
Episode Seven: The Last Conservative