Around ten o’clock this morning, Phineas “Trey” Forrest Beauregard Wanker III, senior staffer to junior Senator Thomas Bryant “Tom” Cotton of Arkansas, paid me a visit. His boss, Senator Cotton, has been here in Washington DC for about two years, and has served in the United States Senate, as the incumbent Secretary of State recently noted, for about two months. With that said, Trey acted as if he had been here about two days. His appointment was for nine, and I was busy with my genuine consultation for ten, a pro bono session with an NGO representative seeking advice on the solutions to several intractable logistics problems which had arisen consequent to the impacts of Tropical Cyclone Pam upon the tiny Pacific nation of Vanuatu.
When Gretchen informed Trey of my current mission of mercy, and reminded him of the fact that his legitimate appointment time was an hour in the past, he resorted to the the most tired, inane and pathetic clichés used here in the Nation’s Capital.
“Do you know who I am?” he indignantly demanded.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Gretchen assured him, gesturing toward the plush furnishings of my reception area. “Now sir, if you would please have a seat, Mr. Collins will be available shortly after noon.”
At that, Trey took it upon himself to burst into my office, stride up to my desk, interrupt my consultation with the NGO representative, arrogantly toss his business card at me and yell, “I’m here on an urgent mission from the United States Senate! Get this [expletive] pansy, [expletive] liberal socialist [expletive] commie one-worlder [expletive] bleeding-heart do-gooder [expletive] [expletive] out of here, right [expletive] now!”
As it happened, the NGO representative was a Buddhist monk, although dressed, as he was, in a tastefully bespoke tailored ensemble, he could have been easily mistaken for a bald Asian banker. “One of your Tea Party, I presume,” he remarked as he exited my office through the two heavy oak doors leading to the reception area. Trey was one lucky conservative Republican, that’s for sure. The original ten o’clock slot had been booked by a Ukrainian diplomat who wanted to discuss the recent inexplicable disappearance of Vladimir Putin, his enigmatic reappearance and the implications of those events for the ongoing backdoor negotiations pertaining to return of the Crimea from the Russian sphere of influence. Knowing that particular fellow as I do, he would have without doubt left Trey lying on my antique silk Persian rug with a mouth full of bloody Chiclets. And left me, of course, with an horrendous cleaning bill – so I guess I was in luck, too.
“All right,” I sighed, pointing to the couch in front of the picture window overlooking the White House, “make yourself comfortable and tell me how I can help Senator Cotton today.”
“The Tea Party,” Trey barked as he plunked down on the couch, “has had enough [expletive] [expletive] from the [expletive] Democrats!”
“So they say,” I acknowledged.
“The American people – the real American people; they have spoken! And now, we control the United States Congress!” Trey blustered as he gradually turned a bright shade of crimson. “And now, those [expletive] Democrat [expletive] can eat our [expletive], that’s what those [expletive] Democrat [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] can do! [Expletive] eat it! With a [expletive] shovel – that’s what they can [expletive] do!”
“Very emphatically put,” I observed. “Do you recall why you came here?”
“Yeah, sure,” he shouted, gesturing over his shoulder at the White House. “What the [expletive] do you think I am, some [expletive] [expletive] like that [expletive] over there, desecrating the home of Ronald Wilson Reagan?”
“There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever,” I told him, “that there isn’t the slightest comparison between you and President Obama.”
“Damn right there isn’t!” he yelled. “That black piece of [expletive] wants to let the [expletive] towel-heads over in Iran [expletive] with us! He wants to let them build [expletive] atomic bombs and [expletive] and come over here and shove [expletive] sharia law up everybody’s [expletive]!”
“It’s possible,” I posited, “that the situation may be somewhat more… complicated than that, but leaving such considerations aside for the moment, is there something about which you or your employer require some… advice?”
“Oh yeah,” he nodded with a rueful air, “sure. It’s this letter my boss and forty-six other Republican senators sent to the Iranian government.”
“Ah yes,” I replied, “that thing. Over the last few days, virtually the entire civilized world – every significant diplomatic community besides Russia and China, actually, has expressed opprobrium for the actions of those forty-seven senators.”
Trey returned a quizzical look, cocking his head to the side like a puzzled puppy. “What the [expletive] is [expletive] ‘opprobrium,’ for [expletive] Christ’s sake?”
“Basically,” I explained, “it means there isn’t a professional A-list diplomat outside of Moscow or Beijing who hasn’t publicly announced that he or she thinks your boss and his forty-six buddies in the Senate have made total fools of themselves.”
“Oh yeah?” Trey roared. “Well [expletive] them!”
“Come now,” I pointed out, “even Iran’s Grand Ayatollah has ridiculed the senators who wrote that letter. And it turns out that Secretary Kerry was right – your boss and his philosophically like-minded cronies accomplished nothing besides giving the Iranians additional bargaining leverage for the ongoing negotiations in Geneva. The bottom line is, they threw a spanner into some incredibly delicate diplomatic machinery with such abominable timing as to make them all look like a bunch of ham-handed, bumbling, benighted, ignorant morons in front of every nation that actually counts for something, everywhere in the entire world. Therefore, I assume that, as rational human beings, your boss and his associates have realized their folly and want to do something about the resulting optics and public relations problems, correct?”
Trey sat back and roared with laughter. “[Expletive] you, Collins! You’re telling me that real American patriots give a [expletive] what a bunch of [expletive] queers and [expletive] cowards who live in places like [expletive] Europe and [expletive] Japan and eat [expletive] sea weed and cheese that smells like [expletive] dirty feet want to [expletive] bellyache about? [Expletive] screw them and their [expletive] mothers, right in the [expletive] [expletive]! The fact is, Collins, Senator Cotton and the rest of them are God-damned [expletive] proud of what they’ve [expletive] done, and what I’m here for is to get you to tell me what else they can do like that [expletive]! So come on, yourself, Collins, and gimme some gnarly [expletive] that’ll chafe the wrinkly hide right off President [expletive]’s black, pimply socialist commie [expletive]!”
“Oh,” I shrugged, “in that case, all right. My first suggestion would be that your group do what Nancy Pelosi did to George W. Bush.”
Trey stared at me blankly. “And what the [expletive] would that be, huh?”
“Well,” I recounted, “back in 2007, she went to visit Bashar Assad.”
“Who the [expletive] is Bashar Assad?” Trey demanded, obviously irked.
“He’s the President of Syria,” I informed him, “you know – that place where the rebels have been fighting the central government for years now, and ISIS invaded, and now there’s a huge humanitarian crisis and…”
“Listen, Collins,” Trey growled, “my boss and his caucus don’t give a [expletive] about that humanitarian [expletive], understand? As far as they’re concerned, ‘humanitarian’ is a four-letter word, okay?”
“Actually,” I noted, “the word ‘humanitarian’ has twelve letters in it.”
“Well [expletive] all twelve of them!” Trey hissed. “And the [expletive] dictionary they rode in on, you got that?”
“Yeah sure,” I said as I stood and extended my arms toward him the palms of my hands facing the floor, “just sit down and unclench your fists, okay?”
“I’m an angry white male!” Trey resolutely proclaimed. “Angry! Got that? And so is Senator Cotton! And so are the other forty-six senators who signed that letter! Angry! White! Males! Don’t [expletive] with us! You! Have! Been! Warned!”
“Understood,” I mollified. “Look, what I’m suggesting is that you take a page from your… um… adversary’s playbook, as it were. Your boss and his friends in the Senate should start conducting their own brand of diplomacy, without the President’s permission or approval, just like Nancy Pelosi did when she met with Assad during the Bush Administration. Only – since there are forty-seven of you, there’s no reason you couldn’t send out five, ten or even twenty senators at once, visiting national leaders and representatives everywhere. Look how confused and upset the White House got over one little mischievous letter! Now, imagine how utterly flummoxed they would be if suddenly there was a whole platoon of Tea Party senators conducting their own foreign policy, completely outside of Obama’s influence or direction. You know what a total control freak Obama is – if something like that happened, he wouldn’t know whether to spit or go blonde.”
“Yeah,” Trey agreed, withdrawing a Samsung tablet from his attaché case and beginning to take notes, “that’s more like it! Nice idea – we do what the [expletive] Democrats did to Dubya, but we do it ten times worse. Good stuff. Then what?”
“Well,” I continued, “you could always have your friends in the House of Representatives appropriate a few billion to set up ‘Congressional Foreign Liaison Offices’ and staff them in the major capitals of the world. That way, if folks in Britain or Germany or Japan didn’t care for what the ambassador and his crew at the State Department’s official US embassy was pushing, they could walk across the street and check out a better deal with the US Congress.”
“Now that,” Trey chortled as he typed, “that would be [expletive] sweet – stick it right in Obama’s [expletive] with no [expletive] K-Y Jelly, hard as a [expletive] rock! Yeah! Anything he does, anywhere, we [expletive] jam him up!”
“And, of course,” I pressed on, “given that, the next logical step would be the establishment of a means for Congress to project kinetic power overseas.”
“What the [expletive] is kinetic power?” Trey shouted.
“Tanks, aircraft, artillery, ground forces, airborne forces, naval forces… special… forces, that sort of thing,” I clarified.
“You’re saying,” he challenged, “that Congress should have it’s own military?”
“No,” I carefully established, “I am going out of my way to avoid saying that. What I am saying is, Congress could… consider… appropriating funds to finance the operations of what would essentially be an extension of the Capitol Police – an armed force, capable of projecting land, sea, air and space power commensurate with the doctrine of American Exceptionalism and charged by Congress with a mandate to engage not in war, oh no – but strictly in police actions, anywhere and everywhere the Congress of the United States should deem… necessary to protect… well, whatever the Congress should decide merits its protection.”
“Oh,” Trey exclaimed as the light bulb went off over his head, “you mean, like oil and [expletive], right?”
“There’s certainly no reason,” I opined, “why petroleum should be excluded from the purview of Congress.”
“[Expletive] no!” Trey agreed. “Gold, silver, petroleum, natural gas, uranium… whatever the [expletive] Congress wants – [expletive] yeah!” But suddenly, his face fell under a passing cloud of doubt. “Only I was just thinking – what about the Constitution and all that ACLU [expletive] that the Democrats are gonna squawk about, like [expletive] chickens with Old McDonald’s [expletive] throbbing up in them?”
“The Constitution,” I pointed out, “says that the President shall be the Commander in Chief ‘of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states,’ not that Congress is prohibited from having a global police department if it wants to. What the Constitution does say is that the Senate and the House can pass laws, and that the House can appropriate money for the government of the United States, which, last time I checked, includes Congress. All the Senate and the House have to do is pass the necessary laws to create an extension of the Capitol Police that includes nuclear powered aircraft carriers, space stations, spy satellites, cruise missiles, ICBMs and legions of Gurkha mercenaries and ninja commandos; and, of course, have the House Ways and Means Committee approve the money to pay for them. Then, if you guys want to invade Iran and kill all those towel-head bastards, bomb their cities to smoking rubble, and sow their fields with salt and Agent Orange, you can do it any time you feel like it.”
“[Expletive] outstanding!” Trey exulted, leaping halfway out of his seat. “[Expletive]-A, Collins, like they say, you may be some kind of intellectual piece of [expletive], always talking out of a [expletive] book nobody’s ever [expletive] heard of, but [expletive] me if you aren’t some kind of God-damned [expletive] genius!”
“Thanks,” I dryly responded. “Then, of course, there is likewise no constitutional prohibition or restriction on the capability of Congress to extend the powers of the Capitol Police to include international intelligence gathering, analysis and… implementation… whether that be overt, covert, or… completely clandestine.”
Trey’s eyes lit up with excitement. “You mean, we could, like, you know, conduct… surveillance? We could… rendition designated terrorists to… you know… foreign countries like Egypt that are members of a coalition organized by the Senate? We could… um… water board our captives on our Congressional aircraft carriers stationed on the high seas, and clip car battery cables to their taints and their tongues and flip the switch and show them a thing or two about what it means to mess with real Americans like us?”
“All you guys need,” I observed, “is enough votes to pass the requisite legislation, appropriate the necessary money and override any vetoes that might come out of the White House.”
“And the Supreme Court,” Trey implored, his eyes screaming at me with an expectation which I have only seen surpassed by toddlers inquiring about the existence of Santa Claus, “you think they will go along with all of this [expletive] you’re talking?”
“SCOTUS,” I assured him, “thanks to the assiduous efforts of your conservative colleagues over last few decades, presently has a majority of Justices who will get down on their knees in their deep and distinguished judicial robes and [expletive] your [expletive] for the opportunity to [expletive] President Obama and anybody who ever voted for him or any other Democrat since 1930.”
At that, Trey’s eyes rolled back in his head and he emitted a series of guttural vocalizations. After a refractory period of about ninety seconds, during which he appeared to be more or less unconscious, he awoke, looked around with a bewildered countenance and then stared down in shock at his crotch, where a small wet spot had appeared on his pants.
“Um… er… that’s great,” he mumbled, fumbling to pack up and leave, and now an even deeper shade of crimson than he had displayed in his high dungeon of rage. “I… I’ll… ah… get this all back to Senator Cotton as soon as possible. I’m… uh… sure he’ll be as… um… excited as I am about these ideas. Excuse me.”
Trey made for the door, shamefaced.
“Please, sir,” I requested as his hand touched the knob, “let that gentlemen waiting out there whom you threw out of my office know that we can now resume our conversation about how to save the hapless inhabitants of Vanuatu from disease and starvation, if you will.”
“What?” Trey ejaculated in surprise. “Uh… sure… the bald skinny slope in the monkey suit? Sure. I’ll send him right back in.”
“Spoken like a true Tea Party Republican,” I told him.
“Um… right,” he replied with a fleeting glance down at his crotch, “that’s us… no doubt about it.”