A Special Announcement From President Barack Hussein Obama

My fellow Americans, my colleagues and I in the Democratic Party recently made a debt deal with our friends across the aisle in the Republican Party. This deal averted a crisis—the debt ceiling was raised and our country avoided default—but the deal, devoid as it was of revenue and full of spending cuts, also left many of my supporters feeling disappointed and abandoned.

I hear what you’ve been saying: That I’m weak. That I’m a master of capitulation and accommodation, but not of fighting. That I might as well go ahead and join the Tea Party as I’m helping them achieve their agenda. Well, I’m out of traditional ideas. The intransigence of my opposition and the dire economic situation of our country calls for me to make large and novel changes in the way my administration does things.

You say I might as well be a Tea Party member, I say that’s as good as any idea that I’ve heard. Effective immediately I, Barack Hussein Obama, am joining the Tea Party and will take up and attempt to complete their agenda. The most important thing for this country is that my presidency fails and that I join the ranks of Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush as a noble one-termer. I was on the road to achieving that goal previously, but with my direct aid, we as a nation can make sure that this is a certainty.

Starting today, immediately following every speech I make, I will go outside and protest whatever I just said while holding misspelled, racist and/or ill informed signs. Despite releasing my long-form birth certificate, I will soon provide proof that I was indeed born in Kenya and will conduct all presidential business in traditional Kenyan garb. And we are still researching the constitutionality of this, but I will be replacing my Vice President, Joe Biden, with the rotting corpse of Ronald Reagan

This is a drastic step, but I’m tired of losing. If you can’t beat ‘em, right? I came in talking about changing the tone in Washington and doing things in the spirit of bi-partisanship so here I am walking the walk.

No, this will not create jobs. It won’t fix our country’s wounded credit rating. It won’t save us from another recession or stop our long slide from the dominant power in the world to…well, I’m not sure where we will end up. Like many of my compromises, it will certainly redistribute the nation’s wealth into the hands of “job creators” who will in turn, horde the money and not create any jobs.

All of that is true. Why am I joining the Tea Party again? Because the next Depression is on the horizon and I’m tired of fighting it. As a matter of fact, it’s just about here. My time will be better spent coming up with a cool name for it: The Greater Depression. I’m partial to that one. The Great Depression II: The Electric Boogaloo. Nah, too predictable. Perhaps The Electric Brokealoo. Maybe. I don’t know.

It’ll come to me, maybe at night when I tuck Malia and Sasha into bed. I’ll look at their faces and imagine them as women—older and post-apocalyptic in demeanor—living through the aftermath of our decisions to be bullies and cowards and I will see them mouthing words and those words will be sad, but also perfect in describing the time some decided to scorch the earth and others decided to let it burn.

*

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.