Who was that masked man?

Michael Lesher

Hello, my fellow Americans. I’m Joe Biden. Remember me? You may have heard of me from time to time over the past months – especially after my opponents in the Democratic primaries were all bullied into dropping out of the race to ensure I’d be the nominee. That made the process a lot simpler, don’t you think? We all like simple things. I know I do.

Well, today I’m happy to announce that, based on poll results, I expect very soon to be elected to the United States Senate. What’s that? Oh – I meant to say, to the presidency of Delaware. No, no, of the country. Yes, the whole country, the United States! That’s what I said the first time, isn’t it?

I’m sure you know that this victory comes after a hard-fought presidential campaign. And I want to personally thank each and every one of you who chipped in something to the fund to help keep me here in my basement, talking to you by long-distance video with this mask over my face even while nobody else is around – just to show you how much I care.

Actually, I can’t personally thank each of you, because I can’t see anybody down here in the basement. But that’s okay; money doesn’t mean much to me, except when I’m doing favors for the credit card companies or getting cushy jobs for my son Hunter. So why should your money mean anything to you?

Besides, everybody knows where I get my money. But I’ll say it again anyway: I haven’t taken one red cent from the Russkies, unlike some presidents I could name – not that I’m going to say which bastard I have in mind, because that wouldn’t be polite. And if you think I’m not being polite right now – do you, Fats? Well then, how’d you like to do some push-ups with me? See, I’m in great shape. Come to think of it, that reminds me of something else I don’t like about that bastard I’m too polite to name. But I can’t remember what it was now.

About this mask. I wear it over my face because every loyal American should know that the most important thing we can all do right now is to stay safe. And that’s just what I’ve been doing – staying safe in my basement, going out as little as possible to where I might have to debate someone (I won’t say who) or to give a speech to a live audience without cue cards. So you see, I’m living proof that staying safe is good for you. For me, it’s a part of the way my team is fixing – I mean, winning this election.

For you, it may mean losing your job and your health insurance, going hungry, and living under house arrest without having committed a crime. But we all do our part in our different ways.

In a couple of months, I’m going to swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And that’s another reason I wear this mask. You see, the orders requiring you to dress like mummies all violate the Constitution – something I’m sure you’d know if the liberal newspapers ever told you about it. We didn’t want to bother with that pesky process of asking your elected representatives if they liked the idea of making you muzzle yourselves.

So, just like everything else we wanted you to do since this election cycle got going, we had the masks ordered by a bunch of state governors who agreed it was time to get rid of “democracy” for the good of the country – which is all we care about. I mean, all those wild stories about a Killer Virus helped us see to it that you’d stay safe at home, keeping out of dangerous things like politics so that I could become President, instead of that overweight bast…well, you know who I mean.

Hell, I might have actually lost the election if it hadn’t been for that story in March claiming that a million Americans were certain to die of COVID19 within a few months. Okay, it wasn’t true, but it certainly made people more willing to give up their rights.

Anyway, the bottom line is that forcing people to wear masks required pretty much the overthrow of this country’s system of law. And if that doesn’t tell you how important the mask is, I don’t know what does.

Why, it’s more important than the Constitution, more important than democracy, more important than the “separation of powers” that used to prevent people like me from becoming dictators. It’s even more important than the Bill of Rights, that old piece of paper that says Americans have freedoms no one can take away without due process of law.

Amazing, isn’t it? And would you believe it, I know folks who actually refuse to wear a mask! Some people just don’t know what’s good for them.

As for me, I wear my mask proudly. And not just because it prevents you from seeing my whole face. The mask tells everybody what I stand for. Remember when I praised Strom Thurmond, the Senate’s leading segregationist, because, I said, he had made sure black people could go to prison for possessing “a piece of crack cocaine no bigger than this quarter”?

Well, back then that was the safe thing to do. Now it’s safer to pretend that I never said things like that. So I’m consistent: I always put safety first.

It’s the same thing with this virus. It’s not safe to let people walk where they want and say what they like unless you can expect them all to vote Democratic. Why, I’ve even opposed the idea of Americans going to the polls at all – because that’s not safe either. Yeah, I know we had normal voting in the middle of the Hong Kong Flu pandemic back in 1968. But in those days, we thought Hubert Humphrey might actually win in an honest vote.

I mean, that fellow could talk! Without even stealing another politician’s phrases, or borrowing another person’s history. Oh – it looks like somebody else wrote those last words onto my cue card. Scratch that part.

These days, I’m staying safe by never doing anything that won’t make rich people even richer. That’s why, seven months ago, I supported the giveaway of trillions of dollars to Big Business and the tanking of the economy for just about everybody else. Yes, it’s true that the other guy – you know, that guy in the White House – supported the giveaway too. But there’s a big difference between us. You can’t trust him. I mean, have you taken a good look at his hair? But you can trust me.

You see, I’ve come to save you from yourselves. I hate to put it like this, but if you guys weren’t all a bunch of good-for-nothing dopes, you would never have elected that – you know who – in the first place. So it’s obvious that we can’t mess around with any more nonsense like personal freedoms or representative government.

Now it’s time for masks – to remind every one of you that your fellow citizens are the greatest threats to your safety in the whole world, that what we used to call democracy, or community politics, is really bioterrorism.

Look at it this way: either you give up everything you’ve always been taught to believe in – the Bill of Rights, democracy, the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law – or else there’s a chance, a small chance but still a chance, that you might catch a flu. And good heavens, if you do catch one, you’ll only have, at least, a 99.8% chance of survival! Now that’s an easy choice to make, don’t you think?

So thank you for making me your next President. Yes, I know there are some people who say we won’t really know the outcome of the election until after the election. But that’s doing things the old-fashioned way. You read the papers, don’t you? This election has already been settled by the media, by the public intellectuals, by the experts. You don’t have anything to do with it, really. I’m going to be President because that’s the way it has to be – or else there wouldn’t be a happy ending.

You see it, don’t you? As I’m saying all this, there’s a bad guy trying to blow up Washington, and I’m the Lone Ranger. Don’t I look like him, kind of? Right now we’re almost at the end of the episode, the music is playing fast, the fuse on the powder keg is burning lower and lower, and I’m riding to the rescue…. Hiyo, Silver!

Make sure you stay home and don’t see me on Inauguration Day!

And don’t forget that mask!

Michael Lesher is an author, poet and lawyer whose legal work is mostly dedicated to issues connected with domestic abuse and child sexual abuse. His latest nonfiction book is Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities (McFarland & Co., 2014); his first collection of poetry, Surfaces, was published by The High Window in 2019. A memoir of his discovery of Orthodox Judaism as an adult – Turning Back: The Personal Journey of a “Born-Again” Jew – will be published in September 2020 by Lincoln Square Books.

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