by Zbignew Zingh

The doctor read my chart with nonchalance. “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Zingh? Your blood pressure is normal, your blood chemistry is normal. You don't seem to have anything physically wrong with you.” He tapped his golf putter on my back and listened to me breathe through a stethoscope.

I sat listlessly on the doctor's examination bench. He wore a flag pin in his white coat lapel. While waiting for his office to confirm that I either had enough attachable assets and/or medical insurance for him to see me, I had glanced at the glossy magazines in the doctor's reception area. I saw some stories about Democracy on the March and about Michael Jackson and whatever Hollywood starlet was cheating on whomever and who survived what on which weird reality television show.

“I'm feeling really ill,” I told the doctor. “I haven't felt well since November.”

“You should take a vacation,” answered the doctor as he checked his stock portfolio on his Blackberry, “someplace warm and friendly like Haiti or Columbia or Saudi Arabia.”

“Maybe you have flat feet?” he answered helpfully.

“Try putting some cotton in your ears. He will sound a lot better.”

“You'd probably feel better if you invested your retirement money in oil futures.”

“Take one Paxil, two aspirin, three Vioxx, four Celebrex, five Bextra, a fifth of bourbon and call me if you wake up in the morning.”

“You should buy a big SUV yourself,” said the doctor, “they're great if you live in them and don't have to drive anywhere.”

“Ah,” replied the doctor, “I can prescribe these little pills for impotence!”

“I mean politically impotent, doctor! What can you prescribe for chronic depression and political impotence?”

The doctor stroked his chin. “Well,” he said, “if you feel politically 'out of it', then maybe we can do a little cosmetic surgery.” He paused to mentally tally the cost of the procedures he would do to me and how much money he needed to buy a third vacation home.

“Let's see, we could do a hair transplant to make you look as young and vital as Bill Frist. We can do a liposuction on your flabby, socialist, yellow belly. We could shorten and straighten your nose so that you have a more manly “American” look. We can straighten your teeth and bleach them pearly white. Then we could inject your cheeks with Botox to give your face a perpetually healthy, happy and conservative smile. Of course,” said my doctor, “ all of this would merely make you look more 'normal' – inside, you would still have the sick, queasy soul of a “liberal”... and you would undoubtedly remain just as impotent as you are now.

“However, for really difficult cases like yours,” the doctor continued, “I recommend that you see a specialist for political replacement surgery. It's difficult, expensive surgery, but it might be the only way to restore your sense of well-being.

“First,” the doctor continued, “we will have to surgically remove your thumbs. You have opposing thumbs, you know, and these days America really does not tolerate any form of opposition.

“Then we can amputate your left ear so that you hear only what people say to you on your right side. At the stump of your left ear, inside the cochlear, we will implant a micro-chip/transducer to communicate the soothing words of Ann Coulter cooing conservative dogma. Then we will use a laser to shorten the focal length of your eyes such that your vision won't extend beyond the tip of your nose and cauterize your nostrils shut so that any of the Administration's explanations about anything will pass your smell test. We can pith that part of your brain that goes into seizures whenever you hear about military recruiting scandals or the War in Iraq or the secret incarceration of 'disappeared' detainees. We will surgically insert a steel flagpole up your spine to give you some backbone. Last, but not least, we will replace your weak, left-sided ticker with a strong, right-sided, red-blooded, rock-hard conservative heart that will keep you patriotically pumped even when the Truth about what America has been doing would ordinarily cause violent ventricular fibrillation.

“Political replacement surgery will also require that you undergo radiation therapy so that you will learn to love nuclear energy as an alternative energy source, kidney dialysis so that you can safely drink polluted ground water, and removal of your taste buds so that you can learn to swallow just about anything that is fed to you by industrial agribusiness, corporate media or the government.

“Of course, all of these medical procedures will be done under a general political anesthetic, like an intravenous cocktail of Fox television, Clear Channel radio, high-test gasoline, hydrogenated transfat, genetically modified corn syrup and born-again-morphine. Naturally, you aren't supposed to 'come out of it' at the end of the surgery, because remaining in a political coma is part of the cure and your ticket to joining the ranks of the electoral majority.

“Your post-surgery rehabilitation program will include six weeks of prayer therapy, UV tanning to burn off the 'pink' in your skin, constitutional desensitization classes, courses in how to negotiate through aggression and bullying, and, of course, inspirational videos by Dick Cheney, Kenneth Lay, Jerry Falwell, Silvio Berlusconi (with English subtitles), Ahmed Chalabi (with English subtitles), and George W. Bush (with English subtitles).”

The doctor was still visualizing his third vacation home earned from my medical bills when I politely excused myself, stifled an Edvard Munch-scream and hurriedly exited out of his office, my shirt still unbuttoned and my shoelaces untied.

My head throbbed. My belly still ached. I was still feeling depressed and impotent. I walked out into the streets among hundreds, thousands of equally bummed-out, sick-to-their-stomachs people. It was the same in Great Britain, Egypt, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Bolivia, France and Panama. It was as though we were in the throes of a political pandemic, a world-wide pox of diseased leadership.

I realized that, in fact, we were all infected with some type of rat-borne or electronic media-borne plague. But I also realized that there was no need for political replacement surgery. Indeed, our feeling ill was an appropriate and healthy response to the miasma in the air. Indeed, it was the healthiest among us who felt most unwell due to the sickness of the times, and it was the least healthy in heart and mind who seemed to thrive on society's disease.

In time, however, we would develop our own antibodies. In time, we would learn how to immunize ourselves and how to practice good election hygiene. In time, the social toxins and political pathogens would be flushed out of our system. In time we would heal ourselves.

I began to feel better just thinking about it. I began to feel better thinking about how I could bring it about.