The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Winston Churchill
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Buck lived inside a cramped metal cage inside a cramped Mississippi animal shelter. The mixed-breed pitbull pup was serving time here until a kindheart gifted him with freedom; until then, it was hoped that the roly-poly little chap could find temporary arrangements because the cramped metal cage he was stuffed in was needed for the larger dogs that were coming in all too frequently.
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The staff made desperate calls to some of the regular donors, patrons, and previous adoptees pleading “to take him in just temporary ‘til we get more room.” This is an old ploy used by animal shelters–it is hoped the foster pets will become permanent pets who never have to return to this loud, miserable place. When permanent adoptions do occur, they erupt in celebration. The adopters are joyously called foster failures.
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Buck was fostered out “just ‘til he finds his fur-ever family. We really can’t take in any more dogs” by a couple in Knob Creek named Jennifer and Jerome Randolph. Two weeks later, the couple became foster failures . . . again.
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The Randolphs brought the stored crate, puppy pads, and urine remover spray bottle back up from the basement that they swore they were never going to use again . . . and used them again. They gifted Buck with his freedom, a fur-ever home, and a new name to replace his prison one.
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They knew very little about Winston Churchill, except that the English statesman led Great Britain through WWII and was now probably now dead, as he was mostly glossed over in high school history class, but they did remember his looks from the iconic photographs–and noticed that Buck shared a remarkable resemblance to the man, even at a few months old. Buck would now respond to “Winston,”in honor of his human doppelganger.
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Curious to learn more about the man, Jennifer got out the “C” volume of the World Book one Saturday afternoon and found the entry. “Wow! Check this out!” she told her husband, taken aback. “Winston Churchill was born November 30, 1874 in Oxfordshire, England. Our little pooch here was pulled from the refuge of a rotting porch and brought to a shelter in Oxford, Mississippi . . . on November 30, 1974–exactly one hundred years to the day.”
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“Just a coincidence, Honey,” he replied. “It’s like that Believe it Or Not panel in the Sunday funnies. Stuff like that happens all the time.”
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“Then check this out,” she shot back, aiming for his skepticism. “His mother’s maiden name was Jennie Jerome. She was an American from the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, New York.”
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“Okay, okay. So her name was our first names put together, and Cobble Hill and Knob Creek kind of sound the same, I have to admit. But come on . . . “
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“His father was an aristocratic British politician with the first name of Randolph–our last name, buster.”
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“Okie-dokie,” he replied with a condescending smirk on his face.
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Jennifer shot back a double-barreled peeved look this time, and asked, “Okie-dokie, smokey, and just what were the two primary breeds the shelter said our Winston was? Huh, smart guy? American Staffordshireterrier and probably British bulldog—also the man’s nickname! American mother, English father. Case closed.”
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Jerome pantomimed waving the white flag. “You win, just like Nixon did.” He sighed and threw up his hands, still shocked, disappointed, and angry over the Senate Watergate Hearings held in DC over the summer that had riveted America.
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Despite the obvious self-incriminating comments and racist conversations revealed by Tricky Dick’s cache of secret White House tapes; despite the sworn testimony of his right-hand cronies, John Dean and Charles Colson, detailing the cover-up and what the President knew and when he knew it; despite the President’s 26% approval rating, a Republican Senate majority failed to impeach or convict him of any crime. On August 8, 1974, Richard Milhouse Nixon returned to the White House, and was re-elected for an unconstitutional third term in 1976 by a grassroots campaign waged by AM radio loudmouths and from pulpits across small-town America. His constituency became his cult.
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In that sham election, the country’s last–and on its 200th birthday–Nixon lost to Jimmy Carter by seven million popular votes; lost the Electoral College vote by a landslide, but, on January 6, 1977, Vice-President Gerald R. Ford refused to validate the election results. This gave Republicans in GOP-controlled states time to submit enough fake slates after a planned attack on the Capitol building to give Nixon the “win.”A conservative Supreme Court, three members who were rushed to the bench by the president since 1970, rubber-stamped the decision.
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So, just like that, just like ancient Rome, the United States of America was transformed from a representative democracy into a dictatorship almost overnight, without a single shot fired. Nixon was America's Claudius.
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Winston, now two, and happy and healthy, lived up to his reincarnated spirit’s pre-mortem reputation–breaking up fights or potential fights between the other rescue dogs in the home by imploring the same appeals he did while shaping a post-war peace at the Yalta Conference: he told the other foster-failed pooches that if FDR and Stalin could get along, so could this motley collection of misfit throwaways.
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On February 16, 1977, ‘Winnie’ (the pet’s pet name, as well as the man’s pet name) was sprawled across Jerome’s lap, watching the shill who replaced Cronkite lie about how the election was certainly not stolen–they were just protecting its integrity. Stewing as the “journalist” shamelessly exulted Premiere Richard M. Nixon, Jerome was becoming more and more vexed he sensed, so the dog decided to comfort his man with his first words:
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“You know, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” The dog looked up with his patented “you’re-fixin'-to-leave-me-again-all-day” look, licked his cheek, then laid his head back down.
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Jerome, after changing his tighty-whities, suddenly realized that his wife’s half-baked belief was true: Winston was not quite all dog. He would keep the conversation between man and mongrel to himself, though, knowing that Jennifer would only accuse him of egging her on, and then get all pissed-off for being teased. No way! he decided, preferring her hot, home-cooked dinners over frozen factory ones.
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As the year progressed, and into 1978, the Randolphs began to feel unsettled and unsafe in Knob Creek, Mississippi, despite the rebranded God & Patriot Party’s increased presence of law and order, including tanks and troops. They heard rumors that their district had purged the rolls of “unqualified” voters before Election Day, and no doubt took note of the ‘D’ behind their names before doing so.
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Their neighbors in proximity, all with ‘R’s after their names on the voter roll, began hanging American flags silk-screened with Nixon’s sniveling mug on them, or were bringing their stars-and-bars out of storage to flaunt–and these were the same folks who castigated the Commie draft dodgers up North for burning their Stars-and-Stripes! So among the lies, was hypocrisy. Maybe this was just the start of the country now called “New America” by the autocratic-powers-that-be, Jerome fretted.
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On the morning of April 21, Winston seemed to sense some tension as his foster failures were eating their eggs and bacon (mmmmmm, bacon!). Jerome was reading a story aloud from the Oxford Eagle about the new travel ban Nixon enacted by executive order overnight for travelers from Israel. He wasn’t really surprised, since this little tidbit appeared in the Eagle just before it became a white-washing propaganda organ for the God & Patriot Party:
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"The Jews are all over the government," Nixon complained to his chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, in an Oval Office meeting recorded on one of a set of White House tapes released by the National Archives. Nixon said the Jews needed to be brought under control by putting someone "in charge who is not Jewish" in key agencies. Washington "is full of Jews," the president asserted. "Most Jews are disloyal."
The tapes revealed Nixon talking about selling ambassadorships, railing against women and other minorities, complaining about the drinking habits of leading members of Congress, and exchanging conspiracy theories with Kissinger and other top aides.
“I don’t want to hear that asshole’s name this early in the morning, Honey, so ZIP IT!” Jennifer said sharply enough to rouse their peace-making pit.
“But Nixon seems to be gunning for those not of thewhite, Christian type,” he replied, the tension in the room beginning to perk like the coffeemaker. “Wake up, Jen! They held a torchlit “Unite the Right” rally chanting, “Jews will not replace us, for fuck’s sake!”
The dog, waiting patiently for his bowl of grease-dripped kibble, now too upset to eat, spoke up for only the second time—the first around Jennifer—telling them, “My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.”
The two looked down at the dog, looked up at each other, burst out laughing, then looked stunned. Winston, instead of the snarl and bark of a pitbull, sounded exactly like he did in the old newsreels!
“Tell me I was right, buster,” she demanded after their initial shock wore off. “Winston Randolph is Winston Churchill! Just like I said when we first brought him home. Tell me I was right!”
“Yes, Jennifer, you were right,” he said, laughing.
“I don’t hear you . . .” she fakely bemoaned.
“Yes, Jennifer, you were right,” he repeated, happy for a change that she won another argument.
“I like a man who grins when he fights,” the dog chimed in in an English accent, and returned to his baconaded dog food.
Whatever it took to mediate a successful outcome.
By the early 1980s, New America showed few traces left of the old U. S. A. To truly be one nation under God, Nixon declared that all states be abolished, and any traces of their individual history destroyed. His new laws and dictates would now go directly to “We, the People'' with complete transparency, and without the corruption of “liberal interference,” he bragged to his brainwashed saps and suckers who were conditioned not to trust “big government.”
The Constitution was suspended. The nation was now being run by a corrupt, lying, megalomaniac, a straw-man Congress of well-bribed senators; a conservative Supreme Court willing to do the bidding (after consulting with Southern Baptist Convention leaders, first); and a stable of crooked billionaire businessmen. New America had become a mongrel, itself: part autocracy, part theocracy, part oligarchy.
In 1982, the Randolphs' premonitions of possible retaliation for being uncovered as “liberal extremists” by banner-waving, self-righteous, Knob Creekers had proven prophetic. Getting the mail one day in May, Jennifer opened the box and found a pair of severed donkey ears with a note attached that scrawled: DED FORver, BUTTERCUPS! Winston, ever the moderator, comforted her back to the house by saying, “You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
Things got worse. Much worse. In 1984, the Supreme Court reversed its Roe v Wade decision it made a decade earlier; declared Evangelical Christianity the official State religion; and reinstated the Alien and Sedition Acts (first enacted in 1798), which made it illegal to make false or malicious statements about the federal government or the leaders in it. Kangaroo courts across the land decided what was false or malicious.
The National Department of Educational Freedom reviewed and banned textbooks that taught concepts it deemed ”objectionable” or were on the long list of its prohibited topics. Students in Christian charter schools were taught that slavery gave the enslaved valuable life skills after the traitor Lincoln turned them loose.Controversial belief sets were formally outlawed.
Curriculums were devised by parents; teachers, bound by the Lord’s Prayer, were restricted by the “Don’t Say Gay” law from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity. They could be terminated for extolling “cancel culture” and/or other “dangerous” ideas, not consistent with the white Christian founding of the country. This was done to protect the children, the department declared.
The shills in the Senate approved bills that gave huge tax cuts and hefty subsidy payments to the rich, while cutting social services for the rest. They axed most ‘red tape’ like they promised the gullible, including a 30% cut in the same Environmental Protection Agency that Nixon himself created in 1970. They passed a law that exempted themselves from any crime, under the dressage of legislative privilege.
In 1985, the Randolphs began hearing stories of “radical-leftist-conversion-camps” popping up across New America’s out-of-the-way places, like the pens the Native population were herded into a hundred years before. Another echo from the same bloody era repeated itself, as well—rewards were being given, not for Injun scalps, but for bringing in fag and Jew-boy penises, because the unofficial national motto was now, “The only good Sodomites and Kikes are dead Sodomites and Kikes.”
They heard of bounty rumors--turning in a suspicious neighbor for favors–similar to the ones already on the books for reporting women seeking illegal abortions. They began hearing rumors of an Underground Railroad, similar to the one that escaping slaves used to flee to Canada, but in this case, was designed to assist former Democrats (hold-overs from when America still was a two-party system), who were fleeing to Mexico.
Winston was mostly silent that year, enjoying being a dog, mostly, but watched Jennifer and Jerome fret and stew now more than ever. On May 25, he decided he had had enough. He lifted his head off his blinkie, recommended that they take action by telling them, “Letour advance worrying become advance thinking and planning,” and went back to his nap.
Sage advice that the foster failures took to heart; good thing because on the night of February 6, 1986, their house and everything in it was toasted with a Molotov cocktail. Luckily, all the living got out safe, but, now with everything in ash, it was time to see if el Ferrocarril Subterráneo actuallyexisted. All they had to go on was a crudely drawn map connecting the dots from Knob Creek, Mississippi to Reynosa, Mexico, and the clue that all the safe-houses were marked by NIXON/AGNEW ‘72 yard signs.
Jerome grabbed the pesos and their passports from the fireproof safe; Jennifer grabbed the canteens and freeze-dried foods she had cached away in her little gardening shed out back that was still standing; the dog-pack grabbed the opportunity to get their foster failures to safety–with Winston leading the way, stating modestly, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
The Randolphs fled for their lives at midnight with the big dog still barking platitudes to the troops. “Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival,” Winston growled defiantly, and implored the refugees southwest to freedom.
After only four days on the Railroad near Crystal Springs, Jennifer began to worry about the blisters on her feet that were already forming, about finding food and shelter along the way, and about whether they would receive asylum at the border . . . or not. Winston reminded her to stay calm and just keep moving forward. “Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time,” the guide dog-man told her calmly, but sternly.
When they got to Baton Rouge and Jerome suggested that they just stay here awhile because his legs were shot now, too, especially after fighting the hefty breezes that had pummeled them all week, Winston encouraged him onward with, “kites rise highest against the wind - not with it”.
They hiked southwestward, Winston sniffing out the trail, the other adoptees defending their foster failures should they be jumped, and warning them of any possible approaching danger.
By July, the wandering tribe reached Houston–the half-way point–in full heat and humidity. “If you're going through hell, keep going,” Winnie said in celebration to those panting and sweating alongside him.
In mid-September, after an overnight layover of resting up and eating well in Corpus Christi, Winston admonished his troops: “This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.”
When they saw the road sign that read ‘New America/Mexico Border 150 miles’, he gave an encouraging shout-out: “Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
On November 27–Thanksgiving Day back in New America–a time to thank gracious King Dick for all that he has bestowed; also, a time to express this thanks with a tax-free donation to one of his political action committees (that were in actuality slush funds to pay off politicians and attorneys)–and they crossed into Mexico with passports accepted.
The escape went without a hitch. The folks with the yard signs along the way were friendly and helpful, providing nourishment and directions forward. The motley collection of misfit throwaways fended off all perceived threats—a chipmunk near Baptist; a couple blue jays outside Rosedale, a pack of butt-sniffing strays in Beaumont. Jennifer’s blisters healed and Jerome’s leg muscles grew stronger. Winston kept them pushing ahead. All in all, it was a nice little 1,000 mile walk, safe from the ruins of Nixon’s New America
Stretched out under a shade tree in a Reynosa public park while the rest of the mutts were flolicking in the fishpond, Winston licked his people’s faces, then orated floridly:
“When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst. We have surmounted all the perils and endured all the agonies of the past. We shall provide against and thus prevail over the dangers and problems of the future, withhold no sacrifice, grudge no toil, seek no sordid gain, fear no foe. All will be well. We have, I believe, within us the life-strength and guiding light by which the tormented world around us may find the harbour of safety, after a storm-beaten voyage.”
Jerome scratched the dog’s belly and laughed. “Winnie, you’re alway ready with a hyperbole for speech. Love ya, boy.”
“Woof!”
On January 2, 1987, inside a pequeña casa just outside the town of El Trece, the nearly 13-year old, four-legged Moses suffered a stroke. Two days later, he wheezed, “I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter,” and gently passed away. The foster failures and the rescues held a grand funeral fit for a prime minister, and buried him in the desert.
Jennifer noted that Winston Churchill Randolph died of the same cause, on the same date, as his doppelgänger, Winston Spencer Churchill, the guiding force who delivered the Brits from Hitler’s evil clutches.
Rest in peace, Winnies old chaps.
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