Political

I wrote this on The Shack recently, and was fairly proud of it:

Until a few years ago, the US was like that big, rich goofy buddy you see here and there on weekends. He got a lot of chicks, he drove a big obnoxious car with an arooga horn, and he yelled "DUDE!" a lot. Occasionally he did some bad things, but we forgave him because his heart was in the right place. He'd usually be back buying the drinks pretty soon, and things would be back to normal.

Unfortunately, because of who he was, his cash, his attitude, etc he copped quite a bit of jealous crap from other people at the bar. They'd try and pick fights, or give him shit, or convince us he was some avatar of Satan. We'd just laugh at those dipsticks, because we knew the guy and thought he was generally ok. Some of the stories about stuff he'd done or bar fights he'd been in were a bit scary, but we let that slide because he was our friend.

One night, somebody throws a beer mug and cracks his head wide open. He goes to the hospital, has a bunch of stitches, and comes back a few nights later really pissed off. He starts taking people out the back of the bar and kicking the shit out of them, and talking about how nobody is safe to have a drink and good time anymore, and if how we're not with him, we're against him. When he doesn't find the guy who hit him with the mug, he goes to another bar and beats the guys there up, and talks about heading off to other bars to get the people who don't like him as well.

Things go downhill from there, and the words of the people in the shadows are sounding a lot less hollow, as he's generally being an asshole and not listening to anything we're saying. He's sure as hell not buying drinks anymore, and he's not doing anything about that big car dripping oil all over the parking lot or the enormous bar tab he's accumulating. We want our goofy old drinking buddy back, not this selfish, arrogant prick who believes he's on some kind of lone wolf crusade against everyone.