My Secret Agenda!

Congress and the President did a very wise and brave thing the other day by setting spies on me. I can now rest assured that we are all safer, especially from me.

I need watching. I cannot be trusted. I might be a terrorist. How do I know I am not?

“Uh Hugh, what makes you think you are a terrorist?” my wife Gladys asks with that habitual clench of her teeth I so adore.

What makes you think I am not?

Yes, it is true that I was born in this country of western European descent.

But so was John Walker Lindh!

Sure, I attended middle-class schools, populated mostly by other European-Americans.

That is a very suspicious hyphenate! Already, my loyalties seem less than pure. It is but a short step from hyphenates to IEDs; from collecting thousands of Euro-Pop CDs (while forcing innocent American ears to listen to them) and jokes about being unable to type the President’s name to launching an unprecedented rain of destruction upon numberless, harmless Americans!

Right now, unbeknownst to even me, I might be plotting a terrorist attack!

Gladys’ eyebrows disappear into her hair. “And just um, who would you plot against?”

“Whom,” I riposte, waving at the phone book. Lots of choices, right there! Full of people I could be out to get. If your name is in the phone book, believe me, I bear watching!

Just because I am paranoid does not mean I am not out to get you.

Hey, people fool themselves all the time! Take, for instance, my love for all the girls that I really believed loved me back; or who would somehow get around to it if I just slept on their doorsteps long enough and ran in tight perfect circles screaming my head off.

I was crushingly mistaken. And if I am mistaken about things like that, how do I know I am not mistaken about being a loyal American?

At this point, Gladys is tapping her foot, her hands on her hips, staring at the attic ceiling: “Hugh, you are not doing anything illegal! What are you so worried about?”

That is a very very silly question. If you were all paying very close attention to me, you would see signposts to deadly danger all along the way! Consider the following clues:

When I was young, I once got a speeding ticket. I went drunk driving a couple of times. Or was it more? Maybe I drove drunkenly every night, but was too drunk to remember! Or I repressed the memories! Maybe I buried bodies in the basement of every house I’ve ever lived in! I just forgot! I could not handle the truth (as Jack Nicholson said to me once. Really! He did! Right there in the theater!)! Repressed Memory Syndrome! A-HA!

I cannot even be trusted to recall whether I went on a drunken rampage! The heart is a deceitful thing! The Bible says so and all things that are said—not just in the Bible—must be considered true until 100%-plus proven false. Consider the following piece of perfect logic:

You cannot prove the Earth is not flat! It might become flat tomorrow!

(See how the bold font represents my sincere, passionately jabbing finger, the guaranteed clincher to all arguments.)

What a just world it would be if all astronomy and physics textbooks devoted a full 50% of their text to the Flat Earth Controversy! Do not forget, I am only promoting standards of fairness in a democratic society’s marketplace of ideas. But until that rosy day, we will just have to subject the scientists to enhanced interrogation until they confess their lies.

What? It is logically impossible to prove a negative? Like, that is a serious argument? Remember! Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!

There is always more than we can see. All you have to say is “Barack Obama is a Muslim” and he becomes one. Saying things makes them true. Saying them again makes them more true. (No, sorry, saying things are not true makes them proven incontrovertible facts!)

Even if you lived with Obama 24/7, even if you followed him into the bathroom and the shower and slept right between him and Michelle, you will never be able to prove he is not thinking Secret Muslim Thoughts!

Scott McClellan is fomenting a new plot to bomb America. How do we tell? Because he wrote that book about President . . . President . . . he wrote that book. This leads us to the following True Exact Formula:

McClellan Betrays President > McClellan Betrays Country = McClellan Plots Terrorist Attacks.

A little math goes a long way!

Another significant clue pointing to my future evil-doing: Osama bin Laden and I both have the hots for Whitney Houston!

Unable to counter my arguments, Gladys has crawled out on the roof for some fresh air: “Why do you hate crackpots so much?” I call after her.

I will now conclude my argument with quotes from Two Great Thinkers Who Will Prove My Point:

Ernest Hemingway: “I know now that there is no one thing that is true—it is all true.”

The Amazing Criswell: “Can you prove that it didn’t happen!?”

Excuse me while I wipe the dust of your feeble arguments from the palms of my hands.

Now somebody call Homeland Security! And call Sean Hannity! I have to warn someone about My Secret Agenda, and it might as well be him because everyone (yes, you) believes Sean Hannity!

That will put a stop to me! Once and for all!

Thank you for your help.

(Photo by Gladys)