(Sips whiskey. Hand trembles as he places glass on podium, out of sight of cameras.)

My fellow Americans. As great-grandmother Bernthal once said, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, make something up.” (Pauses for laugh. Pans room. Eyes dart as if seeking someone.) I trust your judgment to discern fact from fiction over the coming minutes.

Today, our imperial forces stand astride the cradle of civilization, while our society stands enthralled before the temple of Mars. This is a place we’ve visited before, but only out of need. For the first time in our history we visit this grim place by choice. The health of our sons and daughters—the future of our civilization—rests upon whether we choose to leave our offerings here, or to journey on to the respites of Venus and Dionysus, only a little further down the path.

(Long pause for breath. Glances, quickly and nervously, at the TelePrompTer, noticed only by the most attentive observers, of which there are few. Voice cracks slightly as he continues.)

Today, the most able and gifted among us enjoy the best fruits of the land, while the weakest and the least-endowed make do with fatty, tainted beef and fried potatoes. Make no mistake—our spiritual health suffers just as surely from this poverty of the flesh as from our mistaken worship of false idols. We privileged must seek always to share and guide our brothers and sisters to overflowing cups of organic, free-range nepenthe.

(Inhales deeply. Pauses, gathering strength for one more surge.)

Today, the wealthiest and best educated live in neighborhoods of clean and safe streets, while the less fortunate struggle in rural hovels and urban ghettos, beset by the twin blights of human despair and inhuman infestation. It is in these, our most benighted, that we see both our greatest shame and an opportunity for our greatest triumph. For if we can finally—finally—apply the highest ordinations of our reason to the cause of eradicating this poverty of the body, then surely we must ultimately triumph over the poverty of the spirit that so afflicts us. And then, maybe, the four horsemen and their visiting scourges—war, poverty, classism, racism—will trouble us no more.

My fellow Americans, this is your call today—seek always to make the world a place free of violence, terror, want and fear, and make of it instead a land of freedom, hope and justice.

(Runs swiftly from the podium to a chorus of resounding boos. Loses recall election in landslide.)