AND THE SHEEP TREMBLE

Mark Twain liked to say that non-fiction writing was more humorous than fiction because the latter, but not the former, is constrained by plausibility. Accordingly, if I were to sit down and write a fictional skit about a fearmongering neocon letting his imagination run wild, it would never be as funny as this:

The Nevada Republican (Congressman Jon Porter), who returned Tuesday from his fourth trip to Iraq, met with U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Iraqi Deputy President Tariq al-Hashimi and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.

"To a person, they said there would be genocide, gas prices in the U.S. would rise to eight or nine dollars a gallon, al-Qaida would continue its expansion, and Iran would take over that portion of the world if we leave," Porter said Wednesday in a phone interview from Las Vegas.

And….your dog would die…and…they'll stop making that flavor of Mountain Dew that you really like….and….you'll gain 20 pounds…and…Sadaam Hussein will come to your house and sodomize you. See? If a fiction writer made up Porter's comments and attributed them to a Congressman, it wouldn't be plausible; they're so fucking stupid that the average reader would consider them inauthentic. The story's claim to realism would be mortally wounded. So, not to get all philosophical or anything, Porter's comments actually had to happen in order to be considered plausible words from the mouth of a Congressman. Plausibility usually precedes an event, but I suppose all rules are made for breaking.

So are you effectively terrified and submissive yet, America? You don't like genocide, do you? And just imagine how badly $9 gasoline will decimate your pocketbook. I guess we better not leave Iraq after all! I mean, Porter "heard" this (although a great argument can be made for suggesting that he fabricated the story entirely) from luminaries like General Saint Petraeus himself and Iraqi "Deputy President" Tariq al-Hashimi. If any two individuals on the planet have complete, total clairvoyance regarding future gasoline prices at the pump, it's those guys.

While all of Porter's claims are idiotic, I'm particularly stuck on the "eight or nine bucks a gallon" part. He is apparently rolling the dice that 99% of America is too stupid to remember that the exact same argument, word for word, was used in 1990. If we don't push Sadaam out of Kuwait, we'll be paying out the nose for gas! Never mind that such an argument makes absolutely no logical sense and the arrived-upon price ("eight or nine" dollars) is pulled, with tremendous care, directly out of Jon Porter's ass.

Second, although I am convinced that Porter fabricated this quote (or at least the dollar amount), let us briefly enter the alternate reality in which it is true. We wake up tomorrow and gas is $9. A novel, alternate solution to such a problem would have been to take the half-trillion dollars we've pissed away in Iraq, divide it equally among the ~230 million Americans of driving age, and send them all a check for $2174. That would buy each of them 241.5 gallons of gas, sufficient for 4830 miles of driving in a 20mpg vehicle.

The preceding paragraph is, of course, fiction. Which is why it is implausible. The actual "solution" – war and bloody, pointless occupation – had to happen to be conceivable.