Fear and Loathing In The Campaign

I am a many-issues voter. By now, I want them all to lose, every last one of them. Putin and Zelensky can tango into obscurity, locked forever in some insane echo chamber of their own making, each one screaming “Traitor!” into the other’s face. Trump and Harris? They should lose in such spectacular fashion that even their base camps burn the banners and start denying they ever supported them. And Netanyahu? Oh, Bibi should lose big. He should lose in biblical proportions, a plummeting fall so epic that even the sea would refuse to part for him.

If I had my way, here’s how it’d go: Netanyahu, grinning like a fox in a junkyard, somehow lands himself the U.S. presidency. 

But the glory is short-lived, as he’s swiftly brought down in a cascade of indictments — a conspiracy so vast even Oliver Stone wouldn’t touch it. He’s taken down by the very FBI he’s spent years trying to undermine, escorted off in handcuffs as the cameras roll. A tragic hero brought down by his own bad karma — or maybe just lousy luck.

Netanyahu, seeing his American power base slipping, tries to activate his old contacts in the New York and New Jersey mob — relics from his younger days when influence was just a handshake away. But what he finds is a shadow of what it used to be. The mob’s younger generation is more interested in crypto than concrete, and the old guard barely remembers his name. Desperation turns to exasperation as he realizes that his once-mighty influence now holds all the power of a rain-soaked match. All that swagger and bluster, wasted on ghosts of a power structure that’s faded to nothing.

Then there’s Putin and Zelensky. Ah, those two, bound together like a pair of drunks trying to stand. They swap sides, each wearing the other’s slogans and scripts, delivering their speeches like bad actors in a tragicomedy. Zelensky, looking dour in a fur hat, swigs vodka and speaks in cryptic, icy soundbites, while Putin throws on a T-shirt, flashes a peace sign, and pretends he’s running a late-night telethon for freedom. Each one so lost in the other’s rhetoric they’re practically begging for someone to end the nightmare.

In a twist of fate straight out of a vodka-fueled fever dream, they discover they share a babushka who hasn’t minced words since the days of Stalin. This woman is a tornado wrapped in a shawl, appearing at their joint press conference with a half-empty bottle of brandy and an unfiltered mouth. She proceeds to tear into them both — berating Zelensky for not calling, cursing Putin for every lie he’s told since birth. By the end, both men look like chastened schoolboys, heads down as she delivers a riot act so fierce it makes the Seder plates rattle. She wobbles off into the wings, muttering curses as they slink away, bewildered and shamed.

Harris, naturally, becomes president of Israel. She’s flown in with great fanfare, her advisors furiously flipping through Hebrew dictionaries. She takes the stage in Tel Aviv, and when the crowd expects something grand, she offers her trademark cackle, echoing like a ghost across the desert. Policy? Who needs policy? It’s all in the tone, baby, expecting to bring her brand of progressive optimism, only to discover that she’s been handed an ethnonationalist cabinet armed with every weapon she’s rubber-stamped over the years. Her appointees sneer at her idealism, rolling their eyes as she talks of diplomacy and “healing the rift.” She’s got all the tools, but none of the support, and each attempt at reform only throws more fuel onto the simmering fire of resentment. So there she stands, like a deer in headlights, trying to reason with generals whose main interest is a clenched fist, and cabinet members who view peace like it’s a punchline.

And Trump? Ah, here’s the pièce de résistance. Trump is sent to the Holy Land — specifically, Gaza and the West Bank. His new role: head of the Palestinian Authority. Day one, he takes to the podium, barely suppressing a grimace as he belts out, “Allahu Akbar!” Cameras flash, jaws drop. He’s got plans, you see. He’s going to turn the place into a Bedouin paradise, a 24-karat oasis of gaudy domes and velvet-rope VIP sections. The Dome of the Rock Resort & Casino — a dazzling monument to his vision. Camel rides for the kids, blackjack tables for the adults, and a nightly fireworks display that would have Moses rolling over in his grave.

It’s a Las Vegas mirage rising from the dunes, complete with golden towers, rooftop pools, and camel rides in the courtyard. The trouble? The sand won’t hold the weight of his fantasy, and every new construction sinks just a little deeper. Undeterred, he declares it “the best casino the Middle East has ever seen,” as the walls start to shift and collapse. By the time it’s half-built, it’s already

This is the political circus we’ve been condemned to, the theater of the absurd where every player’s a caricature, every promise is a punchline. But hey, at least it’d be a hell of a show.