A CHRISTMAS CAROL FOR ALL AMERICANS WHO CHERISH THIS COUNTRY MORE THAN THEIR REVERED ANCIENT HOMELANDS,  FORMER  TRIBAL AFFILIATIONS, CUSTOMS AND RITUALS

I woke from one of those dizzy nightmares brought on by a back pain relieving cocktail of vicodin and robaxin and it being the holiday season there in front of me were the ghastly spirits of Lenin, Some Chicago Radical and a bleary smear of a shifty Grey Presence that I couldn't make out, though I thought I knew who or what it was.  The three of them were glowing and wavering at the foot end of my bed like rubbery radium half-life faces on black-light t-shirts flickering in a night club.  I knew at once they were the ghastly rave vapors of past, present and future.

My still half-slumbering mind swam up into the middle of the conversation and Lenin was saying, "Well Marx was right, you know."

 The Chicago Radical shook his head. " Karl was a numbers guy. Numbers, numbers, always the numbers."  But in the next second his wavery he-radical image morphed into an angry she-radical with a bushy head of flourescent yellow hair and a snarl on her pink lipstick lips. "I hate accounting," she shouted.  "Kill the pigs!"

And then the Chicago Radical reverted to his former bland male self.  It was a bit o a jarring transposition, at least to me.  He looked like a mild-mannered middle-aged assistant manager at a McDonalds with overtones of professorial superiority.   He flipped one hand in a weary gesture that said he knew more than even the spirit of Lenin might, "Lennie-boy, Seeing the faults in the system is a nice way to make a living, but factual arguments get you nowhere."

His other half resolved herself back into the visual plane long enough to scream, "Right, kill the dirty fascist pigs!" 

On the instant of his quick-morphing return, the Chicago Radical looked only slightly annoyed; he was used to such interruptions.  "Solutions are what count. Results count. "

"Carl should have spent more time energizing his own penis!" the comeback lady with the pink lipstick shouted.

Lenin smoothed his beard, which was more dapper than I remembered it from the old photographs on the History Channel. "What is that crude-ness supposed to mean?" he said, calmly eyeing the wild feminine ranter.

The Chicago Radical returned and cleared his throat.  He looked a little embarrassed.  "She means Marx could count the spots on a pig and the stars in the sky, but he didn't know human nature."

"Which is?"

"Greed. Our natural instinct is to gather crops and horses and stuff against the bad times. We don't share it, we hoard it.   Nothing else matters--not race, religion, nationality--people are all the same; that's why we call them the masses.   And as individuals we're not nice.  We're all  mean mudderfuckers."

Lenin nodded, "It is true, we do not kiss the cheek that farts on us."

"Right.  See, us...that is, you and me and her, we're just the best of the bad.  The way I see it, in our deal people's stuff does get spread around.  It's just that we're the ones who say who gets what. And that's because we care.  We care more than anybody else.  So no more checks and balances.  Just us."

Lenin nodded his approval.  "You certainly have achieved the dumbness down spiral of  Mr. and Mrs Average American since World War II.  Commendable!"

The Chicago Radical took on a look of smug satisfaction.  "Well, yes.  Vietnam helped a lot.  There was Me First, the Sex Revolution, and Feel good, everything is going to be okay.  Incredible!   Not even a generation after the Great Depression and radiation bombs on Hiroshima, and they could believe that! 

"Still, you may not be out of the birch trees yet, Comrade."  Lenin gave the Chicago Radical a wry look, "What if your  Supremes will show some balls."

Pink Lips shrieked back into sight, "Motown? Are you nuts, you fruity old Ruskie?"

"You misunderstand me, unpleasant one," Lenin said with a slight bow in her direction, "Not the musical expressionism of the Daffy-In-Love Afro.  I speak of the Supreme Court."

"You're just history, Lenny."

"Do you not believe there is some small chance your countrymen, even in their mind-weakened state,  will wise up in time?"

"I don't think so." the Radical said.   His feminine alternative popped back in, "Not in a million years, Bolshitski!!"

The third apparition, the smeary blotch that that hadn't said anything up until now, had manufactured a fixed smile that was making me uneasy.  I had the impression that he was impatient with all the talk.  He wanted to eat something and he looked fiercely hungry. 

"What do you think?" Lenin asked.   And with that, the  three of them turned their expectant gazes on me.