Choices
I have a grim little manual entitled “Worst Case Scenarios,”
which presents the reader with a series of awful situations, and challenges her or him to pick the least dreadful one.
In the spirit of that manual, here are a few tough choices of my own:
1. It’s your daughter’s Bat Mitzvah celebration, and a party crasher barges in. Of the following, who would the least offensive intruder be?
A. A Neo-Nazi
B. A member of the Taliban
C. A Palestinian extremist
D. Donald Trump
2. You’re a woman who has survived a mild case of Covid-19. After your hospital stay, you’re recuperating at home, when an unexpected visitor comes into your bedroom. Who would the least unwelcome visitor be?
A. Dr. Phil
B. A representative from Big Pharma who says you’ve been selected as a trial patient to test a follow-up medicine, successfully tested on lab-rats, which will keep you from being infected by any of the new strains of the disease.
C. A Scientologist
D. Martha Stewart
3. You’re won a contest whose grand prized is a one-week, all-expenses-paid stay at a luxury resort in one of the following countries. Which country would you pick?
A. India
B. Taiwan
C. The United Kingdom
D. Finland
Answers
1. Donald Trump. Yes, he’d try to grope your daughter, and eat all the food, but at least he wouldn’t shoot her, like a Neo-Nazi, or cut off her head, like a Talib.
2. The Big Pharma rep. Thanks to FDA crackdowns under Biden, companiess like Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are now providing safe and effective medicines, including the one I cited. Dr. Phil’s pop-psychology feel-good bromides are harmless, but annoying. The Scientologist would babble nonsense about engrams, make you hold two empty tomato cans hooked up to a primitive lie-detector, ask you too many personal questions, finally pronounce you “clear” (whatever the hell that means), and threaten to sic “Operating Thetans (whoever the hell they are) on you if you don’t join the Scientology Org and give it all your money. And Martha Stewart would just say snide things about your drapes and wallpaper.
3. Go to Taiwan. It’s Covid-19-free, and a fascinating country, though there’s some risk that you might arrive just as China is trying to invade it. India is still struggling with the coronavirus, and it is also about to erupt in a religious war, now that Modi has vowed to expel or even massacre Muslims. Finland removed restrictions on public gatherings too soon, and the disease came back. And the UK still has a Covid problem, because Boris Johnson is almost as stupid as his buddy Donald Trump, and dismissed the severity of the pandemic in England.