A message from the Committee for Cheerful Certainty
One leader. One vision. Zero group chats. Tired of a thousand overlords who can't find your paperwork? Try one who can't be argued with. It's the last election you'll ever need!
Each promise comes with fine print, provided in the spirit of total transparency, which will be phased out next year.
Timetables have been updated to say wherever the trains happen to be.
Time saved will be reinvested in mandatory celebrations of not having elections.
Including the wrong ones. Especially the wrong ones. Very, very fast.
Napping is a privilege. Privileges are mandatory.
Please place it in the national suggestion box, which is conveniently located inside the national shredder.
Except one. Everyone attends. It never ends. It is mostly applause.
The Leader can hear you. Approximately.
Applause at 0%. The Leader is sure you can do better.
The People's Constitution Generator
Fill in the blanks. The generator does the rest in thirty seconds, which is twenty-nine seconds longer than most constitutions took. Nothing leaves your browser.
Constitution of
Your constitution will appear here, freshly ratified by a margin of one to nothing.
Want it on the wall? We're considering printing your constitution on heavy faux-parchment, signed by you, witnessed by a pigeon. Nothing is charged; this tells us whether to make it.
Other regimes had five-year plans. We have five minutes, because the Leader has a lot on. Within five minutes of taking office, every town square will look like this: synchronized naps, one flavor of ice cream, trees trimmed into perfect spheres, and a loudspeaker that only says nice things, loudly.
Click around. Everything is going according to plan. The plan is mostly this picture.
In which the campaign, against legal advice, thinks about it for a minute.
The benevolent dictator is one of the oldest ideas in political philosophy. Plato's Republic imagined philosopher-kings: rulers trained from childhood to be wise and incorruptible. Thomas Hobbes argued in Leviathan (1651) that people hand power to a strong sovereign to escape a life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Even software projects, half as a joke, crown founders "Benevolent Dictator for Life" so someone can break the tie.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," wrote Lord Acton in 1887. The trouble isn't the first benevolent dictator. It's the second one. Who picks them? What happens when the wise ruler gets tired, or stubborn, or dies, and the job goes to a nephew who likes parades? A system that depends on one good person is a system waiting for one bad day.
We have thought about it carefully, and the succession plan is the whole problem. We have formed a committee to address it. Our rivals at the Department of Approvals say this is exactly how it starts. They may have a point. We have asked them to submit it in triplicate. Hear the competing idea.
Wear your enthusiasm. Vote for the one you'd actually buy. Nothing is charged; this tells us what to print.
For the proud participant in the last election ever.
For the boss, parent or group-project leader in your life.
A conversation starter. And ender.
More cheeky goods at the Scallywag shop: scallywag-media.com.
Loyal citizens notice things. Look closely at the pictures, the promises and the small print.
Decorations earned: 0 of 0
Order of Enthusiasm, Third Class. You found everything, which makes you either very loyal or very suspicious. There is no First Class; that one is the Leader's. Second Class is awaiting a ceremony.
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