I tried my hand at writing political satire. (The “Purple Party” is a person who identifies politically as a combination of Red and Blue, and has a limited member of one, ME, at the moment.)

Trump: Hydroxychloroquine is a TERRIFIC treatment for COVID-19! (The internet explodes.)

The Left: THAT evil, morally-repugnant, God-forsaken, masochistic, and racist human is now putting even more Americans at risk by advocating the use of a scientifically unproven drug. LET’S STICK TO SCIENCE! There’s no proof of the drug’s safety and efficacy! Aren’t 200,000+ people enough to die on your watch, Mr. Trump?

The Right: Call him President Trump! He deserves your respect!”

The Purple Party (Me): If scientists and doctors say we shouldn’t do something, we probably shouldn’t: Like that time when I was little and was sucking on a penny and accidentally swallowed it. My mother raced me to the doctor who said I should never do that again. I haven’t sucked on pennies since.

The Media (stirs pot): Trump is suddenly hospitalized with the virus after being on the campaign trail, potentially putting legions of people at risk!

The Left: Give him Hydroxychloroquine! Let’s see how he thinks it works now!

The Right: Wait what? Trump has “The Rona?” So, it’s legit for realz? (Asks everyone they know how they go about finding a mask someplace.)

The Left: Serves him right! Had he worn a mask, he wouldn’t be in this spot, nor would he have put numerous lives at stake! That non-mask wearing demon finally gets what he deserves! Karma is a bitch! Die! Die! Die!

The Purple Party (Me):

(Directed at the left) Whoa. Come on folks. That’s super harsh. Let’s take a step back and show concern for the President and the First Lady.

(Directed to the Right) Glad to see you are on board with the masks! They make sense. I really like the cute, plaid, 3-ply cotton ones I picked up at Target for $4.99 in a two-pack. You should try there first!

The Left: It’s a conspiracy, Trump is faking it to get votes!

Biden: Tweets something about “a time for unison” while simultaneously launching his new campaign video targeting one of the fastest growing demographics in America: Dog Lovers

The Purple Party (Me): Damn it Biden! You didn’t just call in the dogs, did you? The Dems may have just won me over with that. I do love me some dogs. Awww. Look at all those cute Presidential puppies! Poo-Poo Trump, you with NO Presidential Pooch!

The Left: Trump is faking it to show people how easy it is to recover from the disease, which will result in more deaths!

The Right: Haha! You just said it’s easy to recover from the disease! Na-Na-Na-Na-Na!

Doctors: Dudes. Mellow. Trump is not faking it. He’s sick! Otherwise why would we tolerate having to see him in his hospital gown for the past few days?

Trump chokes down Regeneron’s (not yet proven by science for its safety and efficacy) “miracle drug” by Regeneron. America’s political front is silent for the first time in 1409 days as everyone takes in a breath, waits to see what happens.

The Rest of the World: Bummed the right fails to blow up the internet about Trump’s second-coming-of-Christ-like efforts to single-handedly save the American people, and possibly the planet, by using himself as a human, tweeting, medically-divine guinea pig. And, equally disappointed the left just let Trump’s apparent suicide attempt go like that. We mean…it must have been a suicide attempt, right? Trump just subjected himself to that dastardly, unproven-by-science-type-medicine they’d been advocating against for months. Come on, give us something over here! (Bored, they all turn to Netflix for the first time since Trump became president.)

Regeneron CEO: Whoa guys. Hold on a second. Whoopsie. About that one thing. Our drug is still under trial, and since PETA let our animals out of their cages years ago, we’ve only tested THAT drug on Barbie dolls and Build-A-Bears. Never on humans. And certainly never on, arguably…gulp…the most powerful leader in the world.

Regeneron’s stock goes up 18 points.

Trump: Still in the hospital where The Left wishes his room came equipped with a noose, is sitting on his hands, wondering if he choked down that new Regeneron drug too soon. He checks to see how the stock is doing, and once satisfied, announces to himself, alone in his room, “Regeneron is just TERRIFIC! I FEEL TERRIFIC!”

The Right: Depletes Target’s inventory of cute, plaid, 3-ply masks nationwide thinking if Trump got “The Rona” they could get it too. That makes the news, and Target’s stock goes up.

The Left: Trump is faking it to win big with his Wall Street clones! Bet he’s got stock in Regeneron!

Trump: Gets scared, dumps his 30 shares and tries to figure out how to avoid the small gain on his taxes. Calls his CPA. Secretly, every Leftist Millennial in the nation puts in a trade for Regeneron.

Regeneron stock goes up another 9 points.

The Right: Across Facebook vehemently defends Trump’s tax return, and points out Trump only had $1000 invested in the company that makes Hydroxychloroquine.

The Media: We demand to know what is going on with Trump! We need the facts so we can fail to report them accurately! With Trump silent, we have nothing to spin to keep the American people divisive! Plus, how are we supposed to remain relevant, and get our ad click revenue, if Trump doesn’t give us something soon?

Pelosi: I have the right to know how Trump is doing, especially since I’m THIRD in line to assume power over this country! (A witchy cackle is heard across the land.)

The Rest of the World: Shut-up Pelosi! Where’s Trump?

The Left: Remains quiet about Pelosi’s non-masking wearing salon visit, caught on video, whereby she claims she was set-up (for not wearing a mask in a public space.) When people inquire, Right or Left, they divert the conversation to, “Have you seen Biden’s dog video?”

The Rest of the World: Americans and their dogs. We just don’t get it.

Pence: Why didn’t Trump just get a damn dog? Awww. Look at those cute Presidential Poochies. Puts in an email to Biden from his private server that reads, “Well played. I have a dog.”

Women on The Left in the South: Unanimously forgive Pelosi for her spa visit faux pas because, Darlin’ did you NOT see the roots on THAT woman?

Trump responds to the media and Pelosi: Steps outside the hospital because “The American population has the right to know, 24/7, he’s “ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIC!” Sends the message, loud and clear, Pelosi doesn’t have a rat’s chance in hell to become president.

The Rest of the World: Trump speaks! (Takes break from binge-watching Schitt’s Creek.)

The Left: Fails to see the mask emblazoned across Trump’s face when he takes a antiviral cocktail and steroid-induced joyride with his secret service agents to satiate the media, Pelosi, the American public, and his ego. The Left quips in unison across Twitter, “He’s putting the lives of his security team at stake by getting into the car with them!”

Trump’s Secret Service Agents: WTF just happened?

The Right: Haha! Gotcha! You said if Trump had worn a mask while on the campaign trail, he wouldn’t be in the position he was in. So now he has one on (shows Meme to prove point), so his agents are safe, right? Unless masks DON’T really work? (They all return their cute, plaid, cotton 3-ply masks to Target. Target’s stock goes down.)

Trump: Back at the hospital is growing concerned he hasn’t been able to pee straight since he took his anti-viral cocktail.

Regeneron CEO: Still shitting Twinkies.

The Left: If only Trump had CLOSED our borders sooner, you know the borders we fought that racist to keep OPEN back when America was the Melting Pot of the world, and when everyone was welcome here, NO QUESTIONS ASKED and NO MATTER WHAT…unless you are Chinese, and travelling from Wuhan, and carrying a disease that shuts down Coachella.

The Right: Dems can’t have it both ways! Border control or no border control? Pick one! Build that wall! MAGA! MAGA!

The Left: More than 200,000+ people have died in America, Trump! And why didn’t they get that special anti-viral drug and that same SPECIAL treatment you just got? Hmmm?

The Right: You mean “special treatment” as in from the same doctors you have revered for the past seven months that took an oath to treat, even Trump, during this pandemic with compassion, and with an experimental drug just like Hydroxychloroquine…sorry, don’t know how to pronounce it…that is not yet proven safe or effective? What about your “Let’s STICK TO SCIENCE” argument? So, now you want to abandon science and give people Trump’s “special” treatment?”

The Purple Party (Me): I’m beginning to think maybe it’s ok to suck on pennies.

Regeneron up $34.20 a share at market close.

“Stubborn“ – painted sketch on canvas
By TONIA ALLEN GOULD #naiveart

We are living in an age where people expect everyone to be perfect, all the time, and this New Age idealism has me troubled. “Like it or not, all humans are imperfect. Perfection is an ideal that cannot be reached.” (Lazarsfeld, 1991).

From the time we are born we live and learn and (hopefully) grow, but sometimes we make mistakes. We fall down. We pick ourselves back up by our proverbial bootstraps. We continuously fail or succeed. No one is infallible. No one is exempt from imperfection. No one is, nor will ever be, perfect.

But, we are mandating each other to be more and more perfect, to match our own ideals, everyday. We have a “holier than though” mentality. We want people to fit into the mold we’ve created and shaped for them, and when someone doesn’t fit perfectly, we are disappointed. We rationalize that they’ve failed us. Perhaps we are giving up too easily, or too early, on each other? And, if that is the case, human beings with value and worth are being discarded like nothing more than the day’s trash.

“Perfection is subjective because its definition depends upon one’s social, moral, cultural, personal standards, and world-view. Thus, any claim upon perfection can and will always remain a relative perfection.”

-Acceptance of Imperfection
Erin Martz, MA, CRC
University of Arkansas

In this age of loving and hating Kevin Hart, and Ellen DeGeneres, and Biden or Trump, perhaps it’s a good time to reflect on our intense need to require anyone, ever, to be perfect all the time. That’s not to say there are no inexcusable offenses. Just be clear, you set what is inexcusable, based upon your “social, moral, cultural, personal standards, and world-view. Thus, any claim upon perfection can and will always remain a relative perfection.” Because we are human our standards are, in fact, imperfect.

My history shaped me. Yours shaped you. Our strong desire to force feed our individual idealistic concepts of perfection down each other’s throats is just another form of human imperfection. No one can make another human being think or feel anything. We can’t transfer the history that shaped each of us onto someone else. We are not transferable.

Have we become too hypercritical of each other? Are we forgetting to recognize that people are designed to make mistakes? Are we losing our ability to forgive? Imposing our ideals of perfection, on each other, may be robbing us of the essence of being human. Imperfection, by my estimation, is the very thing that makes us human in the first place.