I shouldn’t have to say it, but this is a work of satire. Although wouldn’t it be funny if the idiots on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox reported this as factual? It’s happened too many times to take any chances. This isn’t real!!!

You hear it everyday in the evening news: conflict. In the Middle East, America is the Great Satan. Propagandists are busy indoctrinating their country’s children to hate our country, and the freedom she represents.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan may be winding down, but terrorists are quick to fill in the void left in the wake of our leader’s retreat.

North Korea and the mentally unstable regime headed by the sociopath Kim Jong Un are wanting to destabilize the region, and eradicate the fragile illusion of peace.

Now Russia is trying to resurrect their past glory by reviving the old cohesiveness of the Soviet Union, eschewing the democracy that so many lived and died to set into place.

And what of China? India? Pakistan? What of the rest of the world? Who will be the leader building up a cult of personality, whose hubris will march the world closer to annihilation?

The world is indeed a scary place, and more so than it has been since the end of the cold war, and longer since the days of John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. It’s been more than fifty years since the specter of nuclear war has hung so precariously over humanity.

What can we do?

Hello, my name is John C. Weiss, founder and C.E.O. of Weiss and Fleece National Defense Contractors Inc., with a proposition for our American viewers. The price of peace is at an all time high, and the price of war is sure to bankrupt our government, jeopardizing our sovereignty for the first time in centuries. This is where you can help, and why I’m here calling on you.

As a way to minimize costs for our national defense, I’m asking all patriotic Americans to donate to the Secure Our World Defense Fund. S.O.W. was created with one purpose in mind, to raise funds to build up our national stockpile of chemical and nuclear weapons, as a deterrent to the further escalation of hostilities that heretofore have remained simmering just under the surface, waiting to boil over.

Mutually Assured Destruction may have worked in the past, but it’s high time we build an arsenal that can not only take out our threats, but can also intercept any launch headed towards us, or to any of our remaining allies.  With our Predictive Launch Algorithms, we can now accurately launch a preemptive strike on missile bases in even the most remote of locations.

Further, we intend to build Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, with the names of all our sponsors etched into each individual hull, to let our enemies know once and far all, who paid to kill them, not that they’ll live to read it.

And in desert, we are building a monument, a final testament to the spirit of a race so determined to render itself extinct, that they fought to the death of not only themselves, but to the only known center of life in the universe.

If life does exist out in the cold reaches of space, and in the event they learn to traverse the distances and visit us, then they can witness the monumental stupidity of a race that killed itself, and read the names of the ones responsible. For a one-time donation of $100, you can have a brick engraved on the walk leading to the monument. For $1 Million, you may have an obelisk built in your honor. There are many more options to choose from in between!

Don’t be the only ones left out from this one time special offer to destroy all mankind. Space may be limited, but not as limited as the time of man on Planet Earth. Finance your own destruction. Call now, and the first 500 callers will receive this special t-shirt as a free gift, not that you will have too much time to boast of your murder.

Thank you, and please be generous.

My other short stories