Man's Search for Meaning in Office (Act I)
Interviews with the 2024 Republican candidates for President
At the Family Power Convention in the great state of Iowa, Carter Larson is set to interview approximately 42.857 percent of the fourteen Republican candidates for President in 2024.
INTERVIEW the FIRST
The first guest is Tom Chuck, a swarthy mesomorph with a chrome dome that gleams in a pitch-black room. Strange rumors have abounded since his resignation from the Senate in 2010. Many claim he underwent radical surgery in the remote Himalayan village of Bara Bhangal, out of which a new Chuck was born. The rumors and years without public appearance render today’s audience apprehensive.
Chuck emerges from the right side of the stage and lumbers toward the center. He is smiling, as always. This was one of his most appealing traits as he ran for Senate. The South Carolinian voter couldn’t get enough of the joy that emanates from this God-fearing man. Unfortunately, the rumors were understated.
Chuck’s already statistically significant gum:tooth ratio has been exacerbated to a degree hitherto unimaginable. The surgeon carved Chuck’s face to extend his mouth to both of his ears. Large chunks of his facial musculoskeleton have been modified to create the first man-lion hybrid. Modern shamanism has achieved incredible results. Despite the progress, however, Chuck’s head clearly requires upkeep; it remains a grizzly mess. Additionally, the significant increase in skeletal weight has hypertrophied Chuck’s neck into a sinewy traffic barrel. Supposedly, he eats only once or twice per week; a diet consisting almost entirely of live fowl, fish, large rodents, and, to the chagrin of his neighbors, canines. Some have suggested cannibalism, but the press often stretches the truth. Carter has heard the rumors of bloodlust.
TOM CHUCK: Good morning! [Tepid applause] how are y’all? Isn’t it good to be in a country where we are free to praise the Lord? Amen, hallelujer. [Some time passes, with Carter cowering behind the curtain opposite Chuck. This moment of suspension feels at once a second and an eternity, a microcosm of that which is without the potential deformation time and space demand, an ephemeral window to the unbounded timelessness in which Chuck was forced to simply exist, chest heaving with desire, saliva dripping from his mouth, ravenous with the need to consume but forced to await the next feeding away from commotion. He is hungry.]
MC: Carter? Are you coming out?
TC: Since Carter's not here I'll just continue [pantomiming a strange dance].
MC: Where are you? Is that you behind the curtain?
TC: I don’t bite! Ha, ha, ha. [Hushed to the MC, but the mic is too hot] I do bite, in fact. I absolutely do.
MC: Carter, we’re ready for the first interview to commence. Please come out now.
TC: There he is!
CARTER LARSON: [With a huge smile, extending a trembling hand] I was listening to you! I was like, “Amen, that’s right!”
TC: [Smile abruptly disappearing as he squeezes the life from Carter’s hand] I am ready.
CL: Ah, good. Please, sit down, Senator. Thank you for being here.
TC: Absolutely, yessir.
CL: Backstage, we were discussing the fact that you’ve slept in your bed six nights in the past month.
TC: That’s right.
CL: But that it doesn’t bother you at all, and you’re having a great time.
TC: Yeah, I said behind the scene here that, what a blessing it is to live in a country where we are free to praise the Lord, and that the Judeo-Christian foundation of this nation sets the standard across the world. That is what we talk about when we think about John 8:31 and John 8:32. John 8:31 says “you have to abide in me and then you will know the truth, and that truth will set you free.”
CL: Amen. That’s a great point. Reminds me of Margaret Clitherow.
TC: Yes.
CL: You know, a nation that great must be aware of threats to its very existence—
TC: Absolutely.
CL: Yesterday, President O’Callaghan mobilized reserves; what do you think of that and are you concerned that we're moving, as we seem to be, toward war with Russia?
TC: Yeah, so I would say that without any question we should never allow American soldiers to be engulfed into the challenge between Ukraine and Russia. Our boots on the ground should not be there. The ability—[Chuck pauses here for applause. There is a multivariable calculus going on in Chuck’s mind. This is severely complicated by the fact that he has not fed for days, which is clear in his repetitive but subliminal licking of lips. Chuck’s answer to the calculus was not one of the obvious choices: he stands up, putting his flank to Carter so that he can speak quasi-directly to the audience, thereby alienating the far larger crowd behind the cameras, Carter, and the audience itself through the constant twisting and turning he will have to do for the next half hour.]—my mama wanted a preacher, so I'm going to stand up and do it this the Southern way.
CL: Preach!
TC: So, literally, so I think one of the failures of President O’Callaghan has been his inability to articulate America's national, vital interests in the conflict or the genocide [sic] in Ukraine. America's national, vital interest is degrading the Russian military. When we degrade the Russian military, we make sure that our home front is safer and that our NATO Ally partners that would cause us to send soldiers over is safe. Unfortunately, President O’Callaghan has no ability—
CL: Wait, wait, so you're saying that it's in our national interest—vital national interest—to degrade the Russian military. In other words, to fight Russia with other people's soldiers?
TC: I would say it this way: if you think about the world order that we established after World War II, you think about a rules-based system. This system comes from this nation, our Judeo-Christian foundation, that says that there are rules of the road, that there is something called absolute truth, and we established that. What we're trying to do is make sure that our home front remains safe, which means evaluating the actual threats to our country. The most immediate military threat that could happen is Russia. Everything that we do that degrades the Russian military is good for America. Now, the long-term existential threat to our nation is China—nobody is talking about this. You look at this rising axis of evil that we're seeing being formed: it's Russia, China, and Iran. Breaking that to pieces before it gets started, I think, is in our vital interests [trying to sit back down for Carter’s response, but saliva is pooling at the base of their chairs].
CL: So, on the day last February that Russia invaded eastern Ukraine, Russia and China were not Allied, but within weeks of the sanctions that we applied, and the stated intent of the O’Callaghan Administration to effectively wage war with Russia, you saw an alignment, which now hardened, between Russia and China. The United States military cannot, as you know, since you were in the Senate, defeat Russia and China united. So, O’Callaghan’s policies have created a larger threat, no?
TC: Well, [looking for solid footing] I would say that this started under President Potofu in 2014 with Crimea, then President O’Callaghan saying to Ivan Uveshchevatel, “I'm going to give you a list of areas that we don't want you to have cyber-attacks.” Weakness. Secondly, we saw President O’Callaghan said, “gosh, you know, what if you just take parts of it? It's okay.” Well, when we have NATO territory that's contiguous, bombs, missiles, on our—on NATO territory, creates a real challenge for our nation.
CL: Well, you see how it could become, you know—
TC: Absolutely.
CL: The third world war very quickly. So, why not force peace?
TC: I think the faster we get to peace the better off we are. What we don't want to do from my perspective is allow ourselves to ask for premature peace—
CL: Right, we don’t want peace too early.
TC: Yes, right. I would say that the objective should be for Ivan Impozantnyy and Ukraine to achieve victory by maintaining as much of their territory as they possibly can, and getting these two folks to sit down and have a conversation that allows them to determine where those lines will be drawn for the next hundred years.
CL: [Crosses his legs to avoid more saliva on his shoes, looking like a child while he interviews a serious Republican candidate for President] so, Ukraine must win somehow or another. Where are you on the matter of sending cluster bombs to the Ukrainian military?
TC: Well, if I was President of the United States, we wouldn't have to. Here's what you saw—
CL: But now that we have, what do you think of it?
TC: Well, I mean, I think it's… They’re there, so, here's what I would suggest is—
CL: Well, they're not, I don't think they're there yet. Do you think that we should send them?
TC: [Standing to his full height to look down on the child interviewing him] I think that the mistake is when you have President O’Callaghan saying to the world that “here are a host of weapons that we no longer have the ammunition to supply”; you have a request coming from Ukraine saying we need more of the weapons that you say you don't have to provide, and you go to the front pages of every news station, and say to the world “we don't have the ammunition”, and so Ukraine says, “send the cluster bombs over.” Under my Administration, we would have the resources, in a defense industrial complex, that provides the weapons that we need and our Western allies need, we wouldn't be in this position at all.
CL: Do you think he should send them?
TC: I wouldn't have to. He already has agreed to do so.
CL: Huh.
A draft rolls over the back of Carter’s neck. Goosebumps follow down his arms. He wonders whether a vent is hanging over his head and looks up—nothing. The goosebumps flatten, only to be replaced by a quickening heartbeat, a visceral anxiety. One fears what one knows, but anxiety is fear of the unknown and Carter can’t place his fear. He shifts his seated position and tries to shake it off before the next candidate.
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The Family Power Convention rages on with INTERVIEW the SECOND.