11 Jun 2003 @ 18:37, by Raymond Powers
Swami for President!
“Happy Medium” Tosses Turban Into the Ring
Wake Up Laughing
SAN FRANCISCO -- Swami Beyondananda is not a serious candidate for the Presidency .. and that is precisely why he is tossing his turban into the ring and asking for your vote. After all, look where the serious candidates have gotten us. Says the Swami: “We’re faced with a scary dictator protected by an Elite Republican Guard who has threatened to use weapons of mass destruction -- and now we’re dealing with Saddam too!”
The problems may be serious, says the Swami, but maybe the solutions are humorous. “A lot of people have gotten the feeling that there’s definitely something funny going on. Well, who better than a comedian to deal with it? Hey, sometimes it takes a clown to catch a clown.”
In a political climate filled with snarling dogmas, the Swami presents himself as just what he is -- a happy medium. Running on the Right-To-Laugh Party (“one big party, everyone is invited”), the Swami hopes to use the magic of laughter to shine a light on those poorly-lit corridors of power -- and promote “laugh, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- unless happiness is a warm gun, in which case some restrictions may apply.”
“I have taken the political pulse in this country,” the Swami says, “and I have good news. We still have one. Barely. Because the body politic has suffered a series of serious power seizures, and our Constitution has been weakened.”
Swami blames “laugh-threatening seriousness” which has caused fear to cloud our thinking and cause “truth decay.” Among the truths that seem to have atrophied, the Swami claims, are the truths that our Founding Fathers found self-evident -- that government rules only by the consent of the governed, and serves at the pleasure of the people.
“And many people aren’t pleased,” the Swami says, “because they see a lot of self-serving servants serving themselves first, their cronies second, and the people last. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, do you know what he’d say? Well, first thing he’s say is, ‘Boy, do I feel old! Geez, I must be 260 by now!’ Second thing he’d say -- radical that he was -- is ‘Let’s fire those servants and hire new ones .. and if we really want to protect people from terror, we should strip search the government too.’”
While the Swami’s slant is decidedly progressive, he insists that he is strictly middle-of-the-road -- but, “middle of a very different road ... a road less traveled ... where people with different points of view actually listen to each other and find common solutions. We need more forums, and fewer againstums.” The Right-to-Laugh party seeks to bring together all political points of view in laughter, explains the Swami, “because only when we lovingly laugh at our foolishness can we seriously change things for the better.”
Swami’s basic message is the same alternative he poses to spending billions on the war on drugs -- “Improve reality!”
When reality is improved to the point where people choose to laugh instead of criticize, the Swami says, “we will achieve the uncritical mass needed to bring about Nonjudgment Day. That is where everyone wins beauty contests.” Swami claims to have had a vision of what Nonjudgment Day might be like -- all of the world leaders at the United Nations beginning their sessions with the Hokey Pokey, “and instead of Armageddon, we’ll have Disarmaggedon. The more we can visualize this, the more likely we are to step into a future of our own design -- and believe me, that beats what we’ve been stepping into recently.”
Indeed, one of the keynotes of Swami’s message he calls “Tell-Vision.” The key to changing the current programming, he explains, is “turn off your TV and tell a vision instead. As my own beloved guru Harry Cohen Baba used to say, ‘Life is like a good deli. If enough people order something, they have to make it.’”
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