Every now and then I like to take a little break and have a drink or two and read the Chicago Tribune or the Sun-Times at my local tavern. The place is deserted on Sunday nights – just me and Alfie the bartender most of the time. I can sit in my little cone of silence with a glass of whisky and plow through whatever's happening out there in human-land. Then I get out a good crime novel. This week, it's a reread of "The Lady in the Lake" by Raymond Chandler, my favorite author. What he didn't know about gats and dames ain't worth knowin'. Good stuff.

I was a few chapters into the book when a man with a sketchy salt 'n pepper beard, birkenstocks, red suspenders, and a baseball cap that said "Folk You!" with a smily face under it sat down beside me and ordered a lime and mineral water...that dumb French stuff, whatever the hell it's called. There ain't nothin' in it but water and bubbles, but it costs a bunch of mazuma. Idiots who think they're "sophisiticates" drink the stuff. Perrier, that's what it is.

Well, I got this bad habit of talking to strangers. I guess I'm not the guy you want to sit next to on the bus. I struck up a conversation. Two hours later, I finally slunk back into the night with my head spinnin', and not from the whisky. I had just finished talkin' politics with a true-blue American freakin' Liberal nutcase.

He first introduced himself to me as a self-proclaimed "man of the people" and used his professional name, which I will not repeat because, frankly, I can't pronounce it. Besides, even if his beliefs made me wanna put a bullet in my own brain to ease the pain, he was a personable enough guy and I do not want to burn him behind his back. It seems this bird is a fairly well-known folk singer. He had an album of his in his back pocket, and gave it to me. I have it sitting here on my desk, beside the bronze gorilla. The back cover has a picture of him playing songs to dolphins from the rear deck of a Greenpeace ship.

After a while, we violated the First Rule of Bars and started talkin' politics. It became clear from the outset that we was on opposite poles of the political spectrum. He described himself as a big Hillary Clinton supporter, and I described myself as quite the opposite. (I think she's a cold dame.) Both of us lamented the fact that politics in America had become so damn tribal and hyped lately that people of good conscience had trouble havin' a decent discussion on issues of great importance without resortin' to threats and character assassination. This man was articulate, well informed on the news of the day, and struck me as bein' quite intelligent. Two good fellows like us, I said at the beginning, could probably fix things in a week if we had the chance.

Then he started talkin'.

I asked him what he would do if he was made President tomorrow. He said his first order would be to disarm all private citizens of their automatic weapons and explosives and register all handguns and rifles now in private possession.

"What about chimps and other primates?" I asked.

"Oh, well...they obviously shouldn't own any weapons at all," he said...as if it was totally silly. "Anyone with a modicum of sense knows that. It's just the right wing gun lobby that wants apes and monkeys to have legal access, so that more guns can be sold."

Now I knew the guy was wingy. I listened on.

"The truth is," he said, "We ought to ship every single primate of non-human descent back to Africa or wherever they came from, and return the poor creatures to Nature. My heart bleeds when I think of Nature's innocent primate children being locked in cages, seduced into performing demeaning human labour, and made to look ridiculous, driving around in cars and pretending to be human beings. It's just sad. I am in favour of animals' god-given right to BE animals at all times, and screw all that Disney crap. Disney is just a front for right wing think tanks that intend to take away all middle class human jobs and give them to apes and monkeys and then reduce their pay to a few bananas a week so the corporate robber barons can own villas in St Tropez and deal in human slavery on the side. Michael Jackson AND George Bush are in it up the their eyeballs."

By this time my jaw was hittin' the floor. I didn't know whether to get mad or excuse myself and go to the washroom. I was afraid he might follow me in if I did and try to do somethin' on my animal behalf to show how much he loves us!

When I asked why he was so worried about Bush and Michael Jackson, he said he knows for a fact that there are ten suitcase nukes secreted away at Neverland, waitin' to be delivered to major centers that traditionally vote Democrat and be detonated one by one if the Republicans show any chance of losing majority support in America. The trial, he said, is just a showpiece to distract people's attention, and Bubbles is a sacrificial lamb that's been primed to take the fall while Jackson gets off scot free!

"They already got New York," he said, fixin' me with a grim look, "and that was just a taste of what's to come. Their standard routine is, blame it on the Islamic terrorists, and make sure it clobbers a Liberal political bastion at the same time. Two birds with one stone. They get their oil war and they destroy or convert their political competition on the home turf. It's more than clever, it's diabolical."

When I asked why the folks in possession of the bombs ain't used one yet, he said, "Those people are patient. They will as soon as they need to. Mark my words."

"I guess you figure Chicago might be on the hit list?" I asked him. I wanted to see how far he'd go.

"You figure it isn't?" he said, and winked, with a sad and knowing look. "If I were you, I'd relocate to Texas ASAP."

When I pointed out that one does not have to be a Republican to be a terrorist, and reminded him of Big Daddy Malone, a Democratic Party affilliated Orangutan mobster/folksinger that terrorized Schenectady for 10 years until I took him down in a bust in Chicago in '41, he agreed…and then told me in detail about how Big Daddy's mob had been a front group for the Fundamentalist Baptist Alliance...their real game bein' to force all working women back into the kitchen and drive out or kill all gay men and women from America.

"My son and daughter are both gay," he said, "and I'm proud as hell of them. I attended my daughter's marriage to another fine young women last month at a women's nature retreat in Mendocino and sang all the great liberation songs, such as "Billy, Don't Be A Hero", "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore", and "One Tin Soldier".

I kept edgin' away, but he kept movin' closer. I had things I was wonderin' about, but didn't want to ask. He babbled on...

We got to talkin' about hair and clothing styles and stuff. He said that any man who wears a tie is a sellout. A dupe of the New World Order. A corporate hatchet man, out to destroy the urban poor and privatize finally even the cops, so that if you ain't got the money to live in a gated community, you can just take your chances in the "combat zone" with the Hispanics and Blacks and other slaves and drug victims of the right wing drug cartels.

"It's all about money," he said. "Money and power. Oh, and sex, of course. Republicans act like they don't like sex, but if you knew what went on behind the scenes you'd know differently. That Clinton thing was the biggest snow job ever. Bill Clinton liked sex, all right, but at least he liked normal, healthy sex, not the demon stuff."

I hadda agree with him about the money and power and sex angle (aside from the demon stuff), but ain't that all the Democrats are after too, I asked him?

"No way!" he said. "The Democratic Party has been badly hurt by right wing infiltration and creeping moral weakness, I won't deny that, but their basic instincts are in support of democracy and the little guy ever since FDR. Anyway, I didn't vote Democrat last time. I voted for Nader."

"So...whaddya think is gonna happen?" I asked. I was hopin' for a quick dramatic wrapup so I could get the hell out of there and clear my head.

"Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Lybia, and Syria will all be "liberated", meaning...obliterated..." he said, "and then paved over and turned into one huge oil farm. Pakistan will get nuked. Then China will invade India and pour into the Middle East and the USA will lose three million men in the worst slaughter in recorded history, and Israel will cease to exist. Sooner or later the American constitutional government will be overthrown, and replaced by a military dictatorship that will put all gays, lesbians, and agnostics into prison camps. Right wing militias will sieze power in several western states and there will be bloody civil war. Liberals will become the most endangered species in America.

144 nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of Christian fundamentalist radicals who will declare America the new "Land of God" and expell all non-Christians to Mexico, where they will probably be given little mercy by the already desperate Latino population. Canada will be invaded or annexed for its fresh water. This, he said, will start the Final Conflict, as China and much of Europe become embroiled in a fullscale World War with the USA, resulting in the collapse of civilization as we know it. "The survivors will envy the dead. It will take a thousand years before Liberalism is again achieved in America. That is George Bush's true plan."

I felt like I'd swallowed a truck. I held up my hand for silence for a few seconds...

"Look," I said, "I ain't sayin' I believe any of this and I ain't sayin' I don't, just tell me one thing......you believe electin' Hillary Clinton is gonna stop all of that????"

"Nader's had his chance," he said. "The public just isn't ready for a 3rd Party in America. I believe Hillary is the one decent chance we have left. It's a slim chance, but slim is better than none. I do not intend to go quietly into that good night while there is one shred of hope left for the flame of Liberalism to survive in the country I love! It's Hillary for me in 2008, brother. You can take THAT to the bank. George Bush is the AntiChrist. And besides...he looks more like a goddamn chimp than he does like a human being."

That was it. Something snapped in my brain. I whipped out my .45 revolver and planted it right between his crazy blue eyes...

"You crack-brained son of a bitch," I said, through gritted teeth, "you just directly insulted every freakin' chimp in the world. Even every totally BUTT-UGLY chimp!!! You have gone beyond the LINE! I'm givin' you 3 seconds to get out of this freakin' Chicago bar and out of my sight! One! Two! ..."

He was gone in a flash. I never seen a man move so fast before. I left a minute later, after payin' my tab, and I didn't see him nowhere, not even his dust, but I had his "Folk You!" hat. He had left it behind on the bar.

I am thinkin' I should not have stuck the gun in his face. It ain't right to threaten people like that over just some idle words at a bar, and I feel bad about it. A little bad, anyway. We don't need no more chimp-human violence right now, after that California thing the other day. Enough is enough. I would like to return his hat by mail or somethin', but I don't know who this guy is, I just know he's a folksinger. Sound like anyone you people have seen on the festival circuit?