Please help them – before it’s too late

Dull Ache column by W.R. Marshall

It’s the silent softener.

The disease that weakens not only the backbone, but preys upon the very resolve of men and women who once had both.

It’s a tragedy unfolding everyday in America, but unlike most disorders, it doesn’t infect the poor and disenfranchised, but it’s rampant among the rich and powerful. (However, there is residual affect among those not contaminated.)

It’s called Democratmalacia, and it has reached epidemic proportions in the hot zone. (Also known as Washington, D.C.)

But we can help; we can give these sad, often confused people new hope and perhaps a way back to health.

We’ve all the seen the horror that this disease brings: waffling, flopping, flipping, caving, anticonstituionalism, reidoma, pelosiitis, and in its final stages, intense and incurable libermanalgia (a pain no one should bear.)

Science is working diligently to find a cure, but this is a rather pesky and somewhat crafty virus. It often appears to be something it’s not.

On first inspection, Democratmalacia appears to be a hardy, cellularly different microbe; presenting a genuine and discernable alternative to the body politic. But as the disease begins to mature, in spite of all its posturing and, if one may use such a term when speaking of these things, bravado, it often becomes undistinguished and indistinguishable from its surroundings.

Said environment is frequently uninhabitable by normal citizens or anyone with a low – or given current circumstances, a very high – threshold for discomfort, incredulity and outright indifference.

Early research treated this disease as something viral, an airborne contagion that spread quickly once the patient was exposed to his or her own name in the Congressional Record. However, regardless of protocol, nothing was found to be effective and research began to examine the disease as a genetic disorder.

Democratmalacia appears to unidirectional, meaning it always moves out from the hot zone, never toward it. However, once infected, the patient presents all the outward signs of the disorder regardless of physical environment.

A brief case study will showcase the horrifying effects of this disease:

Patient #1 is a 47-year-old male of mixed racial background (Luo father, Caucasian mother). He is in excellent health and above-average intelligence. By all outward appearances Patient #1 seems to be the picture of health.

Yet in recent weeks, symptoms of Democratmalacia have begun to present and, while no conclusion can yet be made, the disease seems to have taken root. Patient #1 has recently softened in many areas where he once stood resolute. This could be a statistical aberration, but should this trend continue – which will result in unmistakable libermanalgia – we can only be left with the singular determination that Patient #1 has full-blown Democratmalacia.

How can we, Jane and Joe America, help? It won’t be easy, and it will be painful, but each of us can do our part. Just snip off a little piece of your spine and send it to:

DNC

430 S. Capitol St. SE

Washington, D.C. 20003

Make sure to put “Stamp out Democratmalacia” on the envelope. (And ask not to be put on any mailing lists, or the next thing you know, someone will be hitting you up for a donation to end Republicanpenia.)