For more than a year, ominous rumours have been privately circulating among high level DNC leaders that the Sanders campaign had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate own, a doomsday device. Intelligence sources traced the site of the top-secret “Russian” project or whatever to the perpetually brain fog-shrouded wastelands below the arctic peaks of Iowa. What they were building or why it should be located in such a remote and desolate social media platform, no one could say.
1.
The machine came to life. Metal boxes hummed and magnetic tape discs musically clicked and clacked. The results were coming back, line by line, filling the room with noise and a faint odor of ozone. It smelled like means testing.
Pete Buttigieg grabbed the pages spitting out: the poll results out of Iowa. He rubbed his chin, thinking, trying to understand what was happening to his campaign. He absentmindedly plucked his double bars as he stared hard at the grim numbers. The former military man was still wearing his white Navy uniform he used to pad a political resume, and also to score close parking spots at Applebee’s. It was all falling apart. All the salutes from random civilian dickheads and getting on a plane first couldn’t shake this terrible realization: he was not going to be President.
The phone rang. The voice on the other end, the one he had tried to imperfectly emulate in coffee klatches and debate stages, spoke clearly.
“Lieutenant Pete Buttigieg speaking, sir,” he said, still liking the sound of it.
“This is Barry Soetoro speaking.” the voice said. Buttigieg knew exactly who it was, but not sure why the man was using the name given to him by racist conspiracy theorists. “You recognize my voice, Buttigieg?”
“I do sir, why do you ask?”
The phone call went on for about ten more minutes, until “Barry” was sure that Buttigieg understood who he was talking to. The man was a genius at saying even less substance than Buttigieg was. He was listening to a master at work.
“Very well, now, let me be clear. The DNC is being put on condition #VoteBlueNoMatterWho. I want this flashed to to all Biden stans, uhhhhhh, immediately.”
“Condition Blue, sir. Yes, jolly good idea, keeps the men on their toes.” Buttigieg had no idea why he suddenly decided to use an English accent.
“Lieutenant, I’m afraid this is not an exercise. I shouldn’t tell you this, Buttigieg, but you’re good folks and you have a right to know. It looks like we’re in a meme war.”
“Oh, hell. Are the Russians involved, sir?”
“Buttigieg, that’s all I’ve been told. It just came in through my DMs. My orders are for the DNC to be sealed tight, and that’s what I mean to do, seal it tight. Now, I want you to transmit plan B, B for Bernard, to the wing. Plan B for Bernard.”
“Yes, sir. Plan B for Bernard, sir.”
“Now, last, and let me be clear, I want all blue checkmarks to be immediately impounded.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They might be used to provide spicy memes to brocialists. After you’ve done that, uhhhhhhhhh, report back to me.”
2.
The DNC’s loudspeakers boomed to life. Hundreds of lanyard drones stopped mid-sip of their green teas to listen to their commander’s announcement. A thrum of tension pulsed through their thin veins. Obama put on his best preacher voice, the one he used in Berlin to talk about soaring with the eagles or at the 2004 convention to make people cry when he said the word “America”. That time had passed. The pills were too powerful, the memes too moist, and his brain was flooded with only the finest nootropics and succulent nicotine. This had to work, he trusted the drops. He was a baker now, and the only way out was to post harder than anyone had ever posted before.
“Your average Bernie Bro has no regard for civility or decency, not even his own. A real shame. And for this reason, folks, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come in the form of the gentle resistance lib, or the Goop mom, or even our own troops: the #Resistance. But however they come we must stop them. We must not allow him entrance into our group chats or Facebook groups. Now, I am going to give you three simple rules. First: never log off. Second: trust the plan. Third: if in doubt, post first, and ask questions afterwards. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America only under the gold standard.”
3.
Buttigieg was scrolling his timeline, reporting all the Bernie Bros he saw, even the bros pretending to be people of color and women to get laid at Sanders campaign meetings. There were so many fakers, convincing ones too. They even had photoshops of their fake faces with families and friends. It was almost like this was some sort of big lie to service a pre-existing corporate liberal narrative or something! No, couldn’t be. He didn’t have any fakers on his team, they were all real white people.
After an hour or so, he had a few scalps, an account called Washington Post Malone was put in Twitter jail, a few Dank Meme Stashes got doxxed, but then he saw an account mocking the High Hopes dance at one of his Iowa volunteer groups. Sure, it was a sparsely attended meeting filled with robotic gyration, but they were so excited for him. It didn’t make any sense. Something was seriously wrong. Why were they making fun of that 100% genuine unforced dancing?
He quickly went into the former Commander-In-Chief’s office. The office was dimly lit, smoky; was one of those cheap clapboard affairs; wood panelling, green carpeting, those porous white tile ceilings. Russian maps dotted the walls, defaced pictures of DNC luminaries were stabbed into the walls with knives. Tom Perez, Donna Brazille, Ezra Klein. A copy of his famous 2008 HOPE poster was half-incinerated in a metal trash can. Flies buzzed around old turkey chili bowls. The room stank of insanity.
A lighter hissed in the dark. A cigarette tip burned cherry red. A deep drag and then hiss of escaping smoke. The Big Guy had started smoking again, a bad habit that simultaneously damaged his clean-cut professional image but made him look cooler in 2008. He said he quit for Michelle. Behind the lanky, grey-haired statesman, a video had been playing. A laptop was open to an image of a flaming Q, which was then burned away to a flying eagle. Then an ad for MyPillow played with a doughy man hugging a shitty overpriced pillow for some reason.
One look at President Barack Obama and Buttigieg immediately knew the truth: the man had been fully redpilled.
“Excuse me sir, something rather interesting’s just cropped up. Listen to that. Laughter at my High Hopes dance video. Not very nice, but I think the folks at the Daily Show or SNL have given us some sort of exercise to test our readiness.”
“Buttigieg, I thought I had made myself clear, for all blue checkmarks to be impounded.”
Buttigieg cleared his notifications and put the phone on the desk. The former president erotically fondled a cigarette before gently placing it in the corner of his mouth. He scooted the laptop closer to Buttigieg, enticing the completely-a-not-CIA operative with the algorithm. Another video began playing, this one about how Atlanteans created cultural marxism and piped it in through the new She-Ra Netflix cartoon. The logo of the video’s author, DeepStateAnnihilator4, was a skull with two tridents crossed behind it. The former President relaxed, his face slightly shifting, shimmering as if a mask. Buttigieg couldn’t believe was he was seeing.
“The world is a bucket of fuck, Lieutenant. We are so cucked by the Deep State and the trolls that no meme can sustain us. No matter how spicy. As you know, I’ve recently gone through a very public and messy divorce. I used to be a wife guy, now I just scroll Michelle’s Insta on my lewd alt. I’m a blocked man. But what I will not allow is these trolls, these haters, to be allowed to infiltrate our forums, our homes to harvest our precious bodily adrenochrome.”
4.
In the DNC War Room, the entire leadership of the organization had gathered. The war room was a dark, cave-like expanse. On the wall, a map of the US showed the upcoming primaries with the dotted lines of the Bernie Bros descending on the state of Iowa.
Joe Biden, dressed in his personal 4 star general pajamas, was busy relaying a story about how a dog once yelled at him in Chinese and he thought the dog was totally out of line.
“I tell you, he was barking at the top of his dang lungs! Woke the kids! Where did he even learn Mandarin?!” Biden yelled, but no one was really listening. He craned his neck around since both of his eyes were beginning to bleed slightly. “Have we ever had an orgy in this room? If not, why not?”
DNC Chairman Tom Perez entered the room. His incessant wheezing and coughing filled the air and made everyone think they were going to catch something just being near him. At the head of the circle, he settled into his chair like a laundry bag filled with coat hangers. The attendees tried not to notice the hoarse sound of his breathing. He took a big hit of an oxygen mask around his neck, let out a dry hacking cough, and rested his boney hands on the table.
“Joe, buddy, what’s going on?”
“General, sir. I’m wearing my army pajamas. I liked to be called ‘General’ if that’s alright, sir.”
“Fine. General. Whatever. Also, you are a former Vice President, technically we should be calling you ‘sir’.”
“But I’m wearing my pajamas. Sir, you know the protocols.”
“Alright, okay. What’s going on at headquarters?”
“It seems that my good friend Barack Obama, whom I served with for eight years in the White House if you remember…”
“Yes, we remember. You mention it almost every time you talk.”
“My good friend and brother BARACK OBAMA, the former PRESIDENT…” Biden was practically shouting now, “Thirty-five minutes ago issued an order to his one hundred and twelve million Twitter followers many of which were initially pledged to Elizabeth Warren as part of Operation DNA Test. Before you ask, I didn’t want his endorsement because I wanted to do this on my own, even though I namedrop him every chance I get. Now it appears he has ordered his followers to support my good friend and colleague Bernie Sanders for President. Many of these accounts carry troves of just biting pop culture memes and snarky comebacks to centrist and conservative malarkey. Just withering stuff, mostly about me! They will begin penetrating the ‘Russian bot’ claims within twenty five minutes, sir, oh captain my captain.”
“Jesus Christ. ‘General’ Biden, I thought I was the only one authorized to deploy targeted spirit bombs and meme drops.” He let out a ragged series of gasping coughs.
“That’s right, sir. You are the only person authorized to do so. You’re forgetting the provisions of Plan B, sir. Plan B or Plan Bernard is an emergency measure to run the most popular candidate that people love but we hate, so we can remain a permanent minority rather than having to provide any, uh, solutions and such. I mean, we don’t want to actually govern, that would be utterly insane.” Biden took out a small lock of hair and gently placed it underneath his nose. He touched the face of the man sitting next to him, Iowa Dem Party Chair Troy Price. Not in a romantic way, but like how you would test if an oven door was hot.
“I assume we can call back the accounts,” the DNC chairman meekly said.
“Sir, we are unable to communicate with any of the accounts.”
“Why not?” Perez was breathing in rattling gasps now, like an old air conditioner.
“They keep calling us strange words like ‘binch’ and ‘turd whistle’. Let me tell you, I’ve smelled a lot of scalps, and this one smells unwashed and unconditioned.”
“Where did you get all this information?”
“President BARACK OBAMA, my best friend, my buddy, remember all those funny photos of us? He emailed me a little electronic message. I printed it up on paper. I’m probably going to frame it.”
“Read it,” Perez said, immediately regretting his decision. He did not want to hear another pointless anecdote about how pumpkin pie tastes different with a plastic or metal fork, or a mildly racist and most like made-up story about a Yakuza named “Samurai Jack” at a bowling alley.
Biden stood up, adjusting his green camo slippers. “Yes gentleman, I have been fully pilled and I have seen how deep the rabbit hole goes. Atlantis is rising and the alien cyborgs have resurrected JFK as a scruffy guy in an ill-fitting suit. We are all lizard people apparently. For the sake of our account metrics, our way of life, you better send in the rest of the state and local canvassers or else they will be completely destroyed by deep state mind control devices. Moloch willing, we will prevail through the purity and essence of our natural adrenochrome. We’re still trying to figure out basically all of this, looks like a bunch of computer game nonsense to me.” Biden’s left eye was fully engorged with blood, and Perez politely pretended not to notice.
“So there’s… wheeze… nothing we can do? Why not?”
“WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT!” Biden shouted, then dove across the table to bodyslam Perez into the hard marble floor.
5.
Barack Obama finished off his cigarette and put it out on his tongue, like a normal person does.
“Yes sir,” Buttigieg said, nodding. That last part about adrenochrome hung in the air like a fart. He had no fucking clue what Obama was talking about. Was Adrenochrome a new band or something? A meme? He was still trying to understand the whole “corncob” thing.
“The deep state is too deep in the state. We tried to run Trump against Hillary, but bless her heart, she shit the bed. Meme wars are to important to be left to the politicians, because they’re terrible at it. Their memes are normie trash tier. I have decided the only way to fully destroy the deep state and the Illuminati globalists is to full commit to attack Plan Bernard which will fully cripple the Democratic National Committee’s desire to harvest adrenochrome from helpless interns, children, and certain virile late night talk show hosts. Total commitment.”
Suddenly, machine gun fire ripped through the office. Obama, betraying his Sandy Hook Promise, ripped a .50 cal machine gun (gifted to him by Macklemore) out of his golf bag and sprayed bullets at the Bernie Bros outside. Obama should seem very upset about the idea of shooting a gun, which seemed weird to the Navy man because then President Obama dropped more bombs on Syria than Syria did. But he was cackling wildly, screaming “FALSE FLAGS! ALL OF YOU! FALSE FLAAAAGS!”
Outside grew quiet, and Obama plopped onto a nearby couch. Buttigieg sat next to him like a nervous schoolboy.
“So sir, uh, where did you develop this theory of yours?”
“Why, during the physical act of posting. Elon Musk sent me a link to his Joe Rogan appearance and I just kept watching. Soon I was looking at a grainy video with a guy in a hotel room saying I smoked crack and got blown by him in a limousine. Maybe I did, Buttigieg. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I was born in Kenya. Who’s to say? Do the research for yourself. Then I was pilled on Q and fully realized the truth.”
“I mean, sir, wouldn’t that make you part of the conspiracy?”
“Buttigieg, everyone eats a fetus when you get into politics. A necessary evil to consume the life force of the child and absorb into yourself, making your own adrenochrome more powerful and more potent,” Obama said this as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Pretty basic stuff. After the last one though, a sudden feeling of fatigue and emptiness washed over me. No more Satanic orgies, no more drone strikes. I interpreted these feelings correctly: a loss of essence. Now let me be clear, I do not avoid women, Buttigieg. But I do deny them my adrenochrome.”
“Listen, Mr President. Mister Soetoro if you prefer, why don’t you tell me how we can, you know, work together with some sense solutions that don’t push boundaries or challenge people. Like we used to? You remember that? Do some pablum for the rubes? You remember that, Mister President?”
Barack Obama had a small smile on his face. Now fully pilled to the gills, with a glowing brain, he levitated to the bathroom. He recorded a short Deep State Rant for YouTube about how the Bernie Bros were putting soy into more soy, creating a type of SuperSoy that would instantly turn you into a mind controlled centaur cuck. Silence.
There was a sharp sound of a gunshot soundboard app. Buttigieg ran to the door, trying to force it open, but it stopped short. The President was cancelled. He had logged himself off.
6.
The DNC war room was abuzz with activity. Jack Dorsey and Jeff Zuckerberg were quickly brainstorming ways to shut down all the accounts about to post mocking and derisive comments to bullshit nobody liked anyway. The DNC would be obliterated by online rudeness, an unthinkable apocalypse was upon them. Someone was going to be mean to them online, and there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Joe Biden was finishing a 13 minute rambling tale of how he got lost in his own house.
The Ukranian ambassador, face half into a Big Mac, solemnly rose, a smudge of special sauce on his mouth. “If Plan Bernard is successful, and these ‘Bernie Bros’ are successful in even one op-ed writer’s account being owned, it triggers an unthinkable weapon: The Boomersday Machine. The device will trigger such powerful memes all centrists and moderates will be exposed for what they are: sniveling conservative cowards who worship money but don’t want to be seen as racist. Their pink capitalism will be exposed as the cynical co-opting that it is. People will begin to see things like female prison guards as just as bad as male ones. A Sanders Presidency will be the inevitable result!”
A gasp crossed the room. They all knew the stakes; if Sanders got elected, they might actually have to do stuff instead of just making jokes on late night talk shows. People might expect their lives to get better. They may have to pay higher taxes or let the unthinkable happen: letting working class people make decisions for themselves. Unions, healthcare without means testing, properly funded public schools. Truly the end of the world!
“Doctor Madam Secretary, is this possible?”
The shadowy woman had been listening carefully, but had yet to speak. She pushed herself back from the large table to address the entire room. Dressed in an all-black pantsuit, she was sitting on a motorized stool, puffing a latte-flavored Juul.
The woman’s reach within the DNC was stuff of legend, but her chilly, overly-eager weirdness made her seem more robotic than anything else. Her office was located in the Uncanny Valley, many secretly joked. After a recent electoral mishap, some claimed she had disappeared into the woods, emerging only recently, as if called by some mystical voice. She continually adjusted herself on her stool, back pain she claimed, and if she attempted to walk, would spontaneously vomit and faint. The room waited in anticipation. She spoke in a voice that was the sound equivalent of room temperature milk, like it was designed to bore and annoy you at the same time. She squinted her eyes and smiled, or the approximation of a smile that made all there feel uneasy.
“Mister Chairman, nobody likes Bernie Sanders. He’s so divisive, he’s dividing voters from the candidates we like and they hate. The inability to stop the Boomersday Machine is not only inevitable, it is essential. Its machinations are completely out of our hands. The flaw, which is now immediately obvious, is that you made the critical mistake of thinking anyone, well, cares about the social media accounts of op-ed writers. The purpose of our organization is to beat the public down, yes? Yes? Until they are either too exhausted or bored to even thinking of attacking us. It only takes the will to make them expect so little, than tax credits for job training may excite 3.75% of them to vote.”
Biden nudged his neighbor, the Iowa party state chairman, “Gee willikers, I wish we had one of them elections and won the White House.”
“You’re running for President right now.”
“No, I’m not. Am I?”
Madam Secretary continued. “Mein Fuhrer, I would not rule out… excuse me Mister Chairman, I would not rule out a chance to preserve the nucleus of a centrist Democratic donor base. The hot takes and disregard for our natural superior morality would never penetrate as far as our own personal St James Islands. In a matter of weeks, we could have our own MSNBC and Huffington Post up. Our own Samantha Bee and Daily Shows, yes?” Her right arm began to twitch, moving towards her face. She roughly slammed in back down.
Chairman Perez went into a coughing fit so bad he nearly passed out. When he regained his composure, an aide held his head up. “I would hate to decide who gets to go and who stays.”
“It would be quite simple. We simply, hmm, borrow Mister Epstein’s flight logs. From what I understand, he has been most… err… helpful in this regard.”
“But Madam Secretary, Jeffey Epstein committed suicide!” Perez exclaimed.
“Did he now? Suicide? Oh no, what a shame” she said flatly, her eyes small and dark. “Would anyone like to order pizza for the islands? Perhaps with cheese? Hotdogs for some? I assure you, there will be plenty… of… ehhh, errr sauce!” Her right arm flailed, and snapped up into a tight dab. She quickly swatted it down, but the dabbing arm had its own dark power.
She stood up from her stool. “Mein Fuhrer, this is my fight song!” she yelped and then promptly vomited on her shoes.
7.
The bomber plane had reached its target: the Iowa caucuses. Major Joe Rogan straddled the nuclear payload of his unofficial endorsement, feverishly attempting to fix the wiring on the door. He took a swig of his creatine and Alpha Brain mix and his mind crackled white hot. The solution came to him like a bolt of lightning. A few twists of the last wire left…
With a loud metallic clanging, the bomb doors flew open, filling the bay with icy cold air. Absolutely nuts, man, the whole thing was like being on the best DMT and shrooms and cosmic truth at the same time. The bomb dropped, Iowa rushing towards him, with Rogan happily screaming “That’s wild, bro! Crazy, man!” all the way down to detonation.
Carl Wilhoyte is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His work has appeared in Street Fight Radio, District Sentinel, Abomination Magazine, Bourbon Penn, and Farmhouse Magazine.