The following is satire for the Opinions section of the Clarion.
As we approach the halfway mark for 2024, the new presidential election season draws ever nearer. With it, comes the existential dread of understanding that our options come down, once again, to flipping a rusty old coin and hoping we call the side that won’t spit on our human rights while it somersaults through the air.
Sometimes it seems that the one thing that every American can agree on is that coins are getting old. Aren’t you bored? Aren’t you over it? I am.
Of course, as a child born and raised in the deepest cesspools of late-stage capitalism, I have always been thrilled to be met with issues where I only have to think about two options. Swipe left or swipe right? Stress about my schoolwork or stress about my future? Eat a raw dining hall hamburger or starve? Simplicity can be truly beautiful.
Unfortunately, simplicity in presidential elections is, like, so 2016. We need to spice it up a bit.
It wasn’t until I doomscrolled past my fifth Critical Role Instagram clip of the day that I realized what America truly needs:
The presidential D20.
If you have been exposed to Netflix’s Stranger Things or were a little bit sad in middle school, you probably know what Dungeons & Dragons is. With some dice, math and a little bit of imagination, anything can become possible. The most important piece in this game is a 20-sided die that determines how good you can be at whatever action you are attempting, ranging from a “nat 1” to a “nat 20,” with a 1 being the worst possible outcome and a 20 being the best.
Now, you may be thinking: “This just sounds like you’re advocating for a shift to a multiparty system of democracy.”
Yeah, I am. But I’ve been alive long enough to know that the only way to make people care about politics is to include gaming in some metaphorical or literal capacity, and we couldn’t put Subway Surfers footage below the text of this article. I asked.
As it stands, we simple Americans are playing with a poker chip with a “1” and a “2” written in Sharpie on each side. We know we can expect each election cycle to reliably take us from “Eh, I’m alive I guess,” to “I wonder how much it costs to immigrate to Svalbard.”
With the Presidential D20, we can give 18 additional underqualified third-party candidates an equal chance at the Oval Office, thus unlocking a whole spectrum of new options that range from really bad to pretty okay.
Just think! Each November, we can come together as a country and wait with bated breath as we give our national fate a fun little toss onto a table to see how the next four years of our lives will go!
Imagine the joy of seeing the die land on a perfect nat 20, finally placing Dolly Parton in the Oval Office, right where she belongs. You know it’s all going to be okay.
Better yet, imagine the tantalizing uncertainty of rolling a 10 – dead middle. Robert F. Kennedy is now Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces. Who knows what could happen? You know things won’t be great, but they will definitely be weird!
Of course, an unfavorable roll is always a possibility. But, hey! Germany, Cambodia and Italy are all multiparty democracies and they’ve only rolled nat 1’s on their leaders like, a couple of times.
In an age where it seems that we have no choice but to pick one of two sides of an issue, I think it’s high time we start to think a little more multidimensionally and give every unqualified joker on the debate stage a fair shot at running the country.
