Set the Way-Back Machine to the end of the Clinton years, a time of great prosperity, where we find an interesting juncture. It was a time when some quirk of fate sent us down the path to the dark side. As a green prophet once told us, once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. It’s sort of like, once you go black you never go back. In our case, the downfall all started with, of all things, a cigar. Let Freud wrestle with that one.

In the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, aka a level III Multiverse Theory, put as simply as possible, every event triggers a “split”, or for each possible outcome of the event a distinct universe is created. Now consider what chain of events 12+ years ago led us to where we are today. Where would we be if any of those outcomes had changed for the better? In other words, were we all Lewensky’d?

Post cigar, Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election. Now, one would think the copilot through Clinton’s “cha-ching years” would be a shoe-in for the next presidency. But there was the bad taste in everyone’s mouth, pardon the pun, and there were some gaffs, of course. The most memorable of which was when Al Gore said he invented the internet. While he did not invent this series of tubes, it had been around since the 60s, he did chair the committee that recommended it be opened and available to the public. He was instrumental to the internet moving from the privy of Universities and the Government, to that of Yahoo, Amazon and the porn industry. I think he got the shaft on that, pardon the pud, but to this day people still talk about this statement, mostly on that internet he unleashed. How ironic. Anyway, the newly freed cyber media pounced on the overreach, which cost him dearly.

So the race was close going into the 2000 election. Instead of voting in our well-qualified VP, we voted in a man who somehow managed to run a baseball team into the ground, one George W. Bush. Okay, well, we didn’t really vote him in, but we did for all intents and purposes.

Florida was then a state run by W’s brother. Both sons of the former head of the CIA had questionable outcomes to their respective elections. Long story short, it came down to an exhaustive, manual recount of the votes by a team of well trained chimpanzees. This, by the way, is similar to how The Discord operates. We didn’t have enough time before the inauguration to get this tedious job done. And some say they’re still counting…

As the deadline approached, the Supreme Court, appointed by the aforementioned head of the CIA, made the exact decision everyone knew they would; they sided with the Texas oil man. No shock there, but again, the universe splits. So I am now stuck two splits away from where I want to be, where I should be! You know that game how many degrees to Kevin Bacon?…well, this is nothing like that.

Meanwhile, post this fateful internet gaffe, the once-favored candidate to win the 2000 election became a laughing stock as the pundits and comedians descended. Had The Daily Discord been around then I’m sure Zano would have piled on with something…um, probably something like this:

I Don’t Always Invent Things Like The Internet But when I do, I drink Dos Equis and download porn

Yeah, something like that. So how do I teleport myself to this alternate America? With all this talk of secession, I’m looking for a more scientific escape pod. Besides, these seceders are generally the yahoos who got us into this mess. So secede already! Don’t let the border fence gate hit you on the ass on the way out.

America fundamentally changed under Bush and nobody on this planet is going to be able to totally steer us through this ongoing global shit sandwich. What if we had let Clinton work his last year in office? …you know, instead of mire him in a witch hunt led by the Family Values Czar himself, Newt Gingrich? What if we had let W just clear brush and maybe bankrupt another baseball team? All right, if it were the Tigers I’d really have to think about that. But what if we didn’t have a media outlet bent on creating brain dead pawns instead of candidates? Did you see the movie The Candidate with Robert Redford? Today’s GOP has added one more step to the process. Each candidate must walk into a booth where 30 IQ points are ripped from your prefrontal cortex. I can’t wait to see who’s next. Zano’s got it right, 2016 will likely be Hillary vs Tree Stump. Meanwhile, we’re still two elections away from where we need to be…two splits. Sure, I’m talking about a land of make believe and what ifs, but more importantly it would be a land of democracy, not judge rulings and a systematic propaganda.

If and when time travel becomes possible, could we avert 9/11, avert the Bush Administration, and or even the entire global economic collapse? How about someone goes back to Time-Space 1999 and tells old Al not to hail himself as the Internet King? Maybe that would be enough to avoid the 2000 split and the 2004 split. Personally, I would go back and try talking Rupert Murdoch into getting into the music industry instead.

I can’t shake it. I still fear these splits, l fear a cigar and that f-ing recount and a group of integrity-less swift boaters, but then again…

“Named must your fear be before you can banish it.”

— Yoda D’Kana (yeah, he has a last name)