Bedbugs and Pirates: Every State a Free State

By Bernie Quigley

- for The Hill on 4/16/09

This is the way the world ends: Bedbugs and pirates. But we know what the Commander-in-Chief will do because he wears a little bracelet on his arm that says: W.W.M.D? (What would Mitt Do?).

Mitt Romney can’t be feeling all that bad right now. Last week he advised crowds of Republicans to support President Obama on issues when they are confluent with their own desires. Threatening General Motors with bankruptsy and the war on Afghanistan, for example.

Romney was the first to call for letting Detroit fall into bankrupsy when the singular voice of press and politicians was in a love fest for Obama bailouts. And Romney was already right there right along with Gates and Obama on Afghanistan.

Like the Democratic mayor of Atlanta who hired Mitt Romney’s boys at Bain & Company to do the books, so it appears that Obama will be mining Mitt’s site for best practices.

I hope Romney has some advice on bed bugs and pirates. Should we negotiate with pirates? What if they sought a global alliance with China and Russia? Supposed they called for a shift in the global reserve currency from dollars to dubloons?

And anyone who thinks that bed bugs is a minor issue has not had the terrifying and lengthy experience. We did at a very popular chain of motels passing through the high country of Virginia five years ago. It still stings.

They like certain types, like my wife, who woke up covered with small, bloody wounds all over her body. I was not attacked, possibly because I used to smoke. (Tobacco is an excellent organic pesticide. When everybody smoked there were no bed bugs. Just saying.)

You cannot see them in the evening because they hide inside the mattress. You cannot get rid of them. You will carry them home in your luggage and they will invade your house. You will have to throw out all your stuff. You will carry them to other motels. It is like a ponzi scheme of vermin. They are everywhere. They are worse than pirates.

Sun Tzu says the first object of war it to psychologically destabilize your enemy. Bed bugs have now, having had the experience, fully destabilized our travel. First thing my wife does is check the beds; futile and paranoid, as they are hidden deep in their mattress caves. Instead, we stay with friends and family whenever possible.

I hope Mitt can fix this. He can fix anything, like Eisenhower and Robert C. Gates; that is why they call him up. They call Mitt when things get broke. I can personally attest to the swift skill that turned around the cursed Winter Olympics in 2002. And for a Mormon, who has the reputation of being a real square, he seemed thoroughly entertained by Robbie Robertson’s delightful hippie review and the “Oklahoma” style drama about the White Buffalo awakening the Age of Aquarius. I’m sure he can save the world from bed bugs and pirates but he might not get the chance. It might be too late.

The April 15 anti-tax “tea parties” put a lot of pins on the map. Conservative Instapundit Glenn Reynolds said a third party could result if the Republicans don’t listen up. It was not the total number of protesters but the hundreds of separate events that was striking, as each can be seen as a starting point. This could develop into a thoroughly original movement. America is getting New Hampshire-ized. As New Hampshire calls itself a free state or strives to be, so the rest might now find this slogan: Every state a free state. We here in New Hampshire are simply tolerated as cranky, independent and perpetually irascible; we are an impotent entertainment to big power and money; like a caged bear at the county fair. But if only 20 more states developed the same temperament it would be big trouble.

It is part of our vanity perhaps to see ourselves dying in a big way; a nuclear holocaust, a global financial meltdown or some Al Gore extravaganza of melting poles and burning forests. Bed bugs would never make a very good Jerry Bruckheimer disaster film. And being bitten to death by bugs doesn’t suit our global ego. But this, wrote T.S. Eliot, is the way the world ends: Nor with a bang, but a whimper.