THE PLAY’S THE THING

 

By Ruth A. Sheets

December 16, 2025

Watching the news, on TV or online lets us all into a crazy world of folks in power roles in a giant game.  There is a kind of outline, but no script, “Project 2025.”  They have a kind of goal in mind but don’t seem to know what it should look like when finished.  The cast includes a set of players who think they know what their roles should be, but the rest of the cast is not necessarily in agreement.   

A challenge is that no one is clear just who the director is.  There are several candidates, but none of them has the needed skills or talent, but are all jockeying for position. 

In some ways, this is like a role-playing game in which all of us are involved in a quest related to our democracy?  The main characters are rich, white, racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, mostly male, and want a society where only folks like themselves have full citizenship, making all decisions, ruling families, the workplace, communities, and governments at all levels.  They have permission from no one, caring nothing for the skills, abilities, knowledge, talents of anyone unless they can use them.  For them, it’s about wealth and power.  The vast majority of the American people are supposed to be NPCs (non-player characters, to be seen and not heard, pawns to be dragged around with the party.  However, the NPCs have one tool or skill they can use when needed, which scares the leads in the cast.

So, meet the cast at this point in the production:

• Cheeto-Cheeks:  He wants to be king.  His brain is slowly drifting away through dementia, but no one around him can mention it on pain of being fired or worse.  He has no talents beyond grifting, but a lot of ambition, and no positive work ethic.
• Little Elon:  a toddler-adult who wants to rule the world.  He has far fewer skills and talents than he thinks, but has an enormous amount of money due to inheritance (rarely mentioned), and the results of investments and other ways he feeds his addiction to money and power. 
• The Unjolly Miller:  He wants to be the Lord High Inquisitor and Public Executioner too.   His hatreds are astronomical.  He shows little facial expression, no concern for anyone (as that would show weakness).  One can imagine him as the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp.
• Whitey Vought:  His partner is The Unjolly Miller although they are often found treading on each other’s territory, trying to outdo each other in the cruelties they perpetrate on others. (Both want to be director.)
• Noem Dog:  she spends a lot of time trying to prove her manhood; it isn’t working, so must do photo ops at every opportunity, which may slow the party.  She has no skills, no talent, but knows how to dress for an occasion.

• Wanton Warrior:  He likes renaming things and spends time doing that instead of actually learning his job, supposedly defending this nation, but prefers committing war crimes.

• Suzie-Q:  She is a manipulator, the whisperer for the party.  She can tell them to do things and they will just do them because they know she has information on them they don’t want shared.  She can quietly order Cheeto around when no one else can.
• Marco Little:  the appointed diplomat who found going along with Cheeto’s expectations is better than real diplomacy.
• Bonded Woman:  She is attached through an umbilical cord to Cheeto Cheeks and is certain she must do everything to protect her baby, kind of like his pseudomommy.  She too has little experience, less skill, but is so excited she gets to do as much harm to the “kingdom” as she can with impunity while Her Baby Cheeto has immunity.
• Mikey Wimp:  His job is to get things done in the party, but alas, he can’t figure out how to do that because he is incompetent and does not realize he is just the guy to be blamed when he is unsuccessful, which is constant.
• Johnny Kingmaker:  He and his band of 5 hoods want to force all the NPCs to obey, no matter what stupid thing they demand or proclaim.  The six of them make up rules, then pronounce them throughout the land.  They decide who will win no matter what is legal.

 Can you imagine this band of misfits on any kind of quest on behalf of this nation?  Any quest is entirely for themselves and those whose incompetence, hatred, ignorance are as powerful as their own. 

 They often forget us NPCs, so if we are careful, strategic, intelligent (which we are), we can stop them.  We need to give them a dungeon to survive so they won’t bother the rest of us as we work to undo the damage they have done and put in place new guardrails to keep a party with actions like theirs from forming again in America.