how the united states elected the talking guinea pig viral video sensation.
we just got a couple of guinea pigs and mini-unblock found some internet videos of guinea pigs with human voices dubbed over them to make it appear as if the piggies are talking. funny and cute! i'm not linking because i don't want the thread to be derailed before it starts 
it got me thinking about an alternate universe where one of the presidential candidates was a viral video sensation, a talking guinea pig voiced by mini-unblock.
in a wide-open field of many primary candidates of various backgrounds and levels of experience, many got lost in the shuffle, but everyone wanted to see what the latest video from the guinea pig was! they were hysterical! being voiced by a 10-year old who had no particular interest in politics, the answers were mostly devoid of any particular policy substance, but very entertaining. mini-unblock also has adhd, so the "piggy" talks quite a lot and jump from subject to subject. it's very adorable and captivating!
all the other candidates were complaining at how incompetent and outrageous the answers were but the people kept laughing. they wanted to see more, so one by one, they kept voting the humans off the island and kept the guinea pig. a few people really liked what the guinea pig has to say, but a lot of people just wanted to see what the piggy would do next, and still more people were just stunned that a guinea pig was in the primaries.
everyone assumed the guinea pig wouldn't actually get the nomination, that they would have to pick an actual human, but people just kept voting for the piggy. the party leaders panicked and tried a "stop piggy" movement to nominate "anyone but piggy", but that only gave piggy more airtime. his ratings were terrific!
eventually piggy won the nomination and the world was stunned. everyone knew it was very, very wrong, but they couldn't stop it from happening. a few in the party said they couldn't support a guinea pig, a rarity for what is normally a very unified party.
but when the general campaign came around, most of the party and the media just did what they always do. they cranked up the general election machine they do every four years and touted their new, improved graphics and feeds. red vs. blue, are you ready to rumble?
throughout the campaign, most of the people supported the actual human from the other party, of course. but quite a few nevertheless came out in favor of the guinea pig. some of them out of habit of siding with that party, some of them just because they couldn't stand that particular human from the other party, and quite a lot just because they couldn't get enough of that cute little piggy and wanted to see more! when's the next video coming out! all i see is an empty cage!
eventually, the actual human, who by the way was very qualified and quite capable, said, out of frustration, "how am i not winning by 50 points? my opponent is a guinea pig!" piggy supporters found this offensive, and the media started asking how the actual human's campaign could survive a gaffe like that.
when the conventions and the debates came, people got a bit more serious, and it was clear that piggy's answers lacked the gravitas of the actual human's answer, and the polls finally shifted to give the actual human the a clear edge.
it looked like the actual human would win, and sanity would prevail.
then, right before the election, the fbi director said he heard about a stack of papers somewhere that might be blank, or might be copies of things everyone's seen before; but, not having read them, there was a possibility that they said something bad about the actual human. oh no!
when the votes were counted, most people voted for the actual human, but the guinea pig somehow won the electoral college and was on his way to becoming president!
there was much controversy, many people objecting, he's a guinea pig, we can't let him become president! but the guinea pig's party leaders now had too much to gain from letting him become president.
now the guinea pig had to plan a transition and become president! he had know idea how to do this so he went back to what worked before and released some more videos. again they went viral! people just love the talking guinea pig!
meanwhile, the media kept wondering how to cover all this. they had seen presidents come and go but they had no idea how to cover a guinea pig.
well he's my suggestion.
- stop covering the guinea pig like it's any other president, but with an internet-viral twist.
- tell the world, each and every time, that it's not an actual human, but an internet gimmick -- a guinea pig, voiced by a 10-year old. don't pretend it's almost normal, don't pretend that there's forrest gump or chauncey gardener wit or charm or heart behind there, because there isn't. it's just an internet gimmick.
- stop hanging on every squeak. it's a guinea pig. they squeak. a lot.
- pay attention to the actual humans in government, not so much the guinea pig. actual humans will be the ones actually doing things.
- the process is broken if it can install a guinea pig as president. don't let up on that story until it's fixed! this cannot happen again!
- the situation is broken as long as we have a guinea pig as president. don't let up on that story until it's fixed, and yes, these are two separate stories.
- oh, and stop with the analysis about what the other candidate could have done differently, or if a different actual human candidate might have done better. people chose a guinea pig over an actual human, the idea that a better human being would have changed anything is completely missing what happened. either way, the actual human was far superior by every traditional metric. they the people who voted for the guinea pig wanted to be entertained, they wanted to have their viral videos.
