Rats occupy a special place in the compendium of human fears and fascination, these horriblis rodentica come to real life in urban streets and virtually in literature and popular culture. Rat-riding fleas spread the Bubonic Plague Black Death in the 1300s. A cage of hungry rats strapped to his face breaks poor Winston in George Orwell’s 1984. Rats have always played a supporting role in movies, occasionally gnawing their way to stardom in horror flicks such as “Willard” and “Ben” as well as lovable in the animated Ratatouille. Social mediaites scurried voraciously to watch The Pizza Rat labor determinedly drag his found meal down the subway steps. A few days ago a New York City sidewalk collapsed casting an unfortunate pedestrian 12 feet down into a pit swarming with rats. Afraid to scream for help he said he didn’t want rats to crawl into his mouth.
With the Election of America’s next President only a few days away, will the sidewalk of American democracy collapse, hurling us to doom in a pit filled with the Rat King Trump and his hoard of rat relatives and Republican rodents? New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently that if Trump wins this may be the last weekend in America, the democratic United States of America. Hyperbole you say? In his last days campaigning the Rat King is frothing that if he doesn’t win there will be chaos in the streets. That he must be declared the winner on election night or else! America’s Democratic infrastructure, like the sidewalks of America, have been hollowed out, neglected and teeming underneath with corrupt, ravenous, greedy vermin. Only an army of American voters determined to defeat the rats under feet will save us. Gods won’t. They only save those who want to be saved. Save ourselves. Or let the rats crawl into our mouths and devour us from inside out. Vote before it’s too late.
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