Political Peeps

Now that people in the District of Calamity have recovered from their Easter basket sugar comas as well as the elation over Bryce Harper hitting two homers to secure the opening day win for the Washington Nationals, it is a good time to consider Easter epicurean art in the form of political peeps.

Peeps are a marshmallow confection produced by Just Born candies from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania since 1953.  The Peeps are formed in the shape of chicks and bunnies and are often associated with Easter.

Had the creators of Occupy Peeps have watched Occupied Unmasked, their take on the protest might not have been so sweet. 

Since 2007, the Washington Post has sponsored a contest challenging budding artists to make dioramas with Peeps.  This year a few of the outstanding entries had playful yet poignant political themes.  

Nicholas Burger and  Radga Iyenger honored the heroics of Seal Team Six in administering justice to Osama bin Laden in Diorama of Zero Dark Thirty (with Peeps).

It is unclear what exactly was inside the wrapper. Assuredly, it was not kosher. 

Others took a more whimsical approach to governance in the District of Calamity.  A group from the Siemens Technology Team in Beltsville, Maryland satirized Sequestration by splicing it with imagery inspired by Despicable Me in their creation: DesPEEPable Congress.

Despite the demagoguery of the Obama Administration, Sequestration was not the bomb that the White House expected.  The 2.3% reduction in the rate of growth for the federal government did not not blow up between the beltways.  The White House did hold the annual Easter Egg Roll but decided to cancel school tours of the White House, blaming it on Secret Service funding.  Maybe if the First Family cut down on their jet setting (first daughters surf and ski spring break at Paradise Island, the Bahamas and Sun Valley, Idaho,  the President taking Sunday Golf jaunts to Florida to have a round with Tiger Woods), they could avoid the damage. 

h/t: The Washington Post

This Is What Democracy (Really) Looks Like

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.  Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.”      (attributed to) Ben Franklin

While attributions to Franklin may not quite be on the money since the term lunch did not enter into common parlance until the 1820s, the meat of this food for thought is still quite fulfilling.   It aptly captures the tyranny of the majority and class warfare epitomized by the ineptocracy currently in power.  To borrow a phrase from the unmasked Occupy Movement "This is what democracy looks like".

The coda of this faux Franklin phrase alludes to the Second Amendment, which protects Americans from tyranny.  It is important to recognize why the Second and the Fourth Amendments were included in the Bill of Rights.  The British tried to enforce burdensome laws on their British American colonies without any input by the citizenry.  When Americans balked at things like the Stamp Act and the Tea Act (1773), the powers that be doubled down on their policies by sending in massive force and forcing the colonists to quarter the Red Coats. Taxation without Representation is more than a slogan that DC Statehood activists have ironically re-appropriated.   The right to keep and bear arms was not about helping hunting but as natural rights which  are backstops against anarchy and organized tyranny to protect property rights.