my hair was bright yellow and my power level was over 2 million. Its going to be a good day.

There’s a ten-ton elephant in the room, and 3 months ago it released the political equivalent of Vista to the American public. Sure it had a few new features and fixed a few old bugs, but at the end of the day it was just a clunky upgrade of its predecessor desperately hoping to capture the “Jesus is the internet” segment of the population. The opposing side on the other hand countered with OS X, shiny, hip, young, and available on both black and white Macbook models.

What happened? What happened is what Apple has understood for years.  It catapulted the computer company in the late 90s from a fringe cult to a dominant, and growing, force in mainstream tech.  The simple truth: people die.  Cater to the youth vote, because in the long term, the youth will become older, and the old will die.  A campaign platform based on early bird specials and noise complaints is not sustainable.  As the Republican Party ages, and ages horribly I might add, its followed die, and unfortunately for them, its followers are old.

However, the truly elegant aspect of the Democratic strategy in not in facts, but in perceptions. My guess is that a large portion of you who just read this agreed with the above paragraph. Do I have any evidence to back it up? Of course not, its probably a blatant lie.  But the public perception is that the Republican Party is old, and the Democratic Party is young, and that simple perception is all that matters to make the prophecy self-fulfilling.  Its a classic battle between establishment and more-different establishment.  One side pretends to be counter-culture, makes its products hip, trim, and *importantly* distinguishable from its competitors, and two years later everyone has white headphones, wears a “think different” t-shirt, and then finds five dollars.  Why is it important to have a distinguishable product?  Because its meaningless to be counter-culture unless you can show it off to all of your friends.

Why is this dangerous? Because it could spell the end of the two-party system as we know it.  The Democratic Party has been able to defy game theory by playing two strategies at the same time, leaving the republican party little room to maneuver.  Not fair.  What can they do about it?

There’s a ten-ton elephant in the room, and it must be eaten.  I recommend that we spice it with paprika first to get rid of the decrepid 72-year-old smell. It must be rebranded, baked into pie, and then served at every indie and emo concert in the coutry. “The (Republic Party)++ feels your pain.  It will stop birds from dying.  Here’s some pie.” Associate the Republican party with something delicious–not mentally challenged hockey moms, old people, or the Amish.  No one wants to be any of those things. They aren’t what kids dream about when they’re little.  People want to be able to dance.  They want to have hope. They want bird to live.  And they want pie.

My advice: get back to your roots of individual liberty and a state-led federalism.  Listen to the youth of American.  Change your mascot.  Chip away at the Democratic base.  Expose it for the big-government behemoth lurking beneath the fold.  Hide Palin in a padded room, and maybe then you will weather the winter.  In the words of Marcus Aurelius, “There was once a dream that was the the Republican party. You could only whisper it.  Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish.” Strength and honor, my Republican friends.  Strength and honor.

I am always asked why I chose to go to MIT.  I tell job interviewers it was because I wanted to test my limits. I respond to coworkers with tales of roller coasters and giant robots. My parents believe it was to become a highly-paid political commentary food blog writer at an independent website collaborative. These are all lies. The truth is much deeper. It started earlier. For you, and only you, here is the epic that is my story.

When I was seven, my parents bought me an SNES so that I could make friends.  It worked.  People would come to my house to play video games for days on end, starting with Super Mario World and expanding from there to a variety of side-scrolling awesome.  One game, however, rose above all others.  The graphics were crisp, the gameplay tight, the score epic.  U.N. Squadron-be a mercenary pilot, earn money for kills, buy planes and special weapons, kill terrorists, destroy everything in your path, and save the planet all in two dimensions.   The game was addictive.  It was very addictive.  There was only one problem.  It was hard.  It was very hard.  Other games came and went. They were beaten and forgotten, but UN Squadron lingered.  It mocked me, but every time we attempted to teach Project 4 the respect we deserved, we were bested.  We weren’t even able to reach the final boss.

January 17, 1995 was a sad day for the allied forces of Area 88.  I was with three of my closest video game friends when we decided that our strategy wasn’t working.  Rather than wearing the enemy down, the results of our labors were blisters and trench foot.  However, before we parted ways, we made a pact, that in 14 years, we would meet again, and on that day, we would play again.

And so it goes.  After not talking to each other for the rest of my youth, we left the land of our humble upbringings. I went to MIT to study optimal budgetary allocations and weapon effectiveness.  Steve went to flight school to become a pilot and aeronautical engineer. Jim never went to college, instead honing his reflexes and social skills by playing World of Warcraft. Bill became a writing studies major.

There was a chill in the air on the night of January 17th, 2009, as if the planet trembled in anticipation of the saga to conclude.  Were the last 14 years of our lives a waste? Would we find ourselves in the same predicament?  After blowing the dust out of the cartridge and hooking up the SNES to the TV, we began.  Armed with tab and power bars, we fought.

The fighting in this area is ferocious.  Only fate will determine if we live or die.  No truer words were ever displayed in the intro of a video game.  And so it was that, after a tumultuous 6 hours of play, we reached further than we had ever before.  But would it be enough?  Our continues were exhausted, our life count depleted, our life bar low when we saw the final boss–a flying battleship carrier.

The night of January 17th will forever linger in my memories.  It was the moment, in the words of Bill Pullman, that the world declared in one voice: We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. Thank you, Bill.  Mission Accomplished.