A red elephant and a blue donkey were ambling across the middle of America. The elephant was regaling the donkey with a tale about a bunch of blind men who had once felt him up and who had somehow believed that the part they touched represented the entire body.
"I'm a pretty big guy," the elephant pointed out. "There is no way that any one part of me could represent me entirely. I mean, like, I am the embodiment of diversity."
The donkey mumbled something unintelligible in response as she chewed on a clump of sweet grass, following the delicious green blades as they led her behind some bushes. The elephant looked around. The sun was beating down on his head and he wanted to chill in the shade, maybe squirt a trunk full of water over his back. Then the elephant noticed a group of blind candidates rushing toward him, kicking up dust, with a bunch of journalists in their wake. Here we go again, he thought.
The first blind candidate to reach the elephant was Trump the Leader. He reached forward to touch the elephant's head and smiled.
"The elephant has a very big head," exclaimed Trump the Leader. "The elephant is very much like me."
Trump the Leader stood near the elephant's head, held up a finger, and pursed his lips. He turned to the side so that the many cameras could catch him in profile. The elephant turned his head and bumped Trump. Trump the Leader fell into the broad side of the beast.
"Wait a minute," Trump the Leader exclaimed. "The elephant is like a wall. Like the wall we need to place at the border in order to secure it to keep the raping Mexicans out. We shall enslave the illegals and force them to move the elephant to the border."
Another of the blind candidates, Scott the Cheesehead, believing he was in a mosh pit, threw himself into the elephant's side. "A wall, a wall," he sang. "We need the elephant to be a wall. It will block the Mexicans; it will block the unions. And my friends the Koch brothers will pay to train this elephant to do their bidding. And it is I who will ride regally on the shoulders of this magnificent beast as golden coins sprinkle from the skies."
Huckabee the Holy stood nearby clutching his Bible to his chest. He felt something squirmy slide up his leg and touch his private part. The sensation was interesting for a moment, and then he remembered that the elephant is a male. Huckabee leapt backward about 10 feet. Could there be a homosexual tendency in the elephant. No way! Huckabee waved his Bible toward the undulating trunk.
"We shall have to pray the queer out of you," Huckabee said. It was the last understandable thing he said before he began speaking in tongues. The words were unintelligible but the beat and melody sounded like Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever." Huckabee wondered if you could take an elephant down with a bow and arrow.
Blind Ben the Surgeon stood back from the elephant though he could smell peanuts on the animal's breath. "I don't care what the elephant is like. I say we bring in the drones and just blow it up. If we spray elephant brains all over everything, well that's just the cost of doing business. You can't blow up an elephant without a little mess. We'll just have a nurse clean that up."
"I don't know what you're talking about with this wall business," said Jeb the Sensible. Jeb had encountered the elephant's leg. "The elephant is like a tree trunk, rooted to the foundation of this great nation. Each leg represents the great foundation upon which we built this nation. One represents my father, one represents my brother, and one represents me."
"What about the fourth leg?" asked Jindal the Smart, who was a Rhodes Scholar. He knew that there were four legs on an elephant. He had seen a picture of one in India.
"Oh ... uh, that one represents my mother, Barbara Bush," said Jeb. "We cannot forget the great legacy of kindly, gray-haired, non-feminist women in this great party."
Blind Fiorina the Corporate found herself near the elephant's tail. The small appendage pleased her. "The elephant is small, just as government should be," she announced.
Fiorina lifted the tail to show that she could handle small government. A whiff of air from under there caused her to faint. As she came to on the ground she noticed Randy Paul the Libertarian sniffing at a dung ball.
"I need to smell this to find out what the elephant is eating," explained Paul. "An elephant is a curious creature. You must find out just how much libertarian is contained in the mix. It changes from day to day and I must attain the odor of the day."
Cruz the Canadian bumped into Christie the Blunt. "I think there may be more than one elephant in the area," he said, reaching out and rubbing Christie's head.
The red elephant shrugged them off like they were so many crumbs on a table and ambled away. He rejoined his blue donkey friend to continue their walk.
"Who was that bunch?" asked the donkey. "What did they want?"
"Who cares?" replied the elephant. "Even with my memory the entire lot of them is quite forgettable."
Larry Gabriel writes the Stir It Up and Higher Ground columns for the Detroit Metro Times and is editor of The American Cultivator.
