Baskin OR Robbins?

A young man from a town like yours, A couple states over, comes of age and prepares to take place in the quadrennial tradition of choosing which local business will provide the ice cream for the pavilion in the town park.

It is a time of much pageantry and a fete is held where the local eateries set up stands to present their wares for the voting population of the town. The competition is always won by one of the two biggest diners in town - Old GOP’s Soda Pop Shoppe or Barry O’s Sundae Social.

There is also Bistro Bernie who serve things like tofu and new ideas served on a basket of structured arguments and facts - but most people find them new-agey and icky.

The hero of our story is ready to do his part and make the right choice for the town and he begins at the stall for Old GOP’s. Maybe because his family has always eaten there, maybe because the people that eat there look more like him than those at Barry O’s; nevertheless, he sidles up to stall where the familiar looking waitress who looks and sounds like our guy is ready to impress him with their signature sundae.

One “Frosty Freedom Fighter” is brought right up and our all American boy is stunned.
First of all he can see all the toppings and ingredients he’s heard about. There’s the Pro-life syrup, the marriage protection sprinkles, there are right-to-bear-arms gummy bears and all infused with essence of small government and chilled to a perfect temperature of xenophobic paranoia and dusted generously with religious nuts. Everything he has been told his mouth should water for! But more than the ingredients, what struck this lad was the presentation.
This dessert was a patriotic masterpiece. With flags and sparklers and reminders of those ‘over there’, to eat any other dessert would surely be un-American. If you looked at it just right, the ripples of the whipped cream looked just like George Washington’s wig and it was topped with a oversized communion wafer and a beautiful, abstinence-only-sex-education preserved cherry. The second it came out, any questions this guy had about what was in the sundae just red, white and blew away.

However, our lad was not dazzled for long. As he approached to take a taste, something did not seem right. All the bits he could see that were easy to scrape of the surface for instant, delicious satisfaction were great! The curled mass under all the decoration and away from the featured ingredients wasn’t like any ice cream he’d seen. It seemed vaguely familiar but his brain refused to recognize what he was being fed. It stank of corporate favors and bought congressmen. It had the consistency of a partially digested and regurgitated constitution and was that a peanut or the patriot act? On further inspection the fibrous matter binding it all together could well have been institutionalized bigotry and misogyny.

As he was a smart chap the spell was broken. The good fella that he is he decided to check out Barry O’s stall - the trendier of the two joints with a hipper clientele. He knew about it from the flyers in old GOP’s claiming that the cherry pie was made of aborted fetuses and the milkshake whippers were powered with the body’s of the founding fathers spinning in their graves.

Another sundae was provided and was equally well presented. Designed by Shepard Fairey and accompanied by a Beyonce soundtrack, this was a hopeful treat speaking of youth and future! Suitably impressed so far, our guy was ready to jump in but stopped himself. He had learned from his experience at Old GOP’s and had been to a Whole Foods once. He asked the waitress if he could see the ingredients and nutritional values and was dully provided with them.

Wouldn’t you know it - ice cream! Real ice cream! Made with locally sourced ingredients such as cream from Adam and Steve’s Marriage Equality dairy farm, Granulated Universal Health Care Sugar, some gun control eggs (which sadly never had a chance of hatching) all mixed together at the right political temperature. There were even some we-killed-bin-laden chips!

No brainer for our boy right? So he thought. But he started to look at the area it was prepared and didn’t like what he saw. It was unsanitary. There were malodors very similar to the ones from the other place. The same filthy corporate utensils had been used and there were sticky brown footprints running in between the two stalls.
He investigated further. The were additives in the ice cream, like banker bonus preservatives. Traces of Benghazi - that must be something to do with gluten. The thing was so high on the government spending glycemic index that everyone involved got deficit diabetes! Once again, our boy is not happy. He decides maybe he’s not hungry anymore but he is told he has to choose! The whole town will be eating what he chooses for the next four years, but what are his choices? Both waitresses push their offerings towards him. As a waft of the sulfurous emissions that occur when the rights of the many are digested to nourish the greed of the few causes his vision to blur and both waitresses and sundaes merge into one and back to two, then two ice creams one woman, one girl two cups, two girls - one cup…. he realizes what he is being fed and where he saw it before!!

His choice is either ice cream flavored shit or shit flavored ice cream. Either way, his dining experience is likely to be the same.