To the editor:

Being President is a tough job. Campaigning can be kind of fun, but once you’re elected the fun stops. Every time you turn around there’s somebody telling you that you can’t do what you want to do. That’s no fun. “Checks and balances” simply get in your way. Know-it-all professors, fake scientists and so-called economists want to make you seem stupid. Lawyers, judges, protesters, newspaper writers — all sorts of people just try to make you look small, make you look weak.

No, running a government in a democracy is a lot of work and it isn’t fun. What’s fun is putting opposition candidates in jail. What’s fun is having dissenters accidentally fall out of apartment house windows. And shipping people you don’t like off to obscene prisons in other countries, invading countries and wrecking economies. But it’s even fun just to scare big-shot law firms and universities enough that they will knuckle under. After a while you can frighten everyone enough that they automatically do what they think you want. You can even get them to rat out neighbors and friends. Once you are really in charge you can close down inefficient parts of the government like the House and Senate and Supreme Court. You can have a really sharp looking crown that you can wear anytime you feel like it. You can rewrite the Constitution any way you want.

But I suppose you really can’t do that here, not in America. The people wouldn’t let you.

Joe Douglas,

Lawrence