Truth be told, there was no other way for the dice to roll.

And the punch line to this unfunny joke… all the players love the house rule. Even though the loser winds up with all the loot (but doesn’t know why), downtown’s a ghost town, the train depots are deserted, and there’s nothing left to buy.

So, with hats and shoes all packed into their tiny race cars, the rest of the fools flee the board in search of Trouble, Sorry! or Hungry Hungry Hippos. Leaving behind…

Foreclosed houses
Shuttered hotels and
Emptied jails ^{(No cash bail …just roll doubles)}

When shopkeeps have to lock-up all the thimbles and flat irons… yeah,  the game is pretty much over.

Well… almost.

There is still one monopoly left in play:

“Free education for all children in government schools. Let there be necking in the parlor and dancing in the streets.”
^{Karl Marx meets Groucho Marx}

The tenth plank of Marx’s Manifesto (…that would be Karl not Groucho) called for an educational free-for-all giving tenured tyrants a gamelife all their own. Today’s Li’l Red Schoolhouse fills days on end for weeks on end with soul-sucking lessons in:

• Profit is theft
• America is racist, and of course…
• White men are evil

Lesson One: If Ol’ MacDonald had a farm with too many cows in his barn, what would be the nursery rhyme’d remedy to this white (and black) supremacy?

Liberalism: Steal the milk
Socialism: Steal the cows
Communism: Shoot the cows
Black Lives Matter: Shoot Ol’ MacDonald

…E-I-E-I-O ♬

Of course, nowhere in this marxist manure would be the capitalist notion of simply selling off some moos to buy a bull.

(…and that cows and bulls use different stalls.)

Also absent from the lesson plans is that all their infamous “isms” have fabulously failed everywhere everytime they’ve been tried: The former Soviet states, Cuba, Venezuela, and (…that’s right boys and girls!) Plymouth.

In order to secure funding for their voyage to the New World, the Pilgrims were forced to live by a form of socialism (informally known as: 𝚻𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧) and in a land flowing with milk and honey, the settlement nearly starved to death.

But in true happily ever after fashion, the disastrous concept was scrapped by their Governor (and our hero) William Bradford.

Maybe the thought police assumed Brother Bradford was a Trump supporter and dismissed the classic MAGA tale. And (as the oft-used quip goes) when you assume, you make a democrat’s heinie out of ‘u’ and ‘me’.

Give a kid a fish and he’ll stink for a day.
Teach a kid to steal fish and the stinker will vote democrat for the rest of his life.

Of course, shoplifting ain’t really “stealing” stealing: Waltzing outa Walmart with a 4k 1080p HD thin screen is simply wealth redistribution for the culturally oppressed, aggrieved minorities, and victims of corporate greed.

Reparations: The new Get Outa Jail Free card

Well, sure… takin’ something belonging to someone else is wrong (especially if you get clipped) but referring to it as… uhm… the ‘S’ word might be just a little too 𝐎𝐥𝐝 𝚻𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭. After all, you-know-what presumes some carved in stone right an’ wrong, and the 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 was expelled from the game a long time ago. So…

No Thou shalt Nots
No Do unto Others
No Love thy Neighbor

…just take the money and run.

Or don’t run. Fleeing is consciousness of guilt. And players have no guilt because they have no God. Well, not the 𝐆𝐨𝐝… not the 𝐈 𝐀𝐦

The god of the palm-worshipers is a woman: Alexa hears their playful prayers and divinely grants them high-speed heavenly access to their heart’s desires and forbids them not.

“And whatsoever feeleth good to thee, just doeth it.”
Colossians something ^{BKE (Burger King Edition)}

So, why are we surprised when the pee-pee’rs loot and pillage Boardwalk and Park Place?

𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝚾𝐕𝐈: 𝐋𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝚻𝐡𝐞𝐟𝐭

Well, what else would you call forcing some to pay more for less so others may pay less for more?

A gallon of milk ^beep a dozen eggs ^beep a pound of bacon ^boop and a tin of coffee. ^Whirrrr… That’ll be Nine-thousand nine-hundred seventy-three dollars and fifty-three cents. Plus the Biden-Harris Biohazard Tax.

…bacon grease?

No, your diesel sucking stepside.

Even flattening the lumpy code into a single rate, the rich would still pay more for benefits they would never want to use, than those sopping-up those benefits… for which they could never hope to pay.

The Founder’s idea of fairness was for everyone to pay the same. Not the same rate…

The same amount.

𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞 𝐈 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝚾 constitutionalized any financial responsibility for the shared benefit of all to be shared equally by all. But equality was outlawed by Marx and Engel’s 𝟏𝟔^𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: Fairness and equity for me but not for thee.

…welcome to the farm, animals.

Why tax income at all? We should tax stuff we don’t want, like potlucks.

At a church social, a sign at the head of line advised:
“𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟ֽ. 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫̦ 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠.″

But a hand-scrawled post-it left down on the empty dessert tray noted:
“𝚻𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭ֽ. 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐭ֽ″

Well… piety like democracy is a mile wide and pie crust deep.

After all, what is democracy? except the majority voting themselves a forkful of their neighbor’s entrée while charging them for the privilege. And the first rule of democracy is there are no rules. Just crumbs of graham cracker.

But if it’s a 𝚻𝐡𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 to steal from someone, and a 𝚻𝐡𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 to steal for someone, then you darn-well know it’s a 𝚻𝐡𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 to vote for someone to 𝚻𝐡𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 for you.

Amen.

𝚻𝐡𝐞 𝟐𝟴^𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: 𝚴𝐨 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠

Yeah… but it’s not enough to say nothing is free. Everything has a price including everything that’s free. And someone must pay.

…though not necessarily in cash. Unearned presidential trading paper is just monopoly money: Not nearly as colorful and worth even less.

“He who steals my purse steals trash… and a cherry lip gloss, half a banana, and a two-for-one coupon at Bob’s Burger Barn.”
^{William Shakespeare meets Erma Bombeck}

Pack rats are nature’s takers. But in place of what they take, they always leave something in return. Because to value what is taken, something of value must be given. Two-legged rats just take.

Ride it like you stole it. ^{Thomas Paine (…sorta)}

Well, he might have…  had he opened a novelty t-shirt outlet. Instead he penned it like this: “What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

Theft not only devalues what is stolen but also who. What is stolen can be returned but cannot be unstolen. Unredeemed, the thief remains a thief.

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” ^{Romans 5:8}

And the parking is free.

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I’m That Kind of Girl ♬
Painting expressions of warmth and harmony, or dancing like nobody’s watching and singing like Kathy Mattea.

Let’s Eat Grandma
Hold up on that blue haired buffet, we need a quick powwow with the shoot eating panda.