That we’ve been at war in Afghanistan for 17 years is probably lost on most Americans.  Devoid of the conflagrated selective service cards and violent college protests that marked the debacle of Vietnam, it’s been relegated to the dusky horizon of our political landscape.  After all, how much gravitas can a conflict possess when we lose five times the number of servicemen killed each year to boating accidents?

Retracing the early ‘70s, those not opposing the war altogether were growing increasingly frustrated about our inability to defeat a barefoot army wearing pajamas and setting bicycles against our vast array of jets and helicopters.  Capitalizing on the prevailing zeitgeist, a trio of Dirty Harry films was produced wherein Inspector Callahan’s Magnum .44 served as a thinly veiled stand-in for our unspent atomic arsenal.

Today it is an endless string of superhero movies that salves our unrest.  The polity is understandably weary and unnerved as this decade has seen an unrelenting stream of existential threats from mass shootings to mega-storms to the revival of Roseanne.  As it is all but impossible to conjure any rational solutions to abrupt climate change or terrorist attacks, we are reduced to fantasizing that any moment now the X-Men or Avengers will swoop from the heavens and save the day.  Given our regrettable nature to measure the caliber of any rescuer against the stature of his nemesis, we fixate on obvious villains such as Kim Jong-un and Ayatollah Khamenei.  And while the current administration has us all turned around when it comes to Vladimir Putin (think: the fuzzy line between menace and ally in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Benjamin Netanyahu leaves us completely befuddled all on his own.

Here at home, peril takes the form of President Toadstool and his trusty sidekick, Judge Cosby.  Their particular superpowers include lying under oath, slathering the earth with carcinogens and caging brown children.  Their signature maneuver is a lightning quick and equally depraved slight-of-hand known as the labial filch.

The evil duo does, however, have a fatal flaw; they rely for survival on the energy field of the Redneck People, a race whose rabid fascination with gunplay, moonshine, methamphetamines, incest and sex with minors continuously puts them on the precipice of extinction.  We find an exemplar in Cody Wilson who was arrested after paying a 16-year-old girl $500 to have sex with him.  The worst part of the crime, according to Austin police, is that after the exchange, he ditched her at a local Whataburger.   I would think with all that cash in her pocket she deserved at least a Red Lobster.

Wilson, you may recall, founded the Internet site Hateron – which funneled thousands of dollars to neo-Nazis and white supremacists – along with Defense Distributed, a company that promulgates CAD blueprints for 3-D printable (and thus untraceable) pistols. While the firm and the government have wrestled in court for years, it continues to peddle its wares, having argued (somewhat successfully) that gunning someone down is a form of protected speech.

Yet perhaps, on a global scale, there is no evil darker than the Catholic Church.  Since my last missive, the Brooklyn Diocese has coughed up $27.5 million of parishioners’ money to 4 victims of sexual abuse.  Further upstate, Buffalo Bishop Richard J. Malone is fending off calls for his removal after leaked files show he sheltered more than 100 suspected clergy. In Indiana, the Church publicized the identity of 18 of its rapists, although it’s not clear why Mike Pence’s name was not on the list. Meanwhile, the German Bishops Conference just revealed 3,677 cases of abuse and, at the same time, fully half the bishops in the Netherlands stand accused of participating in or covering up the debasement of young boys.

But let’s face it, there are no super heroes coming to liberate us.  No Hulk or Green Lantern.  No Wonder Woman or Captain America.  Absent Iron man, then, we have to solve this on our own.  To that end, I propose the following: Round up all the Rednecks and Catholics and place them behind razor wire in Florida.  I figure it’s a state we can easily cordon off, and with the toxic algal blooms and rising seas it won’t be around much longer anyways.  At that point, the captives can commence to a-rapin’ and murdering each other to their hearts’ content.  We could make it into a reality show, like a cross between, say, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation and Survivor.  And you know what, just for good measure, let’s dump Dr. Phil in there, too.