The Accidental President

By I Michael Grossman

The last man standing?
Earth is in crisis. And the intergalactic managers who oversee all creatures of the Milky Way Galaxy are tasked to bottom-line man's usefulness. Should they let homo sapiens survive or watch them continue to their own destruction? 
   To answer that, the extraterrestrials charged with evaluating us as a species discover incredible truths about who we are – the good, the bad, the really, really bizarre. They look at how we govern and decide to change the rules.
  The Accidental President takes a deep dive into our politics and human nature based on hard-to-believe but historically accurate facts. Take a fresh look at the two-legged creatures who dominate the third planet from the Sun, and follow the extraterrestrials as they tally our vices and virtues to reach a final judgment. Or do they? 

  The Accidental President, I. Michael Grossman's seventh book, is raw satire. You may laugh, even cheer at his take on humanity, or consider him outrageous. But you'll find yourself rolling your eyes about curious creatures known as humankind.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: EBook Bakery
• Release date: Mar 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781953080301

I Michael Grossman

The Accidental President is I. Michael Grossman’s seventh book. Grossman’s six other books run the gamut from poetry to an adult children’s book and from fiction to non-fiction.  Articles span similarly diverse topics for Advertising Age, Ergo Solutions magazine, The CLIA Cruise Industry Annual Report, The American Banker, and Plane & Pilot magazine.  Grossman holds a B.A. and M.A. from Michigan State University. He taught English and Journalism at Oakland Community College before leaving academia for what he was told would be “the real world.” He created The Science of Your Own Success, a course taught at the New School in Manhattan, then started four businesses including Cruises of Distinction and Office Organix.  “I sold my last two ventures because I had a book to write,” says Grossman, referring to his memoir, Shrinkwrapped: my first fifty years on the couch. Grossman currently runs EBookBakery.com and helps fellow authors self-publish. His own books have been both traditionally published and self-published. The ‘I.’ is the author’s full first name and is not an abbreviation. “I claim no responsibility for the name though I participated in the birth,” quipped Grossman. Michael, his therapist wife Susan and a varying number of four-legged creatures share blessed lives in Rhode Island.

Book preview

Before

The fields flooded again, and with his wheat crop threatened, Jeremiah Butler wasn’t watching the lottery on TV that night. 269 million sets were tuned to the drawing which Neilson reported was the largest audience ever. Viewership dwarfed even 2017 when Powerball winner Mavis L. Wanczyk scored a check for $758,700,000.

Despite record-breaking viewership, this winning lottery ticket paid nothing. Yet CNB simulcast the show in all four-hundred thirty languages actively spoken in America – from Angloromani (a creole English language spoken by Romani Americans) to Yiddish.

Every native-born American who had resided in the USA for at least fourteen years and was thirty-five or older, was automatically entered. Lottery organizers, the Selons, chose those qualifications for a reason. They wanted to echo the requirements set in the American Constitution for Presidential eligibility, thinking it gave the lottery the feel of legitimacy. There would be only one winner, and like the lottery during the war in Vietnam, if your number was drawn, you would be drafted. Service wasn’t voluntary.

In days preceding the drawing, Americans, never hesitant with opinions, were permitted to voice disapproval. The Selons allowed protests and citizens marched in scores of U.S. cities, assembling with megaphones and magic-marker placards. Crowds shouted insults knowing they wouldn’t accomplish much. But at least they’d rallied against Selon authority.

President Bernard Gammon, the 55th American President, continued to deliver impassioned speeches against the lottery until he fell to the plague, and illness forever silenced his booming Texas twang. His Vice President, Eleanor Winslow, was prepared to assume the highest office, but the Selons made clear they would not allow her succession.

Before the plague took him – in the time of the Great Fires and Floods – President Gammon tried to comfort Americans. In his State of the Union address, he promised that the havoc reaped by weather extremes – tornado force winds that came without meteorological warning to rip homes off foundations – weeks of crop-withering heat and the floods – that these were cyclical events. Skies would cool, Gammon promised, fields would dry, and the crisis would abate.

Gammon’s cabinet secretaries echoed his message in copycat speeches, reminding constituents that Earth had been around for 4.5 billion years and would continue to rotate on axis long after these momentary challenges passed. Off the record though, several worried that humanity could face extinction – and a few were so politically brash as to suggest human mismanagement was a factor.

But the chaos did not abate, and tidal floods spilled oceans over the land, polluting aquifers until drinkable water became scarce. Even the stored harvests of the great corporate farms proved inadequate, and as they depleted, armies marched to corner dwindling food supplies. Earth divided into clusters of the well-fed and the emaciated have-nots.

Around the time that President Gammon passed, the Selon Parliament met to decide if it was time to reveal their presence.

2

The Test

In the starlit Chamber of Decision , thirteen billion light-years from Earth, Eminence called Parliament to order. Seer will summarize the state of Milky Way Galaxy planets and his recommendations before we vote.

Your Eminence, fellow Selons, Seer began, "as we have for eons, our teams visited the hundred billion planets we supervise. Several hundred required remediation. I’m pleased to report only three are red flagged. They are:

"Draugr (or PSR B1257+12A)) for its rapid deterioration due to low mass - somewhat half that of earth’s moon. A density-infusion squad was dispatched.

"KELT-9b, one of the Milky Way’s hottest planets with a surface reaching 4,600 Kelvin. We’ve seeded it with a hundred billion tons of Graupel to lower its temperature.

Which leaves Earth, a planet facing existential threats, said Seer, and though we propose superficial abatements, they address symptoms, not the root of Earth’s fragility. The threats facing Earth are such that without more aggressive intervention, we’ll have to deal with the planet endlessly. The core of the difficulties is Earth’s greatest irritant – a uniquely irrational species – the homo sapiens. We’ve long been entertained by them - amused by their unwillingness to address existential issues despite a scientific community that offers the rational solutions humans routinely ignore. Besides their limited ability to reason, we find evidence of a moral deficiency, possibly genetic. Selon intervention is unavoidable, but it begs the question: how aggressive should we be?

The attending Selons radiated agreement. Seer was much admired for a shrewd assessment of peculiar species.

I have a question, Seer. said Provost Darius glowing with interest.

Of course, Provost Darius, said Seer.

Why consider intervention when it violates the Prime Directive? Aren’t we compelled to let humans plod along to their own extinction?

And what’s more, Commander Gregor interrupted Darius before Seer could answer, I don’t recall any galactic importance to homo sapiens. There are merely 8 billion of them, and their sun flames out in a billion years.

Correct on both accounts, Darius and Gregor, said Seer, and normally we’d let them self-destruct. But Earth has Xonium.

I was unaware, said Provost Darius.

And of course the Second Directive instructs us to protect Xonium anywhere we find it, given its importance for intergalactic travel. Earth’s coastlines are loaded with it, and thankfully humans doesn’t know it, said Seer.

But isn’t Proxima Centauri richer with Xonium? said Darius. Why bother with Earth given it’s a planet in chaos?

Proxima Centauri’s deposits are substantial, Darius. But the Treaty? The Aarebets hold mining rights …

... Ah, the Aarebet Treaty. I’d forgotten, said Darius.

So Earth matters, said Seer.

But tell me, Provost Darius continued, since our present Xonium supply is adequate for a billion years, why violate the Prime Directive now?

It has to do with human negligence, said Seer. Earth’s depleted ozone layer causes the rising waters to alter its geography. Twenty-nine percent of the planet’s surface is land mass, and while the planet has actually gained land surface in the last thirty years - an amount about the size of its Lake Michigan - erosion along the planet’s coastlines threatens the Xonium.

Then obviously we have to intervene, said Commander Gregor who enjoyed celebrity among the Selons for his skill eradicating useless species. My team has an opening and can do away with them immediately. Shall I handle it in the usual manner, Eminence?

A moment now, Gregor, Provost Darius interrupted. There must be there less destructive ways to handle them?

Always so timid, Provost Darius, said Commander Gregor flashing annoyance. Will the time ever come when you appreciate efficiency? My teams can dissolve the species like that - Gregor fired a bolt of light across the chamber. Recall the Doridians. After my recent visit, they bother us no more.

We admire your professionalism, Commander Gregor said Eminence who’s powerful presence caused the chamber to still and attendees to give the meeting leader their rapt attention. But the Council of Overseers asks if eliminating the homo sapiens is the preferred solution. We know the Council is all about the Prime Directive. They believe humans have evidenced merit on occasion and ask us to explore their nature.

A total waste of time, with respect Eminence, said Commander Gregor. Given the history of the human species, could Parliament possibly expect altruism from those creatures? They’re a stone’s throw away from walking on all fours. Don’t we have issues of consequence to address?

You may eradicate if our analysis concludes homo sapiens are beyond hope, said Eminence.

"Not if but when," said Commander Gregor.

I disagree and applaud that Parliament proceeds carefully, said Provost Darius. The loss of even an insignificant species diminishes the richness of the entire Galaxy. And I’m of the opinion that the human problem isn’t species systemic but stems from how hopelessly they govern. Help them revamp its mechanisms, and I’m sure you’ll see they can prioritize planet and tribe over personal greed.

Perhaps, said Eminence, but that is the question, and Seer will direct our analysis of them. He has identified a tribe to examine. His Petrie dish of choice is the dominant Americans since their constitution directs them to value every citizen.

They are my subjects of choice, said Seer. I picked a democracy and not an autocracy or oligarchy since the latter unabashedly exist to benefit their elite, said Seer. Nor will I test a government where the leaders came to power by birthright. Neither autocrats nor royals would provide what Earth needs.

If you think you’ll find altruism among American legislators, I’d like some of the Neptunian dust you’ve absorbed, said Commander Gregor.

I didn’t say I was optimistic, Gregor, said Seer, but the Overseers ask us to test.

To determine what exactly? said Darius.

Does the tribe have the capacity to govern? The answer is predetermined if we let them pick leaders through their present flawed electoral mechanisms. To allow that would be, in the words of an Earth mathematician with Selon-like intelligence, ‘the definition of insanity’.

Seer found intelligence? said Gregor.

It exists, said Seer. But it can’t impact how they act unless we shake up how they govern, said Seer. "The first American President understood the need to revamp government. When asked to start a line of royalty. Washington refused, preferring elections. But despite his inspired instinct, it took only a few terms for the flaws in their electoral process to became blatant.

What’s wrong with how they pick leaders? said Darius.

Seriously, Darius. Sometimes you obtuseness astounds me, said Gregor.

Show restraint, Gregor, said Eminence.

Inherent in their elections, said Seer, is a certainty that in time it favors men driven to acquire power. An unintended consequence is that more and more energy is spent to rest wealth and authority from its citizens. Before an Earth century passed, the first president’s hopes for a democracy drifted into oligarchy - though the leaders still branded it a democracy. The tribe is easy to indoctrinate.

You make my point, said Gregor. Flawed species, flawed government.

Perhaps not, Gregor. Their mechanisms to govern are clearly flawed, but that doesn’t prove humans couldn’t be altruistic if they had systems that function, said Seer. That’s what we want to find out.

So Seer’s test will…?

… determine if fresh leadership can release any potential in humans to act for the good of all members, said Seer. If it’s determined that self-interest will always drive them, Commander Gregor may unleash his team.

"I don’t approve of ‘unleash’," said Gregor.

Let’s not rush to judgment, said Provost Darius. Gregor ignores pages of examples of human compassion in Seer’s report. Healthcare workers who risk infection; volunteers who wade floods to carry food to the homeless; many who care for their planet’s lesser creatures. Are we to ignore entire sections covering human generosity?

Really Darius? You think human history is a meteor shower of joy and kindness. It’s war and pestilence. said Gregor.

The species is ‘a bag of mix’ if I have it the human expression right, said Eminence. For example, you have church crusades that brought men to war, but also parishioners generously sharing what they have.

Commander Gregor doesn’t talk about their goodness because his lust to destroy warps his ability to see their nature, said Darius.

We’re wasting time, said Gregor. Galactically speaking, humans are primitives. They still believe the galaxy originates from some God with a magic wand. They’re devout science deniers. How many centuries did it take for a couple of Greeks to argue the Earth isn’t flat? How many more centuries passed before they stopped jailing any who subscribed to sphericity? Homo sapiens aren’t the galaxies’ most sophisticated organisms.

Yet Seer found intelligence, said Darius. … that mathematician Seer quoted.

I’ll give you this, said Gregor. Humans have a sense of humor. As proof I offer the joke they tell about how their God created the world in six Earth-days and rested on the seventh. Upon observing his creation Man, God noted, ‘Perhaps I overestimated my ability.’

No! voiced one of the assembled. Don’t tell me Earthlings still anthropomorphize deities?

They do, said Gregor.

They still talk of God in human form? said another.

There’s a telling passage in one of their holy books, the Talmud - Sanhedrin 38b - authored by one of the oldest of human tribes, the Israelites, said Gregor. It tells of the creation of Man. When the Holy One, their God, decides to create the species, he materialized a group of angels to help him. Angels are an Earthling metaphor denoting ethereal, superior creatures – like us except they aren’t real. Anyway, God asks his angels what they think of his plan to make man in his own image. The angels advise not to create man at all. So God destroys those angels, creates a second group, and asks them the same question. Again, the angels warn against creating man. God destroys the second group of angels. God creates a third group and once again asks the question. The angels answer that God is only going to ignore their advice, and, as master of the universe, he should do as he wishes. So, God creates man. In no time at all it became obvious that his creature is hopelessly flawed. So God sends a great flood to destroy all men. My point, said Gregor, is that even Talmudic scholars knew man is flawed. I say, finish them off.

That’s not authorized yet, Gregor, said Eminence. "We will test first, and I favor Seer’s plan to give them a new head of government - one not doomed by