Dateline: WASHINGTON—The Wild Animals of America Party began as an offshoot of the GOP, railing against big government for interfering with the divinely ordained inequalities in nature.
“Let the natural struggle in the marketplace sort everything out,” said WAA’s founder Mark Savage. “Government’s top-down regulations are bound to be detached from reality and to make matters worse. We should let nature take its course since government can’t do anything right.”
But Mr. Savage realized he would have to start a third party to apply his political vision. “It dawned on me that maybe I should take my nature worship to the limit and forgo all pretenses of rational planning. So I founded the Wild Animals of America Party.”
From a distance, WAA members look like ordinary nudists since they go about their daily business stark naked. “Self-reliant animals don’t need clothing designed and manufactured by some organized group of know-it-alls,” says Mr. Savage, spewing out the word “organized” as though it were rancid slime on his tongue.
“We could knit our own clothes, but then we’d be going against what God gave us. We’re proud to compete with our innate abilities, without arrogantly assuming we can improve on them by outthinking or out-planning the Lord Almighty.”
On closer inspection, however, the Wild Animals look more like homeless people or like the ancient Cynics who were compared to wild dogs because they objected to most conventional desires. Besides clothing, the Wild Animals renounce grooming and showering.
“Where does shower water come from?” asks Mr. Savage. “From the government bureaucracy that oversees the water supply. Do you see animals showering in the wild? No, and that’s because they’re not spoiled like the French, with their luxury cars and decadent desserts and tap water. God didn’t give us the toilet, since that ludicrous invention comes from human busybodies who think they can improve on the world that must already be perfect, since it was created by God. So you won’t find Wild Animals lounging on a porcelain seat. We accept no handouts.”
Asked why WAA thinks of purchased products as “handouts,” Mr. Savage explains how money itself is artificial. “Did you invent bartering, the monetary system or fiat currency? No, you inherited those systems, so if you use them you’re not self-reliant. And even if you did personally invent them, you’d be spitting in God’s eye.
“That’s why we call the Republicans hypocrites, since they only pretend to let the unruly wilderness grow as it will. Look at all the fancy math spun by free market economists! All of those axioms and equations and computer models—they’re just vain attempts to outthink God. The free market conservatives may be opposed to government regulations, but they should be against all rational attempts at so-called progress. Otherwise, they’re as arrogant as communists.”
WAA members creep around Washington on all fours, maintaining that standing upright was a prehistoric blasphemy against our original design. Although they tend to stay indoors during winter, some Wild Animals have been known to venture out into the snow, naked and unhappily furless, whereupon they typically perish from exposure to the harsh elements.
In his infamous political debate with the Republican Senator Cheryl Smilesalot, the naked Mr. Savage interrupted his opening remarks to leap on the senator like a wild chimpanzee, groping her and growling like a beast when security guards hauled him off.
As he was dragged from the stage, Mr. Savage shouted, “Do you think I need your laws, you pompous technocrats, you perversions of the natural order? Do you think I planned this? That I thought ahead of time that I’d act on lust? No, I’m a Wild Animal of America. Throw me in prison! See if I care! I won’t know the difference between a prison cell and a mansion, because I don’t dare profess to know anything at all, you foolish thinkers and planners!”
Eventually, WAA realized that language, too, is an inherited artifice, so the Wild Animals took to grunting and groaning as the circumstances warranted, avoiding any pretense of civility. Lacking all forethought, then, including any respect for organized work or for anything that might be called a distinctive human nature, WAA became ineffectual and politically irrelevant.
From his prison cell, Mr. Savage glowers at Republicans on TV, perhaps learning too late the advantages of hypocrisy.