Question: What was the real Soviet reaction to America's latest
peacekeeping threat?
The reader must first realize that there is usually quite a
difference between the official reaction to a newly acquired piece of military
intelligence and the real reaction. The real reaction to this U.S. action
has been discovered via a top-secret Pentagram, intended for former
Secretary of State, George Shultz, but mistakenly delivered by a postal employee
to a Ms. Georgia Shmaltz, head secretary in the Berkeley Department of Foreign
Affairs.
Ms. Shmaltz dutifully transcribed tapes hidden within the
Pentagram of secret conversations held between Soviet Premier, Mikhail
Gorbachev, his wife, Raina, and one of his top military advisors, Ivan
Killemallov. When Ms. Shmaltz' boss saw the document, she immediately
realized it contained material which was not in her job description and
forwarded it to a Disposal Unit, where it was intercepted by an alert news
reporter who was searching simultaneously for a hot news story and a free lunch.
I came into possession of these tapes quite by accident.
The reporter's bicycle collided with my unicycle in the middle of University
Avenue when it swerved to avoid hitting a nude gentleman dancing in the
intersection demanding his right to wear only a protest sign. In the
ensuing commotion, she acquired my lecture tapes on quantum tunneling, and I
found myself in possession of the hottest tapes in Berkeley.
G [Gorbachev]: Look at what these Americans are doing
now! Thousands of their homeless in the streets, millions without basic
medical coverage, and they plan to spend almost seventy billion dollars on 132
airplanes to drop thermonuclear bombs on us.
K [Killemallov]: That's a lot of rubles.
R [Raina}: I'll say! With 70 billion dollars we could
have ...
G (interrupting): Does this mean that we also must spend 70
billion to win the Gold Medal in the Arms Olympics?
K (hesitating): I'm not sure, comrade. It's not yet
clear whether this new boomerang bomber can even fly. If it can't, who's
to worry?
G: And if it can fly?
K: The Americans claim it is only for second-strike use.
G: Meaning?
K: Meaning that if we don't strike first, the Americans have
wasted 70 billion dollars.
R: So we simply don't strike first, and we have 70 billion
dollars to spend on ...
G: (interrupting): What a joke on the Yankee dumdums!
K: Not so fast, Mikhail. They might sell some to Iran,
and then we could be in deep doodoo.
G: True, we can't trust the Ayatollah to strike second.
Just what's the big deal on these stealth bombers anyway?
K: Well, the Americans think we can't spot them with our radar
soon enough to retaliate.
G: Can we?
K: I'm not sure.
R: So what if we can't? We'll just equip our west and east
coast fisherpersons with binoculars. Anything with a 167-foot wingspan
we don't need radar to see. As for the Iranians, they can't get a
balloon off the ground without us knowing about it.
G and K (in one voice): Brilliant, Raina!
R: So now that I've saved the Mother-state $70 billion, let's
consider what might be done with all that money.
G: What about our homeless?
K: Taken care of, already - relocated to work camps, asylums,
or cemeteries.
G: We could build lots of nice little dachas for our fellow
citizen comrades at, say, $10,000 a piece. [Translator's note: A dacha is a
vacation home.]
R: True. Almost 7 million of them - one for most
families in Moscow, Leningrad, and Siberia!
K: We don't have to build dachas for everyone.
G: Agreed. We all know some comrades are more equal than
other comrades. Perhaps the top one million comrades dedicated to the
greater welfare of the Soviet state could have dachas worth $70,000 each.
R: Or the top 100,000 could have delightful places on the
Black Sea worth $700,000 each.
K: Perhaps we should spend some of this on tanks and machine
guns.
G: Come now, Ivan. In the past fifty years we've spent
hundreds of billions on defense and not even one billion red rubles for
ourselves!
R: I think we should offer financial incentives to those many
Chinese, Hispanic, and French who are our Marxist friends to immigrate to
Moscow. We simply do not have nearly enough gourmet restaurants and
trendy dress shops. You can hike around the city all day and not find a
single edible taco or wearable evening gown.
G: You're right on, Raina, but let's not encourage too
many of the French.
R: I can barely comprehend the meaning of $70 billion.
Why, we could feed every human being on earth for weeks with that much
money! Or clothe them even.
K: That's so, but we Soviets can't save the whole world.
G: Right. It would actually be immoral to feed the poor
for a few lousy months or years when they are just going to end up starving
anyway. So let's celebrate. It's not every day that we don't spend
$70 billion on bombers.
K: Well, ok. but we can't celebrate here.
There isn't a decent bottle of wine within a thousand miles of the Kremlin.
G: So where shall we go, comrades? Paris or San
Francisco?
R: San Francisco, provided Nancy-you-know-who isn't going to
be there.
End of Tape
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