US undergoing treatment for “paranoia”

Author’s note: Looking at this now, it seems both prescient and naive

The USA admitted today that it was undergoing treatment for “clinical psychotic paranoia” and would be removing itself from world affairs until it could “sit in a room with a nuclear button and not have to be restrained from pressing it”. Speaking on behalf of the US, President George Bush admitted that its behaviour over recent weeks had become increasingly irrational and it had agreed to undergo treatment before it “became a danger to itself or others”

It is thought that the symptoms started to develop after a severe trauma with initial shock being followed by an irrational exuberance, showing itself in swaggering pride, patriotism and massive overconfidence in its own abilities. The overconfidence rapidly gave way to a feeling of persecution and a belief that the entire world was ganging up on it.

Recently the US has shown an increasing mistrust of everyone else in the world and in his State of the Union address, the President declared that he had seen an “Axis of Evil”. He started by explaining how the axis contained many recognised enemies, including Iraq and continued by including recent allies in the “War against Terrorism” such as Iran because “even though they display a rudimentary democracy, they have said many nasty things about us”. He finished by unexpectedly adding several new countries to the list including France because they “spoke funny”, Canada because they should have “joined the USA when they had the chance” and Dominica because he “doesn’t like bananas”. The President was, however, careful to exclude countries that harboured terrorism but “were obviously our allies because they’ve got lots of oil or friends in Congress” such as Saudi Arabia or Israel.

At a follow up meeting, Donald Rumsfeld, displaying a slight twitch in his eye, noted that the USA had “already saved the world several times over” and had “bailed those crummy Europeans out at least twice”. Mr. Rumsfeld then went on to declare that as far as he was concerned “every nation on Earth” was now a terrorist state and would be treated accordingly. When asked how he would be responding to domestic terrorism, such as the Anthrax mailer, Mr Rumsfeld declared that he was “especially suspicious of those two-timing Yankee bastards”. As Mr. Rumsfeld held a gun to his own head declaring that he was “clearly a terrorist and should be shot down like a dog”, psychiatrists were called in and sectioned him and the rest of the United States for mass delusional paranoia.

Many other countries were quick to condemn the US. Kim Jong-il of North Korea claimed that the US had been showing symptoms of paranoia for many years. “They have persecuted us because they were jealous of the peace and harmony in which we live. They would come and demand that our ancient temples be destroyed, simply because the towers resembled missiles and housed our most sacred offerings of plutonium”. Saddam Husain also claimed that Iraq had been persecuted simply because he went to visit his relatives in Kuwait with a few friends “OK we had a bit of a tiff, but it’s typical of the US have to go and overreact”. The UK, however, showed a great deal of sympathy and declared that it too would be seeking counselling to deal with its “need to be dominated” and its “fawning sycophancy” when in the company of bigger more authoritarian countries.

The US itself was last seen standing in the corner muttering to itself that it would “get them back, all of them, just see if I don’t”