Guerilla Good Deeds

Merry Christmas, fellow liberals!  If you've already opened your presents, visited friends and family and eaten Christmas dinner, and now you're wondering what to do with yourselves for the next week or so, we've got a fun and exciting little campaign for you to join.

And even if you're not celebrating Christmas today, it's something you can do on the way to the annual Chinese-food-and-movie observance.  In fact it's a great thing to do at the Chinese restaurant, or the movie theater, or the Native American Casino for that matter.

Because whether you're eating Christmas turkey or Peking Duck, we all know that there's a certain President whose goose needs to be cooked for his continued antipathy toward American values.

All I'm asking is that you spread the word.  And that word is IMPEACH

Now I thought you might want some seasonally-appropriate songs to sing while you're posting the word all over.  So I've written two impeachment carols, just for you, and you can find them right below this post.

The first is "Impeachment Clause, Impeachment Clause" and you sing it to the tune of "O Christmas Tree" ("O Tannenbaum" for you originalists)

The second one is "Impeachment Clause Is Coming To Town" and I think you know the tune.

Hey Zeke, I hear some of you saying, the IMPEACH campaign is all well and good some other week, but we just don't feel right skulking around right now.  Somehow going out by night attaching big signs to a freeway overpass, or lurking around busy street-corners pretending to check your cell phone while you wait for the coast to be clear so you can hit that lamppost with another sticker just doesn't feel like a Christmas-y activity right?

I hear ya.  But let me tell you a little story, about the real Saint Nicholas.

Yes, Virginia, Saint Nicholas was a real historical person.  No doubt some of the miraculous stories attributed to him were exaggerated if not outright fabricated.  Those stories are responsible for him becoming the patron saint of an extremely varied portfolio: children, sailors, barrelmakers, prostitutes, pawnbrokers, longshoremen, pharmacists, thieves, Russia and Amsterdam.  But there is one story that doesn't involve any supernatural miracles, and the reason he is associated with anonymous gift-giving.

In life, Nicholas was the bishop of Myra, in what is now Turkey.  Among his congregation was a nobleman's family who had suffered a devastating reversal of fortune.  Without dowries his three daughters would be consigned to lives of prostitution and slavery, but the father was too proud to ask for charity.  Bishop Nicholas, an orphan who had inherited great wealth himself (kind of like Bruce Wayne), decided to help.  He snuck up to the bedroom window of each girl in turn and deposited a bag of gold by their beds. The father was understandably concerned about exactly what was going on, so on the third night he hid himself by the window of the third daughter and watched.  He chased old Saint Nick down when he saw him, and being younger was easily able to catch him.  Imagine his surprise to find out it was the saintly old bishop!  Nicholas made him promise to keep the whole thing a secret, which he did until the old man died and then the story was told.

Because of this Nicholas is known as the patron saint of all those who do good deeds by stealth.  Even if you don't subscribe to my tradition, there are the teachings and example of holy men and women all over the place:  Rabbi Yohanan ben-Zakkai, the exhortations of the Qur'an, the teachings of the Bodhisattva, just for starters.

And there can be no question that you're doing a good deed.  Whether it's domestic spying, suppression of civil liberties, wars of aggression or the use of torture, it has become painfully obvious that under this administration America has abandoned all pretense to be good and instead embraced evil.  By calling for impeachment, you are calling for a collective repentance by the nation, explicitly rejecting the crimes committed under this president's so-called leadership, and demanding a return to true American values by our leaders.  

So follow the example of Nicholas of Myra, and skulk proudly!