Can't we at least be frenemies

War doesn’t do as much for humanity as it used to. We’re all so angry and ill-tempered it’s tiresome. Where's the unity?

After World War I and its exciting sequel World War II, the war franchise seems to have increasingly fizzled as a means to unify people.

Allies aren’t close buddies. All the enemies declare their own victory. People are dead, money is spent and no one gets a sense of satisfaction. Enemies, allies, countrymen, neighbors, everyone is so crabby-pantsey, bickering and hellbent on fostering divisiveness. It’s physically and morally exhausting.

We need a common enemy, an enemy that can unite the world.

We need aliens.

Not “ohmigawd, someone who doesn’t speak my language just snuck through the fence and took a low-rent, demoralizing job away from exactly nobody else without even paying for a green card” kind of alien. I mean mind-reading, acid-spitting, green men from another universe. No cute E.T.s need apply. I want aliens with grand intentions of world domination and possible annihilation.

If we get that, we won’t care what color a human’s skin is or which god or gods they do or don’t believe in or who they want to marry. So long as that person is human that’ll be enough to make us buddies from way back once the green monsters stop by for an invasion.

We’ll be happy to have on our side anybody with experience in sneaky, dastardly acts of terrorism to direct toward the green men. They’ll be proud to hang with folks who have a hankering to step up to a fight, any ol' fight, and bring their top-grade armor — as well as endless supplies of tinfoil to make those antimind-reading skullcaps to safeguard our brains from alien mind-speak.

It’ll be a humankind love fest after the dust settles. Tinfoil hats will be all the rage.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the ancient proverb says.

That’s why the Klan having come littering their propaganda in the yards of my adopted hometown makes me want to pop some popcorn and sit back and watch the action. Let the hometown unification proceed, I say.

This far from the deep-South nucleus of their society, how organized can these Klanners be anyway?

A bunch of guys will get together with hoods made from worn out pillow cases they recycled from the rag bag, and one of them will call the meeting to order in a fake southern accent saying: “Hear ya’ll, hear ya’ll, this meetin’ of the Kue Klutz Klan is now—”

“Excuse me, mister speaker in the paisley hood,” says the guy in the green plaid pillowcase, “but I have this handbook from my mother’s sister’s husband’s cousin twice-removed who is an okra farmer and real estate salesman down South, and the book says we ain’t KKK anymore we’re UKA.”

“Oh. I knows that. You … all just didn’t let me finish what I were sayin’, which was — the Klue Klunk Klan of the, uh, United Klan Association ... ?”

“Klan of America.”

“... of America is fixin’ to ascend on north-central Montana like General George Washington stormin’—”

“Um, wrong war.”

“General Ulysses S. Grant—”

“Nope. Wrong side.”

“Lee?”

“Sure.”

“Like General Robert E. Lee in his Confederate gray, stormin’ the beach of Normandy on D-Day.”

“I quit.”

So they’ll be importing some UKA experts to lead the charge, and then all of a sudden locals won’t be happy with strangers invading the Hi-Line bent on annihilation of our community, trying to tell us what to think.

Too busy to bother with a major rally but too independent to be told to change, locals will be saying: “Hey, leave that [insert racial, religion, gender or sexual orientation status here] person alone. Who do you think you are coming in here messing with my [insert mildly offensive descriptive term here (hey, you can’t fix everything at once)] neighbor? Get what I’m saying? MY neighbor, you douche.”

Then we'll go have a barbecue like one great big dysfunctional white-trash, land-grabbin’, redskin, bean-eating, ghetto, ricer, hetero-breeder, light in our loafers, multi-Bible thumping, god-denying family like it should be — with too much food and some good music.

We’ll be unified against a common enemy and wearing homemade tinfoil skullcaps to protect us from that enemy’s attempts at alien-style brain washing.

Tinfoils hats will become all the rage.

(You know you want to wear the tinfoil hat. C’mon, it’ll be funny. Whatever. Happy neighboring anyway at [email protected].)