A week ago my brother decided to run for ASB Pres­i­dent at my school. Because a high school elec­tion runs very much the same way as a real “demo­c­ra­tic” elec­tion does, which is to say that it is an over-glorified con­test to see who is the most pop­u­lar, has the most money, and can lie the best, my brother real­ized that he was at an imme­di­ate dis­ad­van­tage. This isn’t to say that he lacked the pop­u­lar­ity, money, or decep­tive capa­bil­i­ties required to win the elec­tion, because he quite cer­tainly did, but it’s more-so to say that he did not pos­sess these three attrib­utes to the extreme and glute­nous extent that his rich and spoiled oppo­nents did.

Real­iz­ing that he couldn’t win the elec­tion using the “most posters, most gim­micks, most lies, most fake friends, most time on ASB, most money spent” war of attri­tion style that his oppo­nents would undoubt­edly uti­lize, my brother decided to uti­lize a more sub­tle “guer­rilla war­fare” method. He designed posters which promi­nently dis­played his face in a Big-brother, Communist-esque, fash­ion, with a slo­gan loosely fol­low­ing the lines of “Build­ing a bet­ter tomor­row for you and your chil­dren”. The idea was to under­mine the exces­sive nature com­monly found in today’s “demo­c­ra­tic” elec­tions, with the power and bril­liance of some good old Com­mu­nist pro­pa­ganda, and for the most part, the cam­paign was very effective.

Peo­ple who passed by my brother’s few posters couldn’t help but notice  the imags that they were see­ing which was  a pow­er­ful fig­ure with an idea of what he wanted for the future. For those used to a tra­di­tional “demo­c­ra­tic” can­di­date, the con­cepts employed in my brother’s posters where for­eign as they lacked the oblig­a­tory  “vote for *insert name here*” and “*insert crappy slo­gan that loosely plays off said candidate’s last name here*”, tech­niques that my broth­ers “demo­c­ra­tic” oppo­nents had so exces­sively employed. Thus, the images remained in the minds of the peo­ple that saw the posters, and with this sup­port for my brother’s cam­paign began to grow. While my brother’s posters were indeed bril­liant, they where per­haps too bril­liant. A few cow­ardly cap­i­tal­ists couldn’t help but deface some of the posters with french-style mus­taches  in an attempt to infuse the posters with the weak and piti­ful nature of the french, which they ide­al­ized so much. How­ever, the deface­ment of my brother’s posters did lit­tle to harm his cam­paign. In a true show­ing of inge­nu­ity (the kind that the cap­i­tal­ists weren’t pre­pared for) he merely expanded the piti­ful french-mustache style, into full on Stalin mus­taches, because we all know that Stalin, was prob­a­bly the world’s most benev­o­lent and inspi­ra­tional ruler to date and thus my brother wanted to asso­ciate him­self with him as best he could.

But like any Com­mu­nist, my brother needed more than just pro­pa­ganda posters to defeat the cap­i­tal­ists. He needed a nuclear weapon to oblit­er­ate the demo­c­ra­tic cap­i­tal­ists who threat­ened his cam­paign, or to at least keep them at bay Cold War style. This is where I came in. Using my skills as a film maker, my brother and I devised a vision for a 1 minute com­mer­cial which would ulti­mately lay the foun­da­tion for his even­tual rule as high com­rade of the ASB Union his Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. The movie had to appeal to every­one, it had to have humor, it had to be styl­is­tic, it had to have action, it had to por­tray his mes­sage as a can­di­date, and most impor­tantly, it had to make him win.

After a cou­ple of days work, plan­ning and film­ing my brother’s cam­paign com­mer­cial, it was com­plete, and for the first time ever, I had cre­ated a movie that had all of the aspects I orig­i­nally envi­sioned for it.

The com­mer­cial aired on the week of the elec­tions, and it was a resound­ing suc­cess. Those who viewed it absolutely loved it, and more impor­tantly, it kept other com­mer­cials (which would have oth­er­wise won elec­tions) at bay. We had out­classed the com­pe­ti­tion, and beat them at their own game, deliv­er­ing every­thing that the peo­ple wanted but with­out the exces­sive ten­den­cies that are so fre­quently employed in “demo­c­ra­tic” campaigns.

Unfor­tu­nately, the cap­tial­ists got the last laugh. My brother did not win the elec­tion, and when my best movie to date was posted on youtube, it was taken over by cap­i­tal­ist  “copy­right” hold­ers. See, because I used a very pop­u­lar song in the com­mer­cial, a big cor­po­ra­tion decided that they owned that song, and because of that, they decided that they can make my video auto­mat­i­cally play when­ever it appears on my youtube chan­nel. I have an issue with this for a vari­ety of rea­sons, not only is it annoy­ing as hell when I go to my chan­nel, but the cap­i­tal­ists are essen­tially using the bril­liance of my video to adver­tise their song. While I don’t nec­es­sar­ily have a prob­lem with this after all it is bet­ter than hav­ing my video “muted”, I think I should at least have the basic right to pre­vent the video from auto­play­ing on my chan­nel so that it doesn’t annoy the crap out of any­one who vis­its it. It is very much like giv­ing a friend some money for gas and then demand­ing that he only use his car to drive you around because the gas in the car was paid with your money. In other words, its exces­sive, con­trol­ling, and defeats the orig­i­nal pur­pose of the whole ordeal. But  I sup­pose those are the three ele­ments  mak­ing up the foun­da­tion of our proud “demo­c­ra­tic” cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety so I guess I have to deal with them.