Grammar Corrected Haiku

This was a political dream. The structure of the United States government was significantly altered so that in a presidential election, two parties always got elected. Of course, those two parties were invariably the two prominent ones with which we are familiar. During the four-year period, only one of the two presidents would be in power at any given time. But they would switch whenever approval ratings of the current administration, as determined by opinion polls, fell below a certain percentage. Now these opinion polls were controlled by The Media, which had become unified and organized to the point that it was indeed The Media with capital letters. The Media actually wielded more power than the government, because they could oust any politician at will (apparently the other branches of government had been restructured as well). Popular belief was that the opinion polls accurately reflected popular opinion, and those who knew better didn't dare speak up because The Media was too powerful.

Now the dream itself was mostly an animated political cartoon, which ran on Cartoon Network. The animation consisted of cutout drawings of various politicians which were moved around on two-dimensional backgrounds, along with talk bubbles. There were voice actors reading the lines, but the talk bubbles were still there. This cartoon would give a rundown of recent political events, altered somewhat to make them funny. In this particular episode, all the dialogue was in Haiku, but then the Haiku was altered according to the grammar corrections suggested by Microsoft Word.

Okay, so for some reason the two presidents in power were George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. At the beginning of the cartoon, Bush had just regained control of the White House, and as the plot unfolded you found out he had a problem. There were a lot of homeless people in Washington D.C. Also, Bush owned several properties in Washington D.C. He actually had "deeds" for these properties which looked like Monopoly deeds. They were really random plots of land; one of them was about two feet square and had the pole to a traffic light in it. Bush had discovered that by turning the deeds upside-down, he could mortgage them for half their value, just like in Monopoly. He had done this on a couple of occasions, and used the money to help homeless people. The Media liked this because it made for a good story, and kept pressuring him to do it some more. He wanted to, but he didn't want lots of publicity because it was supposed to be a private act of charity. So he made a deal with The Media: He would mortgage several properties (including the traffic light one) and give the money to the homeless, only on the condition that they promised not to report on it. The Media agreed.

The next part of the dream shifted, and instead of it being a cartoon it was real life, and I was playing the role of the president's son. He had mortgaged the traffic light property and bought a bag of food with it, and I was waiting at a gas station to deliver the food to a homeless guy. For some reason this homeless guy drove to the gas station in an old beat-up Ford pickup. He took the bag of food, thanked me, and drove away. There was another man in the otherwise empty gas station, who I assumed was an employee. I turned out he was actually a reporter for The Media. They had promised not to do a story, but the press secretary forgot to get that in writing. They were upset with the president for not wanting them to do a story, so they spun the act of charity as a cheap ploy to make himself look good, and caused his poll numbers to plummet.

Cut back to the cartoon. The presidential limo (which the president was driving with the first lady in the passenger seat) is on its way into the White House. It pulls up to the front gate just before midnight. (Administration shifts always took place at midnight, when the new day updated.) Bill and Hillary were camped out just outside the gate, since shifts happened so often that it wasn't practical to move anywhere else. The secret service agent in the back seat rolled down his window and said a couple of grammar-corrected Haikus making fun of the Clintons. Then in the final scene, the day updated and the Clintons both made the victory sign because they were back in power.