Having fallen through the looking glass, I found myself in the council chambers for a small community. “You cannot recuse yourself from this vote!” cried one councilman from the dais.

“Why not?” shouted another.

“You are here to vote, so you must vote!”

“But I am told to vote would be a conflict of interest. I am told by my lawyer to recuse to avoid a conflict.”

“Pishaw. What do lawyers know of the law? It is your duty to vote. You were elected to vote. You cannot leave while the rest of us vote and show ourselves to be the leading candidates for village idiot. No one will know where you stand on the list of village idiot candidates.”

“But the lawyers say I have a conflict. Before my wife was laid-off from her job that paid enough to allow us to have Bacon Bits with our baked potato, she worked for a company that did business with the company with the issue before us. Therefore, I cannot vote, I must recuse. Besides, usually one argues that someone MUST recuse, not against it. If there is the slightest possibility of conflict of interest, one argues for recusal.

“No. We do not believe in recusal. If you recuse, there is more pressure on the leading candidate for village idiot, the Mayor, to also recuse. After all, he really does have an appearance of conflict of interest, what with checks hanging out of his back pocket with the company’s name on them while he sits at the dais. Right, Mayor?”

The mayor looked up startled, while totaling checks on his watch calculator. “If you do not vote with us on the issue,” he yelled, “you are a godless heathen Communist trying to make race an issue. The children need a safe place to exist. Never have so many given to so few for so long for sew buttons on your rubber duck if they don’t bounce off.” He looked around and saw there were no questions and resumed what he was doing.

Everyone looked at each other in a puzzled manner. It never paid to ask the Mayor a question prior to a vote. He could harangue you for an hour and make you remorseful without actually understanding what it was you may have done.

“I am sorry, your Honor, but I must recuse myself.”

The mayor looked up in a state of agitation. There were too many zeroes on the checks and he kept hitting the wrong buttons on his watch. He couldn’t tell whether he had made enough to retire from politics or to retire the debt of a small third world nation and all these people wanted to do was think about themselves. “Whatever. Recuse yourself if you must. We have the votes without you.”

And so they voted as I tried to climb back out the looking glass.