Deluders of the People
by Martin Marprelate
*Open Source since 1588*
“SAY BURFIE BEFORE YOU SAY HELLO.”
Foreword
The law does not forget your choices.
What you decide in moments of pressure
becomes the record of your life.
The past is not buried —
it stands in judgment.
Every path you take forecloses another.
And when the reckoning comes,you will be measured by the choices you made.
— Robert H. Jackson, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
and Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg Trials*
*No pardon for the Headless Horseman
Day 1 Agenda
Inaugural Reunion of the Sons of Liberty of New York
Theme: Who in the Herd is Heard?
Please check your Burfies regularly for changes in the agenda.
Agenda Overview
- Registration
- Opening Ceremony
- Vent the Chamber
- John Rodgers is Conscripted
- Key Note Speech
- The Worthiest Man
- America the Beautiful
- Break
- Sleepy Hollow
- One-Way Interview
- Johnny Carson in Transit
- Wall Street Parade
- Interview – Washington Irving
- One-Way Pavilion
- My Country ‘tis of Thee
- Interviewed by the Past
- O’Liargram
- America’s Dilemma!
- Verdict
- Supreme Court
- 110 Years Later
- End
Summary by AI
Registration
In a surreal casino-turned-convention hall, Johnny Carson works the Sons of Liberty check-in beside a wind-up Washington Irving, trapped in a place with no clocks, no exits, and only the script to obey. As the crowd is whipped into spectacle—Darth Vaders, a shopping-channel William Duer, and patriotic kitsch—George Washington finally arrives to rebuke corruption and demand virtue over plunder. This section sets the book’s frame: performance vs. conscience, memory vs. manipulation, and the price of letting power turn citizenship into a show.
Opening Ceremony
Doc Severinsen’s band plays Yankee Doodle as William Duer presides over a Burfie-sponsored “First Annual Reunion of the Sons of Liberty.” Fireworks flare behind him while Darth Vaders march across the Capitol. Amid patriotic absurdity, Duer recites rules of obedience—display your Burfie, obey Darth Vader, complaints in the bucket by the desk. Johnny Carson takes the stage to host, joking through slogans of freedom turned corporate until the announcer’s voice reminds everyone that “money trumps all.” The crowd files out under federal direction as Carson bolts for the restroom.
Vent the Chamber
Johnny Carson fights through a crowd shouting “Here’s Johnny!” while desperate for a restroom. His Burfie interprets every remark as patriotic prophecy, broadcasting that he has declared a “Second Revolution” to “vent the chamber.” Applauded and reported worldwide, Carson finally reaches the wrong door and stumbles onto Reverend John Rodgers preaching: “There is no beginning before today.” A cleaning cart blocks the bathroom; a boy warns him it’s a trap. Following the boy, Carson finds himself instead in a cathedral—onstage again, microphone in hand, red light on.
John Rodgers is Conscripted
The Reverend John Rodgers stands in an impossible Trinity Cathedral and hunts for the missing “bridge” that explains how he got there, only to confront a harsher problem: the external seizure of conscience by icons, ideology, and idols. Martha Washington presses a Burfie on him—an oath-bound talisman of the Headless Horseman—and a federal script of obedience unfurls, while Rodgers argues the opposite creed: truth is internal, attention is power, obedience and loyalty are anti-virtues when they override the soul. His own 1776 exhortation to ragged volunteers plays back like a summons, forcing a choice; faith, he decides, is an act, not a feeling. He accepts the burden, fastens the abomination to his neck, and steps into a packed sanctuary where power and spectacle mingle—and where he meets his old foil, Charles Inglis, with the complicated warmth of men who fought the same war from opposite pulpits.
The Keynote Speech
In the ruined Cathedral turned theatre, Johnny Carson hosts a holy variety show where faith and satire share the same stage. After introducing the reconciled clergy of Rodgers and Inglis with mock reverence, Carson launches into a monologue that blurs sermon and stand-up — communion sponsored by Kraft, patriotism reduced to a brand. But when he calls forth the keynote speaker, 16th-century firebrand John Knox, the tone collapses from comedy to terror. Knox’s sermon, a thunderous justification for holy violence and prophetic tyranny, scorches the stage; his call to purge the “unworthy” freezes the audience into silence. The applause light blinks unanswered. And in that final darkness, Carson — the entertainer, mediator, and fool — vanishes, leaving only the echoing question of whether truth or laughter can survive once prophecy demands obedience.
The Worthiest Man
In a dreamlike revival of The Tonight Show, the cathedral gives way to a neon theatre where Jane Fonda presides as celestial host, Doc Severinsen toots divine fanfares, and two eighteenth-century clergymen—Charles Inglis and John Rodgers—are pitted against each other in a televised contest of humility. Their mutual praise grows absurdly sincere, each trying to out-repent and out-revere the other, their rivalry dissolving into a sentimental arms race of piety. Beneath the laughter, the satire lands squarely on modern spectacle: faith repackaged as entertainment, virtue sold by text-to-vote, holiness franchised at RRDCI.com. While the audience votes for the “most worthy,” Johnny Carson fidgets off-camera, bladder full, trapped between sacred theatre and commercial break, watching religion itself become another variety act.
America the Beautiful
Carson is swept into the John Street Theatre, where history and satire collapse together. Surrounded by children carrying candles, he watches a flickering film of George Washington and his enslaved aide, William Lee. The children sing a new “America the Beautiful,” pure and aching, before a disembodied voice—echoing Martin Luther King Jr.—calls for love, justice, and moral courage. The audience holds its breath in reverence—until the screen blazes red, white, and blue, and every Burfie declares in unison: “I’m the Headless Horseman, and I approve this massage.”
Break
Carson bursts out first, only to collide with Reverend John Rodgers—whose endless small talk tests divine patience. The minister muses that “God has an interesting way with doors and bridges,” warning that every passage changes the traveler. Carson, desperate and squirming, takes the advice literally and flees down a corridor of mirrors reflecting only his retreating back, his Burfie flashing yellow, the promised door to relief still nowhere in sight.
Sleepy Hollow
Carson steps through a door marked Sleepy Hollow and lands on a beach of shredded ballots, hosting a surreal interview with Rip Van Wrinkle—an ancient sleeper roused from America’s conscience. Rip’s cracked knapsack holds an Apple that dispenses prerecorded hotlines for Justice, Integrity, and Free Speech—each collapsing into corporate disclaimers and paywalls. O’Liargram girls croon propaganda while “Yankee Doodle” parodies expose corruption as entertainment. When Rip presses too far, Darth Vaders storm in, chanting bounties against “freeloaders of the American Dream.” Rip, lacking papers, is dragged away; the stage falls silent, leaving only his knapsack and the glowing apple behind.
One Way Interview
Johnny Carson, dragged through the corridors of the Big Beautiful Government by his ever-watchful Burfie, is recruited by a bureaucratic Darth Vader to conduct “one-way interviews”—broadcasts where the answers are scripted first, and the questions invented later. The system, he’s told, prevents lawsuits and keeps the Headless Horseman appeased. Carson’s showman instincts recoil. He recalls the electric honesty of real conversation—the spark of risk, the shared breath with his audience—and feels the artificial pulse of the Burfie mocking him. Once the king of unscripted truth, he’s now chauffeured past the public like a relic, ushered toward a stage where spontaneity has been outlawed. As Vader vanishes into air, Carson stands alone between memory and machinery, realizing the future no longer wants interviews—only confirmation.
Carson in Transit
Carson’s Burfie drags him to Concord K, an endless airport-like concourse where every motion is surveillance and every queue is hierarchy. Seeking only a restroom, he instead finds four security lines—Private, First Class, Extra, Coach—each guarded by corporate Darth Vaders enforcing “safety” for the rich. The poor are turned away with unspoken fine print; the wealthy board freely behind curtains and gold. Carson, denied privilege, joins the herd in coach: crumbs, elbows, waiting, and indignity. When he finally disembarks, the only line longer than security is the one for the men’s room.
↑ Back to Agenda
Wall Street Parade
Johnny Carson, searching for a restroom, stumbles instead into a surreal parade sponsored by O’Liargram Bedding and the Big Beautiful Government—a procession of history, art, and philosophy turned spectacle. From Andy Griffith’s tranquil “Authority you can trust” to his own childhood self preaching that “Every truth begins with a question,” Carson presides as master of ceremonies while icons like Einstein, Hitchcock, Newton, Michelangelo, Picasso, Shakespeare, Rodgers, and Irving roll by on allegorical floats. Each offers a fragment of moral or artistic law—truth as question, promise, surprise, covenant, or refracted light—until the pageant collapses into chaos, argument, and laughter. Beneath the vaudeville of wisdom and parody, the scene exposes America’s obsession with performance: a culture where faith, reason, and deceit parade side by side, each demanding applause, while Carson clings to his microphone—the last fragile instrument of truth in a carnival of illusions.
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Interview – Washington Irving
After descending from a tower of surveillance and synchronicity, Johnny Carson passes through a world ruled by Burfies and corporate obedience—his entry policed by a Darth Vader bureaucrat quoting Christmas jingles as state doctrine. Stepping through the turnstile, Carson finds himself suddenly back on his old Tonight Show set, caught between nightmare and nostalgia. The studio is empty, the red light blinks “Recording,” and his only guest is a spectral boy in knickerbockers who insists—again and again—that he is Washington Irving. Their exchange becomes a parody of truth itself: an interview reversed, where the subject writes the script, the interviewer performs ignorance, and meaning dissolves into self-reference. Carson’s confusion and Irving’s theatrical recursion expose a media world where every truth is prepackaged, every question rehearsed, and the only laughter left is canned.
One-Way Pavillion
Ushered into the One Way Pavilion, Carson finds an endless concourse of glass-walled motion and ritual obedience. Darth Vaders flank his path, chanting parodies of hymns and patriotic anthems about conformity and “the One Approved Belief.” Across from them, suited zealots sway in unison, celebrating their unity as freedom’s triumph. The Headless Horseman and his chorus of lawmakers join in, pledging allegiance to control and profit. Realizing the performance is scripted for indoctrination, Carson bolts—fleeing a parade of perfect voices marching in only one direction.
My Country ‘tis of thee
Led by his green-lit Burfie, Carson enters a chamber that shifts between Congress, frontier cabins, and Native villages—America folding in on itself. Washington Irving appears as a fiberglass idol wielding a wand that conjures armies, mothers, and protestors who sing dueling verses of “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” The anthem splinters into counter-melodies—guns, wombs, labor, and pride—all demanding liberty on their own terms until the chorus fuses into one compulsory harmony: “Make this your law—required for all.” As rifles and cradles blur into a single national rhythm, Carson’s Burfie blinks green. Liberty, at last, means permission to run for the restroom.
Interviewed by the Past
Dragged into the gilded restaurant of the Big Beautiful Government, Carson finds himself seated with Reverends Rodgers and Inglis for a mock “interview” that quickly becomes interrogation. Over gold-crusted crumpets and flashing cameras, they test the health of the republic—law, faith, education, speech, privacy—and every answer collapses to the same refrain: money trumps all. The rich sin with impunity while the poor are priced out of justice, medicine, learning, and dignity. The waiter repeats the mantra as Carson fingers his reprogrammed Burfie, realizing that in O’Liargram’s empire even truth comes with a bar tab.
O’Liargram
In a darkly comic lullaby, children serenade “O’Liargram”—a stand-in for Mar-a-Lago—as both nursery and crime scene of America’s ruling class. The verses praise a garden nourished by corruption: roots fed with market wealth, pillows stuffed with shredded evidence, blankets sewn from stolen votes. Justice, commerce, and deceit share the same bed while gavels and cradles keep time together. The song ends with Johnny Carson’s stunned laughter amid the opulence, sealing the moment where satire meets farce and the Republic tucks itself back to sleep.
America’s Dilemma
The finale unfolds as a televised quiz show—America’s Dilemma #2025—hosted by Dick Cavett with Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent and Washington Irving as the forgotten conscience. Historic “children”—George Washington, Horace Mann, David Kearney McDonough, and Jonas Salk—pose moral problems, while the audience’s multiple-choice answers reduce virtue to cynicism: deny, deflect, monetize, wait. Cavett and Carson trade quips; Irving’s long moral appeals go unheard, his microphone dead. Each question exposes a nation where profit trumps principle and irony replaces ethics. When the lights cut, Cavett smiles through the darkness—“and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how true Americans resolve their dilemmas.”
The Verdict
At Washington’s old oath site, Carson hosts a final panel with William Duer, Washington Irving, and Dr. Wiki (a deadpan cartoon dog) to “judge” America by its choices. Dr. Wiki argues forced choice reveals national values, then runs a DSM-style bill of particulars—antisocial, delusional, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid—sketching the Headless Horseman’s cult of power where truth is treason and loyalty is currency. Duer and Carson trade gallows jokes; the point lands anyway: integrity has curdled into greed. The Revolutionary Reverends close with a litmus of messages—hate controls, lies delude; courage, hope, and love draw us together—after which Carson adjourns Day One and, at last, finds relief.
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Supreme Court
A century after the fabled Dick Cavett Show of 2025, the long-delayed verdict in Audience Inc. v. Big Beautiful Government and the Headless Horseman is finally at hand. LIFE magazine’s weary correspondent William Duer reports from a nation where citizens must wear government-issued “Burfies” that broadcast their compliance, corporations bankroll the state, and justice marches to a sponsored beat. As the nine robed arbiters process through the White House gates under the hum of Burfie scanners, their allegiances flicker in corporate logos and stock symbols—until the signal collapses and “alternative facts” replace truth. The satire ends on the courthouse steps, where spectacle, commerce, and law merge, and the promised verdict never comes.
110 Years Later
At Washington’s old oath site, Carson hosts a final panel with William Duer, Washington Irving, and Dr. Wiki (a deadpan cartoon dog) to “judge” America by its choices. Dr. Wiki argues forced choice reveals national values, then runs a DSM-style bill of particulars—antisocial, delusional, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid—sketching the Headless Horseman’s cult of power where truth is treason and loyalty is currency. Duer and Carson trade gallows jokes; the point lands anyway: integrity has curdled into greed. The Revolutionary Reverends close with a litmus of messages—hate controls, lies delude; courage, hope, and love draw us together—after which Carson adjourns Day One and, at last, finds relief.