The Republican Apocalypse Is Here

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be like my dad in every way. He loved Ronnie Reagan because he was an officer in the Army and old Ronnie gave them plenty of money to buy new toys. Dad was a tank commander and one of the things Ft. Knox got was new tank simulators. Dad would take me with him for training.

The way these simulators were set up were just like the inside of an M1 tank and dad was in the commander’s seat and I was driving on a computer screen. Another tank would pop up and the great thing about an M1 tank was that it could shoot accurately while it moved because the computer would do the calculations and put a SABO round right where you aimed it.

To me, it was just a much bigger Atari game and dad never played video games. It took me about five minutes to figure out this game and I wasn’t much for following his orders he was giving me in the head set. So I am in control of everything and I am zipping through the different levels and the guy in the control room is giving us our score as we go along.

I was 13–14 years-old and dad was telling me I needed to follow his commands because that’s how the Army works. So I go, ‘don’t you want the highest score? Well of course he did. So I just ignored all the commands he was giving me and drove the tank to the target. He would select the kind of round we were going to fire and as…