Good Government

The children have built a city.
I have informed them that only with a 3/4 quorum can we destroy it by "tornado" at the end of class. I have upheld justice as I understand it. I am stern but fair.
We have called it Party City and worked tirelessly for the past week to cultivate it with civility. The pizza parlor is huge, the ice cream store unparalleled. A verdant pasture is filled with bottle cap cows. Transportation options are numerous. Vehicles in varying degrees of fuel efficiency line the construction paper streets. The economy of materials used to construct a wine cork car belies its engineers greater concerns with the city's resources. An airplane made out of a paper towel tube lays in a shoebox hangar where the light denies it. One boy made a helicopter from my old tampon box and no one is the wiser.
Sure, a gaudy mansion sits in the hills, and one end of the town is buffeted by an air force base that admits the very few, but pockets of the town flourish with multi-use solutions. A hotel with a handsome, historic marquee abuts the ice cream stand with the swirled roof. The theater owner refuses to sell out to the fat cats who prop up the encroaching cardboard conglomerates (Starbucks, Einstein).
On Friday this will all be devestated. We took a vote. It is bigger than us all. Democracy is simple and sometimes very cruel.