Stale Mate

It was only last week that our leaders made a decision that is going to change the course of our history forever: they agreed to disagree about agreeing at the moment. Now they plan to have another meeting where they will decide whether they can agree to agree about agreeing, and that will be a great step toward getting out of the current political stalemate.

Which begs the question: Who on earth invented a word like stalemate? And why would anyone ever need the word? Are words like ‘deadlock’ and ‘impasse’ too bourgeois for our communist leaders and the English reporters, so that they need a word like ‘stalemate’?

Perhaps, stalemate goes along with our leaders because it has all the qualities needed for a communist revolution. First of all, it has the word stale, that says the person using the word is a supporter of a ‘People’s Revolution’. He/she would be willing to eat stale bread, hear stale news, wear stale clothes, chant stale slogans, and have only stale rights for the benefit of the party. Stale is a powerful word when used by a proletariat, and is favored by our communists.

The other part of the word, mate, tells you everything you need to know about communism, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism you ever need to know. Mate is friend. It is figuratively the opposite of ‘me’ or ‘I’. When a powerful leader or paper uses the word, it means the institution is denouncing individual selfishness in favour of all the mates, and wants a People’s revolution.

This makes sense. Who would not want a people’s revolution? To entice people with the mate (people’s) revolution and the slogan of Stalism, our leaders are trying to have a stalemate as long as possible. Long live stalemate!