My dastardly and despicable reign as a supervillain has been filled with the most creatively vile plans: space lasers to boil the oceans, weather machines to freeze the sun, even time machines to change the course of history. But none have helped me achieve world domination. Now, I’ve made the ingenious decision to take over the globe by closing my evil lair and hiring an army of corporate lobbyists.
For decades I’ve watched other entities of villainy succeed in their plans to influence the world. Big Oil, Big Pharma, not to mention the groundbreaking evil work of Big Tobacco—all wreaked havoc on the world while I tinkered away in my nuclear volcano lair. I couldn’t understand what worked. Then I realized I could be an evil villain without being an illegal villain.
I don’t need to waste money on a wildly oversized Moon-based heat ray to threaten a country’s food supply. I can simply buy thousands of family farms in the Midwest using shell corporations set up by my DC law firm, consolidate them after Congress repeals anti-trust legislation, and jack up the price of bread. No law against that (if there is, not for long!).
Finally, I can retire my giant magnet that steals pocket change. To destroy the middle class, I’ll simply lobby for a law that changes my employees to non-union contractors and watch the beauty of gig work destroy it for me. Mwahaha!
Who is going to stop me? The Federal Trade Commission? Ha! The FTC is no match for the world’s greatest criminal mastermind and also a handful of entirely legal campaign donations to a single congressman on an obscure labor committee. The best part is no one will see my plan coming (my lobbyists ghost-wrote legislation sealing all corporate political contributions).
Oppose me at your peril. If I do not succeed with this plan, I will be forced to engage in pretty much the same conduct the next election cycle, and the next, and the next, until all of my mergers are rubber-stamped by a favorable set of Supreme Court judges and my shuttered volcano lair gets an Electoral College vote.
But if anyone does dare to stand in my way, I’ll have them vaporized by my gamma-ray satellites. Just kidding; I’ll simply vaporize their life savings by drowning them in a mountain of litigation and paperwork that only a K Street law firm can summon. Feel free to petition and campaign; you don’t stand a chance against the endless onslaught of incredibly complex but incredibly legal corporate maneuvers.
My takeover will begin where all successful takeovers begin: Delaware! From my new evil lair (technically my LLC’s co-working space), my army of diabolical henchmen (legally, consultants who are strictly on an advisory basis) will take over the world (while generating shareholder profits, of course).
Supervillains are a cliche. It’s much easier to be a Super PAC villain. And once I’ve amassed more wealth than the fools I rule could ever imagine, I’ll do the one thing to make myself totally immune from opposition, from the law, and from consequence itself: I’m going to run for president.