I don’t mean to sound conceited, but my obvious mental acuity makes me an easy target for some autocratic tyrant’s curb-stomping goon squad.

What I’m saying is if a ruthless dictator were to strong-arm his way into the White House and decree that intellectuals be exterminated lest they pose a threat to the ruling fascist regime, I would, like, totally be murdered. I mean, look at me. I’m an adjunct professor at Florida State University.

Sure, technically, I’m a part-time lecturer and not a professor, but seeing as how no one in my family gets that, a roving gang of far-right street thugs won’t request my full job title and last pay stub before bashing in my skull with a mini-bat.

So what if my brother-in-law, the auto mechanic, can afford to take his family on vacation and doesn’t have to subsist on day-old bread for the summer? I bet a fascist will never try to crush his windpipe.

When you think about it, I might be the only one intellectual enough at FSU to pose a real threat to an autocratic administration. I’m certainly the most murderable person on this campus. Way more murderable than my goody two-shoed colleague, Jennifer.

In a sense, I can understand why they would want to kill me. The fascists likely would have a dossier of my many pointed comments on The Atlantic’s website, or they would dig up a receipt from my recent $32 contribution to the ACLU as evidence that I am a cerebral force of powerful dissent and must be neutralized. Or maybe they’d murder me just because of my sharp-looking, clear-framed eyewear.

It’s easy to imagine how the fascists would come for me. Jackbooted stormtroopers would descend upon the university, scanning the student body for the best and brightest FSU has to offer, only to find yours truly as worthy of their ire. They’d probably look right past Jennifer even though she was recently asked by the university to come on full-time. Instead, they’d track me down in my office on the main campus in a basement of the engineering building annex. Or if it’s a Monday, Tuesday, or Friday evening, the on-campus Starbucks, where I sometimes hold office hours. Then they’d pluck me out of the crowd and pound my smart face and brain into ground chuck before hauling me away to a black site prison.

The fascists would choose ME. I mean, wow! Wouldn’t that be something? Scary, yeah, of course—it would be a scary vision of the future of America.

All I’m saying is, if fascists wanted to kill us intellectuals, I don’t think Jennifer would have to worry. She doesn’t even wear glasses.

Anyway, getting back to that horrifying vision—the fascists would probably scream something like, “You look like you should hold a tenure-track position. Come with us.” Or, “If only the FSU employment search committee could see you now.” Maybe they would say it loud enough for everyone to hear. Who knows,

Then I’d be dragged through the quad as onlookers, possibly including Little Miss Full-Time Faculty, stood powerless to do anything other than silently agree that I am their intellectual superior.

I wonder if I’m smart enough to be buried alive in an unmarked grave.

Maybe they’d even tie a rope to my feet and drag my corpse through the street as a warning to agitators. Everyone would see it, even my brother-in-law. “That guy must have been way smart to get all this! I guess he wasn’t a loser, after all.” he’d say.

It’d be awful, of course. Being murdered, I mean. That part would be awful. But man oh man, what a ride it’d be!