I will never be president of the United States. Partly because I don’t want to, as the hours are too long, the work is way too hard for the pay involved, and I don’t need to age any faster than my 7-year-old daughter is already responsible for. However, mostly I won’t be president because I’d be completely unelectable. I’d be speaking my mind, swearing frequently at public appearances and telling frothing, right-wing pundits and annoyingly smarmy left-wing ones where to put their gonads for maximum hilarity and humiliation.

However, were I to somehow become president, I would make a very simple system for dealing with despotic, totalitarian rulers, knowing that it is very expensive to wage war and very wasteful. Also, nation building rarely works out well.

You, as the totalitarian ruler of your nation, will have one recourse to avoid me sending in drones or long-range missiles to vaporize whatever palace or bunker you hole up in: Engage me in a three-out-of-five thumb war. You will present yourself at the appointed time to the deck of one the United States’ proud aircraft carriers as it floats in international waters, where you and your entourage will be unarmed, while my entourage will be bristling with weapons.

If you defeat me in the thumb war, you can go your merry way back to your nation and the United States won’t personally harass you for the rest of my term in office. If you lose, you will abdicate immediately and head immediately for some country that is willing to harbor you; if you don’t, my people will riddle you with holes right then and there on the deck of the carrier.

I like to keep things simple.