Note: This piece is a work of satire.
Even in these days of denial, science marches on, sometimes apace.
According to a recently published report* in the Journal of Peptides, Nucleotides and Riptides, a team of researchers at the prestigious Dolly the Sheep Institute of Forensic Political Genetics have discovered a previously unknown nucleotide in the human genome. Nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA and are arranged in a sequence, a code, along the genome. It is the code that determines a person’s genetic makeup. Joining the Big 4 line up of A adenine, C cytosine, G guanine and T thymine is a fifth: a Republican-specific nucleotide that the scientists have dubbed $ for $olipsistine.
“You could have knocked us down with a feather,” said Goldberg, referring to the surprise and elation he and his colleagues, Dr. Bannerjee and Dr. Whewell, felt on identifying this previously unknown organic molecule. “So, being scientists, we did a double blind test using a bipartisan sampling of DNA and —”
“— the results were borne out across the aisle with a stochastic error score of ± 1,” says Dr. Bannerjee.
“—and that was Dianne Feinstein,” concludes Dr. Whewell.
The discovery, as many great discoveries have been, was made by accident. The way Dr. Goldberg tells it, the team was just sitting around shooting the breeze in the staff lounge when the president’s latest Tweet appeared on TV followed by the latest tax bill chicanery compounded by the continued failure of this administration to reign in their quest for personal profit.
“—And,” says Goldberg, “we kind of looked at each other and Ruchira, that’s Dr. Bannerjee, just said something like my god! do you think this kind of behavior could be genetic? and Tim, that’s Dr. Whewell, said it’s massively consistent in its manifestation, enough to make such an idea plausible and I said let’s get out the electron microscopes and chromosome tweezers! And they did. I have a great team.”
Due to their reluctance to participate in the study, Republican samples had to be obtained from glasses taken from the Senate floor and utensils slipped to researchers by the immigrant household staff at Mar-a-Lago. On the other hand, Democrats just rolled over and presented their tongues.
The team located the specificity almost immediately: an “$” tucked into the sequence that politicogeneticists have long believed governs ethical behavior. Though present in all Republican samples, the sample from President Trump showed an occurrence of $olipsistine of a dangerous frequency. (see Figs. 1,2 and 2a below)
Fig. 1, Typical gene sequence; Fig. 2, Republican gene sequence; Fig. 2a, President Donald J. Trump’s gene sequence
“The president definitely has more $olipsistine than any other Republican currently serving,” says Goldberg. “And that’s saying something.”
“We are fully expecting a tweet in which he brags about this just as we are even now waiting for the exhumation papers so we can test his DNA against Richard Nixon’s,” adds Dr. Bannerjee.
“I predict massive similarities with a minuscule reduction in redundancy,” says Whewell.
The ramifications of this discovery resound. Even as the pharmaceutical industry rushes to patent $olipsistine blockers, leading medical specialists are scrambling to revise diagnostic protocol to reflect a new classification of ”Republican” as a congenital disorder with some families showing stronger patterns than others.
“If, as it appears, this proves that Republicans are born not made,” says Dr. Lucy Warriner, author of Born Not Made Nation, “any attempt at conversion therapy is likely to fail.”
And activists on the ground are equally alarmed. “Hell yeah we’re concerned,” says Jaz Davis, founder of GOT*#&!@ V (Get Out the *#&!@ Vote). “Something like this could take gerrymandering straight to the womb,”
* Goldberg, Ru, Bannerjee, Ruchira, Whewell, Tim. $olipsistine: It Explains Everything (2017)