Lilli-Bunny was famous for his furry blue slippers. First, Lilli-Bunny met his right slipper. It hopped along the road singing a slipper-y song. Lilli-Bunny liked this funny guy and so gave him a cookie—Lilli-Bunny always carried one in his pocket just in case something like this should hap-pen. So, Right Slipper followed Lilli-Bunny home and settled under Lilli-Bunny’s bed. Then it came out that Right Slipper had a Left brother. However, Left’s left-foot views were too liberal for everyone’s taste, which made it impossible for respectable Right Slipper to introduce his brother to Lilli-Bunny.

But at five o’clock tea, Lilli-Bunny showed his political indifference. He offered raspberry jam to those who sat to his right side and those on his left, without any discrimination. Moreover, he even sent some jam to Hamster Hamlet, an insignificant inhabitant of his house who lived in the basement near the furnace and didn’t care to show up for tea. Seeing such a pluralistic approach in Lilli-Bunny’s behavior, Right Slipper found the courage to introduce his Left brother, in spite of the leftist slogans Left was apt to spout: "Distribute the Wealth!" "Overthrow the Government!" "Reduce Gas Prices!" "Turn off the Light!" and even "Death to Global Warming!" Left Slipper was invited to join the very next tea party, where he was pleased to make acquaintances with the merry company which lived in Lilli-Bunny’s cozy brick house: Lilli-Bear, Lilli-Kitty and Lilli-Jake, two cats (Lilli-Bunny usually carried an armful of cats, even though he had only two of them. His were pretty fat, or to be more exact, fat and pretty), two quite articulate little parrots with well-developed two to three word vocabularies with which they could fully enjoy their freedom of speech, and Hamster Hamlet, who has already been introduced to my honorable reader. However, Hamster Hamlet soon departed from Lilli-Bunny’s house, because it turned out that he had solved the popular question, "to be or not to be?" in the most irresponsible way, amorally engaging himself in random relationships with numerous mice in the house. Very soon, Lilli-Bunny started to notice the seemingly in-explicable appearance of mutant mice offspring with hamster ears and mouse-tails in his house. Such an impact on the course of evolution quite upset Hamster

Hamlet himself in such an unfortunate way that he placed the following ad in the local newspaper: Hamster Hamlet-(Way cuter than average)-Looking for a new apartment -Won’t accept any offers from mutant mice-And the telephone number. Hamster Hamlet had a telephone line of his own. He, frankly speaking, was a hamster-individualist. I am sorry, but Hamster Hamlet did not give me his consent to disclose here his number, because he doesn’t want to be disturbed during his winter hibernation that usually starts in mid-August and ends in mid-June. Though, in case of some sort of emergency, you may find it in the phone book under his name. But don’t look under the section "Ro-dents." You must look under "Princes of Denmark." After acquiring such politically engaged slippers, Lilli-Bunny ceased to express any interest in politics. But it often occurred that Lilli-Bunny fell asleep while watching TV, putting his slippered feet right in front of the screen. While Lilli-Bunny took his nap, the slippers attentively watched all available political commentary and quietly discussed the current political climate (climate is very important because if it changes, some politicians will start sneezing and coughing, and might even need warmer cover-ups to cover their political ass—yep, you got me right, I was going to say "assets.") Sometimes the slippers even debated different changes in the political system. You probably know that not all changes in the system are healthy.

For example, changes in the gastrointestinal or cardiovascular system can turn deadly. Some democratic changes in the political system might be good for democracy itself, while changes in the systems of internal organs usually are considered a disturbing sign. Democracy between the systems of body organs may lead to some undesirable consequences if it gets too far— imagine that your liver passes a no-confidence vote against your head, or—excuse the medical details—your rectum impeaches your dignity. Sorry? Dignity is not an internal organ? Some-times it is. But debates among the elective organs are a good thing, for this means democracy is on the move. Democracy needs more physical activity, otherwise it gets obese and finishes up all the food in the nation’s fridge. But democracy shouldn’t move too fast, because it is not very young anymore, and its constitution sweats if it gets too heated. Then the world’s tyrannies declare with disgust that democracy has got its constitution sweaty. Democracy promptly checks on its constitution and honestly confirms, "Yes, it is pretty wet. But this is reparable. But look at you, bloody tyrants! You keep your constitution dry, and it is entirely eaten up by moles!" Then tyranny and democracy jump on each other and have a fight. And the rest of the world yawns while watching it on TV.

I always supported democracy and the ultimate authority of the majority in theory, though I never got a practical answer to what should be done if the majority is evil or gets things wrong. Perhaps democracy has some mysterious power to improve human nature, otherwise wild and brutal, and which only gets worse in a crowd. Probably I am wrong and democracy has never turned bad, or if it has, people try to forget such unfortunate occurrences. Let us forget it too, for it is better to forget unsolvable questions than try to solve them. The only problem with the politically-engaged slippers popped up when Lilli-Bunny woke up and went to the bath-room. He was very sleepy, and by mistake, put the right slipper on his left foot and the left slipper on his right. This forced the slippers to change their political orientations almost immediately. This occurs fairly often in politics, but was tough for the slippers because they retained shreds of dignity, which isn’t quite true of politicians. To remain consistent in such confusion, the left slipper argued that he had gone so far to the left, that for the first time in his life, he had actually got things right, and the right slipper tried to convince himself and the others that since he had now traveled so far to the left, he had to adopt some leftist tactics. Don’t get heated, my dearest reader. This is a simple truth of political life. Changing one’s mind constantly is just one of the professional hazards of any political career. But Lilli-Bunny was sleeping and not paying attention to all these political acrobatics. Once, he slept so deeply that he flipped over in his armchair. Thus, he pointed his slippers up at the ceiling. That was the real moment of national unity. By raising both up, Lilli-Bunny won the hearts of his slippers. They agreed to elect Lilli-Bunny as President. They cast their ballots that way because, first, Lilli-Bunny treated everybody to raspberry jam, which made him very important, and second, he sometimes threw the slippers at his cats when they got too playful—and who, if not a real president, would do such a drastic thing in order to restore public order? You know, excessive playfulness might interfere with healthy sleeping, and this is unacceptable! Never wake society while it is sleeping. This may have serious consequences, especially to the one who wakes it up. And third, Lilli-Bunny was the owner of the house, and who, if not the owner, is supposed to be elected president? I mean, he owns the house. It is very important for democracy to confirm the real situation of society by electing the one who would rule anyway, even though he wasn’t elected. This practice adds more legitimacy to the government and therefore makes the loyal citizens feel better. Isn’t that what modern democracy is all about? The slippers didn’t tell Lilli-Bunny about their decision, be-cause they were afraid the knowledge would make him nervous and preoccupied with his new political career. The slippers knew such preoccupation could seriously damage not only the household of the politician himself, but also households of many fellow citizens. Nor did the slippers tell anyone else in the house about electing Lilli-Bunny for the office. The other in-habitants seemed not to care. But that was just okay, because in a normal society politics shouldn’t much interfere with house-hold issues. Now the slippers formed a coalition and began to run against Lilli-Bunny’s winter boots, which would compete with the slippers for the leader’s feet in December, or even as early as mid-November, if it snowed early that year.