Hell in Paradise! Flipper Murdered!

by David Benjamin

“All creatures kill—there seems to be no exception; but of the whole list, man is the only one that kills for fun; he is the only one that kills in malice, the only one that kills for revenge. Also—in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.” ―Mark Twain

WASHINGTON D.C. January 10, 2026—An immense crowd of angry Americans covered the heart of this city from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial, culminating the “Million Dolphin March” here Saturday. Protesters, carrying signs and chanting, demanded an end to missile attacks on civilian boats in international waters off the Venezuela coast. Nationwide, the protest brought an estimated ten million Americans to the streets in more than three hundred cities and towns coast-to-coast, marking a dramatic reversal of public sentiment about the remote-control killing of alleged seagoing “narcoterrorists” ordered by a once-popular president affectionately known as the Mad King.

It all started well for the president, who justified the military action as part of the so-called “war on drugs.” By early November last year, fifteen sorties by MQ-9 Reaper drones had killed, in spectacular style on viral videos, 65 alleged “narcoterrorists.” Viewers shared the Mad King’s delight at explosions that resembled video-game action sequences. “Zoom! Kaboom!” posted the Mad King on his personal social-media platform, “Make My Day, MOTHERF***KERS!”

A handful of liberal critics, who accused the beloved president of extrajudicial murder were ignored by video viewers thrilled at the sight of badasses blown to bloody shreds. This indifference to traditional norms came as no surprise. Except for a few token “No Kings” protests, Americans had stood idly by as the Mad King razed the East Wing of the White House to replace it with a trailer-trash version of the palace at Versailles, Americans were similarly complacent when the Mad King enriched himself and his two idiot sons with a pay-to-plat cryptocurrency grift, when he took food away from poor children, when he sent out masked ICE storm troopers to smash car windows, pound people’s heads into the pavement and abduct them in unmarked black vans, even when he ordered raids on elementary schools and day centers to snatch children away from their families.

So, it came as no shock that very few citizens objected to the colossal expense of sending aircraft carriers, destroyers and nuclear submarines to obliterate speedboats and fishing vessels accused by the Mad King of pumping deadly narcotics into the veins of kindergarten tots and white Christian virgins in Hometown USA. No patriot dared flinch at the expense of F-35s flying over Caracas at $36,000 an hour, nor at the $27,000-a-head price for shooting accused “narcoterrorists” out of the water. Taxpayers understood, after all, that cost is no object when you’re making America safe again.

However, the tables turned when—just before being splattered across the Caribbean—one passenger on an alleged drug boat held up a golden retriever puppy. Video of the pup’s demise, released triumphantly by the Mad King, went viral, But instead of the usual applause, it triggered a national reckoning.

Americans had shown few qualms about snuffing brown-skinned strangers with $100,000 missiles in the open sea, without any poof of their alleged offenses or even the consideration of due process. But killing puppies is different.

Thereafter, the Mad King, doubled down intemperately, responding to critics by saying. “Hey, so what? I don’t like dogs any more than I like drug smugglers.”

The vice president backed up the Mad King by calling the video “fake news.” He said, “That wasn’t a real puppy. It was a stuffed animal. And that wasn’t blood. It was ketchup!”

However, as boats kept sinking, puppies kept dying—in full view of anyone with access to YouTube, CNN, MSNBC and every broadcast network except CBS.

The slippery slope became slicker as crews of virtually every boat on the Caribbean, from luxury yachts to eight-foot dinghies, included puppies and other small cuddly creatures who could be held up to camera view at any sign of danger. Defiantly, the Mad King escalated. TV and streaming media were overwhelmed with gruesome clips of tiny pets turned to mincemeat by Hellfire missiles. The turquoise sea became a holocaust of mangled kittens, slaughtered lambs and vaporized baby chicks. The Mad King’s approval ratings ticked down five points in a single days after millions of angry comments flooded the internet over the death of a newborn Shetland pony who, before the missile ripped her to bloody ribbons, gazed up toward the sky with big brown dewy eyes.

The tide turned irreversibly against the Mad King when one canny fisherman had the idea of strewing the waters around his boat with bait fish that attracted schools of dolphins. When Pentagon drones destroyed the boat, YouTube viewers were riveted by the sight of one doomed dolphin, a great gash in her body trailing entrails. In living color, they saw the intelligent animal gasp for its dying breath in waters stained crimson with its blood.

The New York Post’s headline read: “Hell in Paradise! Flipper Murdered”. Outrage swept America. The Mad King’s staunchest supporters waffled. Senator Lindsay Graham wondered openly whether a dolphin could be accused as a drug mule. Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the only Cabinet member who had actually killed a puppy, avoided comment. The Mad King’s sole defender on the issue, Obergruppenfeuhrer Stephen Miller, said, “Let’s get real, guys. If you want to make an omelette, you have to abort a few baby chicks.”

When missiles continued to fly and six more gory dolphin deaths went hyper-viral—with a billion views globally, the camel’s back finally cracked. Pollsters couldn’t find more than a handful of Americans who supported what came to be known as “Operation Fatal Flipper”.

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times resident bleeding heart, wrote, “It’s a cruel world and life isn.t fair. We’ve seen that voters can harden themselves to the accused terrorists being spirited away and tortured in black sites. We’ve accepted the ripping of immigrant kids away from their families. We tolerate the gunning down of black people in their homes, in their cars and on their doorsteps by police without warrants. We’re even cool with the willful, gleeful starving of children in Sudan, Somalia, Chicago and Mississippi. But dolphins? This is the deepest depths of depravity, an unspeakable crime against the most cherished cetacean ever bestowed on humankind by the hand of God. This cannot stand. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

The huge protest in Washington featured a dozen speakers addressing crowds who carried hand-inked signs bearing messages like, “Save the Puppies, Dump the King!”, “We Are All Dolphins Now!”, and “Peace Is Our Porpoise!”

Before the march, the Mad King had vacated the White House, an “outdated building” that he has ordered completely demolished by Valentine’s Day. He has gone into seclusion in his members-only Florida villa, where—critics have noted sardonically—no pets, not even Seeing-Eye dogs and teddy bears, are allowed.

In a sign that this horror might have a silver lining, several videos have appeared in which a missile fired at an alleged drug boat, loaded with puppies and kittens, and surrounded by cavorting dolphins, missed its targets by a hundred yards, plunging and exploding harmlessly into the sea, killing only a few jellyfish and barracudas.

The ASPCA heralded the remote pilots of these misguided missiles as heroes of animal rights and dolphinism. In a swift and manly response, Secretary of War Pete “Hairdo” Hegseth charged the pilots with cowardice in the face of a cute enemy and ordered them drummed from the armed forces.