Gas prices are soaring. Natural disasters are wiping entire cities off the map. The economy’s languor is making Tara Reid and Brit Spears look healthy by comparison. (You know the nation is in danger when Britney Spears’s exploits take second bill to political issues.) We’re in dire straits.

What this humble writer can’t offer you is a realistic assessment of what’s to come. I don’t have the facts. But then, I don’t trust them, either. Aren’t we getting different stories from each of our so-called experts and leaders? We haven’t even come to a consensus on whether global warming is a certifiable threat or a bedtime story; can we really rely on economic predictions based on facts? And what are facts anyway, but data that hasn’t yet been discounted?

What I have to offer is not based on facts. What I have to offer, and all I have to offer, is an implausible but unsettling exposé of the real trouble facing the world today: the gremlin invasion.

Our little green saboteurs gained notoriety during wartime, when pilots began attributing unforeseen mechanical failures to a stealthy race of miniature nogoodniks. Gremlins didn’t pick sides; their enemies weren’t the opposing nations, but the entire human race.

At some point, the gremlin myth lost steam. Whether their lapse in meddling can be attributed to civil unrest or a planned period of inactivity is unknown, but I’m banking on the latter. The 1984 Joe Dante film Gremlins may be to blame for our current blindness to the real threat facing our planet. Having kept themselves “on the DL” for years, and having become mythic creatures in the eyes of the world public, gremlins may have reemerged to initiate a plot decades in the making: the systematic destruction of human civilization.

Remember the supposed weapons of mass destruction that were conveniently absent in Iraq? What if there were such weapons—in Saddam’s bathroom, no less—before the gremlin syndicate pilfered them. What if Bush’s entire failed career as president was undermined to weaken the American people?

Where has all the gas gone? Reflect on all those mornings when, only a couple days after filling up, you’re right back at the station pushing the hand from “empty.” Luxury vehicles with abysmal mileage? Struggling business owners watering down fuel? Balderdash! Gremlins are siphoning our gas, and using it to fuel their tiny imported mopeds (which get incredible mileage).

Logic hasn’t gotten us very far in solving our global problems. Children are starving in third-world nations while the poor and suffering American upper-class are selling their vacation houses at far below their original market values. Gremlins are milking us of our dignity. It’s one thing to milk a cow of its dairy. But milking a man of his self-respect? Some milk can’t be pasteurized.

Our planet is suffering. In order to attribute our many predicaments on things such as pollution, bad foreign policy, and overpopulation, we’d have to blame ourselves. Humanity would be responsible for its own downfall. As Americans, we should know better. Clearly, invisible green scoundrels are trying to shake our confidence. Rally up, my countrymen! Let’s show those responsible for our troubles that we won’t be milked dry without a fight. Our reputation is on the line, damn it! Let’s march.

Charles Smith is a native Southwest Virginian with a penchant for belief in mythical creatures. You should see his pet unicorn!