Open Letter
Open Letter
[The picture shows a letter.] October 7 th 2013 To: The Freemasons, the Illuminati, Scientology, FEMA, the New World Order, the Federal Reserve, Citigroup, Halliburton, Google, the Vatican, Bilderburg, Walmart, the Rothschilds, the Knights Templar, HAARP, the UN, Skull & Bones, Bohemian Grove, the Koch Brothers, George Soros, the Trilateral Commision, the Knights of Malta, the CFR, Exxon Mobil, the Zionists, the Vril Society, the Lizard People, and everyone else who secretly controls the US government Can you please get your shit together? This is embarrassing. Sincerely, A Concerned Citizen

This comic is a reference to the US government shutdown in 2013 that had been ongoing for a week and was still current as of the time of this comic. Under some circumstances, the United States Federal Government can temporarily shut down pending budget legislation being passed by the United States Congress. These shutdowns are typically due to political disagreements between the President, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. Due to the shutdown, numerous government services and facilities are shut down, often resulting in many logistical issues for the public.
Over the years, various conspiracy theories have been proposed claiming that the United States Government is not controlled by publicly-elected officials, but rather by one or more organizations that secretly control the actions of the government (sometimes termed a "shadow government" ). In this strip, Randall writes a letter to the shadow government, telling them that the situation (having the country's government shut down) is embarrassing and asking them to fix the problem.
This comic also implicitly argues against the plausibility of the aforementioned conspiracy theories if one assumes that a shadow-controlled government would be more likely to operate with a singular purpose and therefore be less susceptible to paralyzing political disagreements. Randall previously alluded to this in the title text to comic 1081 : "Really, the comforting side in most conspiracy theory arguments is the one claiming that anyone who's in power has any plan at all." This is one of several comics in which Randall expresses dismay at how many intelligent people can fall for absurd conspiracy theories; see comics 258 and 690 , among others.
The title text addresses the leadership of the shadow government in more colloquial terms, asking if they are suffering from personal problems that are impeding their ability to keep things under control. This is patronizing, and thus hilarious.
The message, as titled, is in the form of an " Open Letter ", being a directed and 'personal' message to a person or group of people which is nonetheless intended by the sender to be publicly aired (unlike a standard commentary or editorial, which is intended for public consumption, but addresses the concerned 'target' almost as an aside). In some cases this may be to ensure the correspondence is not kept confidential by the recipients and/or that the public as a whole are also indirectly addressed ('Cc'ed) in the correspondence, without having to compose a companion piece for that purpose. In this case, however, it may additionally be because the intended recipient(s) are not so easily identified for direct communication, and a public airing would ensure 'delivery' even without compromising the integrity of the message.  Open Letters are often aired (or pre-copied, verbatim, from actual correspondence) in one or area or other of the public media, and while web-comics aren't necessarily the most publicised of forums, the xkcd readership almost certainly leads to covering both the 'named' recipients and the intended public view.
[The picture shows a letter.] October 7 th 2013 To: The Freemasons, the Illuminati, Scientology, FEMA, the New World Order, the Federal Reserve, Citigroup, Halliburton, Google, the Vatican, Bilderburg, Walmart, the Rothschilds, the Knights Templar, HAARP, the UN, Skull & Bones, Bohemian Grove, the Koch Brothers, George Soros, the Trilateral Commision, the Knights of Malta, the CFR, Exxon Mobil, the Zionists, the Vril Society, the Lizard People, and everyone else who secretly controls the US government Can you please get your shit together? This is embarrassing. Sincerely, A Concerned Citizen
