(~5 minutes to read)
News headline: More people in the USA are killed by lawnmowers than by terrorists.
The following are excerpts from a transcript of a speech (to be) given by future USA President Derek Benditt on New Year’s Day 2049, the eight thousandth day of his presidency.
Benditt was (or more correctly, will be) a product of the Social Media age, where alternate facts are consumed like (and with) fried chicken and XXL slushies, facts of all kinds aren’t checked, opinions are polarized by people’s habit of reading only what aligns with their point of view, and news reporting and communication in general have descended to the lowest common denominator, i.e. the gnome at the bottom of Kim Jaeioung-whassname’s back garden.
(I acknowledge the irony of my having written this article even though I was unable to verify conclusively the authenticity of the “lawnmower” statistic.)
People of America: I bid you good evening and a Happy New Year on this, my eight-thousandth day as your President.
[Editor’s note: Some trivial, populist fluff has been removed from the original transcript at this point…]
When I inherited the presidency, I undertook to continue the work started by my predecessor to Make America Safe Again.
Back in 2027, the country was under siege. Environmental organizations had succeeded in having their doom-laden, “sky’s-gonna-fall-down” beliefs enshrined in law. Thankfully, in one of her last acts in office, my predecessor tore those laws up, on prime-time television, in the Oval Office, and paved the way for a return to unfettered consumerism, thus boosting the economy bigly. Today, more Americans than ever before are employed—part-time—by those very companies whose profits had been hog-tied by environmental measures.
What philanthropy!
But it was my mother’s abolition of the need to elect presidents that paved the way for true American democracy and my accession.
If we look further back in time, to when the great Donald Trump held the highest office in the land, we see that he took great strides to protect Americans from what he perceived as the biggest threat of all—religious fundamentalists. But as we know from events in the following years, his actions were too focused—too limited; because it turned out that religious fundamentalists from our own cherished faith—the faith that our forefathers defended with their hard-invested money—were the source of as much human misery as those that President Trump had targeted.
Three presidents attempted to enact legislation to curb some of the more flagrant abuses of religious omnipotence, but it wasn’t until the “One Country, One Faith Act” of 2029 that the situation began to come under control. In a masterful move, execution by lethal injection was replaced by burning at the stake. This solved the problem of obtaining the drugs necessary for the former procedure as well as paving the way for ensuring compliance with OCOFA.
And I’m sure you’ll agree that America is a better place since the burnings went public.
More recently though, we have observed a new menace. A menace that has taken more American lives—innocent American lives—on American soil than games of scrabble.
Now, for the sake of full disclosure, deaths have occurred in scrabble games played between Americans and people who spell the way the rest of the world does, but no Americans have died in such games, so they don’t count.
This same menace has stolen the livelihoods of thousands of American citizens.
I’m referring to imported compact excavators.
There was a time when posthole and trench digging, earthmoving, and concrete breaking were all done manually.
Labourers felt safe in their jobs. Trenches might cave in, and the occasional gas line might get damaged, but overall, the tools of their trade were not dangerous.
They also felt secure in their jobs. Labourers found work where large-scale excavating machinery couldn’t reach or wasn’t cost-effective.
Even the introduction of American-built compact excavators such as Bobcats wasn’t perceived as a threat.
All that changed with the entry into this country of foreign compact excavators. If a labourer wishes to remain in the excavation business, he now has to abandon his shovel, and hand over large sums of money in order to obtain his own compact excavator. Many don’t have sufficient funds. And if and when they do succumb to the pressure and purchase one, they discover that it’s easier to hurt or even kill themselves or someone else with a foreign compact excavator than with a shovel.
Lives are being lost—tens of lives every decade.
This mass slaughter cannot be allowed to continue.
Therefore, with immediate effect, all compact excavators from six key compact-excavator-exporting countries will be banned. Those countries are: Greenland, Vatican City, Tuvalu, Monaco, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and The Cayman Islands.
Seven countries.
In addition, all compact excavators currently in the US that were not built here will be placed on a “No Dig” list.
Finally, we are mandating the installation of beverage holders and heavy machine guns on all American-built compact excavators. The addition of weaponry is to ensure compliance with the No Dig List by foreign excavators. Beverage holders will be required to contain a multi-electrolyte energy drink at all times.
Operators will be required to prove they can write their names in joined-up handwriting before being granted a Certificate of Excavation and Machine-gunning Competence.
We believe that these measures are all necessary for the protection of American jobs and lives. And we are determined to neutralize the threat to the American economy represented by compact excavators imported from the six countries—industrial giants, every one of them—I mentioned earlier.
Seven countries.
[Editor’s note: more boring stuff removed from full transcript here. You don’t want to read about trivial stuff like nuclear deployments…]
In the last four hours and thirty-three minutes, I have painted a picture of a vital economy, and healthy social fabric. Everything’s going perfectly in our great country, despite what you may have heard or read from all the phoney news outlets in other countries.
Thanks to the rescindment of the First Amendment, our loyal American news outlets will provide you with a unified, true and trustworthy account of our great nation’s progress towards the purest form of democracy ever.
Remember, together, we can Make America Safe Again!
Good night, Happy New Year, and may our Greenbacked God bless each and every one of you.