A document arrived this week, slipped under the door of an office I do not rent, in a city I have never lived in. The cover page bears the imprimatur of a think tank that has long since stopped pretending to think. Its title is Project 2029: Mandates for the Republic of Useful Things. The typeface is the one usually reserved for tombstones and corporate apology letters. The pages smell faintly of bourbon and unread Federalist Papers.
I transcribe what follows in good faith. The redactions were applied with a Sharpie wielded by someone who clearly did not understand how redactions work, so I have left the legible portions intact. The footnotes are theirs. The trembling is mine.
Title I. Of Names and Their Correction
The Atlantic Ocean shall henceforth be designated Lake Trump. The Pacific Ocean is reclassified as the Lesser Trump, pending a naming-rights auction. The Gulf of Mexico is already addressed in prior legislation, and the authors note, with audible relief, that no further action is required there.
A fifth head shall be added to Mount Rushmore. It will not be carved. It will be projected, in real time, from a webcam mounted in the residence. On windy days the head will glitch. Citizens are advised to interpret the glitch as weather.
Any municipality named after a sitting or former Democrat is hereby renamed Patriotville, followed by a numeral assigned in order of compliance. Madison, Wisconsin, becomes Patriotville 14. Jefferson City becomes Patriotville 31, with a stern asterisk acknowledging the awkwardness.
Title II. Symbols and Their Replacement
The Liberty Bell will be retired to a humidor in Mar-a-Lago and replaced by a working air-raid siren, which will sound on a schedule known only to the Office of Patriotic Acoustics. The siren is to be understood as the sound of liberty arriving, not departing. Citizens who flinch will be assessed a fine.
The Statue of Liberty is scheduled for a light retrofit. The torch becomes a Bic. The tablet, formerly inscribed with the date of independence, is now backlit and reads Terms and Conditions, Subject to Change. The crown is replaced by a hat in the appropriate shade. The poem at her feet is removed entirely and donated to a museum that has not yet been built.
The bald eagle is reassigned to ceremonial duty in a small enclosure near the Lincoln Memorial, where school children may photograph it for a fee. The new national bird is the AR-15, described in the footnotes as “a bird of metal and purpose, whose song is the answer to all questions.”
The motto E Pluribus Unum is amended for clarity. The revised version reads E Pluribus, Whatever.
Title III. The Calendar
A new federal holiday shall commemorate the Day NPR Went Dark, observed annually with a moment of imposed silence, after which citizens are encouraged to scream into a frequency of their choosing.
February is rebranded as Reagan Awareness Month, during which all federally funded media must include at least one reference per hour to a man who is, for this document, still alive.
Memorial Day has been moved. The new date appears in the footnotes as a clerical error, retained for tradition. I will not reproduce it here. It is a date from a country that no longer exists, attached to an event that the authors describe as “instructive.”
The week between Christmas and New Year is now reserved for the Annual Loyalty Audit, a household activity in which family members rank each other on patriotism and submit the results via a mobile application that does not yet pass App Store review.
Title IV. Institutions
The Smithsonian shall be reorganized as a flagship Bass Pro Shops, with the original collections distributed across the floor as ambient decor. The Hope Diamond is reclassified as a fishing lure. The original Star-Spangled Banner is mounted above the cash register and described in signage as “vintage textile, not for sale, possibly haunted.”
The Library of Congress is consolidated to a single revolving paperback rack at a Cracker Barrel near Knoxville. The selection rotates monthly. Returns are not accepted.
NPR’s frequencies are auctioned to a podcast network operated by a man who once sold a meatloaf cure for autism. He is to be addressed in all federal correspondence as the Surgeon Adjacent.
The Department of Education merges with the Department of Whatever Texas Says. The new agency has no website, no staff, and a phone number that rings directly into a Buc-ee’s.
Title V. Citizenship and Its Discontents
A mandatory loyalty exam will be administered to all adult citizens. It is structured as a fishing license renewal and contains three questions. The questions change weekly. The wrong answer is the one you give.
Dual citizenship is abolished, unless the second passport is from a country that has hosted a Trump golf course in good standing. A list of such countries is appended, and includes two that were invented for the purpose.
The Pledge of Allegiance is updated to include a Venmo handle. Schools are instructed to project the QR code onto the flag itself, which has been pre-treated with a reflective coating manufactured by a subsidiary of the First Family.
Birthright citizenship is retained but means-tested. The threshold has not been disclosed. The footnotes suggest it is “whatever feels right on a given Tuesday.”
Title VI. Footnotes and the Founders Who Did Not Exist
The document cites, with confidence, the writings of founders not present in any historical record.
Cleetus Hancock, who signed the Declaration in a hand so tremulous it was first mistaken for a draft of weather.
Beauregard Madison, drafter of the lost Eleventh Amendment, which guaranteed the right of every American to be left alone by the truth.
Phineas Tubb, author of Federalist Paper No. 87, in which he argues for an executive empowered to nullify any Tuesday at his discretion, on the grounds that Tuesday has historically been “the most insolent of the days.”
Each citation is rendered in the same crisp legal italics used for the real ones. After a while, I stopped checking.
Coda
The document ends with a note written in red ballpoint, in a hand I recognized but could not place. It reads, in full:
Implementation begins immediately. If you are reading this, you are already inside it. The siren you hear is the sound of liberty arriving. Please do not flinch.
I closed the folder. I went to the window. The sky over Haddonfield was its usual color, which is to say, slightly the wrong one. Somewhere in the middle distance, a bell that was not a bell rang once, and then continued ringing on a schedule I had not been given.
I am told this is fine.
😆 😢