How To Improve America In 2013
By Brad Pike
This Holiday season, as you unwrap your presents by the fire, surrounded by your loved ones, secure in the knowledge tomorrow will be better than today, be grateful I’m in no position to execute my dark Orwellian vision for America. Though I fully endorse each and every one of these “improvements,” I’m also aware they would plunge this country into what I call my Fascist Dystopian Hellscape. It’s a world without hope or love, without freedom or democracy; a world where every bald eagle is born dead, and it never stops raining.
Automated Educational System
Instead of listening to teachers lecture in a classroom, students will be placed in cold sterile Learning Stations, gray cubicles fitted with a computer disseminating carefully designed curriculum that evolves fluidly based on an algorithm tailored to a student’s specific learning style. If a student has trouble with a component of a particular subject, the software focuses on this area until it’s mastered, and if the student still has trouble, a human teacher is sent over for personal assistance. The individualized curriculum maximizes the students’ potential contributions to society based on his/her personality, intelligence, and career aspirations. Unfortunately, students must complete ten hours of Learning Station curriculum per day or they’re executed. What?
Outlawed Football
Football is the most meaningless form of entertainment ever conceived. I’ve never understood why anyone — much less, most people — enjoy it, so in my Fascist Dystopian Hellscape, it will be outlawed and all stadiums replaced with unnecessarily huge cat cafés to reduce community stress and promote oxytocin release. In fact, most things I don’t understand would be outlawed: motorcycles, backwards hats, chiropractors, Chihuahuas, astrology, and above ground pools; these would all be outlawed. But, ah, football would be the first thing outlawed because 1) it subjects children and adults to severe head trauma, often resulting in permanent brain damage, and 2) it emphasizes victory through violence and physical superiority, which, being a thin man who’s frightened of violence in all forms, I reject.
Mandatory Physical/Psychological Diagnostics
Since the rights to privacy and free will have long been dispensed with, all citizens will be legally obligated to undergo annual check-ups to ensure their physical and psychological well-being. If a citizen fails either evaluation, he/she will be routed into an appropriate treatment plan in order to return his/her condition to normal. For example, if a citizen tests positive for anxiety disorder, he/she receives mandatory psychological treatment along with medication until anxiety is reduced to acceptable levels. Citizens cannot refuse physical/psychological treatment. If they refuse, they’re fined $2,000 and placed in an offshore holding facility. But why would you refuse? Are you confused? Scared? Submit to the compassionate will of the Fascist Dystopian Hellscape, citizen. All will be well.
Democratized Supreme Court
The Supreme Court will be replaced with an intellectual aristocracy, elected by popular vote every two years. However, his lordship, the immortal mutant Apocalypse, who rules over the Fascist Dystopian Hellscape, has veto power over any selection. After all, one cannot allow the tyranny of the mob to steer this country into… I don’t know. What’s worse than a Fascist Dystopian Hellscape?
Publicly Owned Television
Democratization of media has failed to enrich the public. The Learning Channel, Discovery Channel, and the History Channel, due to the insidious profit motive, have perverted their original mandates in favor of doomsday fear mongering, ancient aliens, and outright ignorance. They have twisted “reality,” that is, genuine human interaction, into a superficial abomination, commoditized it, and reduced people to sideshow freaks. And so my Fascist Dystopian government will dissolve privately owned television and from its ashes, build a new, more artistically substantive selection of programming. Who will decide what constitutes “substantive” and “enriching”? How about an unelected council of the cultural elite: AV Club columnists, New Yorker writers, television showrunners, screenwriters, professors, etc. Shadowy authorities, operating in secret, will decide what you can watch. It will be wonderful. I see no downside whatsoever.
No More Guns
All guns — machine guns, rifles, pistols, everything — will be banned. Anyone caught with a gun will be arrested and sentenced to one month of dressing like a pretty girl, unless the gun owner is a girl, in which case, the gun is replaced with silly string. Hunting will still exist, but you have to use crossbows, and it will exist only for invasive species control. The armed forces will be replaced by drones and Skynet style Terminator robots, unleashed only if another country does not adhere to the UN’s international gun ban. If war breaks out between countries, we will use our robots to mercilessly execute all the offending government’s forces. Disputes must proceed through the UN. The Fascist Dystopian Hellscape will not tolerate violence in the world and will murder anyone who perpetrates it.
Restructure Cities to Ensure Sustainability
The current model of using a 20,000 lb. vehicle to transport a 160 lb. human a couple blocks to the grocery store is clearly inefficient, not to mention dumb. Likewise, urban sprawl, the modern development paradigm, with its constant highway travel to get anywhere makes for disconnected communities and increased pollution. Instead, in the Fascist Dystopian Hellscape, every citizen will be relegated to standardized living units in high rise dormitories, connected to retail and offices by a network of solar powered monorails and pitch black underground tubes (to prevent exposure to carcinogenic UV rays). Cars will be banned because I’m scared of crashing my car, being run over by a car, and the post-apocalyptic chaos associated with peak oil.
I can see it now: from your standard unit window, you’ll gaze down in despair at a group of Deviants (i.e. depressed people/football players/people who yell sometimes) being shipped off to an offshore holding facility. You’ll swallow your personalized medication regimen and pray the state does not detect your mood fluctuations via the microchip in your neck or the nanobots in your blood. You’ll wash the pills down with whiskey, crying, shaking with the unending fear that is your life. This is my dream for you, my hope for the future. Happy New Year.