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The president prepared a speech, but never gave it. His advisers told him that giving this speech would be “unwise with respect his security situation”. In plain English: they were afraid it might get him killed.
Instead, he entrusted me the manuscript to “do the right thing”. I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but then I watched all that fuzz about wikileaks, and figured the right thing to do is to leak it, to publish it on my blog.
My fellow people of the world!
Today, Dreamarica is in shambles. It is ruled by large corporations that cannot act otherwise than to maximize their profits. The naive among you might think that these profits are ultimately based on the freely chosen consumption of citizens, and that it is thus the ultimate apotheosis of democracy. Whatever a loose horde of consumers indirectly decide, support, vote for, dream about, or purchases is essentially a good thing. Yes, sure, and Romney pays his taxes and my real name is Santa Claus.
I want you to understand, Dreamericans, that the consumer society is bankrupt, and we have to move beyond it or perish. The symbolic order that enables consumerism in our society is called capitalism. It is a system of endless production, and cannot function without infinite growth. Ultimately, this is impossible on a finite planet. Almost all thinking economists and ecologists say this, and I am the first president to embrace it wholeheartedly. We need to dismantle capitalism, step by decisive step. The endless cycles of production and waste have to make way to a more profound cycle that is in harmony with nature. In order to end capitalism, I will remove the incentives for this perversity. I declare our money invalid. From now on, communities will use ledgers and tabs, and maybe a local currency, like in ancient times. Factories and offices will be transformed into public spaces, art centers, or housing for the homeless. Everybody in Dreamarica will have a roof over her head.
We don’t need more infrastructure. Everybody must understand that living locally is the only sustainable way of life. I have thought hard about the future of transportation. Of course our addition to oil, foreign or domestic, will have to stop. After the dismantling of capitalism, I will quickly phase out all oil drilling and fracking. I will also stop the use of biofuels. We will give up part of our physical mobility, but we will gain mental strength. We have more than enough electric vehicles on the road to cover our needs for emergency transportation and occasional long-distance travel for family visits. But I urge you to live in the same community as your loved ones, it will enrich your life!
We don’t need more stuff. I encourage average Dreamericans to refurbish used items. We don’t need more people, because we have already overshot the carrying capacity of our land base. I will create incentives for couples who are having less than two children. Immigrants are welcome if they adapt to our new “way of life”. Humanitarian refugees will be unconditionally accepted.
Our beautiful national parks will be extended. “Reservations” for the indigenous people will be renamed “unoccupied lands” or “free land” and vastly extended. All of our dams will be removed, restoring watersheds and undoing some of the damage done. Biodiversity and healthy ecosystems will be protected and given priority over human settlements.
Permaculture will be the way we produce our food, and lessons are mandatory for everyone. We will build or retrofit our houses to have optimal passive heating and cooling capacities, decimating the energy usage of buildings. The techniques are all there, we will build resilient communities using them. Our energy consumption will be lower than that of our brothers who inhabited this continent for ten thousand years, and to whom we owe everything.
We do not need to “give up” everything the twentieth century has left us. While most of modern medicine is a profit-oriented scheme and more people are sick than ever before, it did make some valuable inventions, and we don’t need to give that up. Health care will of course be free for everyone, and I am sure that every community will find a good way to remunerate medical staff (for example, by housing them in beautiful homes) but in Dreamerica (where all basic needs of food, shelter, health are free), people will feel rewarded by the pride they take in their jobs. This also goes for firefighters, public servants, teachers.
Our schools will prepare for a sustainable and happy life. There will be traditional courses, except of course in subjects like capitalist economy, but we will focus on cooperation. Permaculture will be a mandatory course, and Dreamericans will be encouraged to learn Spanish or other foreign languages. Science is important, and I will encourage practical biology and chemistry education that gives our children an adequate understanding of ecosystems.
In the past decades, we have become addicted to food that we cannot produce at home, like coffee, tea, cocoa. We will stop these imports unless we can ensure a fair and sustainable way to do so. We will offer education and labor, especially help with setting up resilient communities, in places like Ghana, Ethiopia, Brazil, Indonesia, in exchange for a modest supply of tropical produce. We will also support the people in failing states such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Congo or Haiti with food aid and education. This policy will be the replacement of most of our military. We will keep part of the traditional military until the rest of the world has followed our lead and such institutions become obsolete.
I don’t know how quick we can do it. But it is the only way forward. Some of you will ask if it is possible, and I tell them to look at Cuba. They have realized some of this (local food production, free education and health care) with very limited means. We can do much better than them! We will urge them to stop the suppression of dissidents so that they can be our friends.
Some of you will think of Utopia, and some of you will shiver. That is the result of the indoctrination of the current system. In the dreadful Orwellian dystopia, there is a centralized hierarchy of power, but in Dreamerica, there will be self-governing resilient communities. Their interaction, in the form of art festivals, trading markets, knowledge exchange, is what will define us as a glorious land.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much, and may Mother Earth bless Dreamerica.