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THE PRESIDENTIAL DECREES #3 (1996)
BY JOHN HORNE CANNING
*
In an effort to unify a fragmented nation, the President issued another controversial suggestion. He initially considered a decree but his ever-wary advisors warned the President that such action would spawn comparisons to the most despotic leaders of history. The advisors successfully reasoned with the President to drop his proposed decree to a suggestion. The suggestion: miscegenation. 

The President appeared on national television, speaking behind a podium surrounded by 25 to 30 preadolescents of mixed race. Each child wore a USA shirt and nervously smiled at the President who posited these children as America’s prototype for the future. 

“Strong, beautiful children to lead us through to the 22nd Century. The American mutt. The mutt lives longer, healthier lives. The mutt is smarter. The mutt is the union of all that which once was separated, dispersed. That which morphed over the centuries into what we call race. Immigration and miscegenation will bring us back to the initial combination, before it was combined. The first humans were hardy. We know this from our presence today. However, the overbreeding, the like-breeding, the pure-breeding of humans, has weakened the minds and constitution of all races, no different than with dogs. We must sacrifice racial purity for racial harmony. One race and another race together in the human race. The tenets of the peace plan must be written in blood, not spilled by weapons of mass destruction, but mixed by acts of creative love. In this way, we will return to the beginning, and with a nation of these prototypes, we will begin again. This is the first step to the next level. Miscegenation has a bad connotation. But I believe, in the next few centuries, it will be deemed the word which saved us, the creative word, the word for which America stands." 

It was a controversial suggestion. However, the President was applauded for his daring, for his steadfast commitment to his vision for America’s future. But not by all. The President’s popularity rating dropped twenty-five points. His advisors asked the President to retract the miscegenation suggestion. But the President instead began planning for another nationally televised event. 

“I am the one with the vision,” he stated. “The one with the vision must lead the people. I have been elected to lead the people. It is my job, my calling, my right, to persuade the people from their fears, misconceptions, prejudices. I announce the arrival of love and am greeted with hatred. If this is a nation which wholeheartedly rejects my suggestion, then this is a nation which needs me to lead.” 

And with this fiery oration, his dismayed advisors submitted, and the President sat down to write his response to the nation’s rejection of miscegenation. 

After the second nationally televised event, critics called the President “redeemingly bullheaded,” “staunch,” and “one of our most courageous leaders.” He had gone out on a limb, which snapped, which sent him plummeting, and only someone of his self-assurance could manner-of-factly fall, believing all the time that there was a golden trampoline beneath him, not rocks and rusty nails. 

“Perseverance is the guts of persuasion. If it takes a thousand primetime blocks I will get my message through,” the President said, and gradually, as the country responded favorably, love was in the air.
 
 

The Presidential Decrees #1: Raygun

The Presidential Decrees #2: Crosstrainers


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