President Donald Trump's agenda for America was brutally parodied in an Atlantic newsletter by columnist Alexandra Petri, who portrayed it as the expiration of a "trial period" for America's freedom and public services.
"We understand that over the past 250-odd years, you have come to rely on the services provided by the U.S. of A.: postal delivery, representative government, edible food, clean water, lifesaving vaccines, and no kings — ever, guaranteed," she wrote. "Well, 250 years of free is enough. Now we demand $TRUMP coin."
The last sentence is a reference to the Trump family's extensive and controversial involvement with cryptocurrencies, from a Trump meme coin that bought access to a dinner with the president, to a new coin offering that has reportedly made the Trump family $5 billion dollars and may even eclipse the value of the Trump Organization's real estate holdings.
"We were so excited to reach 340 million free users," Petri continued. "But now it’s time to streamline our product so that it appeals more to paid subscribers, and that means some changes for everyone else. We are adding a lot of features no one asked for that will make your experience worse and also cost a lot of money! Freedom isn’t free! Nor is it, exactly, the freedom you’ve been used to! Yes, that is the National Guard in your city. We know that you didn’t request it; it’s just a new feature we’re rolling out, possibly for 30 days, possibly for even longer!"
Since taking office, Trump has engaged in a battery of behaviors that have set off alarm bells for authoritarianism experts, from purging and demanding loyalty tests of the civil service, to terminating congressionally-approved programs by presidential decree, to mass deportations with little to no due process, to deploying the National Guard to patrol cities that did not vote for him.
"Don’t worry. Our new CEO does hate a large portion of our current user base, but he’s not totally ignorant of the culture here," wrote Petri. "He is very excited to bring back some things that past users described as 'great,' such as Depression, Recession, and White-Shark Attacks. It was also his brilliant idea to add the features of autocracy — State Control of Business, General Encouragement of Groveling, Masked Men Who Yank Your Neighbors Into an Unmarked Van to Whisk Them Off to a Gulag — to our core democratic product."
"You can still keep using America, and depending on your version, it may remain functional for some length of time," Petri concluded. "But if you’d like to subscribe to our premium product, there’s no better opportunity than right now! Please hand $5,000,000 in unmarked bills to our CEO. He may spare you."