Category Archives: Writing

The secret vegan’s first day in office was also the first of his last week. The fury of the populace was at its highest since the late antebellum – the historians have bandied about the ante-debeefum as the election year prior. Such a strange word seems fitting for such an unlikely event. If it’s been so long since the events of the last seven days that the world has forgotten, read on carefully. A revolution in eating greater than any improbable burger was in the offing; not that anyone would have picked farms for the conflict zone this wild President engendered. After a campaign rife with foreign policy blustering and even nasty phone calls with several choice world leaders (recorded by the NSA, of course), no one thought that the domestic space would be the chaotic undoing that it was. Turns out, tucked deep in the legislation that created the Department of Agriculture, Congress created the power for the President to essentially eminent domain every living farm animal at zero cost to the United States Federal Government. The USFG could just say, by written executive directive of the Commandeer in Chief, that all your cows…all your pigs…all your chickens are now belong to us. So the greatest agro-outrage since the bungled Danish Mink Cull of Two Thousand Twenty (COVID-19 fears from a mink-borne virus mod) began with a piece of paper signed in a nearly empty oval office. None of the fanfare nor many-pen nonsense of most bill or exec order signings. The new President didn’t have any of that flourish. His Kansas City Shuffle was to get everyone looking at Iran and Venezuela while he flew F-35s right at the edge of their airspace while a blustering Joint Chiefs assured a nervous public that they would, in fact, follow the orders of the big cheese (all militaries are built for warmaking, and when they sit on the sidelines for too long, any excuse will do). So it did not even make the twenty four seven channels when newly re-assigned Customs and Border Protection agents started rounding up livestock (it was agreed by the President and his Chief of Staff that bringing the USDA into Homeland Security was an entirely reasonable maneuver). After stopping all the in-bound shipments from China and preventing any of the empty containers from heading back West (and drilling many holes in these containers), the millions of domesticated animals were picked up from their farms (chagrined farmers standing by) while over-armed CBP commandoes shuffled their cattle, dairy cows, goats, chickens, pigs, and even their ducks into the newly available semis. It was only the most hardcore of park-goers that noticed that all the national parks, national forests, and national monuments happened to be closed during those last days of January. Closed to the citizens, but not to their once-future meals; as part of the apparently animal rights activist President’s plans, these landscapes were soon dotted with confused mammals and fowl with no real animal experiences or instincts (as megachicken corporations and McDonalds had decided long ago that the wild instinct made the meat tougher). As soon as the country figured out what was really going on (really only when the President of Iran tweeted that his greatest enemy would be in no position to make prolonged war when their food supply was exhausted) there was pandemonium. People started sneaking into national parks to adopt pigs. Farmers sought to burn stubbornly concrete state capitols to the ground, complaining that governors must have been complicit in the President’s absurd scheme. Plant-based meat companies suddenly had higher market caps than Facebook and Tesla combined. Impeachment wasn’t just in the air, it was already on the Senate floor (and the Vice President was leading the charge). But on day seven of possibly the strangest presidency in any country’s history (no one expects a blatant heifer-heist from the top government official; even Ponzi schemes are secrets throughout their execution) the President disappeared. And again seven days passed until anyone had any idea what the actual cluck was going on. Eventually, the VP found the head honcho’s letter on his desk (when he finally excused himself from another session of wrangling representatives to vote his boss out of office). The VP was even more flabbergasted when the House and Senate re-convened and impeached him, using the evidence of his actual Ponzi scheme the President’s resignation letter promised were on their way. A dazed former Speaker of the House made her way to the podium for her first official speech as President. From the teleprompter: “My fellow Americans. *pause for normalcy statement to take effect* The Vice President is in custody after it became clear that his entire fortune was made through thievery and deceit. His stock portfolios crashed when the overloaded Perdue and other livestock asset companies crashed when the President used obscure powers of extraordinary rendition to send all of our nation’s slaughterable and milkable and egg-laying protein sources to the nation’s parks. While none of us voted for this man to send several of the anchors of the American food pyramid to pasture, I’ve considered the matter carefully, and in consultation with my former colleagues in the House and Senate, have decided to grant the President a full pardon. While we have agreed that the lifetime salary that typically accompanies a presidency will be prorated to his actual service, the Treasury Department remains committed to the safety of our former Commanders in Chief and a full Secret Service detail will be provided. The President, er, former President has asked me to keep his new home location private and I intend to honor his request. He may have served us briefly, but he may have saved our souls from culpability for the continued torture, confinement, and murder of so many of our fellow conscious beings.”