Chapter 08

The Oath of Office of the President of the United States.

She had seen the pretence through the screen every four years since she was a child. She had the misfortune of witnessing the last two declarations in-person. Each time, she swore she’d do it better.

It was her turn today. Her turn to utter the words she always deemed to be superfluous.

“I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

For years, she fought for two things: free healthcare and education. She had spent her days campaigning for the Democrats – disheartened when Obama left the office scorned for his healthcare failures, victorious when Trump shamefully walked out of the White House right into the pandemic, disappointed when Biden’s cognition declined to political embarrassment. She always swore to do it better; her passion burnt brighter with every loss.

As she recited the Oath, she had no idea what she stood for. How was she meant to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of a country that had been reduced to shambles? Healthcare was accessible to virtually none; education discriminated against the coloured, the poor and the disadvantaged. Illegal deportations fuelled the anarchy that homes across the United States had been thrown into – American children unlawfully divorced from their parents, the endemic of orphans pioneered by her predecessors.

Everyone would now look to her as the champion of violence, the new ‘Hitler’, the leader of a country that has done nothing but incite grief, launch a nuclear attack on the unsuspecting, and fund lobbyists of firearms, proclaiming self-defence while normalizing the number of school shootings per year.

She dreamt of restoring peace.

She dreamt of rebuilding bridges.

But she couldn’t do it better.

She achieved little in her years as a Democrat. Her campaigns were meaningless, if only an effort to get her to her current position; years of cowardice and docility under the guise of ‘bipartisanship’ – she was complacent, complicit in the violence, the turmoil, the anguish.

She convinced herself that she would set things straight when she was president, but it was too late. Her calls to peace were inevitably denied across the globe. She publicly apologised, vowing to rebuild and restore trade agreements, reflecting the principles of cosmopolitanism, yet nothing changed. While Congress obsessed over ceremonial formalities, no one noticed the sealed order signed by Trump and the military general in the waning hours of his administration – a white envelope, stamped CONTINUITY, in a bunker outside Guam.

She was just another hypocrite, regurgitating a hollow creed.

President Lyla Whitters was only new skin on an ugly, diabolical beast: The United States.