September 11, 2085
The Honorable Samantha Torres
Speaker
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Madam Speaker,
I’m sure you’re aware, given the riots at the Capitol, the White House, the Pentagon, and the Lincoln Memorial, that Congress’s hesitation to transition leadership from imperfect humans to artificially intelligent cyborgs is frustrating the American people at an alarming rate.
I understand you wouldn’t want a history lesson from me but feel compelled to offer one regardless. In doing so, my hope is to appeal to you and your party’s sensibilities by offering historical perspectives on how we arrived at our current predicament and how we might extricate ourselves from it.
Your party must understand that it is Congress’s duty to represent the people’s wishes, and switch to cyborg rule in response to the citizens’ demand.
The reasons are obvious.
Throughout history, human leadership has proven ineffectual at best, and the time has arrived to allow AlonGen’s cyborgs to govern with absolute sovereignty, as they will no doubt lead with pure logic and rationality rather than greed and malfeasance.
Please understand, I take no stance on political ideologies.
Party affiliations mean little compared to the urgency with which leaders must act to responsibly represent the American people. Citizens have made clear their desire to replace humans with cyborgs in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, and it is our duty to honor that will.
I intend to present historical examples of tenured leaders whose perfunctory service to their constituencies stemmed from ignorance, self-interest, parti pris, or more nefarious motives, allowing you to draw your own conclusions.
You will observe the examples span both sides of the political aisle; my aim isn’t to deliver a partisan rant, but to highlight instances in which human leadership led this country astray and to encourage action that avoids future missteps by granting the people what they desire and enabling the transition to cyborg governance.
To begin our historical journey, we return to 1999, when American leaders leapt headfirst into Wall Street’s shark-infested waters by repealing the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act—a powerful piece of legislation enacted after the 1929 stock market crash that separated traditional banks from their investment banking brethren.
By removing this bill, traditional banks absorbed their investment-banking peers through horizontal mergers and began accepting deposits from non–high-net-worth individuals, triggering a feeding frenzy that rippled through the financial system. Multitudes of hard-working citizens chased higher, unrealistic returns in hopes of a better life promised by ne’er-do-well charlatans, and these ill-conceived pursuits which sowed the seeds of the 2008 financial Armageddon.
While this deregulation frenzy was in full swing, a newly elected tranche of political leaders elected in 2000 promised Americans home ownership for all, regardless of their job status or financial stability. To accompany this idealistic yet unrealistic promise, a new wave of bankers created irresponsible financial products that cannibalized the financial system and duped unwary customers. Aided by the federal government, banks and mortgage companies created the Ninja loan (no income, no job, no problem), where predatory lenders granted financing to anyone capable of fogging a mirror, and in turn, perpetuated an environment where customers could neither afford nor understand the complexities of the documents they were signing.
When the freneticism finally screeched to a halt, banks and insurance firms were left holding useless piles of paper, triggering the horrific 2008 crash that cost far too many Americans their homes, livelihoods, and, in some cases, their lives amid severe economic hardship.
Perhaps impossible to believe but nonetheless true, as politicians repealed consumer-protection legislation and allowed banks to sow the seeds of financial destruction, the United States simultaneously embarked on a two-front campaign by declaring war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Both wars, born of a deep-seated vengeance to bring the 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden, to justice, devolved into politically manipulated, propaganda-driven campaigns under the guise that America always gets its man.
Although the desire for revenge was justified, history has questioned whether the political party in power used the war as cover to advance more nefarious aims that benefited powerful individuals within the American government and the corporations doing their bidding.
The reality was far from bringing an enemy to justice; like an octopus, the conflict revealed long, varied tentacles as, in the shadows and amid the chaos of war, corporations and independent contractors swarmed Iraq, collecting enormous sums while American soldiers fought valiantly on the front lines.
More than one soldier complained of their vulnerability to enemy attacks while the corporations raked in obscene profits, but the complaints fell on deaf ears. If this wasn’t egregious enough, these same American soldiers were ordered to deliver briefcases containing millions of dollars to local warlords for information on the enemy, then return to battle as the campaign grew in size and scope. Because of these actions by the federal government, American soldiers, along with the public, witnessed firsthand the underhanded dealings of large corporations carried out alongside their duly elected and trusted leaders.
When news broke of the business transgressions in Iraq and Afghanistan, American citizens were repulsed by the final tally of graft, corruption, and greed, which were burdens carried both by the American soldier and citizen. The American soldiers paid the debts with their lives, while the citizens’ bank accounts felt the brunt of a war proven to be a ruse based on eliminating chimerical weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
Corporate titans, special interest groups, defense contractors, and political officials made hundreds of millions through the war effort, while American soldiers and taxpayers were left holding the bag. Combined with the widespread belief that Wall Street had destroyed citizens’ wealth, these events ushered in a lugubrious relationship between the American government and its populace, with faith in leadership, at best, waning.
Fast forward to 2019, and we see American citizens’ trust in their leaders continue to fall.
If we concede that America’s faith in leadership was on life support after the false propaganda regarding weapons of mass destruction, it became extinct when questionable lockdowns and face mask mandates further degraded the American way of life by imprisoning citizens within their own homes through false propaganda and fake scientific conclusions.
Along with their freedoms, Americans lost homes, businesses, and even their sanity when leaders began printing money to compensate for the shutdown of an economic system largely unchanged since the Industrial Revolution. These actions further crippled an already fragile economy by injecting an additional $5.6 trillion in newly printed currency into a system burdened by debt, creating an inflationary environment in which the top one percent became wealthier than the bottom fifty percent of the American populace.
Mind you, these events unfolded as ordinary citizens struggled to afford basic consumer goods for their families, their businesses shuttered and livelihoods stripped away, while financial institutions offered no panacea for their affliction and ruthlessly seized their properties and means of making a living.
The American way of life sailed further out of reach for over seventy percent of the citizenry due to enormous price increases caused by the United States Treasury’s printing billions of dollars.
When institutional investment firms began purchasing enormous tranches of single-family homes nationwide, entire neighborhoods were swallowed up, and when the smoke cleared, these avaricious actors owned more than fifty percent of the country’s single-family homes. The byproduct was that housing prices were driven to unprecedented levels, making the dream of home ownership unaffordable to most consumers, as the American dream dissipated into the mist.
If these problems were not insurmountable enough, America entered a new phase in 2030, when Jennifer Harman exposed the media’s complicity in politically biased reporting. Over a two-year campaign of secretly recording her colleagues, she revealed clear favoritism as contemporaries on both sides of the aisle demonstrated allegiance to their chosen parties by praising political darlings, denouncing opponents, and, in some cases, disparaging the opposition to the point of wishing them imprisoned or dead.
One needn’t look further than the famed political reporter for XJN Media, John Meyer, who cemented this notion when he was recorded admitting he’d written disparaging commentary about the president, invoking the idea that the pen is mightier than the sword and asserting that once the president engaged in name-calling and attacked the press corps’ integrity, it became open season on him and that he deserved every maligned word.
Thus began a new war between American citizens and the media, in which people came to distrust not only their government’s motives but also the media outlets themselves. Conversely, a segment of the population embraced the media’s rhetoric as absolute truth and adopted aggressive contrarian positions toward those who didn’t share their views. In the chaos, people voraciously gorged on information from their trusted new sources, and in some cases, as the vitriol grew hateful, father turned against son, mother against daughter, and sibling against sibling.
By 2050, the notion of civil war pervaded the collective consciousness, and more than once—regrettably—citizens slaughtered political adversaries in a hail of bullets under the illusion of patriotism.
Such was the case at the so-called Massacre in Flint when citizens of opposing ideologies became participants in a horrific event that people still lament today. What started out as a peaceful protest became a mass slaughter when gunmen waving American flags mercilessly fired automatic weapons into the large crowd cheering for their political candidate. Multiple civilians were killed, and many more gravely injured, with only the bravery of five attending American soldiers halting the slaughter when they flanked the marauders and successfully neutralized them.
If there was a silver lining to all this chaos, one must conclude it came with artificial intelligence’s capabilities growing at a staggering rate.
Automation in factories replaced human labor, and on personal platforms such as motor vehicles, automobiles no longer required drivers, having been supplanted by infallible programming that operated with near perfection. So effective were these systems that insurance companies forced policyholders to purchase A.I.-operated vehicles, or risk premiums quadrupling to unaffordable levels. Although a few stubborn citizens refused to toe the line, we predict that within five years, no one will operate a vehicle independently, saving countless lives on public transportation routes.
In addition, everyday mundane tasks for American households are now handled by AI’s amazing capabilities, streamlining processes with computers that can perform complex calculations twice as fast as their predecessors, and homes are becoming smart, aiding the American consumer.
With fiercer competition amongst these companies vying for dominance in the next AI revolution and the newly formed sector of cyborg creations, it was inevitable that one would rise to the pinnacle.
Damian Malone and his company, AlonGen, are leading the race to master artificial intelligence and its myriad possibilities. By integrating AI capabilities into cyborg creations, the playing field was forever changed, as these machines transformed the American way of life—assisting in homes and businesses and replacing human soldiers on the battlefield with superior inventions.
By seizing a stranglehold on the artificial intelligence market, Dr. Malone strengthened America’s position as a dominant global force not to be trifled with, and I’d be remiss not to note that, beyond cyborg technologies, he also leads advancements in biotechnology through AlonGen’s genomic arm, which has developed cloning technologies that address environmental challenges worldwide.
As we all know from watching the good doctor’s soundbites, environmental conservation is at the forefront of his ambitions, with AlonGen cloning some of the world’s most critically endangered animals, leading to the reintroduction of many species into ecosystems that are beginning to thrive again.
Experts estimate that AlonGen has successfully cloned the majority of the fifty endangered species worldwide, bringing them back from the brink of extinction, with their populations not only stable but increasing exponentially. Lions, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos now roam majestically across the African savanna in great numbers, whereas just ten years ago they stood on the brink of eradication due to the malfeasance of local governments issuing excessive hunting licenses.
With improvements in artificial intelligence and Damian Malone’s work, I felt it was timely to introduce the benefits of AI into the political spectrum.
After securing my second presidential term, I placed a bill on the ballot, giving people a choice between keeping their human representatives and replacing them with cyborgs created by the AlonGen Corporation. The result was overwhelmingly in favor of the cyborgs, with an eighty-percent vote, and now, that we’re in the final year of my eight-year term, I feel with the strongest conviction that we must begin the process.
AlonGen has been forthright regarding their readiness to begin the transition the citizens desperately want, but Congress seems to find loopholes and excuses to stall, much to the consternation of the American people, who have witnessed Dr. Malone’s new technologies improve their lives, making them ready for the second chapter of government, run by pure logic and thus bypassing human frailties.
Tomorrow, I will give a press conference with Vice President McKay regarding the government’s progress in transitioning cyborgs into leadership at all levels of government, and your name will be front and center as the one opposing the movement.
Though this may bear a resemblance to a threat, I can assure you it’s not intended in that manner. I merely wish to state that I have no choice but to place the blame squarely on Congress’s shoulders for the lack of action in transitioning to artificial intelligence to ensure civil servants serve our leadership's needs.
In closing, I wish to remind you that our duty as leaders is to serve the will of the people over our own self-interest, and by any measure, we’re failing in that execution.
I hope we may resolve this issue sooner rather than later, for the sake of the American people and our great country.
I will await your response.
Sincerely,
John Langdon
John Langdon
President of the United States of America