Two Mexicans are at the border. A guard patrols nearby.
FIRST MEXICAN: Psst… help me throw this sack of drugs over the border.
SECOND MEXICAN: So that we can’t be linked to it on an international charge?
FIRST MEXICAN: No — to knock out the guard.
SECOND MEXICAN: Will it work? This can’t weigh more than forty or fifty pounds.
FIRST MEXICAN: The sack weighs sixty pounds.
SECOND MEXICAN: I understand now. That is the exact number of pounds required to knock someone out.
They throw the sack over the border, knock the guard unconscious, and cross into the U.S. while laughing at it, because the country is now a laughingstock.
SECOND MEXICAN: We made it! Let us look in the classified ads and take Americans’ high-paying jobs!
FIRST MEXICAN: Yes, but first we will go to the polling place in San Diego.
SECOND MEXICAN: Of course! Voting, which only about sixty percent of American citizens do, is definitely worth the risk of deportation for us, even in California, which our preferred candidate will win anyway in the Electoral College that is unfair to Republicans. How many of us does that make now?
FIRST MEXICAN: Two million, eight hundred and sixty-four thousand, nine hundred and seventy-five.
SECOND MEXICAN: Hopefully that makes a difference in the totally unimportant popular vote.
An overweight man sits on a bed in his room in suburban Illinois, typing on his laptop and eating bacon.
MAN: (mumbling to himself) Cyber… World Wide Web… America Online…
His laptop makes a triumphant chiming sound and projects a spinning hologram of thousands of emails.
MAN: Yes! My fellow computer hackers that I know from the ’net but not real life because we are all losers will be so impressed when they hear that I, all on my own, broke into the emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta! All year long they have been claiming that only a major country — the one they consistently name being China — has the resources to break into Podesta’s emails, but I have proven them wrong!
The man thoughtfully chews a slice of bacon.
MAN: The lesson is that so-called experts are stupid.
A conference room in Trump Tower. Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and others are meeting with a few Russians.
TRUMP, JR.: I have been informed that this meeting is about adoption, which is an issue dear to my heart, being the father of five non-adopted children and being myself one of five non-adopted children.
KUSHNER: I, too, care deeply about adoption, although I have not been informed about what this meeting concerns. I do not read my emails, and I enjoy the surprise of attending large meetings without knowing anything about them beforehand.
MANAFORT: Should we tell Mr. Trump, who is upstairs, about this meeting which his longtime associate helped set up and for which several powerful Russians flew to the United States?
TRUMP, JR.: No, my father is busy connecting to the American people through the Twitter button on his portable internet telephone.
RUSSIAN LAWYER: I do not know what Kremlin is. Adoption.
The Russian lawyer rambles on hysterically, like any woman in a business meeting who isn’t Ivanka.
KUSHNER: Unfortunately, my assistant tells me I must leave now and attend a different meeting about non-Russian things. Goodbye, staunch adoption advocates.
MANAFORT: I must look at emails on my phone now, which means I cannot also listen to or remember anything that was said.
TRUMP, JR.: I should have mentioned earlier that, as I am thirty-eight years old and can still technically be considered a “boy,” I assumed this meeting was to help a Russian family adopt me.
America collapses in 2018. Two pundits discuss it on Russian state television.
PUNDIT ONE: What was the cause of America’s demise? The “witch hunt” of President Trump? The fake news media repeatedly lying when it reported on real leaks? That its Senate was dominated by so many fools and cucks?
PUNDIT TWO: Those all contributed to it, but the main reason is that countries, just like people, have a finite amount of energy.
PUNDIT ONE: Yes, that is truly why America died: once President Trump was impeached and replaced by a less brilliant and handsome politician, it became low-energy.