Now that Donald Trump is literally dropping bunker busters in Iran and we all know he takes bribes, maybe this crazy fictional story below isn’t even that far from the truth? Honestly, would it shock anyone at this point if Donald J. Trump was getting paid to, ruin America?
Let’s be honest—nobody ever expected President Ronald T. Rumpelstiltskin to last more than a year. Least of all me, and I say that as someone who voted for the guy. Not that I was the only one—practically everybody my age did it for the memes. Rumpelstiltskin with his unfiltered live-streams, greasy hair, and billion-dollar smirk. His campaign slogan? “I’m the disaster you deserve.” We made stickers. It was a Thing.
Now it’s the summer after my freshman year at college, and the National Mall is basically Comic Con for the terminally online. People have flown in from literal everywhere, queuing up between the Airborne-rented Supreme Court and what used to be the Smithsonian, all for one weird, soul-itching reason: to pay the President to let them destroy some piece of America.
Of course, it didn’t start off like that. It was just another joke—like late-stage capitalism had run out of original material. President Rumpelstiltskin went live from his bathtub the first night, Air Pods in, glass of whiskey perched on his laptop. “America’s open for business,” he announced between sips, “and every bite’s for sale, friends. Laws, landmarks, parks, whatever. Call your investors.” And there in the chat—right next to “lol” and five million clown emojis—some crypto dude from Helsinki offered $27 million to blow up Thomas Jefferson’s face on Mount Rushmore.
Twelve hours later, there was a crater where Jefferson’s stern nose used to be. My TikTok was flooded with drone footage and cash emojis. The next night, some hedge fund TikTokers from New York chipped in to delete every parking ticket in Manhattan, and Pastor Dave’s Facebook group started a GoFundMe to replace all White House toilets with bidets.
It didn’t matter if you were Elon-level loaded or just regular. There was even this dental hygienist from Nebraska, Mrs. Molly Simpkins, who paid $4,119 (her entire life savings) to destroy the world’s biggest ball of twine. A local YouTuber threw in his bar mitzvah money to dynamite the world’s largest fry-pan. Strangers teamed up in Discord, pooling college scholarships to “nuke daylight savings time” in their state.
You just had to pay. Getyourrevenge.gov. Visa, crypto, GoFundMe—didn’t matter.
Three rules:
- Pick what you want destroyed.
- Pay up.
- Watch the chaos livestream.
People acted like it was all a joke. But the midnight lines got longer and noisier outside the White House (which sold naming rights to an energy drink in April—“Welcome to THE G-FORCE EXECUTIVE HOUSE!”). And I’d lie in bed, doom-scrolling through videos:
—The entire IRS headquarters, toppled like Lego blocks.
—All the old Taco Bells in West Virginia, reborn as “luxury bunkers” for the owner of a crypto farm.
—The statue of Liberty, arm sawed off by a guy in a Spider-Man suit who only said, “She waved too long.”
My best friend Irina crowd-funded $7,200 to have the word “moist” banned from all federal documents. My professor’s dad, who was super old-school, paid to have all Amtrak trains rerouted around his tiny town in Oregon so he could get a solid night’s sleep. My boyfriend threatened to crowdfund burning the Copyright Office, and honestly, I’d have chipped in.
I kept waiting for someone to stop it, maybe a lawyer or the Secret Service or, like, the ghost of George Washington. But this wasn’t the kind of America that survived on boundaries. This was the “do it for the Vine” America. President Rumpelstiltskin, all smug and stubbly, did TikTok dances on the Rose Garden steps, arms wide, his bulletproof vest covered in ad patches. “You want something safe, buy Canada!” he joked.
But people kept lining up. Southern California’s last natural beach? Gone, replaced by a private hot-tub park for a Twitch streamer. The Bill of Rights was bid on by a group of “satirical” Reddit admins who used the paper for a bonfire and an NFT drop.
My mom wrung her hands in the kitchen, telling us President Rumplestiltskin was just a symptom, not the disease, and to remember to call Grandma next weekend before someone paid to detonate her historic apartment building.
The destruction went on and on until there was almost nothing left. The only people laughing were the ones watching the money ticker on every phone in America. Trillions and trillions in the “Freedom Wallet”—which, by then, hardly meant anything at all.
When someone paid $47 million to delete the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” from pretty much everything, the big TikTok stars cried for a day, and then made new merch (“Can’t Pursue Happiness But At Least I Got This Hoodie”). The world just…let it happen.
Nobody protested, not really. Maybe it was exhaustion or denial, or just the magic of having a little power for once, even if it only lasted for sixty seconds in front of a crumbling national park. I thought about lining up to destroy my own hometown’s high school (the principal definitely deserved it), but the queue was finally short. There was simply less and less to buy.
President Rumplestiltskin, in his livestream from the “Doritos West Wing,” finally flashed a gangster peace V and said,
“Well, it was all for sale. And now it’s all gone, folks. Hope you enjoyed the show.”
I never decided if he was evil, a genius, or just the latest trending disaster. Maybe all three.
But that night, with nothing left to pawn, America just sort of…stared at itself in the mirror. And for the first time in forever, nobody liked what they saw.