As the Obama administration and the 111th Congress choose to casually whistle past the deficit/debt graveyard, imagine an America, in the year 2020 or shortly thereafter or before, where the Congress, reacting to 17 percent unemployment, a $20 trillion debt, extreme deficit-reduction measures, civil unrest, non-Muslim domestic terrorism and unending involvement in several military conflicts, meets to ratify a revamping of the Constitution and in the process introduces the following preamble:

We the “Sheeple” of the Corporate States, in Order to transform a near perfect union, establish situational justice, insure docile tranquility, provide for the corporations’ defense, promote the generals’ warfare, secure the credit to buy or sell and sequester the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Corporate States of America. So help us, Gold.

If, like in the book Animal Farm and elsewhere, imagination is the first step toward possible realization, can one imagine, under the social, political and economic conditions described above, how “we the People” will react to such a preamble and the accompanying Constitution and Bill of Rights for the Corporate States of America?

Will a veto-proof two-thirds of a future Congress react to such a preamble as representatives of “the People” or as representatives of the “Sheeple”?

John Briggs

Roxie resident