Letter #5 to President Obama | Subject: Revision of our National Symbols

Dear President Obama,

I’ve been thinking about your promise to change the culture of Washington, and I’m with you; I think we need to change how Washington works. But how can we do that if have the same old national symbols? I’d therefore like to propose a few revisions to our national iconography. I’m writing to now to get the first word in, as I’m sure this process, like anything else in Washington, will be inundated with lobbyists, special interests, and all sorts of other folks wanting to make their pitch.

First of all, I don’t think the eagle is the proper symbol of the U.S. I mean, with all due respect to the eagle, isn’t the eagle a bit of a jerk? I’m from Minnesota; every once in a while you’ll hear a story about a hunter out and about in the woods and suddenly an eagle will swoop down and steal the hunter’s hat, or his dog, and fly off with it. Mr. President, that’s theft. More than that, on The Great Seal the eagle is armed—it’s got a whole clawful of arrows! That means our national symbol isn’t just a jerk, it’s an armed jerk. That’s a little like having The Predator as your national symbol. (If we wanted our symbol to be an armed jerk, why not pick Ted Nugent?) Now I know what you’re going to say—I know the eagle has an olive branch in the other claw, but I’d be willing to bet that’s just a bit of avian sleight of hand, it’s probably got a knife bundled in there.

Now I can understand why we picked the eagle, it’s a pretty cool bird and we didn’t have many other options. I mean, as wise and sage as our forefathers were, they weren’t exactly prescient when it came to birds. I mean, Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird. That would have been ludicrous. I mean, imagine how that would have turned out: all the countries that don’t like would be having Thanksgiving at every protest, and their GDP would probably skyrocket, thanks to all the anti-American turkey and cranberry sales.

Even my home state of Minnesota made a mistake in choosing its state bird. Our state bird is the common loon. I’ll grant you that the loon is an absolutely beautiful bird, but Mr. President, have you ever heard a loon call? Having a loon as your state bird is a little like having a raving, wildly-cackling crazy person as your state bird. Or to use an example from popular culture, it’s a little like having Heath Ledger’s Joker as our state bird; loons make every tent-camping excursion a little like a horror movie. I think that’s why Minnesotans are so stoic, especially about winter—we’re not worried about the cold—we’re just worried the loons are going to come back. Loons are scarier than winter. (Thank goodness loons aren’t armed!)

And what’s with our national motto: E Pluribus Unum? That’s Latin for “out of many, one.” I don’t know about you, but that seems a little creepy to me. It sort of reminds me of The Borg from Star Trek and their line, “Resistance is Futile.” And if you take it literally, it makes it sound like we’re building something, like we’re all Legos or something. I have no problem with that metaphor (I love Legos!), but what we’re building is never specified. Maybe we should finish the thought. Perhaps it could be:

E Pluribus Unum, Unus Nex Astrum (Out of Many, One Castle)

E Pluribus Unum, Unus Moenia (Out of Many, One Death Star)

E Pluribus Unum, Unus Populus (Out of Many, One Nation)


Now granted, I don’t know Latin, so I had to use the Internet to get these translations. So you might want to get them checked first. Anyway, I suggested the first one because it seemed appropriate if we were continuing the Lego brick analogy. I suggested the second one because it’d really make our coinage a lot cooler, albeit a little creepier. And if we wanted to go to the creepy route, we could really amp up the creepiness. Perhaps we could put the national motto in a text bubble (like in cartoons) and have an artist sketch in Rod Serling from the Twilight Zone. This, coupled with the Death Star reference, would make things really spooky. Once the Treasury released these, we could send these coins to our enemies, and I think they’d get the point. And if that didn’t work, we could upgrade the armament for the tough-guy eagle and put him on our coins. We could give him an Uzi, or maybe put him in a tank, with a helmet.

With that said, I don’t think we need to change the national motto altogether; it just needs a little revision. But if we do change it, we should be careful; we don’t want to end up like Wisconsin. Its motto is apparently bibo ergo sum, which is Latin for “I drink, therefore I am.”

In any case, I hope you take these important points into consideration.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Brett Ortler

This is letter #5 to President Obama; I'm sending one a day. You can see the rest at www.knockoutlit.org/brett.html