One Nation Under God

The second coming takes a week and 99 years. Abraham Lincoln is resurrected with a face capable of over 250,000 spasmic combinations. Prerecorded tones send precise electronic signals that can open or close hydraulic valves at will. His brow furrows presidentially. He blinks approximately 15 times a minute. Does this Lincoln also believe in an inherent difference between the races?

Two curtains—one blue velvet and one red satin—separate him from the American people. Every 20 minutes, they pull open on an empty stage. The stage is empty except for Lincoln and the chair in which he sits. Unlike his skin, his speech has not changed. His skin has been replaced six times; silicone has a decade-long lifespan. The speech starts like this: The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. Sadly, his definition of liberty did not make the Greatest Hits cut. I’ll try to be helpful and fill in the gaps.

Disney decided against the Gettysburg Address on the fact that it was overplayed. If Lincoln had the choice, I imagine he would’ve gone with one absolute speech rather than eight minutes of medley. I imagine he would’ve included the ability to thoughtfully stroke his beard while speaking. The beard is made of real human hair.

What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and our independence? A bulwark is a defensive wall. The linguistically gentrified version of bulwark is boulevard. The bulwark of our liberty is a satin curtain hung from an opera house facade in Anaheim, California. When Lincoln tried to build bulwarks from bloody war, he started a presidential trend that, just like him, will never die. The currents of retribution pull even under a man who stands at 6’4″, with an additional six inches for his hat.

The seceding states called themselves enduring dignitaries. They staked claim in the equal and opposite to every action. They cited self-defense.

Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant, to step the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. It has been 185 years since these words were spoken. They will be spoken in five minutes. We will drink from the Eastern Sea in 1966 and make tracks on Fallujah in 2006. We will step the ocean. We will crush, crush, crush.

I want to warn the Lincoln speaking that half a million Americans will die by their own hand. The blood on our hands is the bulwark of liberty. Lincoln’s right hand had an inch on his left. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?

10:20 p.m. on April 14, 1865. Between John Wilkes Booth shooting point-blank into his skull and Disneyland closing at midnight the performance can run a full eight times. Before the bullet entered stage-left through Lincoln’s ear and got wedged behind his right eye, he heard it whispering the 2nd Amendment. This is a secret left behind in the reincarnation; none of the other theater attendees heard anything but laughter.

The Lincoln speaking has a pneumonic signal for an eardrum.

Let reverence for the law be breathed by every American mother. Let it be taught in the schools, in the seminaries, and in the colleges.

Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence.

On the decade anniversary of its incision, Disney decides to title his vaudeville act ‘One Nation Under God.’ A 66-year-old senator says at the time that adding ‘under God’ will teach students the true meaning of patriotism. The bulwark of our independence is a preferential God.

Lincoln himself has never and will never hear the Pledge of Allegiance. It is a propagandal son of Columbus’ 400th anniversary celebration, which took place in 1892. Lincoln dies 27 years before this. It takes nine hours for him to do so, or 27 renditions of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.

Neither has he heard America the Beautiful. A recording—ambiguously updated—proceeds his speech, but he is typically too nervous to listen. Lincoln knew beautiful America in the miles he walked to a one-room schoolhouse in Kentucky. Each stone and each soldier to serve a greater purpose.

Trusting that, in future national emergencies, He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.

There is an apparent lack of second options. Petrified Lincoln portraits are plastered in every classroom in America. In 1860, sculptor Leonard Volk plasters Lincoln’s face. His beardless face, frozen five years too young, is the origin of his animatronic brother. The .44-caliber deringer bullet did not stop a life; it reversed it.

While they were removing the cast, some of the plaster stuck to the haggard inlines of his cheekbones. Lincoln peeled the rest off himself. Tears were in his eyes.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by the menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves!

How much time does a person need to feel the fear of death? A properly buried body will spend a year decomposing.

The bulwark of our liberty and our independence is a corpse. The corpse is comprised of nuts and bolts built 60 years ago. The first and the last Lincoln were both built by men all equally ill with a congenital disease called legacy. The tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery is untouched. Technological revolution optimizes a future where robbing a grave no longer requires any kind of shovel.

In that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. A century before the patent application for Lincoln Logs, Abraham Lincoln’s mother dies. She dies of milk sickness. He is nine and makes her coffin himself. The coffin was made out of logs. ⏱︎