The Candidate (2028)
Excerpts from audio recordings of speeches made by the candidate before the presidential primaries.
COLORADO
At the Ira Levin Retirement Community in Denver on December 29, 2026
Thank you Marion. Some of you will be dead by the time the next presidential election comes around. Some of you might even die before the primaries come around. But Marion told me that there are plenty of you who still remember that song by Warren Zevon: Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead. Well, unlike Waddy, you remember Waddy Wachtel? [audience reacts with cheers and applause] … you might never be able down a shot of rye in the Rattlesnake Cafe, but if you do die in Denver, remember, you are already a mile closer to heaven than those freaks who dehydrate and get burned to a crisp by trying to walk through Death Valley.
[audience reacts with laughter].
If you don’t die before the primaries or the next presidential election—if those motherfuckers in Washington will actually allow an election to take place—then I want you to either write me in on the ballot or, if I manage to get on the ballot in Colorado, to put your X in the box next to my name.
[A voice from the crowd] Why should we do that Violetta?
Well thank you for asking that Jack. How do I know his name? Because I asked him before this meeting to call out that question for you so I could tell you exactly why you should vote for me.
[audience reacts with laughter]
Reason number one: Except for the 10 most essential early warning military bases that the United States must maintain for the safety of the country, I will close every other military installation that the United States has around the world. That means over 750 bases will close, the soldiers will come home, and we will stop using our military might to intimidate every other nation in the world into doing what we want them to do. No more Bully United States.
Now that doesn’t mean I will allow the United States to be bullied by any other country. What it means is that the United States will become just another partner among the nations of the world that want to engage in peaceful relationships. We will not waste money and people in wars that do nothing but enrich a small minority of arms makers, arms dealers and politicians who bet on their stocks going up in those companies.
[audience reacts with cheers and applause]
Reason number two: Because the Supreme Court recently made sure that the presidency is an office that is immune from any kind of legal repercussions, that is, that whoever is president can do whatever the fuck she wants [audience reacts with cheers]—yeah, I said “she”, meaning me. One of the first things I would do, even though in a normal democracy that is subject to the rule of law it wouldn’t be possible, one of the first things I’d do is arrest and detain any member of congress or the judiciary who was put into office during the terms of the last three presidents—Obama, Trump and Biden. Yeah, the second Trump stint as well. I’d just get rid of them all. Charge them with something or other, make sure they resigned or vacated their spots and left the chairs they sat in empty.
[audience reacts with cheers and applause]
Reason number three: Next thing I would do is nationalize the banks, the media and especially all the big tech companies. The internet must be seen as a utility, like the electrical grid and the telephone companies. In fact, I would probably nationalize all of them as well since their services are essential for the maintenance of a functioning civil society. Jack, don’t you have another question for me?
[audience reacts with laughter]
Jack: Yeah, yeah. But where would you get the money to run those businesses? Don’t you need profits to do that?
Gee Jack, thanks for asking. [audience reacts with laughter]. Remember Reason number one? Once the bases are gone, I’ll have at least half a trillion dollars per year at my disposal to run any kind of business that I want to nationalize. In fact, I’ll even have enough left over to provide you all—not those of you who die before the election, of course— [audience reacts with laughter] with a health system that works for everybody because it is funded by the 50% tax which will be levied against the income of anyone who earns more that 5 million dollars per year. The rest of you won’t have to pay any tax at all.
[audience reacts with cheers and applause]
Jack: Is that all Violetta?
That’s enough for today Jack. If those three reasons can’t convince you, then nothing else I say will make an impression. In fact, in this audience probably half of you have already forgotten my name and the reason you came to this meeting. The only thing you can remember is that there will be free coffee and cake afterwards.
[audience reacts with laughter]
Now enjoy the cake and coffee and Jack, come pick up your bottle of Jim Beam, you earned it.
[audience reacts with laughter, cheers and applause]
PENNSYLVANIA
Address at Independence Hall, Feb 2, 2027
Crowd chanting, over and over again for about 5 minutes before Violetta arrives on stage and goes to the podium: Close the bases! (echo: Close the bases!) Jail the crooks! (echo: Jail the crooks!) Fuck the Rich!(echo: Fuck the Rich!)
OK. OK. Thank you for warming up this crowd on this chilly Groundhog Day in Philadelphia. That was Sam Smith from the band you all know and love, The Deplorables!
[crowd cheers and laughter and applause]
Now I guess I’ll have to repeat myself for the hundredth time. Yes. Elect me and I WILL close the bases. [cheers and applause] I WILL jail the crooks. [cheers and applause] And I WILL make sure that at least 50% of rich people’s money is used to give you a health care system that works and jobs that you actually want to work at without the fear of getting fired so that a bunch of exploiters can increase their quarterly payout on the stocks they hold.
[cheers and applause]
But there is more. Much, much more.
Some of the most radical people in America, the most intolerant people in America, the most obnoxious people in America claim to be Christians. They are not. Not really. They are sadistic monsters who believe only in their own screwed up insane version of a religious faction that has nothing at all to do with Christianity. Even the pre-Christian barbarians had more respect for people and nature than these greedy sadists. These people claim that god is on their side, but which god exactly, Mot, the god of death? Mot is the Canaanite god of death, by the way, in case you haven’t read anything about ancient Semitic religions.
These pseudo-religious charlatans have been bleeding believers since folks arrived on these shores from abroad, claiming they could cure diseases and solve all of your problems, but with one important condition. They would help you if you gave them money. Because it takes a lot of money to have a secure connection to their almighty helper. And if what you asked for didn’t come true and the huckster’s pleas with the almighty didn’t work and your affliction got worse and your problems increased, then it was because you obviously didn’t believe hard enough and would have to give that huckster a lot more money to get the job done properly.
These pretend-Christian hucksters would be more at home with the genocidal murderers of the Nazi regime—which hated Christianity by the way—than with the Christ of the bible, who drove out the money-lenders from the temple and said that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. And guess what? These idiots don’t even know that a very similar metaphor appears in the Qur’an (7:40), “Indeed, those who deny Our verses and are arrogant toward them – the gates of Heaven will not be opened for them, nor will they enter Paradise until a camel enters into the eye of a needle. And thus do We recompense the criminals.”
I’m not religious at all. In fact I believe that the clashes between religions have been a drag on the proper rational civilization of the world. Science and rational thought has progressed throughout the ages. But religion—whichever one could be bent into a sword for a cabal of power-hungry madmen—has been used to enslave people physically and mentally. It’s time for the United States to eliminate the word god from law and civil society. In fact, it’s especially time to tax every institution that claims it is a religion. Why the fuck does a scam outfit like Scientology have a religious dispensation to pay no tax? We have to get rid of any law which gives hucksters a tax-free status.
[audience reacts with cheers and applause]
The first of my ancestors who came to the new world was a pirate. He was a French pirate who made his fortune attacking Spanish and British ships in the Caribbean. He eventually gave up killing and looting and settled in St. Augustine. He married a Spanish princess that he had captured on one of his raids. Her parents were too stingy to pay a ransom for her return. She hated her parents anyway and didn’t want to return. So instead of selling her to some other pirate, he married her. They had seven children.
One of those children went to New Orleans. He married a creole woman who bore him five boys. One of those five boys was my great, great grandfather. He imported cane from Cuba and made sugar out of it. He married a woman from Baton Rouge whose German family had escaped to the new world after the 30-years war had destroyed their village in southern Germany.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I am an American. A real American, just like you and everybody else in this country. There are no pure-bred people here. There were never even pure-bred people before America became a place where refugees from religious wars or poverty would come to start a new life. Every region of the world has been mixing their blood with people from other places for the last 10,000 years, even more. The Egyptians conquered and intermarried, the Assyrians conquered and intermarried, the Greeks, the Romans, the Indo-European tribes that wandered into the Middle East and India, the Mongols, the Chinese, the various Japanese tribes. We are all of mixed race and mixed blood.
[audience reacts with cheers and applause]
Oh sure, the Nazis claimed to be pure Teutonic tribesmen from a pure race. Bullshit. Hitler was a little bit Austrian with Jewish ancestors. And the Jews? Ashkenazim Jews wandered into Eastern Europe and, oh my gosh, there were no Jewish women to marry, which was a crisis because to be officially Jewish you must be born of a Jewish mother. So what did they do? They convinced women to convert. Then, once converted, they could bear Jewish children. The genetic trail, however, remains the same. Everyone is of mixed race and mixed blood. Not even the horses and dogs and other animals they claim are pure-bred are free from the genetic remains of previous horses and dogs who were “impure.”
[audience reacts with cheers and applause]
Once I am elected president of this country, I will make sure that we get rid of that moldy old set of outdated rules and regulations known as the Constitution and that we sit down and write a rational, non-religious document that actually does protect the rights of everyone. And we have to get rid of this ridiculous electoral college system that has nothing at all to do with democracy. All it does is protect the dominant class of rich landowners, billionaire robber barons of industry and, today, the new owners of the technology which should be freeing you from wage-slavery and is instead enslaving you to the algorithms these malignant narcissists throw into their machines.
[audience reacts with cheers and applause]
Freedom awaits you. The election in November is only the beginning. After the inauguration in January, the real work will begin. Let’s clean out the trash together!
[audience reacts with cheers and applause and then begin to chant]
Vi-o-let-ta! Vi-o-let-ta!
Vi-o-let-ta! Vi-o-let-ta!
Vi-o-let-ta! Vi-o-let-ta!
Vi-o-let-ta! Vi-o-let-ta!
[then they resume the previous chant as Violetta walks off the stage]
Close the bases! (echo: Close the bases!) Jail the crooks! (echo: Jail the crooks!) Fuck the Rich!(echo: Fuck the Rich!)
