by Troy M. Olson

In the dark of the night and into the still morning hours of May 26, 2016 – Lady Liberty, that beautiful beacon of hope and freedom that had welcomed generations of new Americans looking for a brighter future, officially closed up shop and decided to call it quits in light of the country nominating Donald Trump as one of its major party nominees for the Presidency. Trump’s incredulous rhetoric toward immigrants and his proposal to build a really big wall on the southern border concerned her. A few weeks ago she mentioned, “if he gets elected I’ll clearly be let go anyway, maybe I’ll just take matters into my own hands and get a head start on the job market.”
Rumor has it Lady Liberty was seen updating her resume and had a couple of networking coffees with recruiters before deciding conditions in the U.S. were even worse than she thought. “Sure I could go join the millions of millennials working 1099 jobs or at coffee houses, but the Little Mermaid was right. I don’t have to put up with this. I have options”, explained LL, who is currently looking into emerging free countries who could use her welcoming services and symbolic weight.
After many months of encouragement from monuments like the “Little Mermaid” in Denmark, and others in Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, and every other country on Earth who is technically free-er than the United States of America, the colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, New York City, stepped off its pedestal into the chilly Atlantic waters, and began the long journey back to France.
This is a big loss for the United States of America, who in 1776 revolutionized humanity’s relationship to governance with its “Declaration of Independence” from Great Britain, who are now totally free-er than the United States, a country now considered an oligarchy by several pointy head studies.