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Three years into his second term, the slogan wore out before the hats did. So he abandoned making America great again and announced something bigger, shinier, planetary: make everything great again. MEGA. The press secretary explained it with a laser pointer and a map of 1843. The Oregon Trail, she said, would be diverted east. A bridge would be built across the Atlantic, a tasteful one, gold rivets, very discreet. The engineers fainted. The historians ordered wine. And then, as if history had been waiting for a cue, the first settlers rolled straight into the café section of Paris. Conestoga wagons creaked past linen-draped tables. Oxen snorted at the Eiffel Tower as if it were a suspicious windmill. Influencers filmed it. Philosophers shrugged. There was a party. There is always a party when geography gives up. The Donner Party arrived last, fashionably delayed by snow that no longer existed. They had rebranded as the Third America Party, a platform based loosely on the Morlocks from H. G. Wells and heavily on late-night hunger. “We are the subterranean electorate,” their pamphlets read. “We prefer candlelight.” At a corner table, a woman in a black dress toasted a bearded pioneer with champagne. Behind them, half-starved visionaries reclined like a living footnote to Géricault. A French Butoh troupe drifted through the crowd, pale and deliberate, reenacting The Raft of the Medusa between the espresso machine and the dessert cart. They moved as if the Atlantic were a thought experiment and the café floor a trembling deck. “Is this policy?” someone asked. “It’s infrastructure,” someone else replied, pointing at a hologram of a bridge arcing over stormy water. It glittered like a promise you could walk across in comfortable shoes. The settlers ordered croissants. The Parisians tried pemmican. Children chased pigeons beneath wagon wheels. A man in a stovepipe hat debated a poet about destiny and municipal permits. By midnight, the Atlantic looked less like an ocean and more like a suggestion. The bridge shimmered in the distance, unfinished but confident. On one side, a republic that had run out of slogans. On the other, a continent that had run out of patience. MEGA, the banners read, strung between café umbrellas. Make everything great again. Or at least interesting.
You have to admire the confidence.
Three years into his second term, when most leaders are thinking about legacy libraries and tasteful memoir covers, he decided the slogan wasn’t ambitious enough. “Make America Great Again?” Too small. Too local. Like opening a Tim Hortons and calling it globalization.
So he went bigger.
MEGA.
Make Everything Great Again.
And because no idea is complete without a construction project, he announced a bridge across the Atlantic. Not metaphorical. Not diplomatic. A real bridge. With lights. The kind that says, “We had leftover steel and no adult supervision.”
Somewhere between Cape Cod and Cork, a glowing arc now rises like a golden eyebrow over the ocean. Paris, apparently, is the new rest stop.
The first settlers—diverted eastbound along a reversed Oregon Trail—roll straight into the café district. Conestoga wagons park beside Vespas. Oxen stare at the Eiffel Tower as if to say, “We walked for this?”
Under a banner reading “MEGA – MAKE EVERYTHING GREAT AGAIN!” the party is in full swing. There’s a woman in a black evening dress clinking champagne with a bearded frontiersman who still smells faintly of bison and regret. That’s diplomacy, I suppose.
Behind them, things get culturally complicated.
The Donner Party has rebranded. They’re now the “Third America Party,” inspired by H. G. Wells’ Morlocks, because nothing says forward-looking political movement like subterranean cannibal metaphors. Their campaign slogan is “We Prefer the Basement.”
Meanwhile, a French Butoh troupe is solemnly reenacting The Raft of the Medusa between the wine table and the pastry cart. Nothing livens up a patio like interpretive despair. Tourists assume it’s immersive theatre. It’s actually municipal anxiety.
A holographic engineer in a white jumpsuit gestures at glowing blueprints hovering in midair. “See? The bridge curves here to avoid Ireland. Long story.”
At one table, Parisians debate existentialism. At another, pioneers debate whether croissants count as rations. A cowboy tips his hat to a maître d’. No one is entirely sure who conquered whom.
And overhead, that enormous banner flaps in the Atlantic wind.
MEGA.
Make everything great again.
Which, to be fair, is easier to promise than define.
The ocean still moves. The bridge still trembles. The oxen remain unconvinced.
But the wine is good. The lights are lovely. And for one strange, glittering evening, history looks less like a tragedy and more like a very expensive group project.
You have to admire the confidence.
