Every day our students across the nation are required to stand up from their seats and swear allegiance to the United States flag. This pledge is required of all children starting at an age of around 5-6, when the mind is capable of swearing unfaltering allegiance to a country, but not able to make decisions in voting to shape said country. Thankfully, it does not matter if someone, when reaching the age of mental adulthood, does not agree with America’s politics; because they have already sworn allegiance close to 2,430 times. After around 1,500 repetitions, we have found that the human mind is subservient to the nation’s commands.

This exercise was crafted due to the entire world being at the brink of a nuclear war. To the government, the Soviet Union flagged concern. Russia and the U.S. had fallen apart after the crushing of the axis powers and then had nuclear warheads pointed towards each other. Worried about the growing threat of those pesky Soviets, the government enacted the Patriots of America; a program which housed research on how to create an army with undying loyalty that would protect America at all costs.

A scientist by the name of Francis Bellamy found that adults were not capable of protecting American secrets under torture exceeding a measly 120 on the Guantanamo Bay scale. Bellamy used a wide range of torturing techniques such as sexual assault and waterboarding, as well as some techniques developed by the Nazis (some of the world’s greatest soldiers) such as use of dogs and forced mind-controlling drugs. Through this experimentation, Bellamy found that children were more suitable subjects, for their minds had not been fully developed which allowed for some sculpting.

Bellamy got to work on the United States’ greatest super weapon. A simple pledge, which would be repeated throughout the subject’s entire adolescent life (not just the meaningless one repetition like every other pledge.)

Every school in the nation implemented the Patriots of America experiment, code named Pledge of Allegiance. The project stumbled at first. Many kids simply did not stand up to recite the words. The children had already been infiltrated by foreign anti-American ideas, so in response, the government made the program mandatory, placing punishments on those who did not participate.

One citation would mean an after school detention, two would result in the two-week correction period where the student conditioned into conforming, and a third citation meant immediate expulsion to not infect the other minds with this rebellious act. This was still not enough.

The government wanted quick results, placing military recruiters on school campuses and starting junior ROTC programs. A scientist by the name of Chris Nolan found that these new strategies would not be effective. In order to receive complete allegiance, the exercise’s true motive would have to go unnoticed by the individual. Nolan theorized that the subject would have to believe that their patriotism was an original creation from within their own mind. This meant that such transparent attempts to enlist would not meet resounding success.

Through re-public examination, Nolan proved that the long term effects of Bellamy’s work was beginning to show. For the Vietnam War some 9,087,000 people served in the military, all coming from grade schools which versed their students well in the pledge’s hypnotic words.

The Christian church, clearly separate from the school, (and therefore the pledge) questioned the morality of this program on our children’s young minds. After many debates between the government and religious leaders, an agreement was reached. As it stands, the church would not reveal the government’s inception to anyone – if a snippet about God was thrown in. The church wanted to be very clear they meant the Christian God, with hopes of experiencing an increase in conversions across the nation after the students pledge their souls to a more Christian tone 2000 times.

Now, under the state-of-the-art classroom flags, children were pledging their allegiance to nation and God, no matter if they were Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucianist, Atheist, etc. We have found that with our soldiers believing in God, they fight twice as hard. It is easy to induce bellicose behavior when we release that the enemy wants to strip our good people of their God. Overall the addition was a win-win.

After 60 years of the Pledge of Allegiance experiment, America has been able to sustain one of the longest battles of our history. America has spent 14 years now and counting fighting in the Middle East. Thanks to the hypnotic effects of the Pledge of Allegiance, we’ve had to open up our military to people of all types, including gays and women who are unequals, yet still ‘want’ to serve their country; allowing for a constant supply of troops to fight for America’s true goal. A secret plan, similar to our less efficient Soviet counterparts, to put the rule of the entire world under America, indivisible.

*This piece is a satire, written for an AP English 4 class