1 Right 10 Lives

     Hello, everyone. My name is Katherine, as you should know by now, seeing that you've elected me president. I was born in China and am female, so you would think that all odds are against me, but here I am! As president of the United States, I hope to make us what we really are- the United States. Together, we can thrive! When I was little and, well, up to now, actually, I loved (and still love) playing with bubbles. I like those pool bubbles that are like human hamster balls, I like bubble wrap, and I like bubble baths. If you’re as much of a bubble bath maniac as I am, you probably know that there are two types of bubbles in most bubble baths- those big, fluffy, mountains and the thin, grey, spread-out ones. The thin ones pop way faster than the mountains, which last a lot longer. This is like America now. I’m not saying that humans are gonna pop if we don’t unite, but if we stand united- well, united and 6 feet apart- we can power through anything and everything that’s thrown at us.

     While we’re still on the subject of bubble baths- you also may or may not have noticed another thing- if you squeeze the thin bubbles together, they turn into a small, fluffy, mountain that’s much more durable. We need to unite. However, the question is- how do we unite? As Americans, we are brought together by two things- equality and trust. Equality is the magnet and trust is the glue. We need to enforce these values. Let’s go back to that bubble bath example. The bubbles, united or not, all developed from the same bottle full of liquid that was all the same. No matter what we look like, we were all made from the same things- flesh and bone and blood. Wow, that sounds gross when you say it out loud.

     I also wanted to address the following quote: “The past is the past so it’s time to push it aside and focus on the future and the present”. This saying is… half right. I completely agree that we should focus on the future and the present, but ignoring the past isn’t the right way to do it. We shouldn’t forget- we should forge. We should look carefully at the past and forge for both the right things… and the wrong. Forge for the right things so that we can observe what we did correctly and hopefully do them again, and forge for the wrong things so that we can improve on them. Instead of looking at it like a rotten board of wood with holes in it, look at it as a ladder with a lot of footholds and handholds.

     As well as examining the past for ladders, I would also like to make our own stepping stools. By doing small actions, we can make it easier for bigger improvements ahead. One thing I would like to do first is to try to criminalize dog mills. Dog mills will be identified as any commercial dog breeding practice where dogs are bred in mass amounts. A counterargument would be that the dogs who are in the mills would have nowhere else to go and will have to be put to sleep, but this is false. They would be given to shelters and private owners. In dog mills, the dogs that are there for breeding purposes get put to sleep if they don’t get adopted or taken in by a shelter. Yes, if dog mills are shut down, some dogs might have to be put to sleep, but hopefully, the numbers will be fewer. By passing this as a law and mentioning it in this speech, I hope to shed more light onto this issue and notify more people out there that their dream dog might be waiting in a mill, about to be put to death.

     In most dog mills, quality food and toys cannot be afforded. Because a lot of dogs’ natural instincts are to, well, destroy everything, toys have to be made of tougher materials, which are more expensive. If the tougher toys cannot be afforded, softer toys must be purchased, and that might lead to more destructive behavior in dogs. Destructive dogs leads to horrible habits, which means adoption is absent. That leads to prodigious puppies and crowded canines, which can be avoided by the forbidding of these farms.

     As president of the USA, I want to improve America for not only us, but for future generations to come. If we just take a different perspective on everything, we can do extraordinary things. Thank you.