The day has come! My new book, How to Fix Everything in America Forever: The Plan to Keep America Awesome, is out. So don’t just sit there! Buy it now! In it, I solve every problem — every single one — our country has forever and ever in the most awesome way possible since America deserves no less. No matter what problem arises, you can just refer to my book and know how to take care of it once and for all. If the Republicans were smart, they would toss out their current platform and replace it with my new book. And if the Democrats were smart… well… they would banish themselves to Antarctica as that would be the most helpful thing they could do.

So go buy my new book and then tell everyone about it. Write an Amazon review, tweet it, Facebook it, send a letter via post office if that’s still a thing. TELL EVERYONE!!!

Why are you still here? You should have bought a copy already! Fine. One more thing. If for some reason you need more enticement than just knowing I’m going to solve all of America’s problems, here’s the entire preface to How to Fix Everything in America Forever: The Plan to Keep America Awesome:

Preface: Saving America

I remember my childhood days, spent running through the fields of the Midwest, hammer in hand as I chased badgers. It was a simpler time but also a time of conflict and challenges. Most of all, it was a time of hope and wonder. The 1980s. I can’t tell you exactly what state I lived in, because back then the Midwest hadn’t yet been organized and was simply a loose confederation of people who liked guns and the Bible.

Badgers relentlessly irked my family, and in those days we faced our problems head-on, so I constantly pursued them with my trusty hammer. But one day, while chasing a particularly wily badger, I stumbled and ended up rolling down a hill. As I got up and dusted myself off, I saw an old man sitting on a log. He asked me, “Why were you chasing that badger?”

“Badgers are a nuisance, sir,” I replied, “and I mean to crush its skull with this here hammer.”

“And why not use a shotgun?”

“We need to save our ammo in case the Commies invade, Red Dawn–style,” I told the man. “You do know about the Soviets, don’t you, sir?”

“Indeed I do,” the man said with a twinkle in his eye. “And why do we need to defend this land from badgers and the Soviets?”

That made me think. “Because it’s a really good country with freedom, opportunity, and Atari. The godless Commies would ruin all that. And so would the godless badgers if there were a lot of them.”

“And do you think we’ll triumph over the Soviets?”

“Of course we will,” I answered immediately.

“Why? They’re large and have nuclear weapons.”

“Yes, they do, sir, but we’re the United States of America—the greatest country ever. However powerful the Commies are, we’ll be more so.”

“Why?”

“Because we have to be. That’s what we do in this country.”

“But what happens when the Soviets are no more?”

I thought some more. “I guess we’ll be safe and can relax then . . . depending on how many badgers are still running around.”

“No, for then we will face our greatest threat of all.”

“Greater than the Commies?” I asked with disbelief. “Greater than the Nazis? Greater than some sort of mutant badger with the strength of five badgers?”

“Yes, greater than all of those combined. Our greatest threat will be complacency. Great threats force us to grow to overcome them, but when the Soviets are gone and all we have left are minor threats like badgers and Muslim terrorists—things that are dangerous but are not real threats to our nation—we risk becoming complacent, having no great worldwide enemy to overcome. And that could lead to our downfall.”

It was a scary thought. “Well, maybe when we defeat the Commies, space aliens will attack.”

“Perhaps, but we can’t count on that. That’s why it’s up to every American to push himself every day to be better—not just to overcome our external enemies but to also overcome the threat of complacency where a great nation begins to fade, crushed under the weight of millions of minor problems with no larger danger to focus on. Then we become small, whiny, and useless. Do you know what you call a man who is small, whiny, and useless?”

I had heard of such people. “Well, that’s not a man at all that you describe. That’s a hippie.”

The man nodded. “And do you know how you deal with such people?”

“Well, my pa says you can’t reason with them. Only thing you can do is punch them in the face and yell, ‘Shut up, hippie!’ ”

“Your dad is a wise man. But never take the threat of hippies lightly. If left to themselves, they could destroy everything. In fact, there is a hippie out there more dangerous than any other. If you are to ever succeed, you must find him and punch him hardest of all.”

It was hard to imagine a hippie so dangerous. They were mainly just annoying and smelly. “Who is this hippie?”

“That I cannot tell you. You must find him yourself. I can see you’re confused, but one day you will understand. Now go find that badger you were chasing and crush its skull, but don’t stop there. Continue onward, always striving and fighting for this country. No matter what, you have to be bold—to take the path others are afraid to walk. Not only to defeat our enemies, but because that is what this nation and its people deserve. Only if you always dedicate yourself to America’s greatness and exceptionalism can we be a shining city on a hill that will inspire all of those who behold our country. I tell you, young man, the fate of our country is in your hands.”

I nodded and once again went after that badger, the old man’s warnings about complacency and hippies echoing in my mind. And who was that mysterious old man? Ronald Reagan. Or at least a crazy person claiming to be Ronald Reagan (at any time did Reagan have a beard?). Whoever he was, he had a point. While I didn’t understand what he meant about the most dangerous hippie, he seemed to speak a great truth about the threat of complacency when America was no longer challenged. And he said the fate of the country was in my hands, which was quite a weighty thought. I mean, I was just one kid. Sure, even at that young an age, I was pretty sure I was the smartest human being that ever lived, but America loomed much larger than me. How could I be responsible for it?

It wasn’t long after that until Rocky Balboa knocked out Ivan Drago, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The body of Lenin was thrown into a volcano to once and for all destroy its Communist evil, and America began to think it was safe. I knew better, though, as the warning of crazy, homeless Reagan still echoed in my mind. I could see the complacency beginning. America has striven against such imposing threats as the British, the Nazis, and potential nuclear annihilation. But after the Soviet Union ended, nothing was left to even pretend to oppose us. So we started to become lazy. We no longer felt like we had to work each day to make America more awesome. Ever so slowly, the end of America was creeping up on us.

But not while I had a say in it.

I had to save our country. So I dedicated myself to becoming the best American I could be. I traveled the world, learning from many great cultures, studying under various martial arts masters, and hiking the wildernesses of distant lands. It was a huge waste of time. Looking back on it, I’m not really sure what I thought I was going to get out of all of that.

So afterward, I stuck to exploring the greatest land in the world: the United States of America. I traveled to every corner of our country (except Hawaii and Alaska, since they’re kind of out of the way) and sampled McDonald’s cuisine from many different American cities. I wanted to absorb all I could of America to best understand its greatness so I could come up with plans to preserve it. But even as I studied, things got worse. America was becoming directionless with no greater threat than a bunch of cavemen with Russian surplus weapons. People were no longer fighting each day to be awesome but were waiting for others or the government to lift them up. And hippies were now lauded as great men, put on TV so all could hear them. And if you tried to punch them and tell them to shut up, you’d be charged with assault instead of being given a ticker tape parade. Also, hardly anyone had ticker tape anymore.

And then one day my wife took me to a movie. In the movie was a vampire. And when the vampire went out into the sunlight, instead of shrieking and burning up as vampires should, he sparkled. And this movie was a huge hit. And then a desperate thought came to me: Maybe it was already too late. We had become a country of whiny hippies and sparkling vampires, and nothing could save us now. I had taken too long to understand America and figure out how to save it, and now there was nothing left to do but stockpile ammo and canned food until the apes started to take over.

In complete despair, I headed back to the fields where I used to chase the badgers (though people no longer chase them since the advent of automated badger skull crushers, made by the same company that makes Roombas). As night fell, I sat in the field and looked up at the stars and remembered back when I was young and full of hope for this country. Suddenly, there appeared before me the spirits of some of the greatest Americans: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Mr. T (I know he’s not dead; I don’t know how ghosts work). They told me that America could still be saved, that our greatest days were still ahead of us, and that my foolishness filled them with great pity. I pleaded with them to tell me what I needed to do to save America, and they told me that they couldn’t—that would be revealed only when I finally hunted down and punched the most dangerous hippie there was. So I vowed to them I would, and that’s what I set out to do that night. I traveled to the darkest corner of our country, found that hippie, and punched him harder than any other. But that’s a story I will tell you later. Suffice it to say, when that hippie was punched, how to save America was finally clear to me.

* * * *

Is the United States of America still the greatest country in the world? Of course it is, but the competition is just so awful these days. There are a bunch of sissy countries collapsing under the weight of their own governments; brutal, backward dictatorships that could benefit from a tech exchange with the Flintstones; and Micronesia (why would you give your country a name that draws attention to how small you are?). We were supposed to be a shining city on a hill, but we’re more of a CFL bulb resting on a dirt mound that sticks out only because of how dark everything else is.

That’s not good enough. I don’t care how awful our children’s music is; we need to leave them a better world like the one our parents left for us by blowing up Nazis and strangling Commies. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that striving to be just be a shining city on a hill like Reagan said is aiming too low. I don’t want people to walk by the United States and just say, “Ooh! Look! Shiny!” People have fought and died for our country and our liberty, and they’ve worked harder than anyone else in the world for this prosperity we share. Thus a cute little shiny city on some dinky hill isn’t good enough. Instead, America should be a blazing inferno on a mountain. The sheer brilliance of America’s awesomeness should cause foreigners to scream in pain if they dare try to gaze upon it. Children should have to poke holes in shoe boxes to even glimpse it. We shouldn’t even have to worry about dinky terrorists, as the mere sight of America should melt their faces as if they were the Nazis from the Indiana Jones movies looking into the Ark of the Covenant. That’s how great America should be. At minimum.

So how do we get there? Politicians will give you their same old, piddling ideas to stimulate job growth or a couple of minor cuts here and there to make a useless attempt at reducing our bloated government. Do old retreads sound like the ideas that are going to send America rocketing into a brilliant new future? No, they are laughably inadequate. They are proposed by visionless fools who can’t even begin to comprehend our country’s potential. Greatness is not achieved by coming at problems with a little scalpel. You have to come at them like a madman with a jackhammer. You have to be fearless and throw out the old ideas—the ideas that have kept us trapped in a slow march to obsolescence. Not just thinking outside the box but going through the house and finding all the boxes and burning them so you will not be tempted with box-thinking ever again. And if you see someone coming to your door carrying a box, you march right up to him, put a shotgun to his face, and shout, “Get that filthy box out of here!” I don’t care if you were expecting an order from Amazon; the threat of boxes is too great. America was made by throwing out old ideas (along with the British and tea), and if we are going to fully meet its potential for greatness, we have to be willing to once again embrace classical liberalism and march into new, scary ideas of liberty and awesomeness that have never fully been experienced by man.

And I am now ready to lead us down this path. I’m done chasing badgers, and am prepared to chase much bigger problems with a much bigger hammer—the hammer of bold new ideas. I have accepted my fate to lead America back to its destiny of total awesomeness, so I have come up with daring plans to tackle every problem America faces. Not just plans to mitigate our problems but plans to solve our problems completely and create a great, new America that is powerful, awe-inspiring, and indestructible. These aren’t plans you will find anywhere else—they are the brilliant, new ideas America needs to hurtle like a comet into a future of prosperity. The sorts of ideas that make people shout, “You’re a madman! You must be stopped!” Our country deserves no less.

Are you excited? If you aren’t, Canada is that way (you can’t see me, but I’m pointing north; direction applies only to continental United States). It’s time to stop being complacent. It’s time to climb out of this rut and focus not on our problems but on the bright future that lies ahead. The history of the United States of America, with all its blood, sweat, and tears, has led to us, and it’s time right now to make this country the blazing inferno on a mountain it should be. Let’s get started.

* * * *

Are you ready? Go buy and read now! And please write an Amazon review when you’re done and come back here and put your favorite quotes in the comments. I am so jealous of you right being someone who is about to experience this book.