Soon, we inaugurate a blowhard to the highest office of our nation. But if celebrity is what qualifies power now, then let's consider the inverse: the notoriety of compassion, the glitz of empathy, the clickbait of a family built from a world without borders. In all seriousness, we could do much, much worse than Angelina Jolie. A speculative case for #JOLIE2024. — The Eds.

Saturday, January 20th, 2024

Today, the world's most eligible bachelorette was officially sworn in as the Commander in Chief of the New United States of America. At 48 years old, Ms. Angelina Jolie is the second-to-youngest POTUS to take office, after John F. Kennedy, only 46 when he assumed the role back in 1961. Jolie is also the first woman President, and the first single one—but is she ready to mingle?

In an exclusive interview with Democracy Now!, Ms. Jolie said she would not be "dating" while serving her term, but rumors abound about the President-Elect's love life. The starlet-turned-humanitarian-turned-world leader is still considered, of course, the "World's Most Beautiful Woman" according to People.com, and the "Sexiest Woman Alive" according to GQ.com. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he will "call off the arms race if that angel spends a night with me." And billionaire Peter Thiel, an Anonymous source reports, has been sending Ms. Jolie a floral bouquet every day since her election, with an unprecedented popular vote of 68%, in November. Still, Team Jolie insists that romance is not on the agenda.

At her inauguration, Ms. Jolie, who ran as an Independent candidate—she told members of the Associated Pressin early 2023 that she "stopped partying years ago"—delivered a speech on the importance of family. Joining her on stage were five of her six children: Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, 15; Knox Leon Jolie-Pitt, 15; Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, 17; Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt, 18; and Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt, 22. Not present was 20-year-old Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt, who was busy helping with the recent typhoon relief effort in his native home of Vietnam. Perhaps as a gesture of solidarity with Pax, Ms. Jolie wore a form-fitting silver skirt suit by the Berlin-based Vietnamese-Swedish designer Nuo Duong, while her children wore a colorful assortment of international designers, among them Zanele Muholi (South Africa), Berta Cáceres (Honduras), Bless (Germany), Vejas (Canada/Paris) and Ladonna Brave, a Native American brand. Ex-husband and co-parent Brad Pitt looked on from the sidelines in a Gucci suit.

MAMA MATRIX MOST MYSTERIOUS

Beyond the historic First Woman President landmark, the 2024 inaugural event was marked by two more firsts: the world was introduced to the new First Dog, a white terrier mix with cerebral palsy named Lotto Max, who can't but walk in circles, yet never seemed to stop smiling (a rescue). It was also the first time that Ms. Jolie spoke candidly about her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died in early 2007 after an eight-year battle with cancer. Bertrand has remained an object of fascination and mystery since Jolie dedicated her United Nations Refugee Agency years memoir, Home, Free and Nothing Less, to her "Mother protector—my inspiration, Marcheline, by whom I remain blessed with every breath." Jolie has remained curiously mum on the subject of mom, leading to much speculation on the departed beauty.

During a tearful acceptance speech, Ms. Jolie related that her mother was, "grace incarnate…generous, loving…my role model to this day…a full-time mom, and a dedicated activist." According to Wikipedia, Bertrand, who claimed to be part Iroquois, founded the All Tribes Foundation, which supports the cultural and economic survival of Native peoples, as well as Give Love Give Life, an organization with the objective of raising consciousness about gynecological cancers through the use of music.

"My mother was a spiritual person," said President Jolie in her speech. "She believed that seeking justice is soul work. The soul, she used to say, knows what is eternally important."

As a single tear streamed down her covetable high cheekbone, Jolie added that her mother "used to have this thing when I'd cry, she'd say, let me see your soul." That tear has since been memefied as a holographic emoticon set to soul music, adding to the stack of memes inspired by the photogenic Jolie, ten of which topped Google's Top 40 Memes list in 2023, including, at number one, Lara 4 Prez, and at number three, Mmmm, aka Mama Matrix Most Mysterious, drawn from the haptic erotic VR game of the same name.

HER BODY, HERSELF

Jolie tends to laugh off such pop news, just as she did Google's reporting that "Angelina Jolie" + "nude," "naked," "hot," and "tits" were among their Top Searches of 2022 and 2023. Jolie says she's "used to not taking media coverage" of herself "too seriously," and that, "while the female form is absolutely worthy of reverence [laughs]," she considers such stories to be "weapons of mass distraction" keeping us from the "real issues at hand," among them "artificial scarcity, poverty, and the wealth gap; increasingly unpredictable and dangerous environmental conditions; and sexual and other forms of discriminatory violence" (Source: Facebook News).

The President-Elect herself has been receiving a barrage of rape threats, which VICE News claims is "ironic," given that attacking sexual violence "at its root" was one of the pillars of the #JOLIE2024 campaign. Ms. Jolie first started addressing rape and sexual violence internationally in 2001 as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, and later as a Special Envoy for the UNHCR. Inspired by seeing common atrocities such as genital mutilation and rape as a weapons of war, Jolie co-founded the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), a global campaign against sexual violence in conflict. "Recognizing that sexual violence against women, children, and other minorities is still happening at home," she told Vogue America, is one of the reasons Jolie committed to running for President.

Ms. Jolie succeeds a Presidential office notorious for rape accusations. Throughout his one-and-a-half terms, the late President Donald J. Trump defended himself against continuous charges of sexual misconduct. Though he dismissed the lot on Twitter, the world was shocked when, one year after Donald Trump's passing of a heart attack during Hurricane Inanna, his sole son with wife Melania, Barron Trump, then 15, made a public statement intimating that all accusations against his father were "potentially viable" and "not out of character." The young Trump, who has made his own fortune investing in such experimental initiatives as the cancer cure Knox-Hunter, later endorsed Ms. Jolie, pitting himself against his own brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, the real estate mogul, CEO of Oscar Health, and husband of Ivanka Trump, who ran as 2024's Republican candidate. Melania Trump has also endorsed Ms. Jolie, stating that her son is "a genius," and that she agrees with "Ms. Jolie's focus on family."

Family was, of course, a cornerstone of the #JOLIE2024 campaign. Appealing to the major voter demographics of Plurals, Millennials and Boomer women, whose male counterparts have, as Christopher Glazek of nytimes.com notes, "been dying off in droves," especially after 2022's Hurricane Inanna which triggered mass deaths among the cardiacally vulnerable population, the Jolie team fashioned a multimedia campaign which positioned the family as a microcosm of the state, and at its heart — the mother.

LABORS OF LOVE

JOLIE2024 truly was a family affair, and the inaugural ball was no different! In his livestream, ex-husband Brad Pitt congratulated America on its voter turnout, reminding citizens that voting, "no matter who for," qualified them for reduced rates on his Make It Right foundation D-I-Y Affordable Housing and repurposed suburban enclave smart farms.

Make It Right is just one of the social programs the Jolie-Pitt clan has been sharing concurrently with Angelina's bid for POTUS. Branding herself a "Daughter of Mother Earth," Zahara ran an international competition that invited youth to propose "responsive solutions to our ever-changing global environment," the most promising of which would be "publicized for future implementation" by the UN. Born-again Christians Vivienne and Knox, meanwhile, have been traveling to churches across the US performing their hit pop duets and sermoning on loving Jesus within a Pantheistic household. And, most famously, Shiloh kept on with Be Real Now, their over 3-billion-following self-help channel, a partnership with 8-year-old prodigy Maxima Z, designed to train individuals in the Way of the Real™.

NO KIDDING!

"I'm sure many parents and teachers can relate to this," Jolie said in her November acceptance speech, and not for the first time: "Youth today are so smart. Our children have access to so many tools and to so much knowledge, it's incredible. My kids are galaxies ahead of where I was at their age. This is why one of my proposals is to lower the legal voting age to 16."

Indeed, it was the youth vote that sealed the deal for President Jolie. The so-called Plural generation, who are, "even more than Millennials," leading sociologists agree, "marked by a profound, if reactionary, idealism; countering their parents' (Gen X) disillusionment," turned out to vote en masse.

Never, of course, has voting been easier, thanks to secure smartcell applications that were implemented during Trump's second term, reportedly due to son Barron's persuasion.

BUT REALLY!

In many ways, Ms. Jolie has been preparing for this role for decades. As a UN rep and a director of political cinema, she has visited 160 world countries, developing an outstanding international reputation, mirroring the one she already had at home. But our beautiful new President-Elect says she was reluctant to consider running due to her commitment to her family.

"Shi is the only who finally convinced me," Jolie confessed to members of the press early last year, speaking of her eldest child of genetic descent, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. "We were visiting Swakopmund, Namibia, where Shi was born, which is a beautiful coastal city with this amazing toy-like architecture. It was Shi's sweet sixteen. We like to make pilgrimages, that's what we call them, to all of the children's countries of origin for their birthdays. We were all there for Shi's sixteenth—Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox, Vivienne, Brad, and I—and after cake, Shi turned to me and said, 'Mom, my only wish this year is for you to pursue the highest office. America needs you now. The world needs you just as much as we do.'"

Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt has recently become a celebrity to rival their mother. The actor-activist, now seventeen, rose to fame when they started publicly documenting their transition to what they identify as 人 (pronounced "Ren"), a Confucian virtue meaning benevolence or humaneness, or, as Shiloh puts it, "人 is the belief that the essence of being human involves a selfless altruism that also happens to feel good." Joining forces with Jaden and Willow Smith, Grace a.k.a. Simon Dunham, Elise By Olsen, Maxima Z(uckerberg), Saba Moeel, and members of the band Ratking, the young Jolie-Pitt initiated a wave of new identity movements based on ideals of action. "What you do matters," Shiloh is apt to say. "What you do is who you are."

Now billions are giving thanks for what Shiloh did: convince their mom that she was destined to become the 47th President of the United States of America. "I told her it was already a done deal," Shiloh reportedly told Adult magazine. "Mom won't tell you that, she's too modest, but I knew."

BACK TO THE FUTURE

But what will Jolie do? Among President Jolie's ambitious campaign promises were a student debt bailout, a nationwide Universal Basic Income program, and "getting creative about job creation."

"Our world has never been richer, healthier or more advanced," Jolie said to a crowd in Albuquerque, New Mexico late last year. "Yet never before have so many people been dispossessed and stripped of their basic human rights. Those in the business of massaging perception have trumpeted the belief in a scarcity of resources. This is not true. Work is a human need and right, and there is so much work to do."

Jolie claims her cabinet, which includes Melinda Gates, Zephyr Teachout, Lee Rogers, and former First Lady Michelle Obama, will create millions of new jobs within their first year, "all in those fields that demand our human touch."

Despite robotic efficiency, recent science has demonstrated that most biotic labor benefits from biotic involvement: "Computers may drive our cars safer than we ever could," Jolie explained to Glamor magazine. "But it's been proven that the sick heal faster when treated by another human being, even plants grow better when tended to by us," she said, citing the work of Jagadish Chandra Bose.

Jolie proposes that all human-adjacent industries—"education, healthcare, food production, media and journalism"—are returned from automatization "into human hands."

PROSPERITY NOW!

Although barely begun, a Jolie Presidency is already proving great for the economy. Not only has Angelina and her family's immanent media presence inspired a wave of imitative plastic surgeries, tattoos, and other fashion and beauty trends, magazines covering Team Jolie are reporting unprecedented sales, the latest Tomb Raider is the bestselling VR game of all time, and the market for Jolie pornography is, Wired reports, "accelerating innovation in animatronics, holographics, haptic VR, and content distribution."

Gamers and mothers alike may love her, but there is one contingent who's not convinced. A faction of women calling themselves "feminists" have been fiercely protesting the #JOLIE2024 campaign from the beginning, claiming that Ms. Angelina Jolie, who underwent a preventative double-mastectomy and oophorectomy in her late thirties, is "not a real woman." The most extreme members of the collective have even gone so far as to claim that President Jolie is a CIA-controlled "Stepford robot" or "femmebot," because, they say, "How else could she be so perfect?"

This article was composed by Con Dynasty, a data-driven natural language generation technology that creates accurate, perfectly written, meaningful narrative copy for any intended audience.

This story is part of Terraform, our source for future fiction.