In a small town lived the most beautiful prom queen, Suzie, a blonde 17-year-old angel who was doted on by her family, the desire of all the boys. She was also the sweetest and the most humble, never looking down on those who were not as pretty and smart as she. She was the pride of the entire town, as she brought joy to the life of anyone whose path she crossed. She said that God made her to make people smile, and so every day she tried to makes as many people smile as she could. She spent every Sunday in Church and every Saturday baking treats to deliver to the town’s old folks. Everyone told her she could be whatever she wanted, but all she wanted to be was the wife of Billy the Quarterback, and give him a house full of little blonde children. She couldn’t wait to get out of school and marry him, and despite his protests, she was saving her virginity for the day they walked down the aisle. “Even if no one in town knew, Jesus would know,” she said, and he respected her wishes. Then the day before her high school graduation, when she was walking home from school, a gang of dark men from the city who were passing through rode up beside her in a van, and threw her in the back. They took her to an abandoned drug house. They laughed especially hard when the head of the gang raped her first and found she was a virgin. All the men raped her, sometimes three at once. Her ribs were broken, her face was smashed up, her lips fat and her eyes swollen shut. When they were done raping her, they pissed on her, they put cigarettes out on her. Then the head of the gang used his boot to stomp her skull until it cracked open, as the gang continued to laugh. Her naked corpse was found at the side of the road, bloody and smelling of piss. When the townspeople found her, they wept and they just couldn’t imagine why someone would ever destroy something so beautiful, something that brought so much joy to so many people, something that had been a gift from God himself.
Young Americans are the townspeople discovering the mutilated corpse of America, knowing what America once was, and baffled at why anyone would ever destroy something so beautiful.