From the summit of East Rock, foreigners from, say, Massachusetts can get a view of much of our new country. Here at the Independent it is not our policy to publish articles written in the future. This is because, as far as we can tell, the future hasn’t happened yet. But we make an exception here, because we believe readers eventually will want to know how our little city became its own country.Dear Citizens of the United State of New Haven: Whereas, To Wit, To Do, Herewith:Today, Nov. 6, 2034, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our great nation, and so it is an ideal time to review how this came to be, and to honor yours truly with the rewards and gratitude I so richly deserve.As you may recall, a decade ago the United States of America held a strange presidential election. It featured two candidates who had equal credentials. One was good at citing facts. The other was good at citing alternative facts. This, of course, led to a tie, as truth telling and lie telling were considered back then equal contributions to the general welfare.The lie teller, however, was able to produce a video on Fox News that showed a striped gray housecat using a ballot drop box in Philadelphia.Then the House of Representatives investigated, and subpoenaed the feline to appear before a special committee which succeeded in getting her to admit that in her first of nine lives she had also cast a ballot for Harry Truman, thereby allowing the haberdasher from Missouri to beat New York Governor Thomas Dewey by a whisker.As a result of the cat’s latest fraud, the 2024 election itself was then sent back to the House for the final say. It awarded the presidency to the lie teller, arguing that lies are better than protections of women’s health. That’s when I stepped in.Warning to readers: the next sentence contains verifiable truth, so be wary. I saw in the Washington Post, that rag that decided it wasn’t very important to take an editorial stand against the purveyor of alternative facts, an interactive map of the United States showing how much financial support each candidate was reaping.I clicked on New Haven zip codes and was not surprised to see that donations to the two candidates were disparate. But how disparate was what struck me. The amount donated to the truth teller’s campaign was in some spots up to 20 times more than sent to the liar’s.So, I had my idea. I knew it was an idea because a lightbulb went off in my head while I was watching Rachel Maddow promote the sixth book she’d written in 2024.I thought of the tiny country of Monaco that, population-wise, is less than one-third the size of New Haven. So why not have the Elm City follow Monaco’s lead? After all, considering that no presidential candidates have in many years whistle-stopped in our fair city, who’d miss us? Besides, we have the three assets every country needs in order to flourish: an airport, a seaport, and pizza.Nevertheless, as some of you may know, at first skepticism about this idea followed, though some referred to it as outright cynicism. On the other hand I received many compliments, such as, ​“What a fool you are.” Which I interpreted to mean, ​“Bravo.”I did make the mistake, I admit, of including my own demand as a reward for the heavy lifting as the Father of Our Country: being appointed ambassador to Tahiti in winter months, and to Prince Edward Island, otherwise known as the Court of Anne of Green Gables, in the summer.So, at first the idea went nowhere. New Haven citizens complained that we’d be economically depressed despite the exports of Modern Apizza, Sally’s, and Pepe’s, not to mention the underrated pie makers such as Zeneli, Rawa, and Atticus Market.Even Yale’s massive endowment, residents argued, wouldn’t save us because the university had the second lowest advance on investment of all Ivy League schools that year. So we needed a plan. That’s when I relied on my excellent capacity for plagiarism.I thought of Tom Lehrer’s lovely song, ​“Lobachevsky,” inspired by the life’s work of a notable Russian mathematician, another brilliant stealer of ideas. And particularly of Peter Sellers in the 1959 film, ​“The Mouse that Roared,” in which he played Tully Bascom, leader of the ​“army” of Duchy of Grand Fenwick, about two dozen men who carried bows and arrows to the tiny country’s declared war against the U.S., and thereby profit from it.It was from this that I hatched my completely original plan. New Haven would secede from Connecticut, and thereby the Union. And what do you know? The vote among citizens was semi-unanimous in my favor. Because as P.T. Barnum famously said, ​“There’s a sucker born every minute.”And when we did this mighty feat we wrote our Constitution on the back of a cloth napkin at the exquisite Spanish restaurant Olea. It specified that the president of our Land would serve for only one 24-hour term, given that nobody is happy with any political act in this city/state, as has long been obvious by the reader responses in the Independent, and giving new meaning to the phrase, ​“What I will do on Day 1.”The next day, as with the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, we declared war on the United States of America. I admitted, to be sure, this would seem odd as we had no armed forces, even if we do have expert axe throwers down at Pine & Iron on Chapel Street. But it made sense.That’s because we quickly surrendered, as part of my plan. And the day after that, as emissary to Washington, D.C., I submitted a detailed request for foreign aid.This was promptly granted by Congress, and aside from a $43.56 equivalency in S&H Green Stamps, our new country was awarded the very first jet built as Air Force One, which though it had 3 billion miles on it, was still in workable condition even if it can’t land at Tweed because it would destroy half of the neighborhoods of the foreign towns of East Haven and Branford.So, here we are at our 10th anniversary. I would love to see you downtown tonight on the David Geffen National Green, and welcome Erin Morley, herself a resident of New Haven as well as leading lady of the Metropolitan Opera, as she sings our national anthem, written entirely by myself with a tiny bit of borrowing from Irving Berlin.God Bless New Havenites,Folks that I like,Stand beside themAnd guide themAnd provide them a lane for a bike.From the East RockOut to WestvilleTo the bridge that spans the Q,God Bless New Havenites,Our true blue crew?God Bless New Havenites,What else is new?