Bill O’Goods

So the other morning I got a dunning email from …of all people…Donald Trump. Or, rather, from his organization (see below). It seemed, it said, that I hadn’t donated enough to the cause. Or anything, for that matter.

I’m not particularly surprised that I got the email…though it was amusing given that I’m so radically Blue. I think the last time I *could* have voted for a Republican president was like, uh, er, blush, Gerald R. Ford. Actually, I *did* vote for Carter. But I *could* have voted for Ford. He was a nice guy and, well, you know, competent. At least if a major plague hit and killed more than a quarter of a million Americans, he would have noticed.

But, getting back to the email. As I say, I’m not surprised that I got it. Mix-ups happen all the time. And, besides, I live in a Red State, and in a particularly Red neighborhood, so you can see how somehow, somewhere, an algorithm made an understandable but mistaken assumption about my political beliefs.

What I find interesting about the letter, however, is its tone. It is a weird three-way combination of shaming and whining (“You haven’t donated!”), overt and somewhat pathetic begging (“The President is counting on YOU…”), and shameless flattery (this is a “great honor” and you, too, can “join the Presidential Honor Roll.”).

You must be joking...

Rather amazing, actually…

Sort of like getting run over in a dark alley by Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Epstein while they’re making a jail break in a speeding Mercedes and then afterwards they sue you for being in the way and set up a GoFundMe to pay for their legal fees and auto repairs and they tell you that you should definitely donate because really it’s all your fault and, besides, when you’re out of the hospital with all those broken bones, internal injuries, and tire tracks on all four cheeks, well, it’ll be such an honor to be able to say you knew them in their prime.

Or something like that.

*

The terrifying thing? Even as I write this…even now…even with all the evidence that Trump is, after all, a fraud and a failure…

Some of my neighbors, who are still flying Trump flags and have Trump signs in their yards…

Are whipping out their credit cards and joining “the Presidential Honor Roll,” even though, particularly though…

It gains them, and the world, absolutely nothing.

*

Until next time…

Onward and upward.

~mjt