A young woman in Romania wants to be my special friend and will send me special photographs. A Nigerian attorney informs me that $10,000,000 US has been deposited in a bank account in my name and awaits my attention. The church down the block promises me salvation and eternal life. All I have to do is deform my sexuality, judge and condemn half the people in the world, and give it 10% of my money. Sometimes things are too good to be true.
A strong and lucid case can be made for the Republican Party of Dwight Eisenhower, Bob Dole, and John Kasich, but Republican populism, like Romanian sex trafficking and Nigerian banking, depends on suckers to operate. I won’t say “operate effectively” because it’s only a matter of time before the most optimistic of suckers realizes that they’ve been had. Sadly, the cultural and civic consequences of Republican populism depend on whether the sucker realizes he’s been had – and decides to make better choices in the future – or gets even angrier and looks for someone to blame. That’s how we get bathroom bills, gun permits for unmedicated manic depressives, and eight public executions scheduled for the month of April.
There’s a Democrat born every minute too, and not just according to P.T. Barnum. These are the Democrats who think it’s okay for their party to run a jobs program for five or six pals, and to hell with everything else. And there are the Democrats who support “centrist” candidates who say all the right things but spend their careers laundering money for bond traders and retire from “public service” with $50,000,000 in the bank. Step right up, ladies and gents.
But maybe we’ve learned our lesson. Maybe we’ve learned that despair isn’t the answer. In an act of hopefulness, I thinking of buying an old Baptist Church that’s for sale on east Madison Street in Berryville and re-opening it as a meeting place for disenchanted voters. I’ll call it the House of Obama Lama Ding Dong. There, fans of President Obama, His Holiness the Dali Lama, and Donald Trump can all come together and reason.
I’ll make coffee.