This Creature
I know that others have been invited. I’ve seen the invitation. I never expected to receive one myself.
I have been invited by the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump to be a member of the Presidential Advisory Board, to help lead his 2020 grassroots support team. Perhaps upon my soon-to-be-filed 2019 federal tax return, on the line for occupation, I will write “advisor to the President.” As you’d expect the invitation comes with a request for a contribution, ranging from a minimum of $15.00 to cover processing, up to $1,000.00. A direct, straight up request for money appears at four places in the document. And this from someone with a net worth reputed to be in billions.
The very first line in the invitation: I am counting on you to tell me the truth… Further, on page two: I want the feedback of REAL Main Street Americans like you…..
Certainly this is meant to flatter. I am a natural born American citizen, but given the legal and economic violence, the distress of day to day life in my country, I have felt quite unreal lately. “Main Street Americans” is meant as a metaphor. For the working class small town communities around me, Main Street is no more. Americans shop elsewhere, at a mall, or more than ever online.
Remember the old Main Street that was bustling with patrons of small independently owned business back in the 1950s when I was a kid? Those businesses have long been shuttered thanks to the Walmart nearby. And now Amazon is delivering the coup de grâce, the kill-shot, to the brick and mortar retail that is left.
Is this the truth that the President wishes me to tell?
This fund-raising letter panders to ignorance, absence of insight about the forces of wealth consolidation that depend upon the offshoring of jobs, and the replacement of human labor by warehouses, and heavily computerized logistics systems. The letter implies that our President will remedy social ills to restore a quality of working class life reminiscent of the days when Main Street thrived. Pay no attention that he and others, like minded have collaborated in the destruction of Main Street.
That is not the truth that the President wants. He states often in his invitation to me that he needs my help to “fight back,” and the language is direct:
corrupt Democrats; their lapdogs in the biased media; bogus, partisan witch-hunt impeachment; kooky agenda of Big Government Socialist proposals; droning Democrats like Shifty Adam Schiff and Nervous Nancy Pelosi; secret star-chamber hearings in the basement of the Capitol!
The last one is my favorite.
I’ll conclude with some lines from Rilke which captures my sense of my fellow-American and neighbor, President Donald J. Trump.
There exists a creature
that is perfectly harmless;
when it passes before your eyes,
you hardly notice it and
immediately forget it again.
But as soon as it somehow,
invisibly, gets into your ears,
it begins to develop, it hatches,
and cases have been known
where it has penetrated
into the brain
and flourished there devastatingly,
like the pneumococci in dogs
which gain entrance through the nose.
This creature
is your neighbor.
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
By Ranier Maria Rilke (trans. Stephen Mitchell)
2 thoughts on “This Creature”
Most of the men who have held the position of “President of the United States” have done their best to represent the nation as a whole. Of course, this is not possible based on the wide ranging diversity of opinions held within the boundaries of our nation, but they would at least listen to opposing points of view.
We are now chained to a person who makes no bones about representing only a certain segment of this country and the rest of us be damned. he and his followers feel that if we can’t muster the number of electoral college votes to change this regime, then that’s our problem and anyone who doesn’t drink the Trump brand of Kool-Aid will remain public enemy #1. The healing of any divides is taken as counter-productive to the long terms goal of retaining power and enriching those who are already wealthy beyond imagination, all while disenfranchising the poor, the immigrants, those of color, and the intellectual “elite” who see that the emperor has no clothes.
Clearly the brochures we have received from the Trump Reelection Committee are meant for others since they are at least honest about listing who to hate within the mailing itself, and I know that we can’t count ourselves among the whistleblowers with regard to the current insanity. This places us squarely at odds with Mr. Trump and his corrupt cronies, but there is no place I would rather be. So I encourage his committee to continue to send us mailings and waste his resources on folks like us. Penny by penny perhaps we can gnaw away at his treasure chest of ill-gotten gains. For all of our sakes, I hope we can.
Any act of resistance is a expression of freedom. They’d like the country to become more casino-like than it already is. A growing majority will be losers, and a very few “winners.”