Today's Political Comment

As I've mentioned here from time to time, I have a secret e-mail address that I use when I have to sign up for a website that I suspect is likely to deluge me with ads 'n' spam 'n' e-mail I don't want. I've used it for some time and it gets a steady stream of communications of all kind, most of them enormously dishonest and full of Bandini.

Some of it is sexual. Some of it is political. The sexual e-mail covers the total span of everything that one or more consenting adults can do to other adults, consenting or not. So does the political e-mail, which seems to me about as accurate as the sexual messages that promise they can enlarge any part of your body to the size where you could cover it with flowers and enter it into the Rose Parade.

Some of the political messaging is Ultra-Liberal and some is Ultra-Conservative but all of it is Ultra-Something because it's all intended to get the recipient so mad and/or terrified that they'll send money, preferably lots of it in recurring donations. All of it says that The Enemy (whoever it is) is only days away from destroying America and everything we love about it.

The Anti-Liberal mail demonizes everyone on the Left but especially Biden (of course), Obama, both their wives, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hillary Clinton. There's a surprising amount of hate directed at Hillary given that she holds no public office, hasn't for some time and isn't loudly attached to any possible legislation. I guess her name is real good for fund-raising.

The Anti-Conservative mail raises its money by warning about Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump and even at times, Donald Trump. It used to speak ill of William Barr but ever since he said the election was fair and some other things Trump didn't like, he's become a wizened authority to be followed.

Apart from the latter never going after women, I don't see a whole lot of difference between the two groups except that all of this kind of mail seems to presume two things. One is that the recipient is pretty friggin' stupid. The other is that to them, a piece of e-mail from God-Knows-Who that tells them what they want to believe is an unimpeachable source whereas any so-called "credible" news agency is part of a well-financed conspiracy to lie.

That e-mail address of mine has been getting these messages for decades. One party that writes many times a week has been telling me for more than three decades that it is in possession of incontrovertible evidence that will have Hillary Clinton on Death Row within the week if only I'll donate $10.00 or more. I thought all of that was nonsense that could be ignored. I never imagined it was a preview of Mainstream American Politics of the last few years.