Interesting Times

Jon Ossoff is probably going to lose Georgia’s special election in June. I hope I’m wrong. But the Trump juggernaut has enough money, momentum, and dirty tricks to keep steamrolling progressive movements and candidates for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps we are cursed – for we live in interesting times.

As it happens, the very progressives I support have done an outstanding job of alienating me since election day last November. A coalition consisting of the Democratic Party, ActBlue, MoveOn and various others have taken a veritable carpet-bomb approach to raising money for Ossoff. With a mixed bag of tactics that includes flattery, shame, panhandling, and the good cop/bad cop game, they’ve been browbeating me and (no doubt) millions of others, via email, for donations that I, for one, can’t really afford but fork over anyway.

It is shameless and it is non-stop. I’ll spare you the details, but here’s a sampling of authentic email subject lines:

Are you getting our emails John?? [read today]
John, are you getting our emails? [please open!]
We're PLEADING (SERIOUS)
John, we're BEGGING you
We've got NOTHING left
Kiss all hope goodbye
Republicans PANICKING
Heartbreaking loss [Special Election]
TRAGIC END
John, if you are angry that the House passed Trumpcare...

These are all fill-in-the-blank auto-sends, of course, but they keep coming even after I donate – and I’m concerned enough to have made quite a few donations, spread out over many months. All have been small, but according to the panicky emails, “quadruple matched.” (By whom?)

More than once I’ve made yet another donation, and within an hour – always after an auto-generated thank-you – I’ll get another doom-and-gloom message. If Ossoff loses, they imply, it’ll be my fault.

It is so offensive that I sent ActBlue an email:

I understand the need to constantly raise funds, especially in these threatening times.

However, I firmly believe you do yourself a disservice...

And blah, blah, blah.

To my surprise, I got a reply.

From: Debby Gentile
Subject: Re: [ActBlue]
Date: April 15, 2017 at 2:11:19 PM MDT

Thanks so much for reaching out, and I'm sorry for the frustration this has caused.

[buck-passing BS deleted]

If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know!

Best, Debby

Debby. Of course! Good old, don’t-blame-us Debby.

I hope Ossoff wins. Because of Trump we are in a dire position, one that threatens the very fabric of this country. Former White House counsel John Dean famously said there was a cancer on the presidency. Forty years later, the cancer is the presidency. But the resistance is real.

Since I began drafting this blog post, Trump fired James Comey. The nation continues to speed headlong toward a cliff. Depending on which pundit opens his or her yap, we are in uncharted territory and nearing a constitutional crisis.

Sorry for the rant. May we live in interesting, well-funded times.