During last year’s election campaign, I began receiving a trickle of e-mails from (purported) Democratic organizations, all filled with hyperbolic rhetoric obviously aimed at separating partisans from their money. Since I’ve never given a nickel (so far as I can recall) to any Democrat anytime anywhere, that was curious. I paid attention to the messages only long enough to delete them.
Post-November, the trickle dwindled to barely a drip, drip, drip. Then, a couple of months ago, the flood gates swung open. Here are the subject headings of those that landed in my inbox today (some more than once):
TRUMP OFF THE HOOK??
Joe Biden just HUMILIATED Mitch McConnell...
Sonia Sotoymayor’s EMPHATIC dissent
we’re about the throw in the towel
Trump’s Jan 6 phone records
Biden’s agenda RUINED!?
Your rating for Dr. Fauci
The content is just as unlikely to persuade the unconverted as that of the election year emails. Here is my transcription (missing the grade school graphics and the links to pleas for cash of “Trump’s Jan 6 phone records”:
BREAKING NEWS: EXPERTS PREDICT DONALD TRUMP’S JAN 6TH PHONE RECORDS COULD SEAL HIS FATE & SEND HIM TO PRISON
YES! YES! YES!
Trump’s phone records are the critical evidence we need to PROVE he incited the horrific Jan 6. Insurrection.
And Merrick Garland is our BEST HOPE for releasing them. But it’ll take a WAVE of pressure to get him to act.
PLEASE, Edward: We need 50,000 signatures by 10 AM TOMORROW. So add your name to demand Garland release Trump’s January 6th phone records! >>
CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION >>
Edward -- We all know that Trump is LYING about what really happened on Jan 6.
We still have NO hard evidence.
But if Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice releases his phone records, we’d have STONE-COLD proof of his awful crimes. He’d HAVE to pay for EVERYTHING he’s done.
So we’re circulating a nationwide petition to convince Merrick Garland to do the right thing and RELEASE TRUMP’S JAN 6. PHONE RECORD.
But Edward, we’re sending our petition at 10 AM tomorrow. If you care about bringing Trump to justice, SIGN NOW! >>
DEMAND GARLAND RELEASE TRUMP’S JAN. 6TH PHONE RECORDS >>
Stand up for what is right,
National Democratic Training Committee
Whoever composed this faith-based screed apparently expects his target audience to believe that the U.S. government has recordings of private phone conversations – and not to be appalled.
This is one of a cascade of bizarre appeals. The Greg Abbott emails inform the recipient that “You can TANK Greg Abbott’s approval rating by responding to this poll immediately.” “TRUMP OFF THE HOOK??” moans that “Pressure Mounts for Attorney General Merrick Garland to Stop Investigating Trump”, to that “we need 5,000 responses from local Democrats to convince Merrick Garland to do the right thing”. What humiliated Mitch McConnell? “Edward: We’re JUMPING with JOY!!! Joe Biden is ALL IN to pass H.R. 1!!” The Biden agenda will be RUINED! without “[14] more local donations” to abolish the Senate filibuster. And “Dr. Anthony Fauci has been helping us through the worst pandemic in a hundred years and never ONCE minced words with us.” (What, never? Well, hardly ever.)
I’d like to assume that these messages signify Democratic desperation or incompetence or that they are just a less adept than usual political grift. I get plenty of appeals for money from ostensibly conservative organizations that are pretty obviously just seeking lucre, but they are mostly less strident and less wildly implausible.
My current working theory is that some prankster has gotten hold of a right-of-center mailing list and is deluging it with this offal in the hope of making the Democratic Party look even more unbalanced and hysterical than one would infer from straight news reports. If so, his heart is in the right (in one sense of the word) place, but I really wish he would cease and desist. The universe’s supply of pixels isn’t inexhaustible. They should be saved for better and higher uses.
One last fact that may be indicative of something: GMail’s spam filter catches almost none of these messages. The only one that I found there today was a second sending of “TRUMP OFF THE HOOK??”. The proportion of partisan conservative email that goes straight to spam is far higher. If I didn’t know that Google maintains strict standards of impartiality, I would wonder why.
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