Even though I’m “retired” – from wage labor, that is – I continue to treat the weekends differently from the rest of the week. I reserve them for rest and recreation, the occasional domestic disaster (and a house built from a random collection of leftover components has them rather often) notwithstanding. I’ll admit that it’s mostly a habit, as, apart from religious observances, there are no compelling demands on my “schedule.” Still, a week with no rhythm to it doesn’t strike me as workable in any sense.
That makes an early-Saturday-morning eruption of bile a most unfortunate thing.
Anyone who’s ever been involved in politics even at its extreme periphery gets fundraising email. It’s inevitable. There are companies out there that do nothing but scan the World Wide Web for sites that appear to have a political orientation, collect email addresses for them, and sell the results to the major parties and well-heeled interest groups. Normally I simply delete them. It’s pure self-preservation: donate to anyone or any organization, for any reason, and your name and address go on a “milch cows” list of persons known to have responded positively to a fundraising appeal. Those are high-priced lists. For your privacy and sanity, it’s vital to stay off them.
But every now and then, one such raises my neck hair, and I feel an irresistible urge to respond. No, not with money; after the above, you should know better. But with a few words of my own.
Here’s a snippet from the one I opened at 5:15 AM today:
Friend,
We just got some bad news. Your status on our team is unclear and UNCONFIRMED.
This is wrong, right? To immediately update your commitment to the Conservative Movement, click here.
Let us tell you again why we need you on our team:
Right now, Marco and his opponent sit NECK AND NECK in the polls. News outlets are calling this a “DEAD HEAT.” Friend, we have a whole race ahead of us and we are starting TIED. That’s a clear indicator that we have a long road ahead of us.
Moreover, not only are we TIED but Marco’s opponent just hauled in over $4 million last quarter and is spending insane amounts of money EVERY DAY in an effort to destroy conservatives in Florida.
We NEED to know, Friend, if you are still with us.
We need you to upgrade your patriot status from UNCONFIRMED to CONFIRMED & ALL IN.
The rest is merely a request for a monetary donation to the Marco-Rubio Senatorial campaign
I approve of Marco Rubio, albeit only in that I’d rather have him occupying a Senate seat than whatever Democrat miscreant might replace him. But the strident / rah-rah tone of the email flicked me on the raw. I decided to reply as follows:
Dear Whoever You Are:
You say you want to know why I’m “unconfirmed.” I shall answer your question with a few questions of my own.
Why, when the Republican Party held the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress, did it do practically nothing to support President Trump’s America-First agenda?
Why did the Republican Party not immediately close ranks behind President Trump when it became glaringly obvious that the November 2020 presidential election was stolen?
Why have several members of the Republican Party, including at least one U.S. Senator, been allowed to denounce President Trump for his now-proven assertion that the election was stolen – without even being chastised by party leadership?
Why has the Republican Party not defended President Trump, the most effective president in the past seventy years, from the scurrilous attempts of the Biden Administration to blame its multiple failures on him?
And why has the Republican Party been so spinelessly compliant with the Usurpers who have stolen the federal government from us?Perhaps my questions will serve to answer yours.
Sincerely,
Francis W. Porretto
I don’t expect a response. But it did help to settle my stomach, with a wee bit of assistance from about a pound of yogurt.
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I’m going to be following the advice of so many who say: when the snail mail is received, use the return envelope to send back your protest – along with most/all of the mail that you got in that original envelope.
For email, just unsubscribe. If you get the opportunity to comment, do so in strong terms. But, do that often enough, you’ll get less e-cr@p.
Bravo. I sent a similar, less provocative letter to Matt Staver a few months back challenging him on why I’ve never heard him raise the no religious test argument anywhere.
Well, I did get a reply.
A merely nominal reply. A bot could do it. No substantive reference to the constitutional clause, no evidence he has used it.
He may be legit, but I’d like to see something more than incessant begging.
That seems to be working for me, Linda, albeit slowly. I’m not getting nearly so many messages from leftist groups deluding themselves that I’m a potential ally since I started leaving comments like “I despise you and all your works,” on their unsubscribe forms. (Still haven’t figured out why they ever imagined it would be profitable to annoy me… oh well.)
Here’s my response to a mid-summer RNC beg letter and “questionnaire”:
Thursday, July 15, 2021
To Whom It May Concern:
Well, that was a cute little questionnaire. Too bad you’ll not do a single damn thing about any of it. I’m sick of your Kabuki theater and Potemkin Village People style approach to the very real problems we have. So my response to your latest blandishment for funds is simple and straightforward: the RNC will never see another dime from me. You’ve broken my trust and you’ll never get it back in what remains of my lifetime.
In the past, most of you worthless Vichy Republican swine lay down in front of Obama and his agenda like rose petals thrown at a wedding. And none of you worthless pieces of shit did much more than clutch your pearls when the 2020 election was stolen right out from under you.
You had no fight in you then.
You have no fight in you now.
And most of you stabbed Trump in the back while pretending to support him. You know who you are.
Yet still – still you expect me to come back to the fold like a good little normie American and check the Republican box and fling money I really don’t have at you. I mean, God-fucking-forbid that any of you Clown World weasels miss out on any of those swell DC banquets and the cocktail parties where the values that normal Americans just like me hold dear are the sneering punchlines to liberal party jokes. And you – you just raise a glass and nod your heads with a polite chuckle. In conclusion, what meager financial support this Deplorable Dreg of Society has to give will go directly to people and organizations that actually do fight for good old Freedom, Justice and the American Way.
And that ain’t you.
Sincerely, Ward Dorrity
Right on, we all need to tell them