MemeMachineGo!

When Pocahontas and I bought our house, and I became a member of the landed gentry, I joked with friends about my new attitude: “Up with The Man! Support the status quo!”

Well, somebody out there takes the possibility of such transitions seriously.

Tonight I received at my house some junk mail. Standard boilerplate. Your membership card enclosed. Renew now. Fight as I do to keep junk mail at bay, I’ve donated to enough charities and activist organizations to get a lot of these. Like the song goes, “A Liberal Is Never Lonely.” Except I’ve never counted myself as a liberal, per se (and still don’t, despite my recent registration as a Democrat.) And I can’t find a single reference to a song by that name, or containing that line, on Google, so I’m probably remembering it wrong. But I digress.

Like a good violent, paranoid computer geek, I consider it in my best interest to keep my physical address on a need to know basis. So I’ve kept the Berkeley PO box I’ve had for the past seven years or so. But like a bad violent, paranoid computer geek, I took a few weeks to get around to opting out of my mortgage-holder’s selling my address, so I’ve been receiving a bunch of junk mail at my home, much of it “Welcome to the Neighborhood!” or “New Homeowner” themed.

And this particular piece of junk mail was from the GOP, soliciting funds for Bush’s re-election campaign.

It had the standard rhetoric. Country at a precipitous junction. Shall we maintain President [sic] Bush’s practical foreign policies, and his saving education, protecting social security, etc., etc.? War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. We have always been at war with Eurasia. Big brother has increased the chocolate ration to 20 grams a day. Or will we follow the Democrats’ plans of raising taxes and big spending?

I know this is stupid, but I felt physically ill about the presumption I could believe their stupid lies and support their candidate, even one resulting from an automated process.

I didn’t finish the letter. I tore it up, cut up the card, and sent it back to them in their postage-paid return envelope. A pretty futile gesture, but the postage’ll take something like a quarter out of their coffers, and it made me feel better.