Dear Dennis,

So Dennis meme'd me. Is that the right word? Probably not. And his name isn't Dennis either, but we're going to call him Dennis. Don't worry, you don't know him. And by meme, I don't mean he turned me into a meme or anything, I mean Dennis DM'd me some Trumpy bullshit meme on Facebook. I guess he thought I was going to see it and change my outlook or have some kind of epiphany or something.

"Wow, this dumb meme has totally shifted my worldview.
Thanks for sending it to me, Facebook aquaintance!"

-no one ever, in the history of memes

Pictured: Noted Trump supporter Herman
Caine who died after contracting COVID-19
at a--can you guess? At a Trump rally. 

What even is this saying? Non-essential employee of the month? Is that like a reference to essential workers? As in the term popularized during the pandemic to refer to staff necessary to the running of a company or organization? Because I'm not sure people who love Trump want to be reminding us about the pandemic. The pandemic the President deliberately downplayed at the crucial early stages and then spent the intervening months holding mask-less rallies that a study from Stanford University may have added thirty thousand new COVID-19 cases to our already crippling numbers.

I don't want to tell conservatives how to meme, but maybe avoid referencing the colossal failures of the person you're trying to get people to vote for? Particularly the ones that have killed two-hundred and thirty million Americans. It's...it's not a good look. 

Above: the number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. by day
and one of the rare charts from the last few years that goes up.

Yeah, I wish I didn't have to keep 
pointing this out either but...

And I say I don't want to engage with nonsense like this, but I also kind of want to engage with nonsense like this. So Joe Biden was first elected to public office in 1970, so it's closer to fifty years. Also, he was reelected to the Senate six times. That's like, forty-seven more years of experience in government than Trump has and not for nothing, but Joe Biden (or in the case of Obama/Biden, his ticket), won a majority of votes in all of those elections, including both terms as Vice President. Which is way more popular vote victories than Donald Trump's zero.

It's a real train. A real, scale
model train you can buy. But don't.

Anyway, I think Dennis-and again, the name's not Dennis, but he's a friend of mine's father and I don't want to be a jerk. But I think "Dennis" sent me this in response to my publicly posting a link to my post the other day, the one about hired goons? Which, I mean, I know that post was me trying to convince people like Dennis that they've been wrong about everything and that they should get off the crazy fascist MAGA train that is the GOP. And I also know that this isn't going to happen. Just as he should know that a lame meme about Joe Biden isn't going to convince me that he isn't our last chance to avoid one-party rule. But if you're going to try and engage me on this, like, use words.

"Sure, we now live in a disease ridden,
fascist dystopia, but corporate taxes are like,
super-low, so totally worth it, right? Right?"

-Republicans

Like, if I can go to the trouble of collecting my thoughts and dumb jokes on an obsolete platform like a blog, so can Dennis. He isn't going to convince me that Joe Biden wouldn't make a good president anymore than I'm going to convince him that science is real. And I get it. I want to convince him that four more years of racist, short-sighted, inept leadership isn't worth whatever tax breaks poor and middle-income conservatives so desperately want for the ultra wealthy. You wouldn't think it would be this hard, but here we are. 

Pictured: The horse's mouth seen here
either saying something racist, blaming
others for its own mistakes, or both.

So yeah, if the evidence of reputable news sources, two-hundred thousand deaths, and the rambling, vitriolic tweets and public addresses straight from the horses's mouth aren't enough to convince Republicans to turn back from the precipice, nothing I say will help. But I would still point out that some of them must, must feel like their party is being held hostage by white supremacists and reality TV stars. Like, they can't all be ok with interment camps and border walls and police violence and tax evasion, right? Some of these people have to be going along with it out of some kind of misplaced loyalty. 

Or, better yet, stick with us. Democrats
have never blamed hurricanes on gay people.

And if that's true, I think the most compelling argument I can make, to Dennis or to whoever, that it's time to vote blue or at least write in someone you can get behind is this: if Trump goes, you might get your party back. I think a lot of this insanity would go with him and the Republican Party can get back to whatever it stood for before they pinned all their hopes on to a tax-dodging misogynist who's declared bankruptcy like eleven times. Things like, um, abolishing the estate tax? School prayer? Those sound right, but-hey what were they into before?

Doesn't matter, my point is that a cult of personality doesn't work without a Jim Jones. When the second Death Star went up, the Empire went to pieces. We are all way worse off than we were four years ago and Dennis and other conservatives actually don't owe the former host of The Apprentice anything.

"Sure, his ineptitude lost two Death Stars and millions of Imperial lives,
but Joe Biden wants to let the Alderaanian refugees take our space jobs,
nationalize the bacta tanks and abolish Storm Troopers. No thank you."

-Die-hard Palpatine voters