There are all sorts of companies, shops, subscriptions and other miscellaneous groups which have lured me into joining their chosen method of inveigling customers to believe that they get some sort of discount or benefit through handing over their email or phone number so that the customer can be swamped with special offers and notifications. If one adds up all the amount of time one spends deleting such messages then – even calculating one’s time at a minimum wage – the discount is rarely worth it!
Notwithstanding all that, I must confess that there are many times I have considered deleting myself from all such correspondence, only to discover that I am the recipient of a $20 voucher which I can redeem at any time in the next month and that seems worth doing and I will definitely make use of this offer before I delete the… Oh, I’ve missed out because it ended on… Shit, is it August already?
Anyway, I wonder if these are one of the reasons that people seem to be more cynical these days than when I was growing up. I mean, when I was six all my friends believed in Santa Claus* and when I was in my teens some still thought that we were fighting in Vietnam to help the Vietnamese. These days, is anyone still silly enough to believe that the message telling us that it’s our last chance to take advantage of the End Of Financial Year sale? I guess that fact that the EOFY was actually a week before you get the email may have something to do with it…
All of which brings me to President Trump and his “Last Chance to Make A Deal” Tariffs.
The first thing that occurs to me is that Trump’s sales method seems to be way out of kilter with everything any sales person would actually use to make a sale. To illustrate:
WELCOME TO SLICK DON’S CAR YARD. DON IS AN EXCELLENT SALESMAN WHO HAS WRITTEN A BOOK ON HOW GOOD HE IS AT MAKING DEALS THAT BENEFIT HIM.
“Hi, you customers have been ripping off this car yard for years and it’s about time you paid the proper price for your car. If you don’t buy one by April 2nd, you’ll miss out and you’ll have to pay an even higher price than the 25% I’ve just added to the price… All right, I’ll give you another ninety days, but then it’s going to cost you twice as much… August 1st! That’s the final day. Really. This time I mean it!”
I can’t see people flocking to that car yard. Similarly, I can’t see how telling every other country that you’re going to make them pay is the best way to get them to line up to get a better deal.
Of course, using the word “deal” when talking about what Trump is doing, is to use it in a unique way. One dictionary defines it as: “an agreement entered into by two or more parties for their mutual benefit, especially in a business or political context”, while another says: “a bargain or arrangement for mutual advantage”. When Trump uses the word, he means:
“This is what we’ve just agreed to and I’ll hold you to this until I’ve decided that it’s not an actual contract and that I don’t like it and we need to do another one because I’m going to make America great again and Biden didn’t do anything like this and you just have to look at the numbers to see what a great deal this is for America.”
It’s worth pointing out that Trump tore up the “deals” the US had with Canada and Mexico because they were made by an idiot. The idiot being the 45th President… (That’s Trump in case you’ve forgotten!)
The United States is symptomatic of the whole Santa Claus thing I was talking about earlier. While it’s good that we tell children that this whole idea that some mythical person has been bringing them presents was just a lie that we made up so that they’d learn never to trust figures of authority like their parents ever again, there’s a flip side to this: Once people start doubting things, the danger is that they starting doubting everything that challenges their beliefs. So when someone tells them that chocolate causes hair loss, for example, it doesn’t help that the person who ran the study on which it was based comes out and says that the whole thing was a hoax; they’ll simply argue that he or she has been bribed or that the clip of them saying it is AI…
Speaking of which, a serial liar on The Platform that Used To Known As Twitter, showed a picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge with nobody on it and told us that NOBODY turned up to the Free Palestine demonstration on the weekend. When people posted pictures, he dismissed them as AI, before eventually disputing that the crowd was more than 16,000… which is still a handful more than zero.
Anyway, the US has a particularly interesting group of people now called MAGA supporters who have taken this, “Don’t trust the experts, the media, the politicians or anyone who disagrees with them” thing to a whole new level. Or rather, instead of growing cynical when told that there was no Santa Claus, they have simply replaced Santa with Donald and argue that he’s real and he’s magical and he can fly round the world and give them all presents as long as they’ve been good all year and by good, I mean, American patriots… And if you manage to find proof that President Trump has done certain unspeakable things, then we mustn’t speak of them, and anyway who said that it was wrong to (insert crime here).
* I did think about having a spoiler alert at the start and say that if you don’t know the truth yet, then don’t read on. But then I realised that MAGA supporters wouldn’t believe it anyway.
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I have friends and rellies here in Oz who think the trumper is the best thing since sliced bread, and that we need someone like him here.
On occasion I have asked them why it is that MAGA’s always look to the past – Biden, Obama, Clinton etc – to find something illegal/unethical/dodgy/wrong, when there is plenty wrong now.
Sadly they just cannot or will not see anything dodgy about his past and present behaviour or their potential effects on the people of the US – let alone here as well.
Well, Uncletimrob, I did think about calling this: “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Satan Clause” but I thought the reference might be too obscure…
According to News Corp and SKY, ALbo has squibbed on the US relationship and should be cuddling up to Donald Trump to get trade deals that benefit the Australian people.
Donald Trump has said that world leaders are “calling us up, kissing my ass” to negotiate deals on tariffs” and he is relishing it.
According to the SKY talking heads Albo’s duty to the Australian nation is to pucker-up and go to Washington and kiss that ample ass.
My advice to Albo, don’t you dare do that on my behalf !
For Don Don the Dumbdumb he simply doesn’t give a shit about the nuts and bolts of complex trade deals. It’s about being able say words like “millions” and “billions” and “trillions” of dollars. It’s the fantasy of unimaginable (to little people) piles of cash he obsesses about.