Nothing Mattresses Anymore

A giant rabbit lies on a bare Presidents Day mattress, by AI.

Happy Presidents Day, a holiday that is typically celebrated by buying mattresses. This is a little odd, when you think about it. It reminds me of the line by standup comic Bill Hicks, who noted that “Easter is the time when we commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children a giant bunny rabbit left chocolate eggs in the night.”

I would instead like to celebrate Presidents Day more appropriately, with a brief shout-out to the dimwits who elected His Putridcy, our current president. And also, a nod to all of his supporting cast of spineless butt-lickers, most recently Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), who introduced a bill to make his birthday a federal holiday.

Also we can raise a glass to the mainstream media for their obsessive normalizing and sane-washing and enabling of the current disaster in the making. Today, a day where the greatest public question is whether Donald Trump intends to ignore the courts in what amounts to a fascist coup against the people and democracy itself — today, the Times sent out a news alert reading: “This is still the best nonstick pan.”

But mainly it’s the Trump voters we’d like to talk to.

On Saturday, the following letter appeared in The Washington Post; it was pointed out to me by reader Leda Davis.

The letter was from Michal Betz, a guy from Wichita, Kansas who voted for Donald Trump, as did most of the people in his state and city, and who now — slap to the forehead — seems to have some regrets. The guy feels cruelly deceived. His letter — which was lacking any hint of satire or even self-awareness — ran under the headline “This Isn’t What I Voted For.”

Mr. Betz wrote:

“Millions who voted for Donald Trump are now saying “We didn’t vote for that.”

“We didn’t vote to take back The Panama Canal, nor for America to control Greenland, or to rename the Gulf of Mexico or to try to make Canada the 51st state. Most people think this is just plain foolishness, and they are right.

“And we certainly did not vote to end FEMA, or the Department of Education, or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to name a few. No, we didn’t vote for any of that. We voted for him because he promised to cut grocery and gas prices in half. We voted for him believing he was going to make our lives better. We also voted for him to keep us out of wars, so the possibility of sending American troops to Gaza to build some sort of Riviera of the Middle East is not what we voted for, and we worry. As for mass deportations, we didn’t think he was serious about that, either.

“And most of us didn’t think he was really going to impose tariffs and possibly start a global trade war and now we are fearful of what that will do to the cost of food and everything else we buy. Nor did we think that people working for the federal government would lose their jobs and now a lot of us are appalled at the thought of so many people being fired for no good reasons — and the thought of others, such as former special counsel Jack Smith actually being prosecuted.

“No, most of what has happened in the past few days are things we did not vote for. If we had known, many of us would have voted differently.”

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In response to this letter writer, I would like to link to an excellent short video by Franchesca Ramsey. Here it comes.

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Good. That’s it for Presidents Day.

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