From the desk of Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, lately of the river, now of the republic
To the Editor:
Sir —
I have been dead a good while now, but a man does not have to be alive to recognize a confidence game. What is being run on the American public at present is as fine a piece of flimflam as ever I saw worked on a riverboat, and I saw a great many.
It seems the government; which is to say, the public, which is to say you and I, sir, and every other soul who ever paid a tax and lived to regret it has purchased, at a price of some $1.7 million and climbing, the privilege of watching its own President appear on the television, walking in a stately and mournful sort of way down a darkened hallway, in black and white, like a ghost who has not yet been informed the funeral is over. He speaks of a “final battle.” He speaks of “globalists” and a “sick political class” and vows to “rout the fake news media” and “liberate America from these villains once and for all.” All this is aired to us, the villains presumably included, at our own expense, during football games and Sunday programs, in the manner of a man who has hired a town crier to announce, at the town’s own charge, what a fine fellow the man is.
The White House calls this a “public service announcement.” I have known some public services in my time; the fire department, the post office, a man who tells you your barn is on fire before you smell the smoke yourself; and I confess I have never before seen one that required a man to appear on camera warning of a communist takeover while looking directly and rather sternly into the lens, as though the camera itself were suspected of Marxism.
They tell us this is educational. I would like to know what it is meant to teach, other than the lesson; an old lesson, older than the republic; that a man with enough public money at his disposal can be taught, at public expense, to admire himself.
Now, sir, I am reliably informed by a Senator from Louisiana, a Mr. Kennedy, that there “probably is a rule” against this sort of thing. I find this a very cautious way of saying a man is picking the public’s pocket. When I was younger and less experienced in politics, I would have called it stealing outright. I have since learned that in Washington, theft is only theft once a subcommittee has voted on the definition, and even then, opinions may vary along party lines.
I am pleased to report, however, that at least one gentleman of the President’s own party; a Mr. Massie of Kentucky, who I am told recently lost the President’s favor along with his primary; has had the plain honesty to call the thing what it resembles, which is the political apparatus of a banana republic. It is a rare and refreshing thing to hear a Congressman describe his own government accurately, and I expect he will be made to suffer for the indiscretion.
The White House’s defenders note that previous administrations ran public announcements too; about vaccines, about health insurance exchanges; and ask what the difference is. Sir, I have seen a great many advertisements for patent medicine in my life, and I will tell you the difference plainly: one bottle tells you to get vaccinated, and the other bottle tells you the bottle itself is the only thing standing between you and the deep state. One is a public service. The other is a man selling his own reflection and calling it medicine.
They say further that the ads are “not political,” on the grounds that the President is not presently on any ballot. This is a defense I admire for its purity. By this reasoning, a man may stand in the town square all day denouncing his enemies and praising his own virtues, and so long as no election is scheduled for that particular Tuesday, he has committed no political act whatsoever; he has merely been sincere, at government expense, on network television, during the football.
I note, too, that these advertisements have been aimed with a hunter’s precision at those congregations most inclined to already agree with the sermon; though I am told, by certain oracles of the modern age who go by the name of “analysts,” that the ads also ran during programs watched by decent, unsuspecting people who tuned in only for the football and got the sermon besides. This, apparently, is offered as evidence the scheme is not partisan, but broad-minded; rather like a pickpocket who robs the whole train instead of a single passenger, and asks to be admired for his impartiality.
I do not know what to call a government that spends the citizen’s own coin teaching the citizen to revere the men who spent it. I only know that in my day we had a name for the fellow who convinced you to pay for the rope he meant to sell you back at triple the price. We called him a swindler, and we did not elect him twice.
I remain, sir, as ever,
Mark Twain
(deceased, but not so deceased as to have lost my sense of smell for humbug)