Catch 2020

Do you think politicians are doing enough for our veterans? Press one if yes. Press two if no.

That’s what I heard when I picked up the phone today. Held my tongue on the chance that someone, alerted to a non-response, would cut in to restate the question, but it was a robo-call, and so I held the phone through about ten seconds of silence before hanging up.

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The Ugly

On the surface, the question is certainly simple.  And the subject is irresistible.  Other than a president who calls them “suckers” and “losers,” who, with any heart and soul, could say that, yes, veterans get “enough”?

Beneath the surface is the rhetorical trick.  The question, for all its seeming innocence, implicitly demonizes people called “politicians.” No distinction between federal, state, or local. No distinction between executive and legislative branches.

More often that not, such pitches–whether made in advertisements, newspaper headlines, cable news graphics, social media memes, or polls designed to elicit pre-ordained answers–are aimed at what we call “congress.” That may seem more specific, but the difference is so slight as to render it misleading.

There’s no mention of two distinct houses, so no acknowledgement of numerous bills, many on the federal level in recent years to benefit veterans, passed in one only to be buried in the other.

Nor is there mention of two distinct parties, so no recognition that one consistently supports veterans’ benefits while the other watches those attempts disappear on the desk of a majority leader who boastfully calls himself “The Grim Reaper” and his desk “a graveyard.”

Instead, the question offers the generalized “congress,” which simultaneously draws from and adds to an American tendency to blame “them all,” to say that they are “all the same.” All of which, in turn, leads us to punish the ones who talk about what government can do to solve problems and reward those who tell us government is the problem–even though the former are working for what we want, while the latter obstruct it every chance they have.

Imagine a city, rocked by arson, firing the firefighters and hiring the arsonists because the arsonists successfully destroy while the firefighters can only limit destruction. That’s the logic by which we have Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell deciding what burns.

The question also reinforces the simplistic one-size-fits-all call for term limits rather than campaign finance reform as a way to “fix congress.”  As if there’s no difference between Ed Markey and Lindsey Graham, or between AOC and, say, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Just what year would John Lewis have been forced into retirement?

Simple as it appears, the question is a sophisticated tool of demagoguery.  By not admitting distinctions, it doesn’t allow for thought, only reaction.

I waited those ten seconds to tell someone that.  Then it hit me:  This is America.  We don’t make distinctions. Why think when reaction is so quick and easy?

And what is more American than quick and easy?

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The Bad

All of the above was a first for me only because there was no one on the other end, and I’m certain it was the first robo-poll I ever picked up. I always answer pollsters and enjoy joking with them, Republicans as much as Democrats.

The latter laugh louder when I insist that I’d vote for venereal disease before I’d ever vote for any Republican for any office, but the former take it in stride, end the call quickly but politely, and softly hang up.

Hope that my friends from Newburyport to Florida manning and womanning phone banks, or anyone seeking an opinion rather than money, find that reassuring. Call anytime, and be assured that what I’m about to say is only for those seeking donations.

Most everyone agrees that all calls from telemarketers, robo or real, are annoying and ought to be banned. We complain that lists called “do not call” do not work.  Some try to politely end the call, some hang up right away, some never answer after checking their caller ID..

Due to some undiagnosed birth defect, or possibly a blow to the head that neither of my parents noticed as their baby crawled beneath the dinner table, or maybe the consumption of too much red and gold Central American produce during my college years, I have this compulsion to turn annoyance into amusement.

For a quick laugh, I answer in a whisper, apologizing for having strained vocal chords while I reach for a sopranino recorder I keep by the phone just for this purpose. That’s a small, high-pitched wooden flute on which I can play the highest, most piercing C with one hand while holding the phone to it like singers hold microphones right to their lips.

Knowing that telemarketers wear earpieces gave me pause until I remembered that they are the ones imposing on me. If anyone objects to that means to an end most everyone wants, then tell me the means that work for you–because nothing else I’ve heard of stops them.

In a more improvising mood, once I know it’s a he or a she and not an it on the line, I’ll unleash things off the top of my head, some of which work well enough to repeat. Often I say I’m a member of some fictional group such as WHO-DATT.

If they ask what that WHO-DATT is, as they often do, I spell it out: “The World Health Organization’s Decapitate All Telemarketers Taskforce.” Sometimes I’ll say the full name first and wait for their light bulb to go on, such as: “I’m with the Federation for Unwelcome Call Killing United.” If they keep me on the phone, I keep repeating the full name until they hang up or, as happened just once, I hear sudden laughter followed by, “Oh! Sorry to bother you. Have a nice day!” Click.

Here’s one of the better exchanges that I’ve been using of late when the creative juices fail me:

“I have already donated all my spare Jacksons and Grants to NO-EAT.”

“What’s NO-EAT?” they ask with their invariable, irrepressible cheer.

“The National Organization to Euthanize All Telemarketers.”

You’d be amazed how often I’m asked to define “euthanize.”

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The Good

Or maybe you wouldn’t.  And maybe you would rather I not joke about such things. Be assured that I never beat the eardrums or propose the funerals of the very good souls who solicit for good causes. However, I do tell them not just why I have nothing to give them, but why I consider them part of the problem that they, with all their good intentions, hope to solve.

Rather than modest, scattered contributions to cure this disease or ease that misfortune, to support a local fire department or to save a nearby river from contamination, wouldn’t it make more sense for our government–supposedly a self-government–to address those needs?

Often voicing a general agreement with me, pollsters always deflect the question, as they should, and try to steer me back to the cause. I cut them off instantly.

Isn’t that what self-government is for? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make these donations to candidates who support universal healthcare and a clean environment and get the ones who oppose them out of office?

They usually make a second attempt to steer me back to their cause. I allow them two words–yes or right, neither of which I have ever heard–before cutting in again:

And how do I know that you or your group do not support the politicians who cut funding for everything they can, who are trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, repeal environmental regulations?

If they are still on the phone, which most often they politely are, this is where they politely excuse themselves and hang up.

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Call of the Called

It’s also where I take a deep breath. Would be hard for them to believe–and likely for you to believe after reading these pranks pulled on people trying to make a living in hard economic times–but the exchange is no easier for me than for them.

We often hear the phrase, “speak truth to power.” This is speaking truth to those who, for all their good intentions, serve as a buffer for power.

I hope they meet their fundraising goals. I hope that all abandoned dogs and cats find homes, that all diseases are cured, that all children have nutritious meals and access to the internet, that all police and fire departments are adequately funded, and that all veterans have all their needs met.

If people who run and work for philanthropies would realize that the apparatus to address all those needs is already in place, they could much better focus their efforts. If the money they raise were put into the unified effort of self-governance, their “annual” goals could be made to last, and all the tension and pressure of, say, medical bills on top of medical needs could be erased.

As they are in Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Costa Rica, Japan, Australia, Egypt, Ghana, Botswana, India, Sri Lanka, and 50 other nations, not one of which, by the way, claims to be the greatest country in the world, a claim that is nothing but a cover for indifference.

Instead, telephone solicitors for charities, through no fault of their own, provide yet more cover for those who preserve the status quo, who work the halls of congress to ignore our basic needs, who serve only their donors. Americans are a generous people, they intone. Who can argue with that? Compassionate conservatism, one tried to popularize before it got laughed off his teleprompter.

To the contrary, instead of more calls seeking support for those who would turn government offices into agencies that do meet our needs, we now get robo-calls reinforcing the notion that “politicians” are “all the same.”

On this 50th anniversary of the film Catch-22, based on a novel about the absurdities of war and bureaucracy, it is as fitting as it is perverse that veterans are the bow meant to play our heartstrings and drown out what we most need heed.

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My fellow fans of Melville might be amused to know that, during the writing of this, entirely by coincidence, I happened to read his Piazza Tale, “The Lightning-Rod Man,” for the first time. Written well before phones and telemarketers, the title character is one of their forerunners, the door-to-door salesman, a “drummer” as they came to be called in the 20th Century. The way the narrator dispenses of that nuisance at the story’s end makes me sooooooo envious.