by Pa Rock
Curmudgeon
Yesterday afternoon I was busy assembling a portable clothes rack out of three-quarter inch, steel plumbing pipe. The activity involved pieces of pipe and pipe-fittings being strategically placed around my living room - as well as a great deal of concentration. I was totally engrossed in the project when I received a text message from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on behalf of Donald Trump. It read:
Donald Trump apparently now possesses something even more powerful than the nuclear codes. He has, at his small, chubby fingertips, the ability to instantaneously text every cell phone owner in America - potentially hundreds of millions of text recipients.
The message said that it was a test and no action was needed - so I hit some button that made it go away - and it is no longer in my log of texts. However, even though it was gone quickly, I still found the whole process to be irksome.
I do not text. Not only do I not text, I actively encourage people not to text me. Most of my friends and family have learned that I will respond much more politely to an email or a telephone call than I will to a text - and, unless it is an emergency, I won't respond to a text at all. Old fashioned? Yes. Out-of-sync with the rest of the world? Definitely. But it is my choice. I don't like having my work - or my sleep - interrupted by incessant pings from someone who is frantic to show me pictures of a toad that they found squatting in the shrubbery or an ear of corn that looks like Ann Coulter.
(I also don't do Facebook and I don't shop at Walmart!)
So where the hell does Donald Trump, of all people, get off in thinking that he has some inalienable right to bust in on my private life. My kids - maybe - in an emergency, but a 400-pound narcissist sociopath who wants to be the center of everyone's world - never!
My biggest concern, however, is not with a government feeling the need to contact its citizens as quickly as possible in the event of a catastrophic emergency - because that is somewhat understandable. My actual concern is with the fact that the head of our government, the man who could employ this massive new message delivery system, is Donald John Trump, a person who has already been proven to be willing to use any means possible to gain benefits for himself and to enhance his own self-image.
I don't want to be subjected to one of Trump's personal tantrums. pity parties, or Neo-Nazi rallies - particularly if his belligerence arrives at my house as texts.
I want to be excluded.
Scratched from the rolls.
Put on the "no text" roster.
It's a privacy issue - and action IS needed!
Curmudgeon
Yesterday afternoon I was busy assembling a portable clothes rack out of three-quarter inch, steel plumbing pipe. The activity involved pieces of pipe and pipe-fittings being strategically placed around my living room - as well as a great deal of concentration. I was totally engrossed in the project when I received a text message from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on behalf of Donald Trump. It read:
"Presidential alert:The bureaucratic screed was preceded by a drawing of a red triangle which enclosed a black exclamation point - just to let me know that this distraction was damned important.
THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed."
Donald Trump apparently now possesses something even more powerful than the nuclear codes. He has, at his small, chubby fingertips, the ability to instantaneously text every cell phone owner in America - potentially hundreds of millions of text recipients.
The message said that it was a test and no action was needed - so I hit some button that made it go away - and it is no longer in my log of texts. However, even though it was gone quickly, I still found the whole process to be irksome.
I do not text. Not only do I not text, I actively encourage people not to text me. Most of my friends and family have learned that I will respond much more politely to an email or a telephone call than I will to a text - and, unless it is an emergency, I won't respond to a text at all. Old fashioned? Yes. Out-of-sync with the rest of the world? Definitely. But it is my choice. I don't like having my work - or my sleep - interrupted by incessant pings from someone who is frantic to show me pictures of a toad that they found squatting in the shrubbery or an ear of corn that looks like Ann Coulter.
(I also don't do Facebook and I don't shop at Walmart!)
So where the hell does Donald Trump, of all people, get off in thinking that he has some inalienable right to bust in on my private life. My kids - maybe - in an emergency, but a 400-pound narcissist sociopath who wants to be the center of everyone's world - never!
My biggest concern, however, is not with a government feeling the need to contact its citizens as quickly as possible in the event of a catastrophic emergency - because that is somewhat understandable. My actual concern is with the fact that the head of our government, the man who could employ this massive new message delivery system, is Donald John Trump, a person who has already been proven to be willing to use any means possible to gain benefits for himself and to enhance his own self-image.
I don't want to be subjected to one of Trump's personal tantrums. pity parties, or Neo-Nazi rallies - particularly if his belligerence arrives at my house as texts.
I want to be excluded.
Scratched from the rolls.
Put on the "no text" roster.
It's a privacy issue - and action IS needed!
1 comment:
One can only wonder how this piece of presidential bullshit will make out once Trump is mercifully gone. Will it be properly placed in the dustbin of history, or will other presidents, realizing the power and reach of such a hideous practice, be too cowardly to give it up.
As I grow older, I have less and less faith in our democracy's ability to chose the wondrous over the profane.
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