Those euphemistically described festivities consist mainly of campaign phone calls.
Millions of them.
At least it seems like that.
We’ve received up to three calls per day most of the past three weeks, all for Republican candidates. Trouble is, we’re registered Democrats. It’s a question of timing.
If you vote in your state primary, you know if you declare for one of the two main parties, at this stage you vote for your party’s candidates. Early calls from the opposition are wasted. That’s why the escalating call pattern led us to suspect the Graying Old Party’s got a strategy going here. We call it our ‘Great Election Conspiracy Theory.’
All but one of the calls are recorded. We can’t tell them what we think of their campaign. We just have to hang up for relief - usually! The pattern developed this way:
Step 1) The calls begin, three per day, all for one candidate.
Step 2) A week into the process, primary ballots go out to people on the Permanent Early Voting List. As usual, we complete and return our ballots within two days.
Step 3) The calls, still for the same candidate, stop registering on Caller ID. We let most go to the answering machine. If the call continues on the machine, we pick up, hit ‘Off’ and ... blessed silence.
Step 4) One evening a call goes to the machine. I pick up, hit off - the recorded voice drones on ... and on and on and - I call Jim. We meet at the base station. The machine still spews. We marvel at the genius of the latest technology. (Not!) Jim finally unplugs the phone base from the wall, plugs it back in ... aaah, peace reigns once again in the Jordan household.
After that miserable escapade, I sit down at my computer to compose the following email:
If anyone in the Republican party actually believes that the current policy of harassing Democratic voters via the telephone will actually convince anyone to vote for GOP candidates, you'd better make sure long-term mental health services are firmly included in your medical coverage. If we weren't already determined to cast a vote in every single election for every Democratic candidate we can possibly support, this abusive Republican policy would do the trick!
This evening, the latest RWNJ Dirty Trick finally forced me to ask the telephone company for complete instructions in how to block these disruptive calls. In the next few days, we'll be implementing this tool and sharing it with as many people as we can.
Thank you for reassuring us that we've been going in the right direction for the past 35 years, even if the rest of the country wasn't quite there yet! And if you're curious about the details of our latest experience with your abusive campaign calls, I'll be posting reports on my blog in the next few days and sending the link out to our numerous Twitter and Facebook friends!
In peace,
Debbie Jordan
imaginetheworldatpeace.com
I send the missive to the Arizona Republican and Democratic Parties. I copy Jim. Everybody knows the score.
Step 5) On each of the next two evenings, we receive only one recorded call inviting us to participate in a political poll. As soon as I hear those words, I hang up.
Step 6) Saturday morning a young man calls to invite me to answer questions for "a political research survey." I tell him I’m not interested and hang up.
Step 7) Since Sunday, we receive different numbers of calls each day, all recordings, all register on Caller ID, each for a different candidate, none for the subject of the earliest calls.
And so it goes.
I don’t know whether my email rant helped. I do feel better since I hit send.
Stay Blue, everyone. Vote for Fairness and Equality in your Primary and, especially, on November 4!
Believe it or not, I heard a few of the good ideas in this
book from pre-1980 Republicans. Pity they aren’t in
office today. I hope their successors will one day lead
a party that is again Grand instead of Grotesque.
WEB EMAIL WORKING AGAIN - SORT OF: A few weeks ago, I was finally able to switch my website and email service to debbie@imaginetheworldatpeace.com to a new host. I still have to update them. We’re working on a long ‘Life List,’ but that task is moving up the agenda fast. I’ll keep you up-to-date here and on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks so much for all your love and patience.
COMMENTS: The purpose of this blog is to share positive ideas for making changes that will help everyone, not just a narrow group of people. I’d love to hear more ideas for imprinting positive effects over a wide range of areas in our society.
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