The True (Double) Cross

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

“I wish I looked as good as I do on those cards — that I can tell you. They give me muscles where, believe me, I don’t have them.” -P.T. Barnum 2.0

'T is the season to practice good will toward all men, with malice toward none, in which the quaint notion of Christian charity is briefly resurrected between the bursting open of Walmart doors the midnight after Thanksgiving to the moment the wine and eggnog kicks in and TVs are tuned to Fox talking heads screaming about the war on Christmas.

    Nods are given deferentially and virtually without condition to the sleek, bloated gods of consumerism that have successfully supplanted any mouldering, trampled corpse of what was once a pretense of an actual American culture. Black Friday has been pushed back to practically the day after Halloween and everyone who can tries to make a buck off the holidays.

 

    So it would come almost as a disappointment if Elise Stefanik's unofficial kid brother George Santos didn't up his Cameo fee from $400 to $500 and Donald Trump didn't offer up fragments of his mug shot suit for sale.

    That's right, in case you haven't heard, Donald is proving what a good Christian he is by offering up tiny pieces of the suit he wore to his Fulton County booking like others offer up slivers of saints' bones or relics or the True Cross. Because Trump has already leapfrogged over the ridiculous self-perception of his arrest in Georgia being a political hit job and has already evolved to the even more ridiculous perception that his arrest and booking is virtually a religious event and even a great historical one.

     Yes, historical.

     Trump's own homespun propaganda mill is actually saying that Trump's parted out suit is “the Most Historically Significant Artifact in United States History.” Not any original, 13 starred American flag from the Revolutionary War or the Liberty Bell or an original copy of the Constitution or Declaration of Independence.

    Trump's Rodney Dangerfield costume that he'd allegedly worn the day he was arrested and booked like a common criminal.

     So, can just anyone buy these tattered pieces of Chinese-made history? Well, yeah, provided you have almost $5000 to blow. Because, you see, typical of Trump, the guy who practically redefined "statements of financial conditions" and put the phrase "worthless clause" into the national lexicon, you have to read the fine print. And as anyone who has ever entered into any kind of a business deal with Trump can tell you to their never-ending rue, you always have to read the fine print. Because, as a journalist once wrote of Trump in 1976, he's incapable of doing anything "unless it has some moral larceny attached to it."

     Because, you see, in order to qualify for the presidential pieces, you first have to purchase 47 NFTs at 99 smackers each. As the Intelligencer wrote, "The NFTs are key to this sales pitch because you have to buy 47 digital cards to get the one physical card. As with the first two batches of Trump cards, these NFTs are $99 a pop. So it’ll cost you $4,653 to get a piece of Trump’s suit."

      And if you're among the first 200 lucky marks rubes customers, you can get dinner with Trump at Mar a Lago (until the inevitable last-minute cancellation after which the lucky 200 may or may not get to sit with a sweaty Walt Nauta) and as well as some vague goodies or “Exclusive Treasures given out at the Gala Dinner”.

     Which may or may not be nuclear secrets belonging to Iran or even us that the FBI and NARA still hasn't collected.

     What I think would be a better marketing ploy, and one that could theoretically balance the deficit if not wipe out the national debt, is selling pieces of Trump's orange jumpsuit when he gets sent to prison in Georgia.