ALL IS NOT LOST:
WIN A FREE BOOK,
COURTESY OF DONALD TRUMP
I hate playing cards and have never been to a horserace in my life, but now that a one-time casino owner has become the most powerful person on earth, I’m ready to get in on the action by sponsoring the all-new, open-to-everybody State of Emergency Pool. If (and only if, as my high school math teachers used to say) the new President should find the House or Senate unwilling to follow orders or too much in love with the sound of their own voices to implement such orders as quickly as he’d like, he’s going to have to declare a State of Emergency in order to maintain the integrity of the great-againening process. And things might not even reach that pass. He could assume office and simply declare, “The real situation is so much worse than I thought it was, that I have no choice…”—for a limited time only, of course. Or some lunatic could stage an attentat.
We’re playing odds here, not politics. This is a purely sporting proposition that has nothing to do with opposing or supporting such a measure and I’m not willing to listen to any complaints should the measure never be imposed and the competition be rendered no contest. It’s simply a question of trying to figure out how long it will take for such measures to be implemented, if they are, in fact, ever implemented at all. We’re trying to calculate the balance between subservience and impatience, not to mention the degree to which things have really changed.
All you have to do is put the Washington, D.C. calendar date on which you think such a declaration is likely to be made into the subject line of an email and send it to trumpsweepstake at gmail.com (be sure to replace “at” with @ and get rid of the spaces). Please write out the name of your chosen month: 03/02/17 means different things in different countries. If that’s your date, please express it as either February 3 or March 2, 2017. I am Canadian, and easily confused.
Emails will not be opened, so please don’t bother with messages, manifestoes, kudos or threats: no one will ever see them. Should conditions render the contest viable, the first entry received with the correct date (or the date closest to it, if there are no correct entries) will win. In case of a tie, the entry with the earliest time stamp will win. The winner will be contacted and asked for his or her address. The prize? A signed copy of my sadly underread book, How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck), as long as it hasn’t been banned for subversion.
If it has been banned, you get The Love Machine by Jacqueline Susann.
Come on, America! It took the Germans four full weeks in 1933. Whup those Krauts! Be great again!
Entries must be received by midnight, January 21, 2017.