Dear Trump Voter: How about $120, with Strings?

Aaron Sorkin made a good point on a recent WTF podcast with Marc Maron. He said, yeah, we’ll probably get rid of Donald Trump in two years (or more, or less), but that doesn’t change the fundamental problem: what do you do about the Trump voters? They will still be here. They will still be angry at the “elites,” threatened by immigrants, and receptive to toxic spewings about the media (as if it were monolithic), globalists, scientists, ivory tower educational institutions, and “Washington.” In other words, they will still have cause to feel embattled and embittered and even though Trump will have done little to nothing to help them substantively, the fact that they were on his team and his team just went down in defeat will not make for a pretty picture. (If you are a Trump supporter, you’ll probably want to skip the next three paragraphs. Let’s meet up at the end.)

Behaviorists are right: humans take action based on perceived pleasure and perceived pain. Trump represents a nation in pain and running scared. With a nostalgic ideal of the good ol’ days when a white family with a few kids could make ends meet on a single-income blue collar paycheck and still trade in for a new car every three years and take a summer vacation and play cards with the neighbors in the back yard on Saturday night and enter church Sunday morning with a sense of dignity and belonging and purpose, the current realities of life in these United States must seem like a dirty trick. It’s hard to secure middle class employment (and “secure” is exactly the verb I want). Meanwhile, threats seem abundant, from the immigrants who seek our jobs to the terrorists who seek our lives.

When, during the campaign, Trump quipped that he could walk onto sun-soaked 5th Avenue, shoot someone in plain view, and not lose the support of his loyal fans — I mean voters — he was mostly correct. What is one murder when set against the American carnage that Trump, and only Trump, keeps at bay? “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” is a direct quote from his inaugural speech. What a line. But it’s meaningless, and for this reason, logic and argument won’t work with his supporters. The “resist” sticker on my car makes me feel good, but it has zero persuasive impact on the Trump voter.

Trump and his electorate have a bargain: he’ll continue to say whatever pops into his mind since by lacking a filter, intermediaries, effective advisors, or even the appearance of deliberation he is “authentic.” They’ll ignore the corruption swirling around his administration, the Russian collusion investigation, the emoluments clause of the Constitution, the nepotism. They’ll misunderstand how his tax policies and deregulatory impulses do a disservice to regular middle and working class people. The effect: they will impede and disrupt government institutions (again: elites) and he’ll get to feed his narcissistic personality disorder. Together, they will stick it to the man. Sad.

Here’s my pitch. If, after two years of this administration, you still find yourself convinced that Trump is the best leader for our times, I’d like to communicate with you. Look, we’re both entrenched in our views, but let’s comment person to person and see if and where we can find common ground. I’m willing to fork over $120 in twelve installments to the first person to agree to chat with me once a month about life and politics. That’s right, I’ll buy you a beer or coffee or Mello Yello once a month for a year, and all you have to do is log in here for a little back and forth. You can message me an address where I can send the money. Make up a pseudonym if you want and give me a PO Box or a business address. I don’t need to know your personal info, just as I don’t need you to know mine. But here’s the deal: for 24 hours before writing me, you must agree not to consume any Fox News or rightwing media. I’ll lay off the MSNBC and Bill Maher, so neither of us can get too frothy about the news of the moment. And one more thing: we have to agree to debate ideas only and not be mean or disparaging personally. And no bad language, for the kids.

I think this is a much better deal than any Trump has proposed or enacted for an actual working class American, but maybe I’m wrong. Let’s find out.

All this could be yours.