For readers unfamiliar with serial killer history, Ted Bundy was basically the archetypal serial killer, charming, raping and killing an unknown number of young women in the 1970s. My most recent dive into the ol’ mailbag reminded me of him in the slimy way this missive is written. It’s not a long one, so I’ll interweave my thoughts with the text.
What a marvelous, superlative, ingenious way to simply ruin a perfectly good weekend. Read on, fellow travelers, read on!! Remember, evil triumphs when good people do nothing!!
So we start with a reference to the famous quote[1] concerning the need of men to take positive action when confronted with evil, and by so doing the author is attempting to wrap his devious message in the cloak of goodness. It’s a common rhetorical approach that attempts to manipulate the reader into accepting the hidden message of the following text. Indeed, the attentive reader will have noticed I used the exact same technique to start this post by referencing a loathsome & deceptive personality (Wikipedia’s description: “Many of Bundy’s young female victims regarded him as handsome and charismatic…“) to place the reader in a state of mind receptive to the idea that this mail, which many may have seen before, is actually a deceptive and destructive missive.
Not incidentally, the fonts used in the mail change in certain places, which I was unable to capture in this post. The point? To build up momentum for accepting the hidden message by suggesting that others have already accepted it. We live in a busy, busy world and it’s common practice to use secondary clues as to how we should react to a given message; it’s much harder to strip away clues which may be extraneous, or even malicious, and evaluate a message on its own merits.
Letter to My Boss,
I have enjoyed working here these past several years. You have paid me very well, given me benefits beyond belief. I have 3-4 months off per year and a pension plan that will pay my salary till the day I die and a health plan that most people can only dream about.
Withholding important information is a common and important story-telling technique. It builds suspense and lets the author channel the thoughts of the reader in such a way as to build a successful story. Note I don’t fault the author for using it; after all, he or she is trying to be effective. But I do want to draw the reader’s attention to how it affects them intellectually and emotionally.
Despite this I plan to take the next 12-18 months to find a new position.
During this time I will show up for work when it is convenient. In addition I fully expect to draw my full salary and all the other perks associated with my current job.
Peeking ahead, I’ll let the Jack out of the Box: we’re talking about sitting members of Congress. This author would have the reader believe that members of Congress are lazy, underworked, overpaid, and feckless. This is the meat of the letter.
So let’s think about the assertion. Upstanding members of Congress must be knowledgeable about a large range of topics from the perspectives of policy and regulation. Think of it: agricultural policy, energy policy, death penalties, should we declare war, how do we monitor the Executive and Judicial branches, the list goes on and on. Sure, we can all point at members all both parties who slack the job, or even worse use their position in a self-interested way. If you want names, Menendez of the Democrats and Price of the Republicans come right to mind as members who’ve been accused, but not convicted, of corruption.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking a couple of examples of malfeasance characterizes all 538 members of Congress, along with all their predecessors. If this were true, the United States would have become the Disunited States way back in the 1800s simply through incompetence.
I think my reader knows where this is going, but let’s digest the next paragraph first.
Oh yes, if my search for this new job proves fruitless, I will be back with no loss in pay or status. Before you say anything, remember that you have no choice in the matter. I can and will do this.
This lovely bit completes the exercise of making the execrable Congresscritter completely contemptible by giving him a high ‘n mighty air comparable to your favorite arrogant monarch. By instilling this bias in the reader against one of the three important legs of the governmental stool, this is, in reality, an attack on the American way of life. The form of government we use was not selected at random or to benefit those who can attain positions in it; it was selected by the Founding Fathers in reaction to the abuses of the English monarchy. As it’s been improved in the years since its formation, it has proved relatively effective compared to other forms of government.
And, for that reason, it comes under attack in letters such as these, letters designed to foment discontent and distrust of a government which, we are often encouraged to forget, is our government. Not the property of a monarchy, never to be transgressed upon. No, at its best, when we’re talking to each other, trusting we have everyone’s best interests at heart, and using our best intellectual efforts to understand the world around us, from science to politics, it’s highly effective.
We wouldn’t be the most influential country in the world, otherwise.
So that’s the real purpose of this letter, to discourage the reader from trusting that our government can work to our benefit. This mail came from a conservative source, but given the behavior of the GOP these days, a Democrat might take similar delight in it. Readers on the entire American political spectrum would be mistaken in accepting this message at face value.
Sincerely,
Every Senator or Congressman
running for re-election
I just find it funny that in one part of this mail the mythical author of the letter says he or she is looking for a new position, yet here they reference their re-election efforts. Apparently the real author is having trouble with their cognitive processes.
The 2018 Elections are just around the corner.
——
Are we stupid or what?Our work is not over, it has just begun, good and faithful patriots!!
If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do, you are misinformed. (Mark Twain)
This is simple reinforcement of the false trope that this mail was written for the reader’s welfare. Twain is a favorite of such authors, given his radiant reputation.
REMEMBER: If you forward this, PLEASE REMOVE all email addresses before you send it on.
REMEMBER: Please help stop email address harvesting and subsequent spamming your family, friends and yourself. Use BCC when sending to multiple email addresses and also delete old email addresses BEFORE forwarding on emails.
One of those harmless reminders about removing mail addresses, isn’t it? But think about it: the author of this bit of destructive trash has just asked that anything that can be traced back to his or her mail account, and perhaps on to them personally, be removed. One more bit of deceit.
“Peace is that brief glorious moment
in history, when everybody stands
around reloading”
— Thomas Jefferson
An unexpected allegiance to the Chaos Theory of History in which nations eternally grind away at each other, rather than cooperate peacefully. The author is getting off message at this point, again perhaps indicative of a poorly disciplined intellect.
I saw a movie where only the military
and the police had guns:
Schindler’s List.
Here we wander off message some more. Which reminds me, I saw a movie where everyone with a gun shot law enforcement and innocent citizens dead: The Untouchables. See, we can find all sorts of examples supporting ideological positions from popular stories. I find it much more useful to ask what science discovers. But you know what? For years, government funded basic science, which constitutes most of the basic scientific research performed in this country, was forbidden by law to study gun violence and gun control. So there’s not much science out there with respect to guns and society.
In conclusion: read warily, my readers, bits of mail that impute terrible personal traits to our elected officials. Most of them labor at a thankless job for praiseworthy reasons. And without them?
We’d be fucked.
1Quote Investigator reports the source of this quote may be famous British politician Edmund Burke, or perhaps the much less well-known Rev. Charles F. Aked.
