Dear Mr. President: Not the Dolls

A short take

An easy softball down the center plate for the Democrats' low-hanging fruit will be the dolls. Many of their supporters are out there right now wearing “Protect the Dolls” t-shirts, but that doesn’t mean what you think it means.

It means, save the transgender people. Why dolls, I do not know, but that only means the Democrats can’t now rebrand “Protect the Dolls.” They can, however, use “Save the Dolls.” Who knows if they can get it together to do something like that, but why hand them such an easy reach-around?

Having grown up rich, Trump might not know that poor people like to feel rich. Remember what John Steinbeck wrote in "A Primer on the '30s." Esquire (June 1960), p. 85-93:

"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.

"I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."

That’s the American Dream in a nutshell. We all wake up in our country, hoping we’ll become rich. This is one of the main reasons Socialism is not exactly popular (except among Gen Z).

The devious plot of the free trade scam was that the very poor could buy lots of stuff from Walmart, making the Walton family extremely wealthy, enriching China, but dooming our working class, who still liked to shop as if they were not struggling.

I know this firsthand. I grew up among those poor people and was one of them for much of my life, and shopping was a big deal in my family. A few of us emerged as penny pinchers, but my grandmother, who lived through the Depression, did nothing with her later years except shop.

There is a great line in Citizen Kane which goes something like this:

“You know Charles, you never used money to make investments, you always used money to…”
”Buy things.”

I don’t know what the solution is to a no-win situation. Fooling the people works for a while, numbing them out with consumerism distracts them with temporary happiness, I suppose.

But as a mother who raised a baby working odd jobs, even as a janitor, I was still happy I could buy her whatever she wanted on Christmas because I could find affordable items, especially dolls. She had every Teletubby and every My Little Pony. I even bought her a way too expensive American Girl doll.

The tragedy of the American Girl doll?

• Early Production: The first American Girl dolls were made in Germany by the Gotz company, particularly the historical character line featuring dolls like Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly.

• Shift to China: In 2003, production of most American Girl dolls began to shift to China.

• Current Production: The majority of American Girl dolls are now made in China.

Don’t that beat all? These dolls are not cheap. But if I had to do it all over again and not buy dolls for my kid because of Trump’s tariffs well, that’s an easy way to lose a voter (not that I would ever vote Democrat now).

Telling parents to buy fewer dolls takes you into Herbert Hoover meets Marie Antoinette territory. Americans should not have to suffer, especially those at the very bottom of the food chain, especially children, to fix the problem caused by greedy millionaires and monopolies.

Even if true!

Remember what a disaster that was for Jimmy Carter and his malaise speech? Was it the truth? Probably. Was it an electoral loser? Absolutely. American exceptionalism is that you boost morale even if you have to tell pretty lies.

As the anchor says, “It makes the stakes too high for comfort.”

I know the Left will adopt a sudden desire for cheap crap made in China to be sold and then dumped in landfills because they know it will be a winning issue come election time with a tough economy like we’re wading through. Handing them that gift seems politically unwise, to put it mildly.

Trump hates immigrants!
Trump is a fascist!
Trump is destroying movies!
Trump is trying to take away your dolls!

The true Left, the Left I once knew, does not want junk filling up landfills, especially Gen-Z. They’re all about the minimalist movement and ending “fast fashion.” All the crap they buy has to be “sustainable” and “responsibly sourced.” That truth will fly out the window when it comes time for campaign ads.

But that’s because wealth and power have shifted leftwards, and what they care more about is their image as “good people.” The majority in this country does not think that way.

Don’t punish the poor or make them feel shame for not having enough money to buy dolls for their children at Christmas.

Just saying.