Yes, you’re right. The writer of this column has complained about the digital world before. It’s becoming increasingly absurd, however. So I thought I’d rant about it again. I was calling my AT&T wireless people about an insurance claim, when . . .
Let me back up to the beginning. A while back some baby oil spilled on my desktop and some of it leaked into my Cell phone. My cell phone did not like that. Why, you may ask, did I have baby oil near my cell phone?
Well, I’ll divert my story for just a moment and tell you. I occasionally put it on my increasingly wrinkled maturing adult face to try and slow down or stop the wrinkling. A futile effort, I am sure.
Anyhow, the oil did make my cell phone hard to read, so I went to the local AT&T store and told them about it. They informed me I have insurance and can file a claim. More, they took a lot of information from me and plugged it into a computer.
Then, the nice young lady helping me told me I should go on a certain insurance website when I got home, and I would find they were ready to give me a new phone. Next day, I did this. Another nice young lady asked me the same questions as the first one in the AT&T store had.
Then, she said I’d get an email asking me to make a copy of my driver’s license, which I should email to her, and she would put together a new replacement phone for me.
I waited. I got a document that said it was not an invoice, and did not tell me where to email any driver’s license, but only informed me how much my deductible payment was going to be.
So, I called AT&T next day and asked what was going on. And another nice young lady at AT&T said she would phone the insurance department to figure out what was happening with my claim.
She did, and a young insurance man called me, but he was immediately disconnected. In about five minutes he called me back wondering what was going on. I explained that the digital information highway has lots of potholes.
He laughed, agreed, and said he would send me another email telling me where to send the copy of my driver’s license. I am now waiting. If it doesn’t arrive tomorrow, I suppose I’ll have to call someone else. Who, I am not sure.
In the meantime, most competing Democrat presidential candidates are announcing their campaigns. The most giant corporations still bankroll both them and Republican candidates. And the corporate-owned media won’t acknowledge citizen independent candidates not soliciting corporate money, but instead pushing for corporate shared responsibility for economic social reform.
The existing candidates that corporations and media do consider to be valid, don’t appear to have specific concrete plans of how recover the 30,000,000 unemployed and underemployed Americans living essentially in poverty.
Mostly, they just say that they are going to: “Lead America.” Well, I’m not so comfortable about their “Leading” business. I’m not clear on exactly how they intend to do it. They don’t seem to be either.
In Army Intelligence and in the International Marketing Community, I learned how to find verifiably factual data and come up with logical plans that appear to stand a good chance of working, and likely getting a job done with a minimum of fuss, bother, and bloodshed.
That, however, doesn’t seem to be the way to gain traction in the running-for-president business. As a writer using my theoretical candidacy as a literary tool from which to write about the current condition of American politics, I may have to do something like dive off the top of the Washington monument with a parachute to get anybody’s attention.
And I suppose on the way down I’ll have to shout: “Look at me; I’m leading too.” Maybe then I’ll be on the right track. I’ll send you another email message when I’ve figured out my ultimate strategy. In the meantime, hang really tight onto your Billfolds and Purses.
Because it looks like, whether it’s a Mexican border wall or another investigation of D. Trump, we’re all again going to be required to pay the tax bill. And it’ll be a whopper, you can bet, no matter which side wins.
