Happy Birthday Donald Trump!

What do you give the man who has everything?

by Rich Herschlag

I feel terrible. I didn’t get you anything. Just like the previous 77 birthdays. But what do you get the man who has everything: Great hair. The perfect marriage. Thirty-four felony convictions. Fifty million brainwashed followers. A constant flow of cash from those same brainwashed followers. A hot daughter. The equivalent of a sixth grade education. There must be something.

That’s why, Mr. Trump, this year I’m not focusing on material things. Instead I want to give my best wishes. After all, this, your last year as a free man, is going to be a very important one.

First, I wish you justice. This means different things to different people. For some it means finally clearing the good name of a loved one. For others it means a fair settlement in a personal injury lawsuit. For you it means imprisonment for the rest of your natural life and well beyond. Justice is a gift but one that must be earned through the righteous actions of many in concert with equally and fairly applied law. Of course, this means absolutely nothing to you now, but one day it will mean even less.

I wish you consciousness. Consciousness is what sets us apart as human beings from earth, stones, air, water, and your base. It is the ultimate blessing conveyed to us by our Creator, whether the omnipotent God of the Old Testament or Elon Musk. To be fully conscious is to know God’s mind in both good times and bad—especially when finally, after many, many years of dodging bullets, experiencing that thing called justice.  (See paragraph above.)

I wish you shock and awe. While according to the United States Department of Defense these two things go together, they are at the same time distinct and interdependent. Shock, as I understand it, is a kind of paralysis upon experiencing a sudden and cataclysmic event. In your case, that could be any number of things: Conviction in Georgia for election fraud. Conviction in federal court for treason. Conviction in federal court for unauthorized removal of classified documents. A crushing defeat in the 2024 presidential election. A look in the bathroom mirror. Just as important if not more so is awe. Awe in this case is the profound realization that there is something in the universe far more powerful than yourself.

I wish you sobriety. I know, I know, you abstain from alcohol as if it’s a superlative virtue, which ironically makes you an honorary Muslim. But I’m not talking about the simple absence of chemical inebriation—a state during which one may nonetheless experience and even will into existence countless delusions of grandeur. I’m talking about the personal growth that occurs when one calmly and without any hint of self-deception takes complete and full stock of oneself and what he has become—in your case, a lying, thieving, grifting, manipulative, sadistic, opportunistic, menacing demagogue.

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I wish you resourcefulness. But I must clarify. Not the kind of resourcefulness that allows one to take a crushing electoral defeat and turn it into a violent, subversive movement threatening the very fabric of our nation. Rather, the resourcefulness needed to eek out one more interminable day behind the thick impenetrable walls of a bleak, remote federal penitentiary. Stir a soup kettle. Mop a floor. Bang out a license plate. Read a book, for God’s sake. These may be the first creditable actions of your long and highly destructive life.

I wish you acceptance. Also known as fifth stage in the five-stage Kübler-Ross process of grief, acceptance often represents a kind of maturity and spiritual growth that comes only from integrating all one’s knowledge of life while eschewing desires, lust, jealousy, revenge, impulsiveness and basically every emotion you have ever experienced since the first girl you molested in high school.

I wish you enlightenment. This is the culmination of all my prior wishes for you on this very special birthday. While each wish represents hope against hope as well as a personal hurdle for any sentient being on this planet, the notion of all these wishes coming to fruition in such a combination as to transform you into a kind of Orange Dalai Lama is so beyond the realm of possibility it shows me how delusional I have become over the past eight or so years.

Early on in this elongated but sincere birthday missive I said I was offering my “best wishes.” That statement may seem disingenuous given the indescribable pain many of these granted wishes will cause you—especially justice, consciousness, and shock and awe. Please allow me to clarify. On this June 14, the date of your birth, these are indeed my best wishes—for the United States of America.

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