Why I Won’t Work for a Trump Supporter: An Open Letter
"you have inspired me to create a form letter I can send to the next Trump supporter looking to cut corners on the foundation of a ten-story building."
Note from Ben: We’re continuing to get an extraordinary response from our readers with The Banter Newsletter, so much so that we are planning to add more content in the near future. One of the things we want to be careful with though is flooding your inbox with too many emails. Your time is precious, and we only want to contact you when we have important things to say, so we will be adding regular updates and notes at the top of new articles sent out (like the one you are reading!), and not in separate emails.
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Ben
by Rich Herschlag
Thank you for your inquiry regarding professional services. I must inform you that I cannot accept this assignment, and I believe it is incumbent upon me to explain exactly why.
I am a civil/structural engineer. I have held a professional license for 27 years without a single claim filed against me. During that time I have handled everything from stabilizing a leaning 130-year-old landmark cast iron building across the street from City Hall in New York to replacing a small steel girder in a modest single-family home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I have spent my entire adult life reconciling the principles of physics with the legal requirements of building codes and the tribulations of limited budgets. Now you want me to work for you. The answer is no.
You call climate change fake. You call the Russia probe fake. You have called crowd size estimates via satellite fake. You have called air traffic controllers essentially superfluous. You have called comprehensive value engineering studies of US southern border security fake. You have called into serious question the competence and integrity of countless lifetime public servants at the FBI and CIA. So when you hear from me that a 10WF31 steel beam spanning 21 feet across the ceiling of your new open living room will deflect excessively and that you’re going to have to use a heavier, more expensive beam, you will absolutely reserve the right call those results, as well, fake. Thankfully, you will never get the chance.
Your fundamental problem is not me or air traffic controllers or the FBI or satellites. Your fundamental problem is reality itself. I am not going to swallow the cyanide pill on your behalf. You will have to find some other sucker to swallow it. My fondest wish is you end up swallowing it yourself.
Yes, I know, reality can be a bitch. As long as you know I won’t be your bitch. As a human being, I’ve had my own harsh encounters with reality: My mother passing when I was nine; getting shot at while inspecting a building in northern Manhattan; watching my early retirement plans go up in smoke with the 2008 mortgage crisis. But I’m fine. This centrist Democrat takes care of his shit.
Now it’s time for you to look unflinchingly at your own reality, own it, and stop blaming it on brown people, left-wing cabals, Muslims and Medicare. Maybe your wife’s leaving you for a darker man was not Kamala Harris’ fault. Maybe your complete lack of communication with your son is not Kirsten Gillibrand’s doing. Maybe you—not Alexandria Octavio-Cortez—hold the key to your drinking problem.
It’s not that I don’t think you have the right to wage war with the very concept of reality. You do in fact have that right, and I enjoy seeing you come to terms with it periodically on Cheaters and COPS. The problem is that you and your Führer have grabbed the reins of government, which if nothing else was created to harness the public will toward a rational, practical reckoning with reality. Instead, that government is now a weapon wielded against individuals, countries, and concepts representing a symbolic threat to your narrow insecure sense of self. On a micro level, therefore, any individual you hire must serve a smaller version of that same purpose. I will not be that individual.
While I am a professional, sometimes I act as an advocate. As a professional my first responsibility is to protect public safety. Once it can be reasonably established that your proposal does not conflict with that responsibility, the advocacy may begin. Roll that around in your muddled brain for a moment. In other words, professionalism, like reality, is by definition not for sale. While with any client there is always some danger this sacred line will be crossed, with Donald Trump and blind followers like you, it is not merely a possibility but a job description.
The reality that you rage against has many components. The notion that payment for services does not represent ownership of the individual hired is but one of these unpleasant, inconvenient components but probably among the most vexing for you. As a sycophant sucking up to those with power, money and utter disregard for the law, the notion that anyone is immune to this seduction must be as unsettling as the commandment not to covet.
Nonetheless, thank you for the inquiry. And thank you for posting your political inanities all over Facebook. You have saved yourself the heartache of working with a moderate, and me, ultimately, from disciplinary action by the state licensing board. Even more importantly, you have forced me to think through the original terms of my license and the moral underpinnings of my vocation. You have allowed me to better appreciate run-of-the-mill clients not seeking the engineering version of Roy Cohn. And best of all, you have inspired me to create a form letter I can send to the next Trump supporter looking to cut corners on the foundation of a ten-story building.
Read the latest Banter Subscriber Only post!:
Trump And The Integration Of The Shadow
Out of the depths of despair and suppressed suffering, Americans have manifested a leader who resembles the ugliness in themselves they cannot bear to confront.
by Ben Cohen
"Something in us wishes to remain a child, to be unconscious or, at most, conscious only of the ego; to reject everything strange, or else subject it to our will; to do nothing, or else indulge our own craving for pleasure or power."
- Carl Jung
One of the hardest things about becoming an adult is accepting the fact that failure is a big part of life, you rarely get what you want, and suffering is central to the human experience. We also invariably learn that good people do bad things, and bad people often win…. continue reading.