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GOOD MORNING, JONN Q.
GOOD MORNING, JOHN Q. is a broadcast from somewhere between memory and forgetting.
Part commentary, part conscience, part late-night transmission, each episode is a short reflection on America, history, outrage, irony, and the fragile distance between what we once believed and what we are becoming.
No screaming. No manufactured outrage. Just a voice in the dark refusing to let memory die quietly.
You may turn it off -- You won’t shut it out.
GOOD MORNING, JONN Q.
What's In A Name
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What begins as a joke about names becomes a meditation on legacy, memory, and the uniquely American obsession with leaving your mark on history.
Good morning, John Q. This is the United States of Amnesia broadcasting today as every day from somewhere between memory and forgetfulness. Today's weekend special. What's in a name? Shakespeare asked the same question, and Juliet answered, not much. A rose by any other name would smell it sweet. Four hundred years later it still does. Which is probably why we're still calling it a rose. Because names matter. God changed Abraham to Abraham. The old name wasn't big enough anymore, especially for his new mission. Solof Tarsus became Paul. Who, after being in charge of the guys who stoned Saint Stephan to death, he needed a new name. Otherwise, Christianity would probably have ended up a small Jewish temple in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. That's because names matter. Some people were born with one, some people changed it. For instance, Bruce Jenner became Caitlin Jenner. Vice President Vance, on the other hand, has had so many names he crashed the computers at the DMV. Names matter. Nobody in American history has ever understood that better than Donald Trump. Love him or hate him. Nobody has ever accused Donald Trump of being shy about his name. Hell, the man made an entire career out of putting his name on things and charging people money just to look at them. Hotels, golf courses, casinos, airplanes, stakes, water, universities, I mean if a flat surface existed anywhere in the world, sooner or later there was a good chance that Trump's name would appear on it. That's how he made a living. At least for years before the Oval Office. That was his brand. That was his business. That was his thing, his keta. I once had a caucus manual exactly like that. Every tree, every fence post, every fire hydro and every mailbox, I mean the dog was obsessed with leaving his mark on the world. Looking back on it, after he died and was reincarnated, he probably came back in the real estate business. Which brings us up to the real tragedy. Since becoming president, half this nation has been trying to take Trump's name off of everything. Not ignore it, not disagree with it. Take it off, scrape it off, paint it off, piss it off, sandblast it off, rename it, sue over it. I mean at this point if somebody writes Strike's name on a men's room in a filthy subway station, I wouldn't be surprised if a cleanup crew came running before the guy could put a cap back on the marker. That's why I feel sorry for the guy. Because if a man can become president of the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, and still can't keep his name on anything, what's the point? Sure, you get to write on Air Force One, sure Marines start saluting, sure you get your face in the papers every day. I mean the man once said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters. That was ten years ago. And here we are today, a decade later, still obsessing over it. But every man wants a marker. Every man wants a monument, I mean other than a tombstone. Every man wants a legacy. Most of us only get to pass our names on to our children if we're lucky, but every once in a while somebody gets the chance to leave it somewhere bigger. And if anybody has ever spent a lifetime trying, it's Donald Trump. So I'd like to propose a compromise. Let's stop fighting, let's stop arguing. Let's stop scraping letters off of buildings. Let's give the man something nobody can take away. The Donald J. Trump three dollar bill. Think about it. Washington got one, Lincoln got the five, Jackson got the twenty, Grant got the fifty, Franklin got the hundred, and hell he wasn't even president. Surely we can find room for Trump. Three dollars feels about right. Hell when you come to think about it, it feels like it was made for him. His picture on the front, his picture on the back, twenty four carat gold trim around the edges, and instead of in God we trust, in Trump we trust. And here's the beauty of it. Half the country will buy them and save them, while the other half will buy them just to burn them. Which means in the end, there won't be money left. Which means the surviving three dollars bills will become the most valuable collector's item in American history. The first currency ever created for a living president whose value went up because people hated him more than they loved him at the exact same time. And finally, after a lifetime of putting his name on things and decades of watching them either go bankrupt or watching people scrape his name off of them, Donald Trump would finally have something nobody could remove. At least not without violating a federal law. A word to the wise Truth is virtue, amnesia a sin. Remember.