We’ve been talking to some friends about the onslaught of direct-mail crap that passes itself off as campaign literature. Our mail person has the unfortunate duty to put this stuff in our mailbox.   It’s the time of year when the United States Postal Service should provide each delivery person with the kind of latex gloves that proctologists wear.   And it’s the time of year when citizens might consider wearing similar gloves when they reach in their mailbox.

Here’s a policy we’re considering. You are free to consider adopting a similar policy at your house.  It’s simple:

We won’t vote for any candidate whose campaign or whose anonymous supporters crowd our mail box with junk mail that only attacks an opponent, twists the opponent’s record, misleads the voter, and in the process fails to tell us what the candidate supposedly benefitting from these mailings stands for—in clear, specific language.   We likewise won’t vote for any candidate who seems to be clearly advocating what their biggest donor wants them to advocate.

Radio and television campaign commercials fall into the same category.

It could be we won’t vote for any candidates this year.  We might vote only on a few issues—and issue mailings are included in our junk mail policy.

So if you want to guarantee that your candidate will not get two votes from this household, load up our mail box with junk.

Why take this position?

Simple.  Junk mail treats recipients as junk.   You know what junk is, don’t you.  It’s that stuff that has no real use or value but you keep it around because you might have a use for it someday.  When that day comes, you use it and then throw it back in the pile just in case you need to use it again.  It might not fit the job exactly but it will do well enough for the purpose.

We don’t like to be considered something of no real value that is kept because it might be useful some time or other.  We don’t like to find something in our mailbox that thinks so little of us, that it demeans us by being addressed to “occupant,” although technology now enables the senders to put our names on it. And it’s even worse when it is sent by some thing that hides behind a vague but noble-sounding name that conceals the identity of the real people who think we, the occupants, are junk—something they can use for their own purposes whenever they want to use us and then throw back on the pile just in case they want to use us again.

Junk sends junk.   Junk does junk.

We’re not junk in this house.   Treat us as junk at your own peril.