I received a personal note from a United States senator the other day.
Because it was from a senator I thought I should read it, even though we have all had enough letters during the high anxiety days of 2020 political races.
Besides, I was flattered just knowing I was being singled out because, I thought, there couldn’t be more than a few hundred thousand other Americans who would be so fortunate to hear from Sen. John Kennedy.
I remember when John F. Kennedy was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952. I also remember his incredible speeches when he was the president of the United States that caused the visions of all Americans to soar heavenward and their imaginations to run wild about what the United States could achieve. Who wouldn’t want to get an email from someone named Sen. John Kennedy?
But, of course, this John Kennedy could not possibly be the beloved John F. Kennedy, later to be known as JFK for eternity!
But the name piqued my interest, so I read his email.
Talk about disappointment. He told me — and I assume the hundreds of thousands of others who got an exact copy of his personal email — that if Joe Biden was able to get Georgia’s two Democrat challengers elected to the U.S. Senate, all hell would break loose!
Yep, America would become a socialist country and we would head down the path of anarchy and all would be lost. That’s what he said.
Wait a minute, didn’t we just conclude a presidential election where upwards of 77 million Americans voted to end our road trip to anarchy and destruction by defeating President Donald Trump?
Didn’t we just vote for President-elect Joe Biden to stop the chaos on our country’s road to ruination?
So what is this fake Sen. John Kennedy trying to pull? And who is he anyway?
I looked him up. He is a senator from Louisiana and he is an ardent, full-on good ol’ boy supporter of the Trump administration (you know, the one the country just voted to end). And, for just a moment he had me thinking he might be like the real John F. Kennedy.
Well, I knew people who knew President John F. Kennedy and this guy ain’t no JFK.
So I think I will ignore his fear tactics, trying to make me and others believe that President-elect Biden, a man who has lived his entire political life in the middle lane of American political thought, is a socialist and danger to America.
I will choose, instead, to believe that the man who has President Kennedy’s name but nothing of his moral strength and intellectual courage is a hoax. He is trying to hoodwink America.
The real John F. Kennedy famously challenged us to ask not what our country could do for us but what we could do for our country.
So, in response to this charlatan’s effort to scare me and others about America’s future I will choose to do something for my country. I will send money to the two people who are trying to put an end to the fear-mongering, identity politics of destruction that Louisiana’s version of John Kennedy represents.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff face difficult odds in their quest to defeat two incumbent GOP senators from Georgia. But, if they win they can give President-elect Biden a chance to reverse the worst of the course set by Trump and rubber-stamped by the GOP Senate.
They are underdogs to be sure, but since when did Americans turn their backs on an underdog? Look them up and, if you like what you see, do something for your country if you can.
I would like to thank @Real John F. Kennedy for the inspiration.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.