When You Think About It: Donald Trumps Friday

F LoBuono

What to do? Oh, what to do?

I was in a bit of a quandary this morning. I seemed to be suffering from some sort of "reverse writers block"; instead of not knowing what to write about or how, I simply had too many topics to choose from. Today is BLACK FRIDAY, either a shoppers paradise or prison, depending on your point of view. It can indeed be considered the Super Bowl of Shopping. I certainly have a few thoughts to share on that. And, then, there's THE DONALD, Donald Trump, the front runner for the GOP Presidential nomination. His rhetoric gives one amble political grist to mill.

Well, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that I should write about them simultaneously. In my mind, When You Think About It, they represent very many of the same things.

Both are about money over matter; at least WHAT matters - certainly to me.

Black Friday is a retailers wet dream. They encourage wanton spending on every level. The more you buy, the better off you are. The message is clear - the more you HAVE, the more successful you ARE. And, to HAVE things, you must BUY them first. We have all seen the videos of people pummeling one another to simply save a buck. The retailers will barrage us with messages reinforcing exactly that. Material things matter most. Others, of an intrinsic nature become, sadly, less valuable while objects of a blatantly commercial one are coveted. Two words will underscore this difference: The Kardashians.

And, there is urgency to our spending!

DON'T MISS OUT - ONE DAY ONLY - THIS FRIDAY - DEALS LIKE NEVER BEFORE, ETC., ETC., ETC.,

In the end, the only ones being "successful", at least by THEIR standards, are the corporations that own the stores.

Donald Trump, in my mind, is no different. He measures his success by his wealth. In fact, he measures ALL success in dollars and cents. Just like Black Friday he is in our faces demanding that we buy. In his case, it is he himself that he is selling - just like he would one of his multi-million dollar apartments. Whether we liked the style or not, we MUST acknowledge their $$$ value.. In fact, if we did NOT like the style, there must be something wrong with us - because something worth that much money just HAS to be beautiful! And, he sells that line of crap all of the time. Should anyone question his tactics or strategy (of which he has none of either) he immediately attacks their integrity by questioning their net worth! He bullies them with it.

He worships money and equates anything that comes from it as good. Like the Gordon Gekko character of Wall St. fame, Trump is here to remind us: Greed Is Good.

Well, we have a word for that: avarice.

So, we ask, why, then, do so many people support a man who embodies qualities like greed and rapacity that most of the rest of us find abhorrent?

The answer lies with the people who are now currently flooding the retail outlets, buying - at all costs - on BLACK FRIDAY.