Suckers

(Re: “Trumpies,” Letters, the Local, Dec. 17)
The letter by Elizabeth McNeil of Sechelt, where she wonders, “…how so many people can fall for this” (referring to the recent election in the USA that saw so many voting for Trump), spurred me also to wonder how this could have happened. So, I put my mind to try to find a plausible explanation, and after much thought, I offer my conclusions to Elizabeth here.
P.T. Barnum, who was the king of the American big-top circuses, in replying to a query about how he was so successful in his business, said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Not very nice, but, to him, it was true. He certainly took advantage and made lots of cash from those “suckers.”
Well, now, let’s look at the math. If you use the eligible voters in the 2020 US election to be born from 1930 to 2002 (the last year you would have to be born to vote in 2020), there are 72 years of “suckers” born in the US that voted in this last election. That is a total of 37,843,200 minutes, equalling the same number of “suckers” over that time (you do the math if you want).
Trump took about 74 million votes in this past election. After one subtracts the “suckers” from that figure, it leaves 36,156,800 Trump voters who were arguably not “suckers.” From what I see and hear in the news, the 36 million-plus will be the number of pardon-seekers that will now come forward just before Trump is forcibly ejected from the White House. So, dear Elizabeth, that’s how I figure how and why so many Americans voted for this modern-day P.T. Barnum.
Michael Storr, Gibsons