How Much?

 I pledge allegiance

to the check that Elon will write me

and to those principles

I left behind

I only care

about the cash in my pocket

This revamped version comes to us via the raffle that Elongated Mush is currently running. “We want to try to get over a million, maybe two million voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment. We are going to be awarding one million dollars randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election." One might pause briefly to wonder about the pronoun choice, but I expect that since corporations are people and Elon has enough money to be a plural, why not?

If you're one of those people who read that pitch and wondered if this is entirely legal, fret not. 

It isn't. 

Federal law makes it a crime for anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting.”

But never mind all that legal mumbo jumbo. All you have to do is add your name to a list that says it is a  "Petition In Favor of Free Speech and the Right To Bear Arms." Don't spend too much time reading all that fine print at the bottom. You support the Constitution, don't you? Specifically those first two amendments, the ones that Elongated Mush, an immigrant who may or may not have eaten a dog, would like you to care about more than anything else. And since he's been bounding around on stages supporting one particular candidate, he might prefer if you would cast your vote in that general direction. 

Does any of this leave a bad taste in your mouth? Like Freedom is now for sale, and the chance to be a millionaire seems totally worth it unless you consider that by the time you slice off the twenty-two percent federal tax plus whatever your state might need for your privilege to say you "won big" by putting your name on that dotted line, you probably won't be shifting brackets anytime soon. 

Would it be worth subverting the democratic process? How much is your vote worth? 

"In God We Trust - All Others Pay Cash" - Jean Shepherd