Top Trumps

Dad: "Baaaahaha! What a moron!"

Bill: "Put the mirror down, Dad."

Dad: "Hah. Hah. Get this, Bill. Your fearless leader Donald Trump was all 'Frederick Doug — Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job that is being recognized more and more, I notice.'. It's like he doesn't know anything about the guy! Probably thinks he's still alive and works for the NAACP!"

Bill: "And what do you know about him?"

Dad: "Well I read some stuff. He was a slave when he was young and managed to escape to the north. I know that he spoke often against slavery. And he had pretty sweet hair, from the pictures I've seen."

Bill: "What if I can prove that Donald Trump's comments are correct."

Dad: "Is this some kind of David Blaine shit?"

Bill: "Nope, no trick. It's all in Frederick Douglass's book 'A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.' Have you read it?"

Dad: "Well, no not as such."

Bill: "It's right there on Gutenberg. Free for all to read. You should check it out."

Dad: "And then poof! I'm in a glass box, right?"

Bill: "Just read it."

Dad: "Okeydokey."

3 days of on and off again reading on the phone later 

Bill: "So? Did you get the answer?"

Dad: "I read the whole thing and he didn't mention Trump once. I win!"

Bill: "What did he do?"

Dad: "Well he talked a lot about life as a young slave. It was interesting hearing about all of his various family members that were around on plantations in the area. The dehumanizing way that slaves were loaned out and passed around like a normal farm implement. I was especially moved that, even though he had already escaped he refused to write how he did it for worry of a single chance that some other slave may not be able to do the same because of what he wrote. It was Big Time, as Trump might say. I read a few newspaper articles of the day criticizing the book as fiction, saying they knew the slaveholders in the book and that they were upstanding men who would never do such things. Fake news, as they say."

Bill: "So you have a new insight into his life."

Dad: "Yeah...."

Bill: "So you might say that he's being recognized more and more each day."

Dad: "Dammit Bill! I knew this was some lame ass David Blaine shit."

Bill: "Scoreboard! Trump: 1, Dad: 0. So what else did you learn?"

Dad: "Not to mock people for not knowing things when you don't know anything either."

Bill: "Exactly. I mean, unless they're the freaking president."

Dad: "I know, right? Hahahaha!"


(Editor's note: I did actually read the entire book in a few hours on my phone while Bill watched Sesame Street over a couple of days. It's quick, it's interesting, it's free. Like Schoolhouse Rocky said: "Knowledge is power")