The Lottery

Here’s a grim conflation of thoughts: on this day (January 11), the first recorded state lottery occurred in 1569—Queen Elizabeth I instituted it in England (read more here).

Once that caught on, other lotteries popped up various places, including the early American colonies, where lotteries helped capitalize early development.

Now, in 2016 the U.S. is seized with an overwhelming lottery fever with the Powerball in January, which has reached—as I write this—a total of over 1 billion dollars.  Yes, I did write Billion. (No doubt, Queen Elizabeth I would LOVE such a national outpouring of … madness for money.)

Of course, there have been other lotteries.  Think the draft lottery in the 1960s, during the Vietnam conflict. Thousands of men drew the wrong number, were sent to Vietnam and then were killed there.

One of the most astonishing and horrifying stories in American literature is Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery.”*  It is such a riveting story, and when you read it the first time—it takes your breath away.

Oh, my—I just had a sudden awful thought. Since Donald Trump is so derisive and dismissive of immigrants in our country, I hope he doesn’t read the story “The Lottery.” It might give him an idea of how to “get rid of immigrants.” One at a time.

Nah—I feel a bit relieved. Such an approach while sensational, would be far too slow, not splashy enough for his Trumpness.** Does this conflated thought sound crazy to you? Me, too.  But then, I thought people taking his Trumpness seriously and actually voting for him sounded crazy.

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*If you have not read it, you can here.

** From here ever after, I shall refer to him as his Trumpness.