10 September—Some people may celebrate—rather than observe—today as the first anniversary (or one-year anniversary, as grammatically deficient pleonasts would put it) of the death of Charlie Kirk, the reprehensible founder and noisome mouthpiece of the United States Bund of Neue Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth Redivivus), more commonly known as Turning Point USA. Good people—even those who decry violence against beast, man, life and nature in general, and property—don’t miss the irredeemable insult to humanity.

The only downsides to Charlie Kirk’s death, it may be argued, are that it was indeed violent and that it made a martyr of the young scumbag. And we’ll leave it there as we move on to electoral desperation and pandering.

Politicians are justifiably reviled for buying votes by promising to do all manner of things—favors for gullible constituents—if they’re elected and/or re-elected. That’s the name of the game. Connecticut’s Democrat give-away Governor Ned Lamont, for instance, isn’t alone in taking incessant pounding—only from the right, to be sure—for his incessant unjustifiably inflated wages, salaries, concessions, and other gratuities to (mostly unionized and otherwise privileged) state employees and allegedly underprivileged voters.

Reprehensible as pandering may be, often as not it works, so don’t knock it. It’s a political reality and a way of life. You can be sure it’ll work this year. And not just in Connecticut. Just ask Lamont and his fellow Democrats. Okay, they won’t admit it, so just look at the record.

So yesterday Donald Trump made no bones about buying votes for his loyal Trumpublican U.S. senators and representatives directly and immediately and for himself indirectly for the moment—by promising to give every American adult five thousand dollars if and only if Trumpublicans maintain majorities in both houses of Congress.

Was that trillion-dollar pander an example of Trump’s undeniable histrionic demagogical brilliance and insouciant malfeasance or—more likely—a confirmation of his desperation, since he’s seen the writing on the wall?

In all events, unless he has a different definition of adults in mind, presumably Trump means all citizens of voting age, even those who don’t vote for his flunkies, given allegedly secret ballots. But with Trump you never know. Anything.

Certainly the five-thou-a-head promise is nothing but typical Trumpish hot-air headline grandstanding that, given Trump’s long and consistent record of broken promises and other lies, nobody with even a modicum of intelligence should believe. And it’s illegal in all events, as if that would stop Trump. But an adamantly gullible third of American voters are bound to fall for it.

So what else is new?