Since 1980, the presidential candidate who has the highest mask sales for Halloween has won the election.

Is this by chance?

Well, the chances that this is completely random is .5^10, or 1/1024.

So it is probably not random.

How can this be? I mean these things are not related at all, are they? Buying a dumb creepy rubber mask actually predicts the winner of the presidential election? No way.

But if you think about it a bit there is something to this. When a person gets into the consciousness of society, they become bigger than just a simple person; they become an idea. A brand. Larger than life. And most importantly….famous. And fame rules. Who would win your elementary school elections? Who would win Prom Queen? The popular person, that’s who. Granted, this is at a larger scale, and there is no doubt that much of Trump’s popularity is negative. But so what? I mean did everyone like the Prom Queen? So how did she win? It seems that negative attention is still attention, and that is what wins in the end.

So knowing this, I think if you are a Trump hater like myself, we should all stop using the words he repeats, like ‘double down’, ‘biggly’, and ‘fake news’. These are words that people use regularly now that were rarely heard before. These words are the residue of Trump’s success and honestly we as a whole have to stop keeping his ideas alive, even when mocking him. The media is not helping on this front at all, parroting all of his idiot language and using it as a common lexicon now. Even Trump haters are not aiding in the process. Yes when we see Colbert and Seth Meyers do their mocking of Trump, it is sort of funny. But the reality is that all of this helps in the long run. Again, fame rules. And the more we pay attention to Trump and his absurdity, I really believe this increases his probability of winning the next election.

So my Valentine’s Day resolution (because I think that is a thing, right?) is to NEVER use phrases like ‘fake news’ and ‘double down’ and call out people that do. I am sure that will pretty much alienate me from the hoi polloi, but there are bigger stakes at hand than my local acceptance in my small cadre of people. Now I’m not saying I’m a Jesus Christ figure…….but yeah….I sort of am.