Even though we’re on the Do Not Call List that doesn’t stop unwanted phone calls. Depending on my mood I either politely defer and hang up or adopt a Haitian accent and place a dire voodoo curse on the caller. Unfortunately, I was in a benevolent mood when a recent call came and answered politely.

As they so often do, this one began with a man saying “Hello, may I speak to Paul please?” Though I often respond to this query by saying Paul was abducted by aliens and hasn’t been returned yet, I confessed that I was he (him?). “Paul,” the caller continued, “this is President Barak Obama and I’m calling to ask…”

I’ve heard a lot of spiels from telemarketers but this took the cake! I couldn’t imagine what this idiot thought he could sell me by pretending to be the president. So I cut him off: “Yeah, sure you are –“ but just before I hung up the caller said “no, really, I am President Obama and I need to talk to you about…”

“If you really are the president, prove it.” The caller then said, “Here, Joe, tell him who I am.” Another man took the phone and said “Hi. You’re Joe Biden, Vice-president of Armenia. May I speak to Vladimir Putin please?”

Geez – anyone that incoherent had to be Joe Biden! Maybe this was legit. I asked him to give the phone back to the President. “Okay, that sounded like the VP. Maybe you really are Obama. But why in the world are you calling me???”

“Well, Paul, I’m calling because I see that you’re a registered Democrat…” Wow! The Dems must really be desperate for money if the president is calling schlubs like me to ask for a few bucks! But he went on “… and we were wondering if you might be interested in running for political office.”

“I don’t know, that takes a lot of work. What office do you have in mind?”

“President.”

“Whoa – you must have the wrong person – you want me to run for president?” I told him there had to be a mistake but he was firm. “No, Paul, we think you could be the man for the job.” I was dumbfounded and stammered something about the Democrats already having Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. “Come on, Paul. Hillary’s got A LOT of baggage and Bernie’s insulting all our wealthy donors. Neither one of them stands a chance against Donald Trump.”

“Well, what about Joe Biden? Isn’t he thinking about running?”

“Didn’t you just talk to him?”

“Oh, yeah. But why ask me?” I was hoping he’d say that it was because of my influential Albion News columns but he replied “Because your name was the next one on the list.”

Talk about a buzz kill! Apparently Obama was calling every registered Democrat in the country hoping to find someone willing to take on Trump. I didn’t know how many he’d called before me but they’d obviously all said “no.” And I could see why. Who would want to stand in the path of Hurricane Donald?

Thinking quickly I yelled “Help, I’m being abducted by aliens!” and hung up the phone, narrowly saving myself from a fate worse than a Martian medical probe.

It seems, though, that other Republicans don’t want to face Trump either. Just the next evening after receiving Obama’s call I got one from Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus asking “Paul, how would you like to run for president?”

When my kids were in grade school they enjoyed the adventures of a character named Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley was a simple drawing of a boy that was mailed from school to school. Kids at each school would take Flat Stanley home for a night and then write about the adventures they had with him. Flat Stanley and the stories of his exploits would then be mailed to another school and over time Flat Stanley traveled around the world and met lots and lots of young people.

Flat Stanley was so well known that apparently when some of the Canadian students he visited grew up they modernized him, creating a hitchhiking robot named HitchBOT. Standing about three feet tall, HitchBOT was solar powered and could carry on limited conversations with the strangers he encountered. His position was tracked with GPS and every 20 minutes he would snap of photo of what was going on around him.

HitchBOT would be picked up by strangers, taken on an adventure, and then left off for someone else to interact with. He traveled across Canada and through parts of Europe before coming to the United States a few months ago. Here he rode the New York City subway and attended a Boston Red Sox game. But when he was dropped off in Philadelphia – the City of Brotherly Love – his arms were torn off and his electronics smashed beyond repair.

Like those of Flat Stanley, HitchBOT’s adventures were a story about the people he met and the society they represented. So it’s caused a good deal of consternation that HitchBOT was able to safely traverse much of the Western world only to be destroyed not long after reaching America. Experts are having a field day analyzing what this says about our nation.

Sociology professor Jeff Ferrell at Texas Christian University, for example, has called HitchBOT’s demise a “parable about American violence.” Ferrall added that “culturally, there’s sort of a meanness in the American soul that isn’t present in Canada and other places, so in some ways I found it too typical.” Justice professor Richard R. Bennett of American University agreed, saying “There’s certainly a different kind of culture in parts of the United States, and violence is kind of an expression of that culture…”

What a sad commentary on our nation’s character — and it isn’t just with regard to violence that America differs from its allies. Upon returning to America after a lengthy stay in Europe, Roger Cohen recently wrote in the New York Times that he was “struck by the crumbling infrastructure, the paucity of public spaces, the conspicuous waste (of food and energy above all), the dirtiness of cities and the acuteness of their poverty.”

One can’t help but wonder how many of the ills Cohen perceives are related to our spirit of meanness. How many times has meanness been at the root of the political decisions not to address infrastructure, waste and poverty? Often this meanness is directed towards minorities and the poor, but one need only observe the amount of violence found in many poorer neighborhoods to realize that meanness is flourishing at all socio-economic levels.

Donald Trump is currently dominating the field of Republican presidential candidates with his unapologetic meanness towards immigrants, women and anyone else who captures his attention. Trump appears to be expressing the sentiments of a significant number of conservatives and along with whoever “killed” the hapless HitchBOT, is providing a disquieting window into the darker corners of America’s soul.