Dear President Trump,

I bet you are at it again as far as saying outrageous things in the hopes we will be pulled to the over-the-top obnoxious, shiny bits you’ve tossed out and won’t notice that you are doing something sleazy and sly somewhere else. I hope whatever it is you are up to isn’t too awful. Some people I’ve floated this theory to don’t think you are strategic or smart enough to pull off such a ruse, but others think I’m on to something. I doubt we will ever know for sure whether these twitter outbursts of yours are calculated distractions or simply impulsive rants, but either way you really ought to cut it out.

Leaving your motives for saying ugly, mean, sexist things that diminish the presidency and our country aside, I want us to try a thought experiment. What would our collective lives be like if the first waves of white people to come to this continent from Europe had recognized the Native people’s sovereign right to their land and their ways of life and found ways to fit in with the ancient cultures that were here? On Wednesday when I was driving through the countryside to get from Dulles to Frederick MD I was thinking about how edenesque the lovely rolling hills must have seemed to those first white people and how home it must have been to a particular group of Native people. It would be lazy to completely romanticize things and think that had white people adapted to Native ways of life rather than systematically decimating them, everything now would be peaceful and fair and generally great. Most Native tribes were territorial and they weren’t sitting around together singing camp songs so no doubt there would still be tensions and conflict between groups. But if white people had been humble enough to not assume their God and their way of life was superior to Native people’s gods and ways of life, I bet our planet would be in much better shape, we would have figured out healthier ways to live together, and only birds would be tweeting. I’m honestly not sure what the point of this thought exercise is except that it is comforting to think there are other ways for us all to be in this world together. In a way, these metta blessings are thought exercises in imagining some goodness in you and wishing you well. I’m not sure they are working, but I’m going to keep trying.

May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be measured and wise.
May your life unfold and intersect respectfully.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson