Dear President Trump,

Yesterday we peeked in the window of a gallery downtown that was closed. The bleached, white-washed American flag with plastic stripes and star background full of shredded money hanging in the front window is a strong, pointed piece as are cutout iron strips that say “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength,” and “War is Peace,” but it’s the exhibit on the back wall that’s the show stopper for me. It’s a freestanding wall painted a deep cerulean blue that is covered with a grid of 110 anatomically correct renditions of uteruses with ovaries and fallopian tubes each made from three brass colored coat hangers. It’s called “Dangers of Nostalgia in Wallpaper Form (in utero).” Holly Ballard Martz is the artist. The “wallpaper” is beautiful and it’s scary as hell.

It’s been clear from the beginning of your candidacy that you’d just as soon drag women by their hair back into the funhouse of “the good old days” and Ballard Martz absolutely cut to the chase with this installation. With everything that’s at stake, I wish I had some way to make sure you leave Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski alone. I’m worried about them and what you will do to make their lives living hells.

And what about Justice Kennedy? Did he really decide to retire all on his own? Maybe. But why had he already hired four clerks for the upcoming term? Why all the chatter between the two of you about his son? His son who was the global head of real estate for Deutsche Bank when he arranged over a billion dollars in loans for you when no one else would touch you. Snopes Fact Check says there’s not enough to prove the timing of Kennedy’s retirement has anything to do with his son’s past business dealings with you, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck….

Whatever you did or didn’t do to hasten Kennedy’s retirement and whatever you do or do not threaten Collins and Murkowski with, we aren’t going back to your good old dark ages. You can make sick sideways threats about your base being strong and ready to take out the other side, but the Jeannie is out of the bottle and you can’t stuff her back in – we aren’t going back into alleys to terminate pregnancies and we aren’t going back into closets with our relationships. It’s just not going to happen.

May you be safe from your own machinations.
May you be happy to stop feeding your base cynical lies.
May you realize you are only as healthy as Vladimir allows you to be.
May you leave us in peace.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson