Dear President Trump,

The universe is a funny, funny place sometimes. It’s also a downright crappy place sometimes, but every now and then there’s a pretty great absurd irony to call out.

A couple of days ago I hit the 600-page mark for the word document where I compose and edit my letters to you and several days before that I went from 98 to 99 followers on my DT letters blog. Yesterday I finally made it to 100 followers, which for me felt like quite an accomplishment since I’m not on any other social media and don’t do anything to promote the blog. Since it’s always fun to see who my followers are, I had to check to see who popped into the #100 spot. Well, it was pretty shocking to see that it was someone who uses your picture for his or her profile and has the handle @BACONSERVATIVE.ORG as in “be a conservative” (I originally didn’t parse it right and puzzled over the “bacon” part – it was late….)

Not surprisingly, BACON is no longer following me, but I think it’s pretty hilarious that this person was my 100^th follower for a few hours. Inexplicably, he/she also actually liked the letter from two days ago with the Julius Goat joke about Barr’s summary and so I was able to get a little more information from that “like.” He/she has a blog titled “Born Free Stay Free TRUMP 2020 bfsfdcd.” Nothing is posted on said blog so the trail stops there as I’m not inclined to spend anymore time trying to figure out who the real person is or why they are using your image.

Even though it frankly was going to be awkward having a follower who’s so invested in being a conservative, I actually wish the person had stayed. I started this letter writing campaign in February 2017 hoping that we could bridge our various divides before we got to some awful point of no return. In those early days of your presidency I spent a lot of time trying to come up with ways to empathize and understand what drove people to vote for you, to believe in you, without letting myself resort to the easy out of thinking they were all stupid or mean or both. I had the occasional person who voted for you make a comment, typically fact-checking me on something, but BACON was going to be my first full-fledged, out in the open, super conservative follower.

Oh well. Maybe they’ll be back. And no matter what, he/she will have the ironic (for both of us) honor of having been my 100^th follower. 🙂

May we be safe and secure enough to peek over or around what divides us.
May we welcome mixed company.
May we all be healthy and strong for the duration.
May we have the courage to be respectful and generous with one another.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson