Dear President Trump,

Oh, oh, oh is there no end of shitty stuff that’s burbled up in the last 24, 48, 72, 96, etc. hours; no shortage whatsoever of mind-blowing crap that you and your hench-people have foisted on the rest of us. Then there’s the recent WP report piecing together how Russia manipulated Bernie Sander’s followers. It included how B.S. told Vermont Public Radio last year that his campaign staff knew Russia was manipulating things in their favor (and yours) only to have his campaign manager later claim B.S. misspoke, that they no-way, no-how knew anything about Russia’s involvement in election rigging. I think this should be utterly disqualifying and that B.S. needs to tuck his tail and slink off.

Beyond getting that information about B.S. off my chest, I’m not in the mood to enumerate the other recent horrors and instead want to call out some positives.

Positives #1 & #2: I got to visit my mom after my Portland meeting, which was #1 positive J, and she saved the most recent copy of Time magazine for me because the lead article called you out in a most incredible way, which was #2 positive. The article is by Nancy Gibbs and is primarily focused on Joe Biden and the Democrats’ dilemma regarding whether to play by the dirty, nasty rules you and yours have created or hew to the high road and run campaigns imbued with integrity and decency. So how did she call you out (and what did Time publish?)? Here you go: “How could Democrats seriously consider disqualifying gregariously grippy Uncle Joe for his many decades of perhaps discomfiting public displays of affections, when President Pussy Grabber occupies the Oval Office?” OMG! That is some kind of call-it-like-it-is slap down (even as we do need to hold Uncle Joe to account). I bet you don’t want to be Time’s MAN of the Year anymore, do you?

Positive #3: Disembarking from the small plane out on the tarmac this morning we had a long trek into the terminal. I was a few paces behind a 9 or 10 year-old boy and his father who were holding hands, chatting quietly. The dad was probably 6’2” and he was leaning down sideways a bit so he could hear his son (who looked to be perfectly developmentally intact in case you were thinking he needed his dad to hold his hand to guide him, which he patently did not). Why is this a positive? Because there are dads and non-toddler sons in this world who appear to be perfectly comfortable holding hands walking through airports and this bodes well both for their developmental trajectories, and for new, more tender ways for men and boys to be generally.

Positive #4: In case you missed the story, Dr. Katie Bouman is a computer scientist who contributed to the algorithm that stitched together four million billion bytes of data to make the black hole image. This is certainly positive, but it’s not the positive I want to lift up today. Nope. Today’s Positive #4 is how her colleague, Dr. Andrew Chael pushed back on trolls who tried to undermine Bouman by saying he, Chael, had been robbed of the glory he was due. Chael noted the irony of the trolls having picked him as their poster-boy since although he’s white and male, he’s also gay and not exactly the prototypic wronged male they likely meant to trot out. He also said this: “….if you are congratulating me because you have a sexist vendetta against Katie, please go away and reconsider your priorities in life.” Snap!

May we be safe to call out slime balls.
May we be happy to quietly (or loudly) change gender norms.
May we not let you dictate the rules and may we take the healthy, high road all the way home.
May we be peacemakers.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson