Dear President Trump,

Two things this morning got me muttering “f*cking babies” over and over, but before I tell you what they are I want to say that I decided it would be better to go with “f*cking snowflakes” instead since I don’t want to denigrate babies. Babies are supposed to get fussy and cry. They need to cry when they are hungry or wet or just uncomfortable because they need to alert people who can help them to the fact that something is wrong and they can’t fix it themselves. We wouldn’t exist as a species if babies didn’t cry, or at least not as we know ourselves. Babies are supposed to be babies and it’s not fair to compare adults who are being whiny and/or weak dickheads to them. So I won’t and will stick with “f*cking snowflakes.” I’d go with “f*cking dickheads,” but that doesn’t capture the over the top fragility on display in the two messed up situations that got me going this morning the way “f*cking snowflakes” does (and yes, I am going for a personal record for how many times I can type “f*cking” in a single letter).

The first trigger for my foul-sotto voce-ness this morning is the WP article by Annie Linsky about Elizabeth Warren’s plan for taxing the ultra-wealthy (50-million plus-ers) 2 cents on every dollar of their assets over the 50 million mark annually (it would be 3 cents for billionaires but for some reason the article didn’t go into that). After doing a very cursory overview of the tax plan, the article pivots and talks about how if this plan had been in place since 1982 (no clue why that year was chosen), the fortunes of the various obscenely wealthy individuals and families we have to hear about all the time would be half what they are today. Oh boo hoo.

Here’s the breakdown according to the article:

“Instead of $97 billion, Microsoft founder Bill Gates would now have $36.4 billion, according to the figures. Rather than $44.9 billion, Walmart heiress Alice Walton would be sitting on $15 billion. Instead of $160 billion, Amazon founder (and Washington Post owner) Jeff Bezos would have $86.8 billion.”

Of course none of these ultra-wealthy people or any others like them were interviewed for the article, but she still found plenty of people to wring their hands that Warren’s plan is going to tank because “oh my, insanely unfair wealth accumulation would be slowed down some and a relatively tiny portion of the money would go to support the people and infrastructure that made that obscene wealth accumulation possible in the first place, oh heavens – what a travesty.” Ok. I know I’m being snide and I’m not at my best when I’m snide, but once again, holy Jesus, if defending the rights of billionaires to maximize their billions is the best you all can do, then good luck.

And by the way, don’t try to bring up the philanthropic nah-nah-nahs (as in whatever’s) here – if there were no such things as billionaires and our economic system were geared to benefiting and fundamentally supporting the greater good (here in the US and globally), there wouldn’t be nearly the devastating poverty and disease (etc.) that billionaires so often get kudos for “addressing.”

So that’s “fucking snowflakes” example #1.

“Fucking snowflakes” Example #2 comes to us from the great state of North Carolina where Speaker of the House, Tim Moore (R), called a surprise vote to veto Governor Roy Cooper’s (D) budget when most of the Democratic Representatives were away from the chamber at 9/11 memorials honoring the victims and first responders. Apparently the House Rules person, David Lewis (R), had promised no votes would be taken and apparently Tim Moore didn’t care. He’d been trying like the dickens to get that veto passed, but since he couldn’t do it fair and square, he resorted to a weakling dickhead move and called for the vote when he knew he could get two-thirds of the votes cast (as best I can tell this is a supermajority in that body). That was such a disgusting move that if there is such a thing as karmic rebirth, Moore is coming back as the biome in a warthog’s colon and it’s going to take him several millennia to make it back to a mammalian life form.

But oh did Representative Deb Butler (D) let him have it! She did an awesome job standing up to him even as she had to deal with some toadie turning off her microphone and Moore trying to shout her down. Moore even tried to get the Capitol guards to remove her, but the handful of Democratic colleagues who were there made a semicircle around her so she was protected. She said all the right things about how he was acting in bad faith, undermining the will of North Carolina voters, and resorting to dirty, low-down tricks. She was fierce and I’m so grateful that this swampiest of swamp moves was called out and that it was all caught on camera. For all the world to see. For all the professed upholders of the Constitution and the rule of law to see. For history to see, and to judge.

May we be safe from desperate, weak people because they are seriously dangerous.
May we be willing to follow Butler’s lead and stand up to them out loud and on camera.
May we restore and significantly improve the health of our democracy.
May we not make peace with either obscene wealth or sleazy power grabs.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson