President* Trump,

Did you do it yourself or was there someone on the construction crew who is about your height who got to (had to) pretend they are you at the lectern while others figured out whether the round US seal that was going to frame your head was positioned just right from all the relevant camera angles? I did read a couple of the WP articles and editorials about your big drone-turned-riff last night and it sounds like it was absolutely dreadful bullshit, but it’s the visual that I think you all were really after. Little old you, the one who’s been the biggest best savior to Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln, the one who embodies the Second Coming for God-fearing law and order types, were up there telling the world how fantastically fantastic the country is doing under your awesome leadership with the glowing golden edge circle behind your head for all the world looking just like a halo – what a coincidence! Who would have thought?

I made myself look closely at one of the half dozen stills in the WP showing you and your halo and the damn thing is not only glowing, but the edge of the inner blue portion is zig-zagged so that it looks exactly like a cross between the halos typically depicted on the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Virgin Mary. Somebody seriously went to town on this theme.

Are they thinking people will believe you’re so all powerful and such a miracle worker that you magically protected everyone in the audience from COVID-19 infection? Are they counting on you having such a direct line to The Almighty that you didn’t need to say a word or do any laying on of hands (yuck) to insure that every last one of those precious props packed in like so many mask-less sardines doesn’t get sick with COVID in the next couple of weeks? Or, more likely, are they counting on no one in that crowd being willing to submit to contact tracing efforts should they get sick? I mean, what an invasion of one’s privacy that would be and the state has no more right to such information than it does to mandate mask-wearing in the midst of an airborne, highly contagious, highly lethal viral pandemic. So really, either way – you’re covered in that there will be plenty of plausible deniability regarding a COVID outbreak among those props and you’ll still have nutty religious-types fawning over the idea that their savior (you) protected all those righteous citizens from infection, saying to one another “see, we don’t need no damn public health restrictions. We’ve got the Donald.”

Again, in normal times, under normal circumstances, I would dismiss myself and would chalk this up to an overblown, overstated read of the visuals you all were projecting – but damn, if anything, I worry that I’m missing the more subtle cues. What I do see is enough to make me gag and cringe. And feel really, really sad. If someone who is such a malignant charlatan can so capture the imagination and hijack the decency of so many and get them to believe he’s the f-ing Second Coming of Christ, when all of his behavior is antithetical to Jesus’s, then up really is down because we apparently now live in a country where evil is good, where actually, evil is great. Evil has a glowing blue and gold halo encircling its head, obscuring its horns, lending a bewitching bedazzle as it spews lies, incites violence, and spreads hate.

And you all desecrated Leonard Cohen’s beautiful Hallelujah song. You’re the lowest of the low. For so many reasons. His estate told you “no” but you did it anyway so you now you can toss this disrespectful boundary crossing onto that colossal pile of asshole moves of yours. I hope they sue the RNC (and you personally) for every last crooked penny you all have.

May we be safe from false prophets.
May we be willing to call them out.
May we be strong and resist being f-ing hoodwinked. It shouldn’t be that hard.
May we accept that millions of Americans have indefinitely parked their commonsense.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson