President* Trump,

Last night we decided that the word of the day was “pissy.” Laura, our friend, and I cycled through various analogous words (e.g., irritable, frustrated, grumpy, cranky, grouchy) but when one or the other of us landed on “pissy” we all exclaimed that this was the best descriptor of them all and oddly, arriving at that silly shared understanding defused the cranky, irritable pissy-ness almost completely.

Hmm. Since my spellcheck is objecting to “pissy” I just looked it up and found that our household’s shared understanding of the meaning of the word isn’t included in the online dictionary. I’m down with the two that are there:

1. “relating to or suggestive of urine”
2. “arrogantly argumentative”

….but I definitely think the dictionary people are missing the more common meaning, which maps neatly onto irritability.

Right? You know about being pissy, don’t you? I know you know it from the “arrogantly argumentative” standpoint and you know it’s twin-separated-at-birth otherwise known as “pissing and moaning,” but you’re also regularly quite irritable/pissy – as in, sour, tetchy, and generally hard to be around.

My guess is that you’ve been all of this in spades for the past several days and will almost certainly continue to be a pissy pain in the ass for the foreseeable future since it’s looking more and more like the election isn’t going to break your way. Thank goodness.

You should be super proud though – you finally, actually, got more votes than Hillary Clinton and so far, you’ve out done your-2016-self by almost 6 million votes. And this is all even after you were impeached, ran the ship aground with COVID, alienated all of our traditional allies, and ran up the deficit by a ton. By virtually any measure imaginable, you’ve left all but the wealthiest among us much worse off than when you started. You’ve essentially done the moral and practical equivalent of shooting hundreds of thousands of us on 5^th Avenue and your peeps still love you.

That’s some kind of special sauce you’re serving. What’s your secret? Is it that those who voted for you really believe you have THEIR best interests at heart (or whatever stands in for your heart), that you’re all about remembering and treasuring their forgotten selves? Or do they mostly want to see you humiliate us libs until you make us cry because that’s what they’d like to do themselves? Or is it that your racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant (and so on) rhetoric is soothing to them? Do they feel lifted up when you denigrate and dehumanize others? It’s probably all of this and more, but whatever combination of factors is driving this phenomenon, I don’t think there’s any way to spin it charitably. I just don’t.

Sure, they’re likely choosing to believe the Foxy Friends hype and the spin about how despicable Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are, and many have no doubt convinced themselves that you’re really a good guy underneath all that ‘bravado.’ Maybe. But there’s no reasonable way to justify supporting someone like you or the politicians who’ve enabled you. It’s no longer theoretical as it was in 2016 – your record is completely damning and yet nearly half the electorate is willing to sign on for four more years of you all.

So, where the hell do we go from here?

May we be safe from those who live to crush others.
May we be willing to be dispassionate about what’s going on.
May we have the strength to proffer (and receive) olive branches without compromising our values.
May we accept that olive branches are likely going to be in short supply for a long time.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson