Dear President Trump, You and Kim Jong Un have been doing some serious fawning over each other lately, touting your terrific relationship and how it’s bound to lead to wonderful things (or the more syllabically manageable “very good things” that you offered). Here are a couple of highlights I pulled out of the WP yesterday: … Continue reading The dictator-magnet
Critical Thinking
Oregon’s exclusion laws weren’t part of the state history curriculum
Dear President Trump, Have you ever been to Oregon? My brother told me the other day that you’re planning a rally there soon; he’d very much like to be in another state when you’re there. A cursory Google search using the words “Trump” and “Oregon” shows that you visited Oregon in 2016 and that you … Continue reading Oregon’s exclusion laws weren’t part of the state history curriculum
Contemporary gerrymandering and who counted as people way back when ~ Some serious deja vu
Dear President Trump, You must have done a little happy dance when you saw that your SCOTUS boys came through for you and yours on the gerrymandering case. I got about three pages through Robert’s majority opinion and was feeling so queasy that I had to stop and find Kagan’s dissent. Part of the Roberts-quease … Continue reading Contemporary gerrymandering and who counted as people way back when ~ Some serious deja vu
“Political” isn’t a dirty word
Dear President Trump, I've thought some more about both the “stop to think” and “Kindness is Magic” messages I wrote to you about yesterday and want to add a couple more things about them. First, I realized this morning that the encouragement to “stop to think” is probably mostly about being intentional about thinking, it’s … Continue reading “Political” isn’t a dirty word
“Kindness is Magic”
Dear President Trump, You know by now that I’m a walker (or rather your threat-checker team knows this about me). I especially like to walk in cities that I’m visiting and over my three days in Minneapolis I probably logged about 8 miles of walking, not counting the regular to-ing and fro-ing around the conference. … Continue reading “Kindness is Magic”
May we keep speaking up even when no one seems to be listening
Dear President Trump, I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m blogging my letters to you in addition to posting them to your contact page. I don’t think I’ve told you, though, that the WordPress hosting site I use makes it super easy to track the action that individual posts do and don’t get. Maybe it’s … Continue reading May we keep speaking up even when no one seems to be listening
Plausible ignorance
Dear President Trump, I just looked up “plausible deniability” again because I can’t keep the concept straight in my head and wanted to see if it might be a way of understanding what you said the other day about happily taking opposition information from foreign sources. It isn’t. It almost certainly does apply to other … Continue reading Plausible ignorance
Time is critical here
Dear President Trump, The other day I wrote in reference to you: “We’ve got to focus on damage control, removal, and renewal and we can’t do all this incredibly hard work if we exhaust ourselves worrying about dumb shit.” I still think this is correct, but after further consideration I’ve come to the conclusion that … Continue reading Time is critical here
May we make peace with limits
Dear President Trump, Hey, good morning. Where are you today? I don’t feel like checking your schedule so I’ll assume you are back in DC, ready to menace us from up close this week. I can’t find the article now, but did you see the news that’s come out recently telling us that you eat … Continue reading May we make peace with limits
Damage control, removal, and renewal
Dear President Trump, While Laura appreciated me sending you the suggestion that you resign for her birthday, she would have been much happier had you actually done it. In fact, there would be rejoicing the world round if you and your illegitimate lackeys were to slink off with your tails tucked. So how about it? … Continue reading Damage control, removal, and renewal