America for all

Dear Mr. Trump,

I have never understood why people choose to be cruel. Even if one does not have much for empathy, being cruel to people rarely works in favor of the cruel person. You have been exceedingly cruel to minority communities. I hear on the news that you are full of self-pity, that you think the world has been so terribly unfair to you.

You have lost more money than your father ever gave you, stolen more money from small business people than we can easily count, and betrayed just about everyone who has ever supported you.

I feel so badly for your supporters. As they come to grips with the lies you told them, their hearts must surely break. I wonder if you know what a broken heart even feels like. I doubt it. To have a heart that can break, one must love and trust, and you do neither. So let me tell you that heart break settles into your chest, not really where your lungs are, because breathing doesn’t touch this heavy feeling. It settles back, behind that, but it has vines with thorns that reach into one’s throat, pulling as if the whole of one’s being might collapse inward. Those same vines, wind and twist up to one’s eyes. They poison tears, so that no matter how many you cry, the pain does not lessen. Heartbreak makes tears of one’s soul, as common tears often won’t flow and it feels like one’s very being has stopped.

That sir, is what you do to people.

You encourage fear like a virus and ironically, ignorance of real virus that is fully intent on tearing families apart, grinding health care workers to the bone, and leaving corpses where communities once stood. People in the Middle Ages have a better understanding of biology than you do. No, we can not inject disinfectant, bleach, or sunlight.

You encourage hate to rage like a forest fire, ripping through communities, riding on the underbrush of racial hatred that no amount of reasoning has ever been able to clean out. That underbrush has been there so long, cloaked in the twisting of the Gospel that allowed people to keep slaves in the way they did in the South, that allowed and even made Jim Crow seem ‘righteous’, that underbrush of hatred is the fiber that gets woven into the ‘Stars and Bars’, which thanks to your incitement, went running through the very halls of the Capital this year.

At least the Capital Hill Insurrectionists were better to our institutes of government than you have been. When arrested and questioned, they are honest about what they did and why they did it, which puts them way beyond your reach in the ethical spectrum. At least they beat people with their own hands. You just rile people up, hateful words at Mexican people, Chinese people, trans people, all so you can look like a hero to your followers, who would quite literally murder for you.

I have personally been attacked in parking lots because I don’t look male enough. Your followers shout your name, claim you made everything okay for them. I’m an honorably discharged veteran, the child of a retired veteran, and an American citizen who has not broken laws nor ever intentionally harmed anyone. When I served in the military, I learned honor and courage. It’s too bad you never even tried to serve. It would have done you good. Your followers raised their fist to me. You gave them freedom and set their hate on fire.

And then there’s your wall! I’ve been meaning to draw your wall for months now. This black imposing wall, with human skulls rolling up against it like tumbleweeds. That’s your wall. Your wall is a monument to inhumanity, selfishness, greed, and lies.

So I feel badly for your followers. One day they will understand who and what you are and see that reflection in themselves. The truth always comes out.

I look forward to following your various trials, Mr. Trump.