A Letter to My Friends

Words for the Start of the Trump Administration

Dear Friends,

Over the last year, we have taken turns reassuring each other.

Before the election, I reassured you that there is too much decency in our country for us to elect Donald Trump.

After the election, you have reassured me that life will go on and good will prevail.

As it turns out, I offered you false comfort. For that, I am sorry. What I am not sorry for is believing in the generosity and intelligence of Americans.

I am not sorry for the same reasons I do not blame President Obama for his failed negotiations with the GOP on an assortment of issues in his first term: we owe it to ourselves, our ancestors and our descendants, to believe that the people around us are acting and negotiating in good faith. Without this, we lose trust in our neighbors. Without trust in our neighbors, we act only for ourselves. When we do that, we become the enemies we perceived our neighbors to be.

That said, I fear the comforts you offer me will also prove to be false.

Today, we watch (or don’t watch) in shock and horror as Donald Trump assumes the U.S. Presidency, the most powerful office in all the lands. Tomorrow, we march and protest in the name of voices likely to be ignored (or willfully quieted) by his administration.

Tomorrow will feel as hopeful as today does hopeless. Be safe, have fun, and feel the power as citizens flood the streets in every major city. But I want to caution against one of the chants that we may all take part in: “Not My President.”

Donald Trump is our president. Yes, he is also a narcissistic man-baby with tiny fingers sore from firm Russian handshakes and endless grabbing of women. But he is our president, and holds all the power and history inherent in the office. Tragic, unconscionable, and true.

We did not vote for this. Many of us actively worked against it. But we must own it. The Trump Presidency was born on our watch, and it is up to us to reckon with it.

President Trump (this is the first time I’ve written or spoken that pair of words in that order) has the largest pulpit on the face of the planet. He and the leadership of his party will take actions that we consider unAmerican.

But that too is a label we need to avoid: unAmerican. Our government is doing it. That inherently makes it American. It will be as American as social security, internment camps, fireworks on July 4th, slavery, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the invasion of Iraq, and the defeat of the Nazis.

There is no American Exceptionalism. We are as susseptible to massive mistakes as any other nation. And we are powerful enough for those mistakes to reverberate wider in the world and farther into the future than any other nation. We just made another one of those mistakes.

Our strength lays in our ability to put those mistakes in the past. Our pride lays in remembering the sacrifice it takes to overcome those mistakes.

When we think about slavery, we think about the four year Civil War and the lives lost to eliminate it. When we think about Jim Crow laws and segregation, we think about Martin Luther King and John Lewis, and the sacrifices made over decades fighting for Civil Rights. When we think about the needless war in Vietnam, we think about the years of demonstrations it took to convince the government to leave it. When we think about the inexcusably late date women got the vote, we think of the suffragettes.

Each of these threats to the health of our democracy and the well-being of our people were domestic. And each of them required average citizens to upend their lives in order to bring about change for years at a time.

Right now, Donald Trump is President of the United States, and party leadership in the house and the senate are willing to rubber stamp his policies in exchange for a rubber stamp on their budget.

To argue that these people do not represent us would be foolish. In the most literal and objective way, they do.

Our job is to put this into the pantheon of American mistakes past. To do so, we will need to work tirelessly against their efforts for years.

We face grave domestic threats, as we have in the past. Do we have the attention span to defeat them this time around?

Every domestic war effort, every battle for the soul of our nation, takes sustained sacrifice — rationing, donating, opening homes to escaping slaves and others, boycotts, strikes, sit ins, travel, letters writing, message distribution, walk outs, voting, running for office, missing work days, missing school days, and much more.

March on Saturday. Debrief on Sunday.

Starting Monday, let us look at our days, weeks, and months moving forward. If they look the same as they did during the Obama administration, we will be lost.

Only by reactivating the patriotism and civil duty we were lucky enough to read about in history classes, will your words of comfort ruling true.

Only then will life go on as we know it now.

And only then will good prevail.

We are generous and intelligent. And we are the majority.

Be safe. Be active. Be American.

Love you.