To all the citizens of the world,

I am writing to all because we have a huge problem that I’d like to call The Donald Trump Paradox.

It’s like we’re all his potential employers and he rocks up as a comically bad job interviewee and fails to meet a single criteria for the job and doesn’t want it and is aggressive and silly and basically so outrageous and so over the top that we’re like, we have to hire this guy. We just have to see how it turns out.

But the thing is, we know how it could turn out, because he’s already told us. He’s going to try to build walls that separate races and countries. He’s going to try to turn minorities against each other. He’s going to try to target middle-to-lower working class America in 2016: the frustration, the sadness, the confusion that we all feel in our day-to-day lives when we can look at Instagram and we can look at our bank accounts and we look at the fact that we can literally buy drones and we’re like, holy shit, this is the future that was promised in Back To The Future and Donald Trump is Biff and the Marty McFlys might lose and this is really weird and kind of sad and I think I want my time and money back? Or I just want to have a really long nap in the sunshine, or go play with the Pokémon from my childhood. Or I just want a really good cuddle (or, whatever you like in the place of ‘a really good cuddle’ that feels good and healthy and gives us the energy to keep moving forward).

The thing is, though, the problems were already here. Donald Trump didn’t invent racism: we’re already racist. He didn’t invent homophobia: we’re already homophobic. He didn’t invent sexism: we’re already sexist. He didn’t invent divides between religions and cultures: we’re already divided. He didn’t invent anything except a fascinating personal brand.

We know we’re already lonely. We’re already feeling torn apart. We’re already reeling from old wars and old wounds and centuries-old and millennia-old divisions and conflicts and land grabs and resource shortages and rising sea levels. We’re already traumatised and exhausted and wondering if there’s food and when we can just have a good rest. We’re already struggling to get out the door and we’re struggling in traffic and we’re struggling with rising prices and we’re struggling with our families and we’re struggling to be heard and we’re struggling to listen.

And, if you’re a Muslim or an Hispanic or Black especially, but also if you’re some flavour of queer or you’re poor or you have a chronic condition or you’re injured and you don’t have insurance, or you’re old or you’re young or you’re a woman or you’re a trans woman or if you’ve been to prison or you’re a poor white guy or you struggle with formal education: we’re struggling. And some of us struggle under unimaginable weights every day and don’t even notice it anymore because our lives and our families’ lives and our race’s lives have always been heavy.

So we already know struggle. And we already know that Donald Trump is the wrong answer. He’s amazing at building up drama that reaches people, he’s got tonnes of volume and stamina and force that can sound like true energy and clarity and power if we’re tired and we’re mishearing. He’s so entertaining because that’s what he is: an entertainer.

We’ve elected an entertainer like that to power before and it was an international billion-dollar nightmare. Hitler was an art school dropout with mother issues and across Europe and America in the 20s and 30s people were saying the 20s and 30s equivalent of ‘Hey guys. Guys. There’s this dude and he’s ridiculous, but oh my goodness, you should hear the things he says, they’re so over the top. It’s so bad but I can’t look away because I can’t wait to see what happens next.’ No one would buy a used car from Hitler or Trump but we run the risk of giving them the reigns because it seems so absurd that they could take or use power.

You know how we have that feeling, like we can’t wait to see what happens next? We can wait. Seriously, let’s wait. Like, maybe 10,000 years. Like, let’s maybe wait to make sure that we never accidentally elect a total numpty who has given us every reason to believe that he is a racist, sexist, ableist, homophobe to a position of global power. We did it once before and it sucked for literally everyone who wasn’t Hitler and it created massive global problems for generations and had far-reaching, unintended consequences. Basically, we’re still circling the trauma drain. (Don’t worry, we can heal from trauma; we just need to take all our bravery and all our cowardice and all our intelligence and all our silliness and all our actions and all our mistakes and use our wisdom and intuition to unflinchingly look at what came before; see that we can’t change past actions by others; see that there is nothing that could have been done differently because people were working with the best insights that they had available at the time; and create forgiveness and a commitment to a new vision of what comes next. I’m a multiple sexual assault survivor with developmental trauma and genetic predispositions and traits of the kinds of conditions that still land people in the loony bin getting electroshock therapy — if I can heal in a very short space of time, comparatively, anyone can).

We have time. We can heal. We can be kind. We can be kind across diverse cultures, across diverse genders, across diverse sexualities, across diverse backgrounds, across diverse families. We can be a giant weirdo family of diversity. We already are: we just don’t know it. We keep trying to mess with our sleazy cousin secretly because he’s so annoying and keep yelling at our racist uncle to STFU already. (Our sleazy cousin is Russia and our racist old uncle is America.)

Hey y’all, this is the goddamn future. We have robots and they let us talk to each other and they let people with different abilities access the world in new ways: they’re kickass. We have gay marriage in poorer countries. There was a small business in Australia that couldn’t make money out of selling whips for horses anymore so they started selling them to kinky folk instead and they became a really successful niche operation.

We are seeing the capacity to run entire countries using renewable power.

We know that women can lead homes and businesses and countries. We know that some strong people can transition from one gender to another. We know that poor people aren’t poor because they suck; they’re poor because their parents were likely poor or because they got sick or because they’re subject to discrimination due to factors beyond their control. We have a goddamn world wide web of information that connects us all and changes us all and makes us reach towards each other and makes us speak into the ether hoping someone hears us.

I’m speaking into the ether. I don’t know your name or your favourite song or why you broke up with that person or why that person broke up with you or why you’re a jerk sometimes without ever meaning to be, but I do love you. I know it’s weird, that I don’t need to know the finer details to already love you, but love is weird. It’s also really great though, hey. We sing songs about it and we write poems about it and we play out patterns we don’t understand and accidentally mess up reaching for the wrong thing when we’ve never had it and we want it even though it hurts sometimes and we need it in order to be OK.

If you’re afraid and you want to talk, then share this and say ‘I’m afraid’. If you want to talk to your parents but they don’t speak English then the interwebs can help translate. If your colleague is racist but has a gay son then share this. If you’re a racist gay son then this is for you. It’s for all of you. We’re all the problem, and we’re all the solution.

Look, about Donald Trump. You’re all so much smarter than to elect him into a position of serious global power. He’s so entertaining and great, we do need to listen to him, we should absolutely hire him, but let’s give him the right role. We make him a political commentator and if a candidate can hold their own against him we know they’ve got the actual chops to lead. Fox News: just hire the guy already. He can be our canary at the top of the mine: if Donald Trump turns yellower and falls off his perch, we know something — in a seriously messed up world — has gone even more disastrously wrong.

And the thing is, ‘disastrously wrong’ just means more trauma, and we already know what to do to heal. If it takes a crisis, then it takes a crisis. However, any one of us can also decide at any time and for any reason (including for no reason at all) that we want to heal, and bring healing to our relationships, and our work, and our communities, and our families. We can decide to be done with torture and pain, with torturing and paining, with self-torture and the torture of others, and commit to a vision of a world that isn’t torturous. One that is beautiful and romantic, safe and healthy.

Let’s elect people who are kind, who want to bring us together. Someone we’d buy a car from. Someone who would make an amazing real estate agent because we’d want to talk to them about our home. Someone we’d want to have round to dinner or buy a drink or pray with or sit with after we’ve been devastated by grief or loss, or who we’d want to see in our hospital room if we were sick (and could afford hospital). Someone who sounds like that lovely person you met one time. Someone who sounds like me, or like you. Someone who knows poverty and budgets like they’re down to their last $50 because they’ve been down, or they are down, to their last $50. Someone who is beloved in their community or at least seen and respected, or alternatively someone who is denigrated because of nothing they can or should change, and who still holds their head up high and goes to work in the world each day. Someone who knows struggle: one of us.

All my love,

Just another one of us.