Dear President Trump,
I know you like winning. You write about it a lot (or someone does on your behalf). Either way, you’re on message and I know you like winning, you like winners and there’s no place in your America for losers. I get it. For the record, it’s not like I’m a huge fan of losers – like it’s some sort of weird fetish of mine or something. I think I’m just learning to manage my expectations differently than you and we might have a different definition of “loser” and “winner”, also.
Anyway, that’s not the point of why I’m writing you. You see, as much as I hate to concede it, I think you have won. When it comes to choosing me over you, it’s not a contest. No one is going to say “that Marc sure has a point” who believes that there is an equivalency between you and any other person on the planet who can run against you. No one is going to say “Marc, I hear what you’re saying about voting for our collective future, not just our wallet” who uses their 401K as an arbiter of the consequence of choosing intrinsic values over extrinsic values this election. No one is going to choose me over you if their mind is already made up, no matter how much respect or kindness there might be. I am surrounded by people who still support you – whether they know I know or not – and just like choosing for kickball at recess, I’m not anyone’s first pick.
And that’s why you have won. Because the only other choice I have is to slowly and methodically remove myself from every neighbor, friend, family member and colleague who will side with you – whether they really like you or not. It’s tough for me. I want to say “this choice is so fundamentally a part of everything I believe to be right versus wrong that I can’t make peace with the fact that you refuse to see the implications for generations beyond you and me – for everything” and yet, if I do, no one is going to fight for me. Not because they might not want to but because you and your cronies have found a way to win at all costs. Fear. And I desperately want to fight it with love.
But love takes time – lots more time than fear and hate. Fear is the way we are wired for survival and predisposed as a flawed species. Shame on you for taking advantage of that but damn if you and your lemmings aren’t good at it.
Maybe we will evolve beyond this in the next couple of centuries, but I, for one, don’t have that kind of time. So, I can only choose to keep finding cracks in the stone wall you keep building where some light can connect me with those so fundamentally different from myself in where we stand on the issues you so carelessly toss out in tweets in the name of “greatness”.
So, congratulations. You’ve won. You’re popular. You’ve tapped into the psyche of the part of us that never left high school. You’ve re-marketed fear from a commodity to a brand and you’ve done it like no one else before you. You win. But, to be honest, I was never really interested in this game or the prize to begin with.
Until next time,
Marc