Dear Mr. Donald Trump,
This will not be an ideological tirade. Too often do 'liberals' spit in the face of 'conservatives,' unwilling to listen to their feelings, experiences, and goals. Too often do 'conservatives' spit in the face of 'liberals,' unwilling to listen to their feelings, experiences and goals. But feelings, experiences, and goals are what constitute our political ideologies.
Hear me out, as I share my own feelings, experiences, and goals with the intention of inspiring reflection on your own feelings, experiences, and goals. We’ve had a lot of time to listen to you, but have you listened to the voices of those you claim to represent? Political discourse mustn’t boil down to hardened hearts and clogged ears, otherwise we’re like dogs barking to mooing cows – making unintelligible sounds, and causing a raucous. Don, if I can call you that, I ask you to listen; criticize me at the end, if you must, but don’t silence my voice, or the voices of others who want to engage in political and social discourse. Otherwise we only perpetuate an animalistic system, better left to random chance and parental indoctrination.
Too often do we package our difficulties in vociferous outcries – usually unintelligible, full of pathos, and remarkably disdainful of the opposing side. Speaking from experience, Don, I’ve done just that to you before.
I want to apologize to you. I wrote an op-ed in December decrying your candidacy, and lamenting your personal attributes as savage, stating that, “You are the epitome of what is wrong with this nation.” My fuel was the symbolic nature of how the media painted you. Although my personal opinions from that point have not necessarily wavered, I am sorry for attacking you as a person. My agenda was to criticize and question your character, instead of seeking to understand you, Don, instead of seeking to listen to what was behind the rhetoric and lustrous shimmer of your painted portraiture.
I matched your hatefulness with more of my own. I doubted you because I didn’t understand you. I do not trust you, now, Don, nor can I say I fully understand you. If anything, I am observing your actions and trying to deconstruct your socially portrayed persona in order to understand how we made it to this historical epoch, which will determine so much of the world’s, let alone, America’s future.
Don, I want to understand you, and I want to challenge you, without condemning you, or closing you off. Truly, you’d make a great Virginia Woolf character. Woolf knows the ins and outs of her characters – Mrs. Dalloway is a fine example of the stream of consciousness – something you embody quite well; however, it does come at its costs, speaking your mind, disregarding “political correctness,” as you, and Mr. Clint Eastwood, coin it. Sometimes we make mistakes, and say things we don’t mean when we get revved up; I certainly did, to some extent, in criticizing you.
Don, so much of our identity is composed of the words we cushion our existence with. But we don’t have full control over what people can say about us. Don, what are people saying about you? What type of image, symbol, is the world creating around you?
Some like to paint you in farce. Anthony Weiner called you “F---face Von Clownstick.” John Oliver created another myth around you, as Donald Drumpf, and Mark Cuban recently called you a “jagoff.” You’re not making that many friends… are you?
They might not be taking you seriously, but so many other people are. You certainly have people that believe in you, otherwise how would you have come this far? Not by sheer luck or circumstance, you knocked out candidates one by one – like a quick, comic game of whack-a-mole. You created an ethos, a symbol around them, just as others are doing to you, and assimilated some of their insecurities into witty phrases and jocose jabs: “weak” Jeb Bush, “lyin’” Ted, “little Marco,” and now, more notably, “Crooked Hillary” – “the devil” who you claim Bernie Sanders made a Faustian pact with. You’re pretty good at this creative process, Don. You’ve marketed, and are marketing your opponent, now; one could argue that you’re playing the game, the game of symbolic politics. You’re participating in an art form:
“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.” - Otto Von Bismarck
Don, do you think politics can be described as art? Art is human creation, the making of something new and innovative. Is politics an art? Don you have made a successful campaign and image for yourself. You are an art form: a symbol. You have an image, Mr. Trump, and it is one, if I’ve ever seen it, as equivocal as the epistemology of a hot dog as a sandwich or something of another species in and of itself.
Hillary Clinton is a symbol too. You both are art forms, representative of ideologies, peoples, and visions of this great country.
The symbolic images create the candidate and all they represent: a platform, a title, and a vision… Don, you know what I mean, you’ve said it yourself: “Make America Great Again.” You are in pursuit of the symbolic, of a romantic past that you claim has faded, and necessitates reclamation.
I think, Don, we are seeing an election where politics as 'art' is a powerful driving force for the political discourse; is this not a dangerous ploy?
Art catches the eye. Don, you’re winning people over because you’re the more attractive piece on the market in some sectors of the states. I think we’re seeing a remarkable shift in the voting body’s decision to vote on the art form – the image of the candidate – and not the policy, nor the nitty-gritty character behind the pastels and cartoon renderings.
Don, you know what I’m talking about; you care a lot about image. You’ve never backed down from presenting yourself as the winning candidate. You’ve grasped your voters attention, you’ve won one populace over (the Republican party – symbolically, of course, as the standing candidate), you’ve wiped out your threats as you’ve cleverly called them by names which your supporters quickly picked up on, you’ve defined yourself as a winner, and you are flexing your image, your rhetoric to appeal to the masses: all in all, you are manifesting an image of the victorious, successful, wealthy, ‘All-American,’ take no prisoners (while physically and emotionally arresting, many) white man.
Don, you’re doing a good job at winning people over, by appealing to your benefits and prejudices – and as a result, you’re just as good at pissing people off. You’ve said it yourself, “one by one I’ve knocked them off.” Charisma on Command clearly lays out those parts of the phenomenology of your political ascent; the speaker in the video poses a question, Don, he asks: are people voting on policy or image?
I think you know the answer to this, because image and image-inducing fear is at the heart of your campaign. You’re a myth-making man, Donald, and your words are as true as the American Dream. A glittering promise to some, and a shackling, bitter nightmare to others.
Don, have you ever made any mistakes? I ask that, knowing the answer, because I believe all humans to be fallible, so please prove me wrong. Don, you’re not perfect are you? It’s okay, neither am I; nor is Hillary, as you’ve made us well aware. "Crooked" Hillary has made her own mistakes, hasn’t she?
What about those emails, Don? And what of Benghazi?
She messed up. She made and will make mistakes. But, Don, she took responsibility for her errors, apologizing for both.I hate to say it, Don, but name-calling and demonizing are void of meaning, and symptomatic of the emptiness of your rhetoric and inflated image of infallibleness.
Want to have a more critical look at this question of empty rhetoric and politics? A recent op-ed in the NY Times put you side by side with Hillary, and they've deduced this: you're both liars. Go figure, Don.
Here's a quote from the article that summarizes the authors's argument:
"If Clinton declares that she didn’t chop down a cherry tree, that might mean that she actually used a chain saw to cut it down. Or that she ordered an aide to chop it down. As for Drumpf, he will insist, “I absolutely did not chop down that cherry tree,” even as he clutches the ax with which he chopped it down moments earlier on Facebook Live."
Don, as an avid lover of art, I also hate to say this, but your image is superficial. The image, the persona, the externalities are empty until we derive meaning from the form, and connect it back to the content. We cannot let art or imagery displace us from reality, Don.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Don, I can only stomach so much of your symbolic language and representation; as can I only take Hillary’s, and other politicians, so far as well. The language spewed, by both sides, is acidic, vitriolic, and debilitating. Don, I’m tired of word games; I want action. Hillary has made her mistakes, huge national security blunders. She cannot reverse the sting of her errs. No man or woman can ameliorate the severity of a venom’s bite once unleashed in the bloodstream. One can only recognize their fault, and let the error die away – sever a leg, cut a finger off, if you must – better than letting the poison destroy the whole person, let alone the whole polity.
Sure, Don, maybe "Crooked" Hillary’s apology wasn’t good enough, but she acted, she owned her errors, and moved on from it.
Don, have you made mistakes? Have you told lies? Have you been playing into the symbolic at the cost of other people’s image? Don, I think back to the name-calling and demonizing: to Ghazala and Khizr Khan, the countless minorities and identities you’ve transformed into political chess pieces capable of being swept off a board, walled off, labeled, and looked down upon. Have you apologized? Don, Pocahontas was a real Native American woman, and you’ve gargled her name and shat on her image to poke fun at Elizabeth Warren?
Don, leadership requires someone willing to look in the face of his or her constituents and say, “I’ve made a mistake. I’m not perfect. But I’ll do better.”
I will not vote for perfection, because perfection is unattainable. Failure is inevitable. But failure fuels growth. And what some deem as failure, others will recognize as moral courage and sacrifice. You’re no leader if you refuse to bear your faults.
Don, do better!
You’re dreaming of the greater good of the world – you want to reclaim the greatness of America. But, Don, you have an image, business reputation, and mythic persona to uphold: people to impress and standards to live up too. Don, don’t compromise values for the sake of esteem. Please don’t inspire our children to divest into ruthless political badgering; you can be an example, you can be a leader.
Don, what effect do you have on the people around you? It is diffusive – but to what extent? You’ve lived a “prestigious” life, we know your name, and you have certainly marked a “successful” rise to power; but in my book, Don, you’re living a life that will deliver you into an unvisited tomb, like Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s Middlemarch – with the sole exception of the fact your impact was not “incalculably diffusive” for the sake of goodness – but for the sole purpose of perpetuating madness.
Don, stop this artful game of hatred and jest and reclaim dignity into the arena by demonstrating you understand the value in recognizing the human proclivity to error.
Don, stop this madness!
Real women, real men, mothers and fathers alike, have to keep themselves accountable for when they will, because everyone does, make a mistake: for the sake of their children and their own moral integrity. Don, you’ve taken a position of power and influence. We are watching you. Children are asking their parent if this is what leadership looks like. We are watching you, Don, and I am watching you neglect your own ineptitudes. Take responsibility. It won’t win you a vote from me, but it might win you a flower on a tombstone, or at least, some inkling of respect.
