Kierkegaard’s Ghost
(News that’s fake, but credible)
Kierkegaard’s Ghost is committed to generating dialogue across the fault lines of our polarized society. To that end, we are pleased to publish this letter from Reginald Wright, a devout supporter of Donald Trump, to his progressive friend, Louis Leftowitz.
Dear Lou.
You liberal white guys really don’t get us Trump supporters. You look down your Ivy League noses at us. You call us angry, ignorant and racist. But let me tell you a few things about us. We grew up in an America where a man was master of his household and the way he disciplined his family was his own business-not the concern of schools, social workers or the police. We grew up in an America where women respected their men, knew their places as wives and mothers-and liked it. We grew up in an America where a man was expected to take advantage of a girl wherever possible and it was a girl’s responsibility not to give any advantage and, if she did, she had only herself to blame for the consequences. We grew up in an America where the high school football team could dunk a guy’s head in the toilet if he looked and acted like a girl and it was all just good, clean fun. No suspensions or law suits or any of that crap. We grew up in an America where those folks you libs like to call “people of color” stayed in their place along with their own kind-and were a lot happier for it. In the America where we grew up, we knew what it meant to be a man.
But the America we find ourselves in today is a foreign country. It’s like we don’t even speak the language. We see the streets on which we grew up full of foreign language signs. We see people on the sidewalks we can’t understand. We see our religion banished from school, pushed out of the town square and the shopping centers on Christmas and mocked on late night television. But we can’t even tell a joke without somebody getting offended. We flirt with a girl and we are sexual predators. We put a confederate flag sticker on our bumper and we’re racists. We don’t know how to be men in this new order of yours. Angry? You bet we are! Our country has been taken away from us. America is becoming less American every day we are getting pushed out of the land we love. Our backs are against the wall and there is no place for us to retreat.
So what do we see in Donald Trump? It’s like this. When we are at one of his rallies, when we look out over that sea of cheering humanity and see nothing but white skin, when we hear Donald expressing all the things we feel deep down inside but are afraid to say in “polite company,” when Donald Trump speaks to us, we feel like men again. When he speaks, it’s possible for us to believe that the old America, the America we grew up in, the America we love is coming back. And that feeling means more to us than the economy, more than health care and more than politics. So listen very carefully Lou: We don’t care that Donald Trump lies about his business prowess, or that he molests women who might easily have been one of our daughters, that he is a draft dodger, a tax cheat and an adulterous philanderer. It doesn’t matter that he lacks any semblance of policy, conservative or liberal. You can talk facts to us till you’re blue in the face and it won’t matter. We don’t care about facts. We believe in Donald Trump because he stands for something beautiful, something we love and miss. And we will keep on believing in Donald Trump and nothing you say will ever change our minds.
There is something else you should know about us. We aren’t as stupid as you think. Of course, we don’t live in the middle of a Trump rally 24/7. Most of the time, we live in the same world you do. We know what’s really going down. We see more and more dark skin on television, in professional sports, in movies, in congress and in our courts. We see more and more women doing men’s jobs. We see mixed race couples walking the streets without getting a second look. We see those folks you call “gay” kissing in public in ways that would have gotten them beaten to a pulp in our youth. We know in the depths of our hearts that the old America we loved is never coming back. Nevertheless, although we’ve lost our America, we can still stop you from building yours for a good long time. We can make a mess so big, leave a country so divided and so ruined that you libs will have your work cut out trying to build your crappy vision of an effeminate, socialist, multi-cultural paradise. Donald Trump is the wrench we are throwing into your well oiled machine. We can’t win, but we can damn well see to it that you lose.
Finally, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Donald Trump is going to be re-elected in 2020 and all you white, male libs are going to help us put him over the top. You see, Lou, you really aren’t so very different from us. Don’t tell me you weren’t relieved when you found out that your company decided not to hire that young woman they were considering to run your department and hired the old white guy instead-who will probably be your boss until you retire. Don’t tell me you didn’t breathe a sigh of relief when you googled that new boyfriend your daughter has been gushing about and learned that, thank God, he was white. Don’t tell me that you don’t feel an overwhelming sense of relief every weekday after you drive across town from work and cross that invisible line into your suburban neighborhood where everyone looks like you. You feel just as jittery as we do when you find yourself in a neighborhood where everybody is speaking a language you can’t understand. You know very well how tempted you are to cross over to the other side of the street when you see a group of black men coming toward you talking their jive. Face it, you are more like us than you want to admit.
And one more thing. You can’t deny that Trump has given you a booming economy. However much you may hate Donald Trump, you love what the stock market is doing. Change, any change could do a number on that nest egg of yours, the savings you are counting on to give you and the little woman a first class retirement. This thing you libs call “white, male privilege,” you benefit from it even more than we do. You have more at stake in preserving it than us-even if it is only to the end of your lifetime. So here’s how it’s going to go down. You will go on talking the talk of “equality,” “women’s rights,” “it’s OK to be gay.” You will continue holding forth on your enlightened views in your liberal church and at cocktail parties among your liberal co-workers and on the golf course with your liberal friends. But when the second Tuesday in November of 2020 rolls around, when you and all your liberal buddies are alone in that voting booth where no one else can see or judge you, you are going to pull the lever for Donald Trump. You will do it to protect your white neighborhood. You will do it to protect the security and seniority you enjoy as a man in a man’s workplace. You will do it to protect your pocketbook. You will vote with us for Donald Trump because, deep in your heart, you know we’re right.
Your good friend,
Reggie
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Peter's Outer Cape Portico 