Dear Donald,

I wonder what it must feel like. From businessman to president-elect. Without the popular vote. Without the support of 18-25 year old voters. Without the endorsement of any previous US Presidents, regardless of political party. Without the support of even the conservative newspapers such as, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, The Detroit News, to name only a few. Without the overwhelming number of black voters. How hollow it must feel as you peer down from any one of your penthouse views and see so many lights blinking blankly back.

But now what? I hear that you appointed your children to your transition team. Qualified? Really? Equally inane is your naming a climate denier to head the EPA. Who can stomach the racist, I mean nationalist, Steve Bannon as your “chief strategist and senior counselor“?  Or appointing a lobbyist, Betsy Devos, to the US Secretary of Education position? A lobbyist? I must admit, these very first actions since becoming president-elect have awakened me beyond complacency and are in keeping with your pompous approach to governance that your under-educated constituents banked on when they checked off your name on the ballot. Many of your followers have said, wait, let’s see what he does, maybe Trump will be a great President. Possibly they have been hoodwinked, but this voter isn’t. Neither are any of the educated and hard-working people I spend my day with who didn’t vote for you. You have already proven incapable of making decisions with Americans’ health, education, civil liberates and well-being in mind. We will all be watching. I hope your supporters will be too.

During the last eight years Republicans were more than willing to topple our government and halt any forward momentum simply to bring President Obama down. The Tea Party made a mockery of our Senate. Distortion of facts became new truths. People recovering from the disastrous Bush recession did not recover. We lost our homes. We lost our jobs. We buried our sons and daughters for Cheney’s big oil war. All the while Democrats used reason. Common sense. Pleas from the heart. Scientific evidence. Even mathematics. The country did finally prosper again under Obama’s watch but hatred, a raw racism, which was directed with alarming vengeance toward not only the Obamas, but people of color all over our country, soared to strengthen the NRA. “The NRA spent 30 million dollars to elect Donald Trump, more than any other outside group, and another 25 million to keep the Senate in Republican hands — and they will expect to get what they paid for”(Everytown for Gun Safety). What the NRA expects is for fear to reign, for people to believe that by being armed they are made stronger, that gun power is real power, that they may rise up against those they oppose and strike them down, that being a bully themselves will somehow return jobs to their failed industries; but truly speaking, these are the voices of privilege. Instead of realizing that the lost coal industry should mean better air quality for all the world’s populous and that innovation and industry needs to take science and problem solving and communication into the board rooms in order to solve the complex issues facing our imperfect union, instead, there are muddled facts.  Promises given that you can’t keep. Are you still reading Donald? Or did I lose you long ago. Have you dropped this letter, distracted by the lights blinking below your tower?

Let’s just pretend that you do care for this woman, who knows, sadly, what it feels like to have her pussy grabbed by someone not invited to grab it, and who, for too many years, felt voiceless to protest against such life-altering and damaging behavior; this woman, like a formidable number of others, who no longer would let such a transgression go un-denounced, are ready to take our nasty selves right up to your barricaded tower and shout you down if you herald such behavior in our sons or co-workers or anyone we encounter. Our daughters are not only nasty, but self-reliant and smart and unafraid. They are in business. They are in local government and headed to Congress. They are part of the military. Police force. Courts. Schools. And our daughters are mothers who will not be tempted by any bloat king. Do you hear me Donald? We are not interested in your augmented Melania, your third trophy wife, as our role model. We are not interested in her views as wife, or mother, or woman. She doesn’t speak for those of us who have risen in the dawn, our babies buckled in and headed to daycare while we put in long work hours and then return to shop and cook and homework and bath and bedtime. Those who work.

Donald I heard you say that you want “to come together as one united people.” But I will not take you at your easily spoken words. I will look at your actions. Let them prove unifying. Let them embrace our multicultural communities enlivened by racial and religious diversity. Let neither business nor industry rule legislation, but people. Think of us. Those who inhabit the lower echelons. Forget the fucking wall and repair bridges. Stop being a bigot. A racist. A man who doesn’t pay taxes. Someone heralded by the KKK. Stop inciting fear. Stop tweeting. Start preparing for your new job. The world is watching.

Nine Cent Girl