A letter to Donald Trump

What can I say that probably hasn’t been said before?

Well, even the thought of writing to you is making me physically ill, to be honest, but even though I know you will probably never read this, I have to get all of this off my chest somehow, so here I go. I originally tried starting out with a sarcastic comment about your, erm, endeavours during your time in the presidency, given that so many people are still defending you with so much passion, so my first instinct was to say something funny about how in your commitment to showcase all the racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, and downright fascism that’s been boiling under the surface in American society, you took method acting a bit too far. See, that’s where the mistake was, in trying to write as if any of this was funny, because you put so many people’s lives in danger since you first began your campaign, that it instantly turned my stomach when I got to the examples of your “method acting”.

I despair in knowing that so many people agree with and defend your actions. In what mind is it okay for anyone to do the type of things you do? Which is to say that anyone who does any of the terrible things you do should also be treated with contempt and judged as dangerous and vile, which for the most past others are. But not you. Somehow not you, somehow not by enough people to actually make a difference, anyway, and only recently has what you’ve done started to catch up with you. It baffles me, to say the least.

Judging from the answers I’ve seen in threads on social media from people who do denounce you, it seems like your supporters would have us think that we’re all jealous that you can do so much and get away with it, but I do wonder why anyone would think that doing what you do and being who you are would make anyone happy? To me, and to most people I know, living like you is something repulsive, being as rude, grotesque, sexist, chauvinistic, homophobic, racist, bigoted and downright creepy as you are is not anything that would make anyone happy. And that includes, strangely enough, some of your supporters! I’ve known people who actively judge all of those traits in others, but when it comes to you, they turn a blind eye and continue glorifying you, and I think I will never understand or sympathise with their adoration for you.

The thing I do understand is that how deranged you are and how much you get your kicks out of other people’s suffering has to be showcased so that people stop turning a blind eye to your insanity. You are a narcissistic manipulator and you have used your abilities thus far to make many people believe you are successful and worth following to gain the same kind of success; and I understand that for many people you were nothing but a somewhat harmless game show host and a fun, albeit arrogant, millionaire who had enough money to enjoy having cameos in movies and TV shows, and as such no one took your insanity very seriously, but thankfully things have changed a lot since then! Real discourse about mental health has been opened up, and whilst I understand the reason for concern that some people give for you being called a narcissist, sociopath or insane, I believe that it’s important for people to understand why those traits are being pointed out in you and what exactly it is that makes you dangerous. Not just revolting, but downright dangerous.

You see, having mental health issues myself, and working as a researcher at a mental health clinic previously, I came to understand that the biggest issue with the mental health stigma is that most people don’t understand where the issues come from, the difference between a biochemical disorder and an emotional problem, nor how they affect each other when both overlap. Plenty of people still don’t understand that it’s not having a mental health condition that makes a person dangerous, but the nature of the condition itself, and the way that nature vs. nurture might have affected the person throughout their life. In your case, the traits that have been pointed out by many professionals (your blatant disregard for the well-being of others, your tendency to gaslight your audience, your sexual predatory tendencies, to name a few), have been pointed out as such to inform people about the danger of those traits, and to some degree to warn anyone who reads/watches about those traits in others, as a way to prevent more people falling into toxic relationships (be it romantic, professional or merely social). People aren’t saying that you’re crazy just because they don’t agree with you, but because in your case your insanity is being referred in its literal sense: as the lack of sanity. We are being warned that it’s unhealthy being with you in any capacity, and, once again, even dangerous.

I hope that in the future papers are written about your ability to twist anything around to fit your purposes, especially in those instances when you changed the meaning of what you said only mere hours after you said it, because the more your narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies are analysed, the further we might get to a) normalising talking about mental health, b) understanding that mental illness does not equal negative or toxic behaviour, but that there are serious disorders which need to be taken into consideration anyway, and c) preventing unstable and dangerous relationships and by extension preventing domestic and professional abuse of any kind. The way I see it, the more people talk about it and try to understand it, the healthier we might all become.

Now, regarding the very serious issue of gaslighting: patterns of behaviour which point to manipulation and emotional torture of others need to be fully acknowledged and understood in order for these tendencies to be amended in any way in global society. The problem with gaslighting is that it has become so insidious in politics that it has become the expected attitude from politicians by Joe Normal, and thus it has also become extremely difficult to see beyond the tag of politician when someone who’s actually caring comes along and tries to make a real change. Unfortunately, what you’ve done towards this is even worse than a lot of people might realise, considering that you were voted in, in the first place, by a big number of people who genuinely believed that you were Joe Normal and that you’d be bringing their voices to the presidency. Why anyone in their right mind ever thought that is beyond me, considering your fame to begin with! Why some people thought that just because of how you “said it like it is”, or some other bullshit like that, is, sincerely, devastating – but more on that later. What I feel openly deflated about is that after you, people might find it more difficult to trust in the people that they vote in to serve them, because now more than ever people need to realise that politicians are, above all, public servants, and that they’re voted in to serve the people’s best interests, not their own. Not that you know anything about that, nor would I even expect you to understand, given your blatant lack of empathy and care for others. Although, you know what, maybe it will all be okay after all, since people in the US seem to have understood that they won’t be able to have Joe Normal after all so they’ve taken Joe Biden instead, and maybe, just maybe, they will realise that they can continue voting in people who are properly prepared, professional, and genuinely caring for their residents. Who knows!

Well, I really hope so, anyway, because the way you got in, with that “saying it like it is” thing that so many people defend in you is one of the most dangerous things of all, in my belief. The normalising of sexual assault and abuse, the normalising of sexism, racism, homophobia and bigotry, the normalising of it being okay for people to defend “their right” to own people. There isn’t such a right, by the way, but you somehow made it okay for people to believe that there was, and to exercise it to the point of “protest”. Let’s start at the beginning: you got into the presidency even after an interview resurfaced where you were talking with Billy Bush about how you like to grab women by the pu**y. You were made President of the United States of America after you ascertained to him that “when you’re famous, they let you do that”. You were given what is considered the highest place of power in the Western World after it was resurfaced how you were defending and promoting sexual assault, and stating that it was a big part of your journey of success. That is the extent to which you took the normalization of sexual assault and abuse, and people are still defending you. And you know what hasn’t left my mind in all these years? Billy Bush lost his job; his whole career was pretty much crushed. He was blasted, and rightfully so, with complaints and reproach from his colleagues and the public alike. He was taken down by pretty much everyone whilst at the very same time you were being made the President of the United States of America.

Yes. All of that really happened. We didn’t dream that.

What am I saying, you know this! You relish that it happened, and how it happened! You love the accolades that were sent your way for “saying it like it is”, for being so much yourself that your supporters downright stated, by voting you in, that sexual assault is in no way acceptable if you are a normal person down here in the normal world, but that is perfectly fine and acceptable if you are the President of the United States of America. I shudder to think about how then that translates into sexual assault being perfectly fine and acceptable in any context, because you were voted in for being Joe Normal, were you not? Ergo, Joe Normal can get into being the President of the United States even if, and more even so, he actively practices and promotes sexual assault. I truly appreciate that the majority of voters in the US have chosen someone who has openly discussed how dated attitudes about sex and gender have created an uncomfortable environment for women and LGBTQIA+ individuals, and is willing to set things in place to give them the rights that they deserve. (Tangent here, but I do love how both Biden and Harris have apologised for mistakes they’ve done in the past regarding women’s rights and LGBTQIA+ issues, and have listened, learned and taken up the challenge to challenge the old views! But I digress, back to the point!).

In case anyone has forgotten already, and considering how insidious the practice of gaslighting is, you didn’t just stop at boasting about and promoting sexual assault, you carried on: you openly said on TV that you would like to have sex with your daughter, later on you made sure that people knew that your abuse to others was not just sexual when you mocked a disabled reporter (once again on TV), then made a sickening mishmash of both when you turned your abusive behaviour on Greta Thunberg, and somewhere along the line you defended both Brett Kavanaugh and Ghislaine Maxwell in their various respective court cases of sexual assault and abuse. Furthermore, when it came out that you had raped a teenage girl years ago, your supporters somehow defended you by saying that you were heroic because you’d done it to blow the cover of a paedophile ring that you didn’t even know existed, a few decades before you knew you would be President of the United States of America (even though your friends Epstein and Maxwell were running it).

The last year has been so incredibly difficult for so many people though, and the depths of your sociopathy have finally been shown through all the utterly creepy back and forth that you’ve done, that I sincerely hope that every single person now is able to see right through you. From the beginning of the pandemic, when you constantly said that it was a hoax and that the virus didn’t exist, and so many people from around the world followed you blindly that it put many thousand people’s lives at stake, to your campaign towards the election last November during which you fundamentally openly accepted fascism as a way of life (and as a way of leading a country).

You have gaslighted enough people that I’m afraid the change won’t come easily, but many of us won’t forget that you told actual Nazis to stand by. Many of us won’t forget that you allowed fascism to spread all around the country, openly noticeable the moment armed people marched into the Capitol in Lansing demanding to be served – literally, as they were demanding life to return to normal so they could have their hair cut and their meals served – all in the middle of the worst pandemic many of us are likely to have ever lived through. Many of us won’t forget how you incited, endorsed and allowed domestic terrorists into the Capitol in Washington DC, armed with guns, bombs and even a spear, with the intention to kill public representatives. Many of us will never forget that for months on end your supporters denied that Black lives matter in any way and stepped in to say that cops’ lives matter instead, when there should be no “instead” but “as well”, and then proceeded to kill a cop with an American Flag when they trooped into the Capitol on January 6th. We shall not forget that they somehow marched all the way into the Senate Chamber, and into Speaker Pelosi’s office, amongst other places of supposedly the highest security in the States. We will never forget that those people were marching into the Capitol for their right to own guns because they intend to kill people with those guns, and somehow they actually believe they have that right. We will never forget that these people marched into the Capitol to defend their right to own others, because somehow they actually believe they have that right – which is what the Confederate flag symbolises, regardless of what you or your supporters might try to gaslight us into believing otherwise. We will never forget that you were the one who convinced them they had those two rights.

We will never forget that you defend and promote sexual assault.

We will never forget that you have been openly and proudly abusive towards others, sexually an emotionally, often together.

We will never forget your mistreatment of LGBTQIA+ and racial minorities.

We will never forget that you put children in cages, nor that you actually manipulated people into believing that it was for the best interests of those children.

We will never forget that your gross negligence, wilful ignorance of science and medicine, and downright contempt towards others cost thousands of people their lives over 2020, and who knows when we’ll stop seeing the consequences.

We will never forget that you managed to convince thousands of people that it’s their right to shoot and kill people at will (even if their actions are their own responsibility, as well).

We will never forget that you managed to convince thousands of people that it’s their right to own others and that they should protest against that “right” being taken away.

Good bye, and good riddance!

***

Thank you for reading this piece. If you want to read more about my concerns regarding the denialist mentality, click here. If you want to read about my experiences as an immigrant in the UK during the pandemic, click here.