Viscerally Damaging

Today is Postcards to Trump day.  I walked to the Post Office yesterday and picked up a few postcards.  I have a bunch of postcards left over from the campaign, when I wrote about 850 of them to Democratic voters in swing states, but they say “Voting is Your Superpower,” which would, I think, confuse The Donald.

So I bought some blank stamped cards, and wrote four of them.  I successfully overcame the intense temptation to make my messages snarky and angry.  Nothing actually wrong with that, since no one's going to read any of the (hopefully) millions of cards being mailed today, including mine.  But stating the truth and doing it in a very concise way is a good writing exercise, so there's that.

Here's what I said:

1. President Trump:  You inherited the strongest economy in the world, and in two months you have dismantled it.  No matter what your advisors say, we will not come back from this.  Stop the tariffs.  Gary Koutnik, Oneonta NY

2. President Trump:  You came into office determined to destroy the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law.  And you did it, which makes you a fascist terrorist.  Gary Koutnik, Oneonta NY

3. President Trump:  I'm almost as old as you are.  I grew up during the Cold War.  Russia was the enemy.  Nothing has changed, except for the worse.  Your foreign policy is a traitor's foreign policy.  Slava Ukraini!  Gary Koutnik, Oneonta NY

4. President Trump:  The dismantling of the Department of Education is wildly irresponsible. You don't even know what it does, and neither does your Sec'y of Education.  Get a grip, and do some research for a change.  Gary Koutnik

OK, so I may have slipped into snark a little.  And I sure was angry.  And actually writing “President Trump” the first time made me stop and gasp for breath.  It's soooo wrong.  And it's still viscerally damaging to do it.  I walked back to the PO this morning and dropped them in the slot.  Just a tiny - really tiny - shot of feeling better.

There's also the ironic satisfaction of using the postal service to annoy Trump.  Our Postmaster General is Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee from Trump's first term who has, incredibly, kept his job and is back in the divine light of Dear Leader.  There's some evidence that he has weaponized the USPS in support of voter suppression, so this voter used the PO to express his first amendment rights.