An Open Letter to Donald Trump

Dear Donald Trump,

We need to talk.  

I am one of the Americans whose future will be directly impacted by the policies you enact if elected president. Because I am one of those Americans, and because Americans like me are listening to you and taking you seriously, I feel the need to speak up. We’re having this talk right now because the idea you’re running on, the central message of your campaign, is one that I don’t think you really believe in or understand, and your supporters are buying into the idea that you do.

It needs to stop. 

You say “let’s make America great again” like America is lackluster, like we’re missing something. It's a common dialogue politicians use, suggesting that America used to be awesome, but someone swept in to ruin it. Thing is, when you say “let’s make America great again,” you don’t offer any real solutions as to how to do that, or what it means to be great. You say “let’s make America great again” again and again. I don't really understand the kind of America you're nostalgically look back on and wanting to repeat.

Do you ever think about what actually made America great in the first place?

America is great because of immigrants who left a repressive government and signed their names on a document declaring, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” a document that, upon signing, they risked their lives for. It is great for and because of immigrants who fled the terrors of Nazi Germany, the employment crisis and poverty of Ireland, and the disastrous circumstances of countries with deeply corrupt governments to the one place in the world that would give them a chance.

Your idea of making America great is to look at it through the lens of someone who has never gone without, who doesn't understand what it is to go without a home or a place to stay. Your idea of making America great is to build walls, then build them higher.

America is great because of men like journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who exposed government corruption for what it was and did so in the name of freedom and the right to know. They did so because they were protected in doing so by the First Amendment, by the lines asserting that Congress shall not make laws restricting the freedom of the press.

Your idea of making America great is to “open up those libel laws so when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money...we’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never been sued before.” And why? So you can get back at journalists who write "purposely negative and horrible articles." Who's to say what that is? You are, I suppose, if you get elected.

America is great because a baptist minister from Atlanta Georgia marched on this nation’s streets, sat in seats he was legally excluded from, and stood at the Lincoln Memorial before the country he and those who followed him helped change to declare, “I have a dream that my...children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Your idea of making America great is to be politically incorrect, which to me just comes across as discriminatory and bullying. Your idea of making America great would forgo character and pretend to be colorblind while speaking such things as "I have a great relationship with the blacks" and "the Mexicans love me." Why does it have to be the anything? We are all humans!

America is great because here, I am secure in worshiping the God I believe in without censure, when a little over a century ago, my pioneer ancestors fled thousands of miles away from their homes to escape the same government that said of them, “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace.”

Your idea of making America great is to shut down the places of worship of my brothers and sisters of other faiths. You do so from the angle that you're concerned with American safety, but what good is safety, I ask you, without liberty? Without the freedom to believe and worship as we may?

The truth, Mr. Trump, is that you think people like you are what made America great, when it was the people who bled for, the people who fought for, the people who lost everything they had for, and stood up for this country who made it great. It was the very same people who vowed to protect the rights and liberties that you enjoy and would so casually take away from people who are different from you. America, if it only was great, was great because of democracy, because of a Constitution that gave you and I the right to speak for, believe in, and assemble together for the causes we love. America, if it only was great, was great because it was a place where people of every race, gender, background, religion, and class could come together and build something bigger than themselves in the pursuit of happiness, something that went beyond discrimination and hatred and came as close as it could to peace. 

If America only was great, it’s because we’ve forgotten those things.

Your campaign is one run on bullying, intimidation, intolerance, and harassment. Well, Mr. Trump, you cannot bully, intimidate, or harass America into being great again. You make America great again by standing up for the very liberties that made it great in the first place, for defending to the death the rights of those who would disagree with you, not because you like that they disagree, but simply because that is their right. It's the right of us all.

I don’t want to live in a country that you’ve made “great” again, Donald Trump, because that is a country that has forgotten how much it owes to the sacrifices of those who loved it. That is a country that would cower in fear, be coerced by flattery, bristle at criticism, and name call instead of live up to the rich history of respect, diversity, and courage you have so completely discarded.

Sincerely,

Me