Dear (Dis)United States Of America,

I write to you as a deeply concerned friend.

I am worried that you might start to get used to it and think that what is happening is normal.  It is not, and it never can, or will be. 

Don’t let your desperation allow the occasional right response make you feel relieved and hopeful.  Those occasional right responses are just little rays of sunshine and they do not signify better weather ahead.  Sadly, they are the aberrations; the norm is the storm.

Yes, he did the right thing in going to Houston, pledging a million dollars of his own money and hugging a few of the poor souls.  Then he said to the people as he left,  “Have a good time, everybody.”  That’s the real Trump; that’s the self-absorbed  narcissist showing the true level of his empathy.

Don’t let go of his efforts to cancel ‘Obamacare’ and dump millions into a nightmare world of no medical cover.  Don’t lose sight of his attempts to ban Muslims, his disregard of the plight of refugees and his desire to make the lives of ‘illegals’ (No person, ever, in all of history, has been, or is an ‘illegal’!) even harder than it is already.  Don’t turn your back on attacks on the poor, the vulnerable, the different.  

Hold fast, please dear Americans, to the words of Emma Lazarus, engraved on the Statue Of Liberty:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Those words, that dream, such magnificent ideals, something to truly be proud of!

Keep them close to you, a burning ember in your very soul; a light to send the dark cockroaches of his racism, sexism, xenophobia and contempt for those he pretends to represent, scuttling back into the darkness of your sewer systems and swamps where they belong.

You stand for something, you Americans.  Sure, sometimes we folk from the old countries find you a bit brash and loud, but even then we have known that deep down, where it matters, you have big, warm, welcoming hearts; that your country has encouraged dreams, freedom and democracy.  You have been the ‘melting pot’, not just of peoples but also of hopes and ideals, faiths and ideas.  You have stood by the poets, artists, writers and dissidents that will not bow to tyranny.  You have stood, across the world, for freedom.  My heartfelt thanks for that.

Yes, you’ve sometimes got your own funny ways (Your gun laws are pretty hard for non-Americans to understand, as are fundamentalist churches which don’t open as refuges in a crisis until they’re forced to and, oh yes, good old Westoboro Baptists, how on earth did you let that happen, and what’s with peanut butter and jelly?) but we held you in our hearts because there were so many times when we could see the best of humanity in you, when you have fought and died for freedom, not just yours but also other people’s, and when you have, quite literally, reached out for the stars. 

A plague now sits where all that hope sat, and its shadows threaten the light.  A few rich men, and they are mostly men, and a cruel and uncaring man who would be king, are trying to reshape your country to suit their greedy and selfish desires.  Where JFK reached out to the moon, Trump wants to build a wall;  where President Obama showed true concern for the planet, the poor and oppressed, Trump couldn’t give a damn. 

I could go on, but I won’t.  You can either see what I’m getting at, or you can’t.

My prayer remains the same.  Please, dear, damaged US of A, continue to resist, as so many of you are, and don’t, ever, get used to it.  It isn’t normal.  It isn't democracy.  It isn’t the USA’s way. 

Yours, most sincerely,

An Old Admirer