To Whom It May Concern

I’ll admit, I haven’t been thinking of you. Yesterday, I visited my cousin, who has been bedridden in the hospital for weeks after a devastating stroke. He moved his left arm, which was a good sign of progress, and as he did so, I was not thinking of you.

On my way into the hospital, a man sat, slumped in a chair, hand over his eyes. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t thinking of you. The doctors buying coffee, the workers selling it to them, the nurses conferring about an alarm that had just been triggered—all of these people seemed really into what they were doing, and although this might sound harsh, I honestly have to assume that none of them were thinking of you.

I did think of you when I read what you had posted about Rob Reiner, soon after he and his wife were murdered. And it occurred to me that, before you took the time to carefully word your disgraceful attack (because let’s give credit where credit is due—you got through that one without any errors of basic English, which suggests a laudable intentionality), before you concluded that Rob Reiner’s death was a comeuppance for his misguided antipathy toward you, you made one essential supposition from which all else must have flowed: that he had been thinking of you.

And yet, if I have not thought of you, and the man in the hospital lobby was not thinking of you, not only is it possible that Rob Reiner—despite your wishes—had not been thinking of you, there may be others who have not been thinking of you. And the scary thing is that they could be anyone, anywhere.

Just yesterday I facilitated a conversation among educators across the political spectrum, and even though the conversation was about politics, no one mentioned you. I listened with interest as a woman shared the life experiences that had shaped her conservative leanings. She voted for you, I’m sure, and yet you appeared nowhere in her story. You played no role in shaping her worldview. I did not ask explicitly, but—brace yourself—I’m not so sure she was thinking about you yesterday. All of us educators in attendance listened carefully, and we asked questions rooted in our curiosity about and care for the woman who shared her story. Each of us grew from the experience, and as it turns out, we did this without you.

Carly Simon has a great line: You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you. Admit it: you probably think this letter is about you. Actually (and this is a dirty trick), it’s not. This letter is about the growing movement of Americans across the political spectrum who are resisting your divisiveness and who see that the success of our country rests on our ability to reach across lines of divide and disagreement. It’s about a country that will outlast you and will thrive thanks to the people who voted for you and those who didn’t.

I’m sorry about the trickery. but how else would I have gotten your attention?