Thank you for visiting and perusing The Biden Letters, a new set of musings, rants, suggestions, and loving-kindness prayers in letter form that follows and builds on the correspondence I sent daily to President Trump for much of his time in office. Those letters are archived at Daily Trump Letters. If our miserable time with …
The System continues to work as designed
Dear President Biden, I’m still checking in with the news a couple of times a day, but I’ve been making the check-ins briefer in an effort not to let myself get lost in the various mucky rabbit holes of our body politic. We’re a flipping mess. And yes, we would absolutely be more of a …
The embrace of anti-truth
Dear President Biden, The other day I registered my dismay at your American exceptionalism rhetoric and the toxic masculinity that’s laced through such posturing and today I will register my dismay at what’s happening several notches up the toxic masculinity continuum. As you may have guessed, I’ve been reading about the House vote to censure …
Soft-pedaled toxic masculinity is still toxic masculinity
Dear President Biden, First of all, congratulations on getting the infrastructure bill passed and signed. Hopefully you all will get the other one done in quick order and then buckle down and deal with voting rights and democracy saving measures since without an at least semi-functional democracy, none of the rest of it matters much …
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Circling back to what matters
Dear President Biden, Busy, tired, uninspired – I’m sure there’s more to it, but that trio of words sound good together and do a decent job of summing up why it’s been almost a week since I’ve written to you. Busy, tired, uninspired, and well, the overwhelm associated with living in this weird situation where …
Letting go of “both sides” for good
Dear President Biden, I do sometimes have original thoughts. Or at least I think I do. Mostly, though, my best thinking is reactive – or perhaps if I’m giving myself grace, my best thinking is responsive. Whichever adjective I go with here, what I’m referring to is my propensity to find the gaps in arguments, …
Democracy is messy so lets get stuff done while we can
Dear President Biden, The other day I took a screen shot of the image that was paired with Henry Olsen’s WP editorial entitled “Biden’s vaccine mandates may just backfire.” Initially the motivation was to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. However, once I confirmed that I was seeing what I …
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Mending
Dear President Biden, I so hope you all are truly hard at work saving the planet – for reals. I know you and most other heads of state can’t make for real promises about cutting emissions and all the rest of it on your own, but somehow you all have to move beyond the “blah, …
Victim-blaming and victim-claiming
Dear President Biden, I don’t know yet whether there’s something substantive linking the two stories that have formed a mash-up in my brain or if it’s just my propensity to see connections between random-ish things. I’m hoping that by writing about them, I’ll figure out why my brain is so insistently juxtaposing them. The two …
The filibuster is not foundational to our democracy
Dear President Biden, Just in case it was confusing to you that we were able to make scrambled eggs without power on Sunday night, we have a gas stovetop, which Laura kindly lit for me (if I absolutely have to, I can strike a match or use the flicker thing to ignite the gas stove …
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Scramble and Scrabble by candlelight
Dear President Biden, Yesterday the power went out and we ended up making scrambled eggs and playing Scrabble by candlelight (and a battery operated camping lantern). It wasn’t an especially strong wind gust – just 40 knots or about 46 MPH that caused it – but somehow it made the lights toggle on and off …
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