Dear President Biden, There’s just so much. So, so much. And it’s pretty distressing/depressing knowing that what I’m personally aware of from the news and from simply existing is just the barest tip of the proverbial iceberg. Do you sleep at night? At all? I don’t know if it’s because there’s so much heaviness and …
World-tilting invisible history
Dear President Biden, I think I told you a few months ago that I was reading James Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me, a world-tilting treatise on how American history is so thoroughly white- (and male-) washed as to wholly misrepresent how our country came into existence and the forces that shaped and continue …
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 …
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, …
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 …
We can’t live together because we don’t really want to
Dear President Biden, Happy New Fiscal Year’s Eve! And nice job getting the stopgap-funding bill signed before we all turned into pumpkins. I know it was just a can kicking exercise and we’ll be facing the same demonic BS from the GOP on the debt ceiling in October and a real funding bill will have …
Continue reading "We can’t live together because we don’t really want to"
The violence of nooses
Dear President Biden, It’s been a minute since I’ve had a moment to write to you. I don’t usually go this long between downloads, but a combination of being more tired than usual, having more work than usual, and playing more Scrabble than usual (as in playing Scrabble at all) have led to low letter …
‘Divide and Conquer’ ~ The American Way
Dear President Biden, If you are keeping up with what’s going on in the world, you probably did check out the clip of The Linda Lindas’ performance of Racist, Sexist Boy that I told you about yesterday since it was splashed all over the place, from NPR to the Washington Post. If you did, then …
Training our eyes on the prize
Dear President Biden, What a frothy, weird, unsavory, hopeful jumble the headlines are this morning. We’ve got everything from the half dozen stories about the numerous ground-shifting positives of the American Rescue Plan to lamentations about the past year since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic to stories about the GOP and their mouthpieces grasping …
We need a Cabinet-level Office of Equity
Dear President Biden, I’m a few days late getting started, but this morning I decided that the thing to give up for Lent is reading any news articles or opinions that are clearly about DJT. It’s time to kick that habit. After so many years of digging into whatever nasty thing he was up to …