Dear “Mr. President,”

I have learned so much from you during your brief stint as “president” that I cannot help but write to enumerate the ways and to thank you for them, and I would be remiss if I didn’t start with your eloquent use of quotation marks to apply acrobatics to the English language. Oh! For how ignorant I have been these past thirty-two years, how I have failed to grasp the fluidity and flexibility of words! I did not know, until you opened my eyes with your great cunning and guile and wisdom, that were one to tell you to go “fuck yourself” it ought to be interpreted, not as an insult, but rather as a suggestion to take a moment to relax, something that the stress of your job–a job so stressful that you should be golfing every other day, instead of just every third day–makes imperative.

But the lessons don’t stop there. You have taught me that, while there may be lies, damn lies, and statistics, there are also alternative facts, and that those facts can form the basis for power and glory. I did not know that reality, far from being objective and fixed, is something we can create and summon, like Greek Gods, in 140 character screeds. I’ve learned that locker room talk is not defined as what people talk about in locker rooms–jock straps, foot fungus, low-flow shower heads, I assume–but rather as bragging about sexual assault. I’ve discovered that blanket statements about an entire group of people or race–Muslims, Mexicans, and other pesky populations–does not a racist make; no, such statements are the brave proclamations of those who intend to protect traditional America from harm.

Why did it take me so long to understand that health care is complex? That those best suited to look out for the little guy are empty suits with billions of dollars in their pockets? That the best way to balance the budget is to throw the poor, the elderly, and the vulnerable off the balance beam?  That we will not be safe until every dollar of tax revenue is spent on bombs and planes; until every non-white is evicted from the land and prevented from re-entering by a great wall;  until every conversation and thought can be monitored by a benevolent government; until you, wise and erudite and of great and presidential temperament, have unfettered power? That words don’t mean what they meant when we said them, but what we have decided that they should’ve meant, or that we now want them to mean?

Oh, Mr. “President,” you are a great, great man–the best, really. I was scared at first, and then reticent and angry, but now I have come to accept you, our great leader. I accept the wisdom of breaking the law and then paying a fine to fix it (jails are for the plebeians, for the weak!). I accept that what appears to be a conflagration, based on smoke and heat and flame, is really just a pile of cold logs on which is inscribed the truth: fake news. I accept that what I don’t like is a hoax and what I do like is true, always true, because I say so, because it is so!

I look forward to many more years of your reign as the Leader of the Free World, and demand that you change nothing about yourself. For your entire life has validated your every action, and I couldn’t be happier to be picking up the pieces of all that you have said and done, and continue to do, in service of yourself–I mean, in service of the nation.

Yours truly,

Andy Posner