Dear Assailant-in-Chief, Letter #5

11/20/16

Dear Assailant-in-Chief,

So, I hear you settled your Trump University fraud case for $25 million.  You immediately tried to spin it as being "smart" (because you would have spent more money if it had gone to court...Doesn't that amount to an admission of guilt?) and because you're too busy with the important business of preparing to destroy American democracy more than you already have.  That's not how you put it, but I read between the lines.

I mentioned before that I teach college.  I am from a family of educators; five generations of my family at least, maybe more.  I have a distant cousin who calls it the family business.  Not a very profitable one, most of the time. But my family has a record of public service and idealism going back to the American Revolution and beyond.

I have a teaching philosophy statement that says things like "Teaching is the art of cultivating epiphany" and muses on the balance of challenge and encouragement necessary for teaching complex skills. Running underneath, unstated, is my belief that every human being who walks into my classroom has unique skills and gifts worthy of development. I teach all of my students with equal attention to their potential.  I see all of them, their presence in my classroom, as a kind of grace.

You see students as rubes to be manipulated with promises of success and separated from their money.  Education for profit is not education; it is a cynical poisoning of people's dreams.  Trump University isn't just the latest in your string of bad business and chicanery.  It is an insult to every teacher in America, every person who believes education is a means to uplift those who struggle, every American who understands that education is a cornerstone of our democracy. I note that what landed you in court is not the fraud itself, but the fact that people eventually figured it out, got the backbone to admit they'd been conned, and rebelled.  Your campaign for President has been exactly the same as your other cons:  big empty promises, manipulation of people's desires for a better life, a cynical poisoning of the the American Dream for your own advantage.  Those who have tasted your poison may yet recover, once they realize that there's nothing there. May it be so.

Yours sincerely,

Sara Amis
Citizen of these United States of America


From Dorine Jennette:

PLEASE JOIN ME IN WRITING THE ASSAILANT-IN-CHIEF
Please join me in bombarding the Assailant-in-Chief with letters: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contact. I will write to him every day through his first 100 days in office, maybe longer if momentum holds. I am asking others to write just ONE letter. Let's not just vent our grief to each other--let's speak truth to power together. Please WRITE and please SHARE this plan with your friends. Pass it on!
You do not need to be a woman or an assault survivor to address the Assailant-in-Chief as such. If you are a man who has a daughter, a sister, a wife, a woman colleague or friend you respect, or a mother (hint: that last one is all of you!), then you have something to say to the Assailant-in-Chief. Your letter might be a brief one-liner. That's great! Please send it! Women need our allies now. Here's the link to DJT's contact page--this might take you one minute or less! https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contact
Or, maybe you will start a related project addressing any one of the many groups Trump has already harmed . . .
As we talk with each other, let's break the bubble and also send our complaints straight to the source. He won't read them and won't care if he does, so probably this is a placeholder action while we figure out what we're really going to do . . . but it's something.

Dorine's posts can be found here:  https://www.facebook.com/dorine.jennette

PS from Sara:  I've taken to just tweeting these at him.  He's not going to read them anyway, but I might as well use the platform that he actually responds to.  *snort*