6/26/2025

My Dear Friend & POTUS, DJT,

            Thanks for making an effort to be a peacekeeper. As you endeavor to stop violence, please see what you can do to get the junta to stop bombing the people of Burma.

            Thanks for leaving NATO on good terms! It seems that you & Mark Rutte are now besties. Perhaps you can go on a bike ride together through Amsterdam someday.

            Are getting enough solitude? According to my new shero, Hannah Arendt (HA), we need time alone to have heart-to-heart talks with ourselves where we contemplate our actions & make sure we are the person we’d like the world to see. HA writes, “The self is the only person from whom I cannot depart, whom I cannot leave, with whom I am welded together.” HA notes that if we murder someone, we will spend the rest of our lives living with a murderer. Facing this truth about ourselves will be a challenge but is part of the human condition of having a conscience.

            Do you think our nation needs a conscience? Do we need to be aware of the harms we have caused ourselves so we can avoid doing so again?

            HA philosophizes that to avoid the "banality of evil," we must develop a collective memory to spark critical thinking about what authorities can order their underlings to do. She coined the phrase “banality of evil” to explain how Adolf Eichman participated in Nazi atrocities without being motivated by extreme malice. He just stopped thinking critically about what he was being ordered to do.

             I bring this up because visitors to the Manzanar National Historic Site are being invited to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, & abundance of landscapes & other natural features” How can we pretend that the incarceration of innocent people was not negative? Certainly, you don’t want us all to stop thinking critically about the history of the US.

            Clearly you bring a critical eye toward everyone you employ, keeping close tabs on their performance. Don’t we all need to have that kind of vigilance toward the actions of our government?

            Just remember that I can love something even if I know its flaws. The best kind of love happens when I love those flaws!!!

            BYBS,