An Open Letter to Donald Trump

This spring, when it became clear that Donald Trump had morphed from an improbable presidential candidate into the inevitable Republican nominee, writer and visiting Bennington MFA faculty member Mark Slouka reached a point where he felt he had to take action.

“I couldn’t continue watching the rise of this con-man while doing nothing,” Slouka said. “I felt then, and I continue to believe now, that there’s a kind of fascist stench about Trump, that in his disregard for the rule of law, his demonizing of minorities, his pathological insecurity and arrogance, he represents a unique threat to this country and, by extension, the world.”

Slouka reached out to his friend and fellow writer Andrew Altschul with the idea of crafting an open letter, laying out ideological principles to oppose the candidacy of the real estate magnate turned reality show star turned politician.

That Slouka, an award winning novelist and essayist, turned to the written word to fight against Trump is not surprising. What is surprising is how many other writers joined him.

Slouka estimates that he and Altschul each sent out around 250 emails that first week, entreating other authors to protest Trump by signing the open letter.

“Because, as writers, we are particularly aware of the many ways that language can be abused in the name of power,” the open letter began, before stating six other points where Trump’s candidacy represents a dangerous deviation from the norms of political discourse.

By the time the cri de coeur was posted on the website Literary Hub in late May, when Trump had all but secured the Republican nomination, nearly 500 writers, including literary luminaries like Lydia Davis, Cheryl Strayed, Stephen King, Michael Chabon, Rick Moody, Junot Díaz, and many more, had added their names.

“Writers are an ornery, independent-minded bunch, so to get almost 500 of them to sign on to a single statement is pretty extraordinary,” Slouka said. “I think it says very little about me and Andrew and a great deal about Donald Trump and the fear his march to the Republican nomination has inspired.”

News of the writerly effort to fight political rhetoric with the strongly worded language of scholarly critique was spread through the Twitter handle and social media hashtag #WritersOnTrump, proving that, even among the literary elite, there is the potential to go viral. It was picked up by virtually every media outlet, from The New York Times to BuzzFeed to CNN. Soon, other writers, as well as non-writers, added their names, and as of a month after its debut, over 20,000 people signed the online petition.

True to type, there were many writers who did not join. Instead, some penned essays exploring whether open letters and online petitions are an effective form to register political dissent and debating certain views about American history espoused in the letter. But while the united views of writers may not be an adequate means to political change, it galvanized a community to do what they do best—use their pens against the threat of the sword.

“Because they spend their days dealing with how language reveals and conceals the truth, they’re supremely sensitive to its abuse. Think of them as the canaries in the political coal mine,” Slouka said, of writers. “Don’t ask them to build bridges or fix the economy, but when the air starts getting toxic, when the Big Lie is getting its legs, they’ll recognize it and call it what it is.”