In contentious, fractured times like these, millions of Americans are looking for understanding in the face of Donald Trump’s recent election victory. Some have turned to the news, others have turned to friends and family, while still others turn to entertainment, for both comfort and decency. For Vox, a former writer for the acclaimed NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation” wrote a letter in the voice of Leslie Knope, originally played by Amy Poehler, about Donald Trump.
READ MORE: The 10 All-Time Best Episodes Of ‘Parks And Recreation’
In the letter, Knope first explains her pain over the past couple, and then shared a parable about democracy involving her fourth grade classroom and a fictional election. Then, she discussed how she underwent the five stages of grief, and why she doesn’t “accept” Donald Trump.
“I acknowledge that Donald Trump is the president,” she says. “I understand, intellectually, that he won the election. But I do not accept that our country has descended into the hatred-swirled slop pile that he lives in. I reject out of hand the notion that we have thrown up our hands and succumbed to racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and crypto-fascism. I do not accept that. I reject that. I fight that. Today, and tomorrow, and every day until the next election, I reject and fight that story.”
Knope goes on to address the women in the country who might be dispirited in the past couple days, saying that, “our president-elect is everything you should abhor and fear in a male role model.”
“You are going to run this country, and this world, very soon,” she say. “So you will not listen to this man, or the 75-year-old, doughy-faced, gray-haired nightmare men like him, when they try to tell you where to stand or how to behave or what you can and cannot do with your own bodies, or what you should or should not think with your own minds. You will not be cowed or discouraged by his stream of retrogressive babble. You won’t have time to be cowed, because you will be too busy working and learning and communing with other girls and women like you. And when the time comes, you will effortlessly flick away his miserable, petty, misogynistic worldview like a fly on your picnic potato salad.”
Read the full letter over at the Vox website.
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