A Letter to America

Dear America,
                       I don't often write letters that contain advice, chiefly because other people's always seems so much better, and seldom do I write letters that plead, because our generation was brought up never to plead for anything, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and rarely have you had such desperate times. We over here don't like to see this.

I have always rather liked your countrymen, and, although I've never visited you, have always been fascinated by you.  Us English (sorry, I mean British!), are a rather reserved bunch, not given to displays of emotion, or indeed, displays of anything else.  Many in this country believe the Americans to be brash, loud, and impulsive.  By our rather narrow standards of aloofness, that may have a grain of truth in it, but I have also found them to be warm, friendly, open, and easy-going, even if they do have an alarming propensity for getting involved in very messy little wars.

You may recall that we had a messy little war ourselves between 1939 and 1945, and despite the taunts of being "over-sexed, overpaid, and over here" most British people remember with gratitude the assistance and sacrifices of ordinary Americans.  I am mindful of the fact that about 47,000 of your young men became casualties flying from "this sceptred isle", of which 26,000 lost their lives; that is a very humbling thought.  Just in case you thought we'd forgotten - we haven't.

It was, therefore, with great sadness that I read of the difficulties you are encountering with this Presidential Election of yours.  It seems - as is so often the case - that the candidates you have ended up with are not really the people your great American public wants or likes.  We in Britain can empathise with that, because, believe me, we've had our share.  However, I do feel that our John Majors and Gordon Browns - and, yes, even Tony Blairs - pale into insignificance when compared to a man like Donald Trump.

Now, look, America, I don't want to tell you your business, but I can't, in all honesty, sit here and say nothing.  I'd never forgive myself;  it wouldn't be right.  Where the Hell did you get him from?  Can you get a refund?  Is, he, in fact, a real person, or some kind of CIA joke we're not getting?  This is a man who has been described - with much justification, I might add - as "a narcissistic, bragging, mendacious, ignorant, dangerous demagogue".  This is a man who loves everyone except blacks, browns, immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, and women.  The Huffington Post didn't hold back either (especially after he'd attacked the lady who runs it!), calling him "an attention-starved, thin-skinned narcissist", and remarking that his campaign was laden with insults, and built on "bombast, bullying, and false bravado".  Then HP really got into it's stride, calling him "a mean-spirited, nasty, and divisive, polarizing, loose-cannon" going on to observe that he was also " a tone-deaf, self-serving entitled meglomaniac and pathological liar".  It went on to say - unsurprisingly - that Trump was "fundamentally unqualified to be President", and then topped the whole thing off by saying that it felt the people of America would demand more than just  "an angry, crass, impulsive, intolerant, intellectually-bankrupt peddler of negativity and doom". as their next President.  I don't think they like him very much.

You've had good,  even - some would say - great, Presidents in the past;  Roosevelt, Eisenhower, JFK, etc., and some who were mediocre, like Johnson, Bush and co., and, admittedly, Nixon, but you can't be expected to get it right every time.  However, there really can be no possible excuse for tolerating a bigot like Trump.  Mrs Clinton (the person insultingly referred to by Trump as "Crooked Hillary") may not be the ideal choice, but she is at least capable of running you without offending most of your countrymen and the rest of the world.  Do not allow DJT to consign the names of Trump and America to the same historical dustbin as Hitler and the Nazis, because I'm with Huffington; I don't think I like him very much, either.

Raise 'Old Glory', America, and raise it against a man who would destroy you politically, domestically, and internationally.  A man who would drag the name of America so deep into the muck of racism, separatism, and blind indifference, that it will take you forever to drag yourself out.

America - dear, larger-than-life, colourful, loud, gung-ho, America - please, I beg of you, do not allow this braying racist to make you a figure of fun.  We have a vested interest - he is as dangerous to everyone else as he is to you.  You are much, much, better than Donald Trump, America, you deserve much, much, more than Donald Trump.

I hope and pray, from the bottom of my heart, that you get it.