“A Man of Integrity: 4 Years of Trump” (@Sareytales ©2020)
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A (long) poem constructed using (nearly) all of the trump-related messages I have received on various dating apps from 2016-2020.
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This may be the end of Trump, but it’s not the end of Trumpism.
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“4 Years of Trump” is the manifestation of my personal experience of being on a dating app during the Trump presidency. And as gut-wrenching as some of these messages are, I know that mine is an experience of relative privilege. It does not, nor could it attempt, to encompass all the injustice, horror, brutality, reckless neglect, cruelty, hatred, bigotry, gaslighting, oppression, racial violence, gender discrimination, and complete and utter lack of regard for humanity that too many Americans and their loved ones have had to endure not just for the past 4 years, but for too many generations to count.
The act of creation is how I can process pain, grief, fear, optimism and hope. And now that we have some fleeting space to breath, I am taking the time to emotionally purge all these toxic messages in art form. But the somber truth is that too many of us have experienced so much worse than these messages, and have lived this suffering for much longer than a single term presidency. And while we can all breathe a sigh of relief for the moment, nothing had changed other than we now have the opportunity to hold our elected officials accountable to their promises and our demands.