This letter is more of a cleansing of my own consciousness than an attempt to change anyone’s mind, so feel free to take my words with a grain of salt. It doesn’t matter whether you voted for Trump to block Hillary; voted for Trump as longtime Republican who felt obligated not to buck the party nominee (regardless of your reservations); or a die-hard deplorable who was simply “mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore,”; I repeat it doesn’t matter. You made an egregious mistake, and now, we are seeing the folly of your misguided allegiance to a candidate who makes Hillary look like a saint.

I really believe that many of you in the first two categories listed above have seen the error of your ways and sincerely wish you could dial back the clock to November of 2017 and take back your vote. Sane, rational people, after 500 days of reflection, have only one option in the matter. Admit your error and work with the rest of the nation to throttle back this man child who would be king and throw the bum out, or at least cripple his agenda come November of this year.

This blog is aimed at the die-hard Trumpers and their inability to see their support of Trump as a strike against our democracy like we have not seen before, and hopefully, never see again. There are several areas that, as Americans, you have to take into consideration.

The first is obviously racism. Many of you developed a racist ideology during the Obama years, or were racist all along, but felt expressing it was too outrageous to display in polite company (or not). Of course, up until the Obama years, no black man had had the temerity to run for the highest office in the land (Jessie Jackson to the contrary). To your shock and horror, however, he won, leaving you in a smoldering funk where you found that that seed of racism within you began to grow and take over your better self. Trump set you free, or as we used to say in the 1960s, you let your freak flag fly.

How you can’t see that racism is eating both you and the country alive, and the results are destructive both personally and too the fabric of our free society. Trump did, and continues, to play you like a cheap fiddle for his own agenda. Do you really think he gives a damn about black men taking a knee during the singing of the national anthem to a protest police brutality against people of color? If you do, put down the glass of Kool-Aid. You have been duped.

Then there are the Evangelicals. Explain to me how a person of faith can sit idly by when the president you helped elect is a proven pussy grabber, liar, fornicator, philanderer, a cheat, and very likely an obstructionist and colluder with our greatest enemy since WWII? Show me in the Bible where your Jesus would condone anything Trump has done in the last year and a half. His half-baked policies are meant to divide this nation, not make it better. What did you expect from a man whose history is painted in moral depravity with what anyone who confesses to be a Christian should find abhorrent and diametrically opposed to what being a Christian is supposed to mean.

I’ve heard many of the holier than thou church leaders claim that it was, and is expedient, to support Trump to help bring America to God. You are fooling yourselves. Americans are not sheep willing to accept your half-baked ideology that Christianity should be the nation’s religion of choice. The Constitution is clear that everyone has the right to worship however they choose, or not. Religion lives in the world apart from our government and it’s intuitions. Be happy with that; it’s more than you deserve considering the low road you have taken by supporting Trump. He’s using you, not the other way around.

I have also heard people proudly claim they are members of the basket of deplorables. Really? What exactly does it mean to willingly align yourself with this group? It means that you are informed by Fox News, or worse, ideologues like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones, rather than think for yourselves. These people are not visionaries. They are entertainers at best or con men at worst who push an ideology of separatism because it sells. They see the fear and anger that people like you embrace and use it against you for profit or ratings or whatever else they can use it for to bilk the unsuspecting masses by fanning your fear and anger for profit. By falling for the hype, you’ve reduced yourself to caricature of what a true American should be. One who questions the acts of our leaders and stands up to them when they go off the rails. If there was ever a president that needed to be stood up to, Trump is the prime example.

The upshot of the support that Trump die-hards have given him we see on the news daily. Now, he and his minions claim that he is above the law. How in the name of all things right and holy can you denigrate your rights as an American to support someone who claims to be above you socially and legally to the detriment of the Constitution and the rule of law? Can’t you see this is the logistical extension of Trump’s agenda? This isn’t a new concept, however, F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best when he wrote,

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

As I said in the beginning, I write this not to condemn Trump supporters, but rather, to understand. Granted, liberals have their issues as well, but let me be frank, “This shit just got real.” Trump is on the verge of doing something really stupid, really vile and evil in regard to the rule of law and our Constitutional democracy. You have two choices. You can continue to support a man who thumbs his nose at the best of what it means to be an American or see him for what he is: A grifter who considers only himself and his tribe. A tribe, I fear, that his supporters in the ranks will never be a part of in the end.