Dear Santa, Whole Lotta People Been Bad This Year

Dear Santa,

I don’t know if anyone’s told you, you being isolated up at the North Pole and all (I heard it’s getting scary warm up there.  Are the elves and reindeer doing OK?), but I heard you can see when people are sleeping and you can see when they’re awake, so you probably already know, but just in case you don’t, whole lotta people been naughty this year.

Santa, they’re being bad in a way we never saw before.  No stocking was ever made that could hold everything they deserve this year...I hope you have plenty of coal. I mean just pull up that sleigh, open up the chute and fill those chimneys!  Coal is still good for something!  What’s really creepy Santa, is these aren’t little kids being bad, they’re “grownups” who know better.  To tell you the truth Santa, I never saw little kids this bad.  You have to be around for awhile to know how to be this bad.

Sometimes, Santa, it looks like a pod people invasion, but I don’t think they’re really pod people, they’re just acting the way they act so they can fool some people.  Except Devin Nunes, maybe he really is a pod person, but I heard he’s an android who got bounced from the back of the truck when he left the factory.  

Truck driver stopped the truck, lifted the lid on the Devin’s crate, the Devin's (I heard this Devin is a 4.0, the first three kept self-destructing) pupils were orbiting freely on the surface of his eyeballs and wouldn’t fall back into place till the truck driver smacked the Devin on the side of the head.  People have noticed that maybe the truck driver didn’t fix everything wrong with 4.0–his eyes often seem to stare without any particular focus at a reality not seen by anyone else.  Anyway, I heard the Devin had been custom made for someone whose identity has been carefully concealed, but needed a Devin who would say the most absurd things publicly and carry out the most ludicrous political missions without worrying about the consequences for himself.  But Santa, android or not, pod person or not, I say fill Devin's chimney with coal!

Santa, there’s this crazy woman on TV who used to be a judge, I mean her previous adult life had been devoted to the law, but now she’s constantly yelling about how you can’t trust the law because it’s out to get her president.  She doesn’t like to talk much about the evidence, which is strange in a former judge, but this is what is happening here Santa, whole lotta people who should know better have been very bad this year!

Santa, there’s this crazy old man they used to call America’s Mayor, made his career in the law, and as strong on law enforcement, but now he never stops attacking the rule of law, and is probably this minute running around committing crimes both domestically and internationally.  Please don’t forget to stop at his chimney!  Maybe you’ll get there before he’s arrested!

Santa, there’s this nihilistic old bastard who runs the United States Senate, oh yeah, you’ve known about him for a long time, well, spare no coal for him!

Santa, there’s this nihilistic old bastard who organized the billionaire class to surreptitiously destroy democracy in America, while for decades funding climate change denial for the dual purposes of protecting his bottom line and allaying citizen suspicions that corporations can be lethal not just to people but to planet Earth...oh yeah, you’ve known about him for a long time, well, pour on the coal!

Santa, there’s this army of mercenaries, mostly former professional Republicans, but now gainfully employed by the nihilistic old bastard mentioned above to carry out the destruction of American democracy, please find everyone of them with your unerring sleigh and you know what to do!

Santa, there’s this especially sad case, a poor, joyless, mentally and physically out-of-condition old man coming out of retirement to imitate, compete with and impress Dick Cheney and to play the quixotic role of solitary hero for those who share his vision of reality--who believe we must hold back the tide of non-white people seeking justice, and destroy the rule of law in the United States to protect the interests of the current president, because protecting the interests of the current president somehow translates into protecting everything about America worth preserving.  It’s a peculiar case, Santa, a man who was formerly the top law enforcement official in America, and now again the top law enforcement official, who is doing as much as any person in the world to destroy the rule of law in the country whose values he claims to believe he is preserving.  Or does he believe that?  He knows he is doing wrong; he doesn’t hide that as well as Cheney does, but he also believes he is strong enough to do wrong, performing heroically to hold back the coming tide of everything he and his team have always dreaded.  He’s sad, Santa, but he has earned his coal!

Santa, this year a beautiful girl came from across the sea, it seems miraculously, to tell the grownups of the world that the world is going to heat up and die if grownups don’t grow up and start remembering what they must do, but Santa, a lotta grownups men and women alike, rose up in fear of the truth she was telling and said things about her that not that many years ago very few grownups would have been low enough to say about a 16 year girl who so clearly is only telling the truth, and who so clearly had to be extraordinarily courageous to dare tell such a truth in the face of so many grownups who now, unfathomably, hate for certain truths to be told.  I was ashamed of those grownups who have grown so far away from the concept of what it means to be grownup, and know no shame in being so shameful.  Santa, that’s a lot of coal, but I know you know where it should go!

Santa, you know about lists, long, long, lists, and, you know, Santa, I believe you already know everything this letter has been saying, and you know that the list of grownups behaving very, very badly in America is much much too long to fit in a letter to Santa, but I wanted to reach out to you this Christmas because I know this is probably going to be your busiest Christmas Eve so far, what with all that coal to deliver, and because I wanted to let you know that although your list of naughty grownups is very, very long this year, there is somehow still a lot of good left in this country south of where you live.  And the record shows that you are a reliable traditionalist, unfazed by the shifting tides of history.  I know you’re gonna deliver.