Dear College Roommate with the Confederate Flag

You know, I don’t remember your actual name. It’s been 19 years since we last spoke. I doubt you remember mine. I kind of wonder if you remember me at all. I sure as hell remember you.

That’s mostly because you will always be the one who told me the Twin Towers were on fire. I suppose I could recast you with, I don’t know, Wolf Blitzer, or Dick Cavett. Feels weird to lie about My Own Personal 9/11 Story though. I don’t want to ruin my The League legacy.

Besides, it was sort of funny. You told me a plane crashed into the World Trade Center like it was nothing, then said you were leaving for class, and left. I got out of bed and investigated.

I don’t know if you would have said anything at all had you not known I was from the city. You were not from NYC. You literally had a John Deere calendar. Every month, a new sexy tractor for your peepers. Whenever a friend asked me what our upstate SUNY college was like, I mentioned the John Deere calendar.

You wanted to maintain a golf course, and it was an agricultural college, but nobody else had that calendar. And nobody else had the Confederate flag up against their wall. And nobody else once left an AIM away message saying something about Black people and a noose and a tree. Not the other white students on our dorm floor. Certainly not the Black students I played NBA Live ‘01 with whom I invited over once just to piss you off, but you weren’t there, and I felt immediately horrible about it when they looked at the flag and asked what the fuck that was about.

I’m guessing you will vote for Donald Trump, if you haven’t already.

Here’s the thing: Could you not?

Before we get to the most likely reason you’ll vote for him, I should go over the other reasons I think people vote for Trump — there is a decent chance those check some of your boxes.

The Democrats are in bed with elitist Silicon Valley rich folk. They don’t give a fuck about the middle-class. They look down on us. They tell coal miners to learn to code.

You’re kind of right. The problem is Republicans super duper don’t give a shit about the middle or lower class. Rs historically give more tax breaks to the rich and widen the class gap more than Ds.

But maybe you are rich, I have no idea.

It’s funny. It makes people who think they are better than me mad.

Well, “owning libs” isn’t funny. Farts are funny. That’s hard for me to say too, as someone who writes for, let’s generously call it, a living. John Mulaney is funny. Puns are funny if the person making the pun knows they’re better than that. Two or three other things. Making people mad is objectively not amusing. It’s really you who is mad. Like, all the time. Over everything. Always someone else’s fault. If you spent half your energy hating others on yourself, you could probably solve most of your problems.

The John Deere calendar thing? It was elitist of me to bring it up. I get that. You voting for Trump doesn’t even things out.

He’s not part of the system. He’s not a politican.

He is. He hired businessmen. They took money out of your pocket. He had four years to shake things up. He shook things up. Didn’t do anything good for anyone you or I know.

He’s going to make America great again.

The implication is of course racist: typically only white people think the past was better than the present or the future. There’s also the thinking that with Trump as president, you’ll be young again, that gum you like will be back in style, you’ll have the stomach you had in high school, you’ll have all of your hair, you’ll be considered aesthetically pleasing to strangers again (for probably the first time), SNL will once again be funny to you, etc It is not going to happen. Age gracefully. Exercise. Invest in a wig.

You secretly hate yourself and want to die.

I’m not going to try and defend this theory, even though I really believe this is the case for a decent chunk of Trump voters.

You’re racist.

Most people who are racist don’t think they’re racist. They cross the street when they see someone who doesn’t look like them walking their way without thinking about it. They choose the person who looks more like them than the other for the job, which leads to better and more financially lucrative jobs, without thinking about it. When those people are called out for their racism on social media they double down, usually because they believe they aren’t racist, and How could this person who doesn’t even know me say I’m a racist? How do I know they don’t know me? They called me a racist. So they double and triple down. They say #Actually All Lives Matter. They don’t do the internal work that they need to do to realize they are part of the problem. They vote Trump because he doesn’t see the problem either. He says You’re fine, it’s just the granola-eating yahoos who are constantly debating among themselves what is politically correct that are the problem. And a bunch of other nonsense, but he sounds sincere, not like a politician.

The uh, “good” news is we both know you’re a racist, so I can be direct here when I tell you that while Trump is a racist, if he thought he could win/pull another inside straight on Election Night by saying we should all love and respect one another and the Poor Boys can suck his dick, he absolutely would.

I also don’t think you’ve considered what will likely happen if Trump gets re-elected. It’s not like America will collectively “¯\_(ツ)_/¯“ and say “Alright fine, we won’t bother fighting against racism anymore.” Quite the opposite, non-friend. You’ll probably just be more angry than if Biden won, because “your guy” will still be in office and you’ll just keep not finding yourself in your own personal paradise where everyone is white and every golf course is perfectly manicured.

Maybe you’ve matured. You were 18-19 when I knew you. Maybe you travelled the world a little. Maybe you made more than one Black friend. Maybe you figured out we collectively are all we got. That you are not a separate self. Maybe.

If you remain ignorant, if you take anyone’s attempt to explain this to you and turn it into a personal attack, I pity you, and politely ask you vote Biden, or just stay home on Election Day and shop online for a 2021 John Deere calendar.

Namaste,

Roger Cormier