August 18, 2017
Dear Mr. Adams,
By now I am sure you have received news from Charlottesville. I offer to you within my opinions and perspective.
On the evening of August the 11th, I observed a mob bearing aromatic torches surrounding my likeness on campus. Presuming them to be adherents to the enlightened principles of our revolution, I approached and recited those parts of my first inaugural that I could summon to mind, an invocation upon the rights of man, a celebration of the harmony and affection that abounds from proper social intercourse. In short time however, I could not raise my voice above the mob. Convinced that my stockings were evidence of perversion, they insisted that I cease speaking and perform sexual acts upon myself that I dare not articulate here. I thus retired with great haste, pleased to not possess the dexterity to commit the acts described and further pleased that so few in the crowd possessed any talents of dexterity at all—an abundance of food items were thrown at me but only a single cup of FroYo grazed my breeches.
I retreated to my homestead at Monticello and immediately set my pen to a dissertation on the malignancies of the mob, and the virtues of individual expression. Please find enclosed. In short: if a man’s opinion has merit, let him stand alone and speak it. If a monument has no merit, let us remove it. But let the fools stand undisturbed as monuments to the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated in a land where reason is left free to combat it.
As my text contains no moving illustrations, I fear today it will never be published or read. However, as a man digging for water may inadvertently find gold, the mob’s obsession with self-sodomy led me, as you will read, to a lengthy digression and I believe viable critique of the “selfie,” that I hope finds attention. The selfie mandates a degree of dexterity not dissimilar to self-sodomy, and is the act’s best manifestation. Do you not agree that this embodiment has been made ever more apparent with the long, retracting stick?
The fateful day of course was Saturday, August the 12th. As is my habit, I was at Java Java Café, an establishment on Main Street that provides an atmosphere for reading or architectural design, and where they brew fine coffee. It was from a corner armchair within, imbibing in my third caramel macchiato that I witnessed the violence.
What unspeakable and senseless horror. I am sure that the witless culprit of that day, and the witless inhabitants of today derive their power not from the strength of their ideas, but from weaponry too easily obtained, and from a malignancy of ignorance fed too easily by the speed of communication, like a single grape that ages before might have withered on the vine, but is fed today by these interwebbings of idiocy. Still what I wonder, is their supposed subjugation? Do they expect their frozen yogurt to remain ever frozen? For their quarters to be free of Black Entertainment Television? For their friends to speak Valyrian but never Spanish?
I confess that ages before we may have relegated a few items to a state of regrettable uncertainty. But with so many generations passed, should we not have arrived upon a higher plain of enlightenment, built upon those foundations to which we so carefully laid? I fear it is upon us now to carefully rectify this ambiguity, before our poor nation degrades itself further.
I propose a convention to be held in a city and upon a date of your choosing. We may be wise to, at the same time conduct our fantasy draft.
I await your instructions as much as I am your humble and obedient servant bidding adieu,
Thomas Jefferson
p.s. After so many months apart I received finally a message from Ayesha after the events in Charlottesville. Perhaps I should pass to Mr. Franklin to decode what she wrote on the phone? “wtf? Both sides? Lmao, rofl #yourstatue #ifyoudontknownowyouknow.”
