A Letter to Cancelled Presidents

March 22, 2021

Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln:

Dear Sirs:

It is a sad day when I must write to you to inform you that you Gentlemen have been canceled.  Last month, after nearly three years of “careful” consideration, the San Francisco Board of Education in a 6-1 vote called for removing your names and those of other honored historical figures from schools due to direct or broad ties to slavery, oppression, racism, or the “subjugation” of human beings. Mister Presidents, you are not alone. You have joined a list, that appears to grow longer each day, which includes such notables as Pepe LePew, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and some of the works of Theodor Giesel (Dr. Seuss) all victims in what has become known as the cancel culture. That’s right a cartoon, a toy and a children’s book writer. Mister Presidents I am sure that you would be the first to acknowledge all your shortcomings and you President Lincoln would probably be the most outspoken regarding those shortcomings.

What really is a shame is that these cancel culture idiots waste their energies on these silly pursuits to erase you from history instead of learning more about the times in which you lived and your accomplishments relative to those times. Those accomplishments and your intelligence and prescience far outweigh anything they may think they are accomplishing today. What these geniuses fail to realize is that their actions smell worse than any skunk let alone a cartoon skunk and even Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head would tell them how inane these plans are.

President Washington, I wonder if any of them have ever read your Farewell Address where you warned us of the dangers of political parties:

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus, the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

Maybe if they looked around today, they could see how right you were and how they should start thinking for themselves.

President Jefferson if they only read some of your quotes, they would learn so much about what you thought about this country and how government can lead us to that “Pursuit of Happiness.” Hopefully, they would realize it is up to the individual to pursue and attain the happiness they long for. Happiness is a pursuit not a right: 

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Finally, President Lincoln I am quite sure that none of these geniuses have ever read your Second Inaugural Address with one of the most stirring and meaningful endings of any speech, particularly at that time or any time. For if they had, they all might just take a step back from their silly quixotic escapades and practice some of that charity and binding of the nation’s wounds instead of ripping those wounds open.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Gentlemen, thank you for your time and know that you will never be cancelled here.

Sincerely,

Andrew DeMarco

Pelham, NY