Aaron Sorkin—never one to miss an opportunity to wax about the United States—wrote a letter mostly aimed at his daughter, Roxy, following Trump’s election to president. The piece was published at Vanity Fair, and it has shades of his best work like The West Wing, and just a touch of that opening Newsroom speech. (Shudder.) The tone is in turns pissed off, and vaguely optimistic.
The Trumpsters want to see people like us (Jewish, “coastal elites,” educated, socially progressive, Hollywood…) sobbing and wailing and talking about moving to Canada. I won’t give them that and neither will you. Here’s what we’ll do…
…we’ll fucking fight. (Roxy, there’s a time for this kind of language and it’s now.) We’re not powerless and we’re not voiceless. We don’t have majorities in the House or Senate but we do have representatives there. It’s also good to remember that most members of Trump’s own party feel exactly the same way about him that we do. We make sure that the people we sent to Washington—including Kamala Harris—take our strength with them and never take a day off.
The note is addressed to “Sorkin girls” which apparently counts both Roxy and her mother Julia. And while it does prove that Sorkin will never miss an opportunity to explain things to women, the sentiment is stirring. Trump, after all, is the perfect Sorkin villain—an inarticulate threat to American institutions.