Winning Pennsylvania: Open Letters to Donald J. Trump from John Taylor Gatto

April 26, 2016
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April 26, 2016

 

To: Mr. Donald J. Trump

2016 Republican Frontrunner for U.S. Presidency

Chairman & President

The Trump Organization

 

From: John Taylor Gatto

Two-Time New York State Teacher of the Year

New York City, N. Y.

info@JohnTaylorGatto.com

 

 

Dear Mr. Trump:

I am a strong supporter of yours, with both a national and an international following and have some suggestions to help with your campaign.

First, your natural speaking style is refreshing, but like all political speakers you do have a tendency to fall back on well-worn rhetorical images, grandiose locations which, over time, are merely heard as noise, but that make no lasting impression on listeners.  This is an easy error to correct but, to maximize the effect of your own real substance, you do require some pithy plain talk rhetorical flourishes as accent notes over and around your substance—audiences expect them and want a slogan to take away from listening to you.

I have a beauty, that you may have for free, that would instantly resonate throughout the land and win the hearts of honest people, rich and poor over.

Like Obama’s “change you can believe in” (an empty promise) that, in my opinion, was his margin of victory.  My suggestion is to begin and end every talk you make with a variant of the Puritanical pledge, “Trust Me!” but to avoid establishment banality, change it to the more “working class,” “Count On Me!” which repeated over and over will burn away skepticism in those weary of political rhetoric:

“COUNT ON ME TO BRING JOBS TO AMERICA!

COUNT ON ME TO CLOSE OUR BORDERS TO ILLEGALS!

COUNT ON ME TO BE A TOUGH NEGOTIATOR!

COUNT ON ME TO BEAT ISIS!

COUNT ON ME TO PUT AMERICA FIRST—

Trust me when I tell you that I was born in America!

COUNT ON ME, I WILL BE YOUR PRESIDENT!

COUNT ON ME!

COUNT ON ME!

COUNT ON ME, AMERICA!”

I have another, less august suggestion costing less than ten dollars that would put a quarter million votes in your column.

America, myself included, is in love with pro football and its symbols, most beloved of all nationally, the Pittsburgh Steelers, having a highly admired symbol of which is the “The Terrible Towel” waved by fans.  If waved one lousy time, as an announcement, at a single nationally televised talk, “Lookout, here we come!” this would resonate so powerfully with Steeler lovers all over; that in Pennsylvania and surrounding states alone would put two million votes in your pocket.  This year they will have a powerhouse team, too, just in time to associate yourself with their strength and renowned work ethic.

To conclude the “Count On Me” refrain, you want to keep it in front of the public eye at all times; easily enough done by adding the words “Count On Me” to already existent public Trump signs, like the one over Trump Tower in Manhattan and the one in Vegas (you might even put up a few billboards in busy traffic locations to keep “Count On Me” in the common public imagination and, listen hard to this, you can mightily augment the psychological effect of this slogan by adopting the moving chorus of the legendary song, “Lean On Me” as your signature campaign song.  You don’t need the entire song, only its iconic chorus:

Lean on me, when you’re not strong

And I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on,

For it won’t be long ‘til I‘m gonna need somebody to lean on

You just call on me brother, when you need a hand

We all need somebody to lean on

I just might have a problem that you’ll understand

We all need somebody to lean on

If there is a load you have to bear, that you can’t carry,

I’m right up the road, I’ll share your load,

If you just call me…call me…if you need a friend call me.

If you need a friend…call me…if you ever need a friend…call me.

Played right, you should hear thunderous applause every time you hit the three words, “lean on me” and if you’re tuneful enough you can steal a page from Obama’s book and sing a verse yourself (although that wouldn’t be obligatory, just a dramatic high note).  Your opponents will be enraged with jealousy if you make this moving lyric and melody your signature campaign theme—COUNT ON ME, LEAN ON ME—a brilliant, memorable association calling up your suitability to lead whenever heard.

Personally, you won me over long ago when you fixed the skating rink in Central Park after that fool Henry Stern, professional bureaucrat, made promises and failed for five years and it took you what—two months?  And to do it under budget! I knew then you were the goods although that coarse vulgarian Stern couldn’t bring himself to say thank you.

You might also reduce the Central Park rink store to a simple illustrated campaign throwaway to stand as concrete evidence that you’re a doer more than a gassy politician.

Thanks for reading this and feel free to use it part or whole without cost as our way of thanking you for the park rink we love, Janet and I.

Incidentally, both of us were recently crippled by strokes, making it impossible to work for money, or I would send a cash contribution too.  But if any of this works for you, I would appreciate being a junior member of your speech writing team and to get a signed photo to hang on our wall.

Ponder these suggestions, all of which will win you votes and cause your opponents, including the New York Times, fits.

Love and hugs,

John and Janet Gatto

 

Author, The Underground History of American Education

New York State Teacher of the Year, 1990*, 1991**

 

*Encyclopaedia Brittannica, Inc.

**Education Department, University of the State of New York

 

 

Second letter-

 

Dear Mr. Trump,

John Gatto here gain. Please listen hard and I’ll give you some verifiable data for a policy speech on schools that is certain to make headlines in every corner of America and, perhaps, would resonate around the world.

You are already on record as denouncing Common Core Curriculum as the anti-American, Marxist project it is.  Its author, David Coleman, from Frankfurt School roots on his father’s side and sex-driven feminism on his mother’s (former president of America’s most radical women’s college, Bennington, which mocked virgins openly during the 50s and 60s, and was nationally famous for doing so) but I have some data for you to use, to be first to use, that will earn you the gratitude of millions of parents and liberty lovers instantly.  Data, again, easily verifiable on the internet, that will shock, and disgust, everyone who hears it, and will earn you gratitude and respect for sharing it with the ignorant public.

Get ready, listen hard, it is my difficult duty to bring you school news of developments under the Obama administration that the liberal press and the media networks have kept hidden from you for motives I can only guess at, but when your supporters hear it, many of them will withdraw their children from public schools because of it.

Four separate school systems across America have gotten the green light from Washington to impose curriculum, to kids of elementary school age and in early teen years, that in some parts of the world would be crimes carrying the death penalty.  You decide, when you hear what they are, whether these things should be forced upon young Americans sent to school, most often without knowledge or approval of their parents.

 

My first example comes from the West Coast school district of Encinitas, California, where students are taught to worship the Hindu sun god, Surya (one among many), because it was paid millions of dollars by a private religious foundation to do so.  Pass one of these schools teaching sun worship on a bright, cloudless day, and witness thousands of young boys and girls chanting and waving their arms in supplication to the sun god.  This study is not optional, but mandatory, while Christian worship is cause for expulsion.  Californian courts have already ruled that sun worship is perfectly legal as an academic policy, but “Count On Me…if I am elected, that pagan practice will cease, and those behind it will be exposed to shame so as to prevent encores!”

The second curriculum outrage that should warn you that something weird, even diabolical, is going on in our public schools is in Seattle, where in 13 schools, any girl over the age of 11 can schedule the school to implant an I.U.D. (intrauterine device) coil as a birth control device without parental notification—on school time, cost-free.

My third example is from Shawnee, Kansas, where middle school students are taught that pleasurable sex might be had free of pregnancy risk by shifting to anal sex, or oral sex, instead of vaginal penetration or by employing a dozen other techniques prominently printed on posters throughout the school.

The fourth example is from Chicago schools, (Mr. Obama’s hometown), where elementary schools are authorized to teach anal sex with female condoms as both a birth control device and a way to prolong sexual pleasure, recommending “enter slowly, with lots of lube.”

The fifth example of bizarre school curriculum, that I am aware of, and there are likely more, is on the East Coast, in Stroudsburg, PA, where elementary schools have a policy of surprising elementary school girls, as young as 9, with vaginal inspections for warts and other infirmities, even though this causes hysteria among many of the young girls.

“Fellow Americans, some wicked agenda has been set upon your children in public schools under the present political regime for unannounced purposes, but COUNT ON ME to stop these indecencies, if I am elected, and to prosecute those responsible, if the law allows—and if not, to force the law to fit fundamental standards of decency.

Our schools have been seized by an anti-American agenda, one approved by President Obama, a Kenyan who refused to produce his birth certificate, while ruining our schools, sexualizing our children, and degrading our families by dividing children from their moms and dads…but COUNT ON ME.  That infamy will end the day I take office.

If you live in California and don’t want your kids worshipping the sun, or live in Washington and don’t want your 11-year-old daughter fitted with an I.U.D. coil in school.  If you live in Kansas and object to students learning anal sex and being urged to homosexuality to prevent pregnancies.  If you live in Illinois and want to stop the anal sex curriculum there, or in Pennsylvania and you want mandatory vaginal inspections for 6th graders stopped there, write to me with your complaints…and COUNT ON ME to end these things and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Also, if you know of any similar mischiefs going on in public schools, please let me know about them.  The media has kept you in the dark about this curriculum because publishers and television moguls are in cahoots with the originators, that’s the simplest explanation.  Make it hot for the bastards, Mr. Trump, and we shall repay you with the nomination…and the Office!

I pray, Dear Lord, nobody else would dare to warn the public about the facts I just collected for you.  Once you broadcast them our gratitude will be boundless.

Love and hugs, your volunteer campaign advisor,

John Gatto

 

Third letter-

 

Dear Mr. Trump:

Don’t be discouraged by the petty sniping, your volunteer campaign advisor knows exactly how to stop it, probably forever, and to preempt the political discussion long range.

At this exact moment, what is called for is another heavyweight policy talk, not a “debate” but an appearance alone to deal with an issue of great public concern.  The two topics I feel will pay off biggest for you are:

 

  1. JOBS
  2. ISLAMIC TERRORISM

 

The substance of what you say—at a time when your competition is saying nothing will dominate the news for weeks, it cannot fail, but timing is very crucial—now is the moment to strike! And to introduce your signature tag, “COUNT ON ME!”

 

At this moment, when your name is on everybody’s lips, those who deride you will be ashamed by your seizure of the issues while other campaigns wallow in platitudes.

 

Love and hugs, your volunteer advisor,

John Taylor Gatto

 

 

 

 

Fourth letter-

 

 

Dear Mr. Trump:

Gatto here again, your volunteer advisor, a man from Pittsburgh who does count on you to clean the tables of the “Progressive” ideology, Marxist in inspiration, that has eroded American greatness throughout the 20th century in schools, foreign affairs, economics, religion, warfare, and every aspect of national life.

 

It’s a foreign ideology that infiltrated American life through our schools, certain politicized mass media, like The New York Times, TIME Magazine under Luce’s management, and especially through subsidized programs from tax-exempt foundations like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford (originally), although these days Gates and his cronies are the biggest villains.  Watch him!  Whatever he says he is not your, or America’s friend.

 

This is the 4th piece of campaign advice I have sent you.

 

Today, I address the inevitable need you will have to make Hillary look bad to her natural constituency—because that specific sort of critique will do her the maximum damage.  Her overall credibility, polls report, is already questioned far and wide—here is the best way you can build on that: her Wellesley senior thesis is a paean of respectful praise for a notorious Progressive radical named Saul Alinsky, in whose book, Rules for Radicals, the immortal advice is stated that if you have a political goal, no tactics are forbidden–anything goes.  Alinsky actually says that Progressives and their allies cannot afford “the luxury” of conscience!

 

Now listen hard, the thing the public will find fascinating is that she has restricted access to this thesis, anticipating damage to her reputation if the public knows her sympathies.  Ask her publicly, without warning, to put the text into the public record.  Her media allies will hardly disagree—and ask her why she concealed the thesis in the first place.  She would answer with one sputter and choke trying to reply while hiding her and Obama’s admiration of Alinsky (whose friends called him Slinsky—which you could mispronounce deliberately as “Slime-ski”).

 

Could your people send us a few dozen buttons that we can use to recruit votes for you?  Have an assistant assemble all my advice in a folder and read them all at once.  I am certain you’ll find ideas of use.

 

One, “COUNT ON ME,” is a powerful phrase, American in its appeal, and would instantly resonate coast to coast with its plain-talk language screaming sincerity. Hilary would be ashamed to try to match it.  I am increasingly convinced that if you get the nomination that you will win!

 

Love and hugs,

John Gatto the teacher

 

P.S. You would win as an Independent or Libertarian, too. Get a vice-president on board soon—that will help enormously.  This would break the spirit of your opponents and scare the hell out of Hillary—who will be compelled to pick a loser. Get a VP, but no Bushes please!

P.P.S. Let this serve as my official endorsement for you as President of the United States of America.

 

BIO:

John Taylor Gatto is a renowned speaker having lectured about education in all 50 states and 9 countries. He taught for 30 years in public schools and was twice awarded the New York State Teacher of the Year.  Mr. Gatto resigned from school teaching in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal because he no longer wanted “to hurt kids to make a living.” Demonstrating unsurpassed bravery in his condemnation of government-monopoly compulsory schooling, he is known as “The World’s Most Courageous Teacher.” He is the author of A Different Kind of Teacher, The Exhausted School, Dumbing Us Down, ?Weapons of Mass Instruction, and The Underground History of American Education, having sold over 200,000 copies, and co-creator of the epic 5-hour DVD interview, The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto. Learn more: www.JohnTaylorGatto.com

 

CONTACT: info@JohnTaylorGatto.com