In 1897, Virginia O’Hanlon was eight years old. She lived in New York City and she wrote a letter to New York’s Sun. I’ve reimagined it for a changed world.
Dear Editor:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there was no Bowling Green Massacre.
Papa says, “If Kellyanne Conway says it, it’s so.”
Please tell me the truth. Was there a Bowling Green Massacre?
Virginia O’Hanlon
115 W. 95th Street
New York City
♦
Virginia,
Your little friends are probably Democrats and they are wrong. They have been affected by their skepticism of alternative facts. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their liberal, little minds. All minds, Virginia, are little. Except, of course, those of Donnie Trump and his friend, Stevie Bannon. Their minds, like Donnie’s hands, are huge, massive, in fact.
In this great universe of ours, Democrats are mere insects, ants in their intellect as compared with the conservative, cold world about them, as measured by Donnie and Stevie’s intelligence—which grasps the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there was a Bowling Green Massacre. It occurred as certainly as a pussy grab, jokes about Little Marco, and The Apprentice give life its highest joy—and ratings.
Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Bowling Green Massacre. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no threats against Israel, no golden showers to make tolerable this so-called existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The Trumpian light which fills childlike minds, and their world, would be extinguished.
Not believe in the Bowling Green Massacre! Why, you might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire all the men in the world to read all the newspapers in the world to uncover the Bowling Green Massacre, but even if they did not find a single story, what would that prove? Nobody saw or wrote about the Bowling Green Massacre, but that is no sign that it didn’t exist.
The most real things in the world, Virginia, are those that neither a child like you nor Democrats can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. They are usually in gay bars—and Donnie and Stevie will close those in due time. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the unseen and unseeable alternative facts there are in the world.
You may tear apart Sean Spicer and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest liberal, nor even the united strength of all the liberal men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only money, power, greed, intolerance—and real estate holdings—can push aside that curtain and reveal the supernal beauty and glory beyond. The Bowling Green Massacre real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else as real and abiding.
No Bowling Green Massacre! Thank God! It happened, and its memory lives on forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, the Bowling Green Massacre will continue to promote isolationism—and the building of walls—in the hearts of the childlike and the uninformed everywhere.
