Parks and Recreation's Leslie Knope wrote a letter to post-Trump America

(Image credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

published 10 November 2016

Leslie Knope, the fictional female champion of public service at the center of bygone NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, addressed America in a sweet and funny letter posted to Yahoo on Thursday.

Citing an amusing middle-school experience involving a tortoise, a jaguar, and a gassy T. Rex named Dr. Farts, Knope explained in the letter that she learned at a young age that "people are unpredictable and democracy is insane." She then explained that after large amounts of hot chocolate and crying, she had worked her way through all five stages of grief in the wake of Donald Trump's stunning Election Day victory over Hillary Clinton — except acceptance:

I acknowledge that Donald Trump is the president. I understand, intellectually, that he won the election. But I do not accept that our country has descended into the hatred-swirled slop pile that he lives in. I reject out of hand the notion that we have thrown up our hands and succumbed to racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and crypto-fascism. I do not accept that. ... I work hard and I form ideas and I meet and talk to other people who feel like me, and we sit down and drink hot chocolate (I have plenty) and we plan. We plan like mofos. [Leslie Knope, via Yahoo]

Knope also appealed directly to young girls to remain optimistic and engaged. "On behalf of the grown-ups of America who care about you and your futures, I am awfully sorry about how miserably we screwed this up," she wrote. "You are going to run this country, and this world, very soon. ... You will not be cowed or discouraged by [Trump's] stream of retroaggressive babble."

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Read the full letter — which was actually penned by a member of the Parks and Recreation writing staff — here.

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Ricky Soberano is the social media editor at TheWeek.com. Her writing has appeared in Complex, Nylon, Gothamist, Maxim, and others. Previously she was the culture editor for The Stony Brook Press and contributing editor for The Odyssey. She has a B.A. in multidisciplinary studies in journalism and dance from Stony Brook University and an A.S. in dance from Queensborough Community College. She's lived in Brooklyn her whole life, eats too much ramen, and freelance models, and she enjoys writing about the undiscovered and underreported within the sphere of culture. Follow her on Twitter.