NOTHINGIS WRONGANDHERE ISWHY
Essays
ALEXANDRA
PETRI
To Steve
You are a good man and I like you
(sorry, I panicked)
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE: Welcome to the New Physics!
Part I
THE BRIGHTEST TIMELINE
Chris Christie’s Wordless Screaming
Waiting for Pivot: A GOP Tragicomedy
Nasty Women
Donald Trump and His Sons Will Never Talk Business Again
The True, Correct Story of What Happened at Donald Trump’s Inauguration
Trump’s Budget Makes Perfect Sense and Will Fix America, and I Will Tell You Why
Every Story I Have Read About Trump Supporters in the Past Week
This Is Not a Crisis, Republicans Say, as a Large Spider Slowly Devours Them
What the Ethics Chief Really Wanted to Say in His Resignation Letter
A Moderate Speaks: By God, Won’t Someone Else Take a Stand?
How Paul Manafort Came by $934,350 in Antique Carpets
Melania Trump Wants to Spend Christmas on a Deserted Island (With Her Family)
The Day Donald Trump First Became a Stable Genius
Welcome to the Normal, Low-End Furniture Store for Trump Cabinet Members
Keep Scott Pruitt Moist
I’m Beginning to Suspect These Were Not, in Fact, the Best People
HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO BRETT KAVANAUGH?
The FBI Has Been Very Easy to Reach about Brett Kavanaugh, and Of Course the Report Has Been Quite Easy to Read
You Are in Melania Trump’s Nightmare Forest of Cursed Red Trees. Keep to the Path.
Lock Her Up?
My Book Report on The Mueller Report
You Think Trump’s Getting Impeached? I Defy You to Convince Anyone at This Cursed Truck Stop.
Part II
ROUTINE NIGHTMARES AND SOOTHING FABLES
It Is Very Difficult to Get the Train to Stop
A Humanizing Profile of Your Local Neo-Nazi
Now Michelle and Ivanka Are Neighbors
Why Won’t This Career Die?
Raising Baby Hitler
You May Already Be Running
The Privilege Tree
Part III
THIS FOLLOWS
Excuse Me, Director, I Have Some Questions About My Role in the Spring Play as a Crisis Actor
Everything You Wanted to Know About Deep State But Were Too Scared to Ask
Some Classic Episodes of Trump’s Space Force
Welcome to AP U.S. History! Everyone Say Hi to the Tank and the 150 Heavily Armed Men.
Part IV
MODEST PROPOSALS AND OTHER COMMENTARY
A Good Time to Talk About Gun Laws
I Am Sick of These Children Demanding Safe Spaces
This Magic Is Too Strong to Stop
How to Sleep at Night When Families Are Being Separated at the Border
Play the “Woman Card” and Reap These Rewards
That Five-Year-Old Refugee Has Diabolical Plans
I Will Not Take My Husband’s Name
Part V
HOW NOT TO DO THINGS WRONG
Famous Quotes, the Way a Woman Ought to Say Them in a Meeting
Some Interpersonal Verbs, Conjugated by Gender
How to Fact-Check
How to Speak Woman
How to Parent Wrong
What to Call Racist Remarks Instead of Calling Them Racist Remarks
So, You Must Speak to the Woman Who Is Wearing Headphones
Part VI
FINALLY, WE HEAR FROM MEN, MEASLES, AND A PIGEON
Please Stop Vaccinating Your Children. I Want to Go to Disneyland.
Sorry, I Obey the Billy Graham Rule
I Am a State Legislator, and I Am Here to Substitute-Teach Your Biology Class
Male Authors Describe Men in Literature Right
Surprise! I’m Back, and I Atoned
Without the Swimsuit Part of Miss America, When Will I Be Able to Judge Women’s Appearances?
I’m Fine with Women in Power, Just Not This One Specific Woman Currently in Power
I Am in Favor of Confederate Statues. I Am Definitely Not a Pigeon.
Coda
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I
NTRODUCTION
RELAX. NOTHING IS WRONG.
There are cretins and goofs who will tell you that this is a bad time to be alive. Or, worse, an “interesting” time to be alive. They want to fill your head with lies—for instance, that outdated horrors are still occurring, and, in addition, new bad things are happening, and if it were not for the ability to order pizza on your phone without speaking to another human being, there would be no good arguments for the present at all. This is simply not true.
Actually, this is a wonderful time to be alive.
We live in an age when anything is possible. Those aforementioned cretins would phrase this another way: Things that once seemed unthinkable are now commonplace. Maybe that sounds bad to you. If it does, you are wrong. Also, you are a coward. Coward! I will explain to you all the wonderful things about being alive today very slowly and carefully so that even a child could comprehend them, keeping in mind that I despise children.
Things that humankind feared for millennia—certain sorts of bears, very big clouds, the weather more generally, large insects, snakes, the creatures who live in the oceans’ plumbless depths—now fear us. We are putting the final nail in the tiny coffin of the poisonous frog; next we will tackle the ocelot. The dark, deep rainforests full of things that go hrrrr hrrrrr bumpkawwww shhshhshh cooooee in the night—they fall before us, acres a day, and their secrets vanish with them. Do not heed the scientists who say that these secrets could save us, could cure diseases. That is only the forest’s vile whispering to save its own life, and soon we shall be rid of it for good.
For too many years, we bent the knee to the climate. We let it be hot in some places and cold in other places. We went around meekly putting up umbrellas and donning thick parkas and sleeping next to blocks of ice, because we (fools that we were) thought that we could do nothing to change it. We were forced to get out of the ocean and walk on the dry land and build cities on the dry land. Now see what we have done! Soon there will be water where there was land, and we will have gotten vengeance on the ice for the horrors it inflicted on our most titanic boat (the Titanic). The climate bows before us. We are not under the weather any longer. Now we soar above it in our magnificent jet airplanes, trailing carbon behind! The atmosphere will have carbon in it until we say otherwise, and the atmosphere will thank us.
Generations of parents once told their children not to be afraid to
