Tom Pain - Introduction

In January of 2025, I started writing social media posts about the literal pain I was feeling. I had this deep, ongoing anxiety about the direction of our country after the inauguration of Donald Trump to a second Presidential term.

I had never been one to speak up loudly. I am a Navy Brat who was raised Catholic by Midwestern parents who were politically active but more likely to be found in a corner reading a book or a newspaper than marching in a protest. I am a child of the 1980’s DC suburbs, raised on civil debates between the political parties ending in everyone going for a beer (or a root beer in my case). But something felt radically different now. I needed to put my thoughts into words and I found that my posts gradually seemed to have a specific audience. These were letters to my family & friends, colleagues and peers, who were Trump voters but whom I knew to be decent people. I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t see the authoritarian slide that I saw. They didn’t see the moral rot and disregard for basic shared humanity that I kept seeing. Instead of shouting at each other or cutting off contact, maybe if I spoke in my hardwired Michigan calm and brought the situations down to very personal stories, maybe they might see beyond identity, beyond headlines, beyond the “othering,” and reach the core values we share.

And these posts seemed to resonate and were shared beyond my small group. So here they are, collected in one place and added to as I keep searching for the words to fight the darkness I feel swallowing our pursuit of happiness for all. Hopefully, they can reach a few more people. I’m not a pundit. I’m not an expert. I’m not a politician or statesman. I’m a gay, white, musical theater writer, for goodness sakes. But this is what I can do.

I believe we need all voices right now, shouts and screams at marches and protests, as well as civil dinner table discussions and my quiet letters that are no less passionately felt than a student on the barricade. (Music theater. I warned you.) This is what I can do. This is what I must do.