Dear James E. Ryan Office of the President University of Virginia

Charleston Athenaeum Press

 LANGUAGE

ROBERT COLEMAN SMITH

Richmond, Virginia

 

April 27, 2021

James E. Ryan
Office of the President
University of Virginia
Post Office Box 400224
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4224

Dear President Ryan:

I’d like to wish you a warm and hardy fuck you! I had always thought this expression was a vulgar and disparaging term. But judging by the way you have embraced Hira Azher’s use of these words, I now know these “University sponsored” words must be a warm and loving idiomatic expression of peace and acceptance. Surely adding the word “fuck” to our academic nomenclature makes the University “great and good.”

 

Hira Azher's dorm room door at UVA. Photo by Sophie Roehse | The Cavalier Daily.

 

 I'd like to thank you for making my beloved alma mater more woke and progressive. In fact, the daily missives from UVA Today have transformed me from a well mannered Southern boy to a fully woke devotee of Saul Alinsky. Thanks to you, I now know that my white supremacist background has given me a distorted value system that is antithetical to not only the values of the University, but also to the various pagan gods that I never knew good woke people should be worshiping. I have now devoted my soul to the gods of Hatred, Division and Ignorance.

I am ashamed of my past and previous belief system that was once rooted in the tenets of Western Civilization and Judeo Christian ethics. To illustrate, just one of the errors of my pre-woke value system, I once believed in the sanctity of private property! I used to be a sympathetic admirer of the writings of the Scottish Enlightenment. I realize now that this greedy and carnivorous cabal was just a bunch of hate mongers, and David Hume and Adam Smith were just evil, selfish white guys. Why what good UVA alum could possibly think that private ownership of property benefited the social construct? Ha, what a fool I was!

I used to have an extensive library (another example of my white privilege for which I am ashamed), but because of you, I have now burned all my books. Doing away with Virgil, Livy, Gibbons, Bede, Thomas Aquinas, Locke and hundreds of histories and books of classical literature has liberated me from my Eurocentric past. I mean, what have Europeans ever done to advance civilization? Certainly not as much as the Hutu or Tutsi tribes of Rwanda!

I used to think that events from the past had a bearing on our present times and could give us perspective on how to make our world a better place. But now I know that these lessons from the past are dangerous and if uncovered threaten the University’s mission to cancel evil white guy culture. Why if the public actually learned these lessons from the past, our fellow comrades might think that the University’s leftist teachings are nothing but gobbledygook nonsense! We must destroy knowledge or else we will never reach our goal of a Marxist utopia!

Another example of my southern heritage that I have now discarded, is my parents taught me to be polite, deferential and respectful towards all people of all backgrounds. How bourgeois! Thanks to you and your stellar leadership in allowing students to scream trite, banal obscenities when debating important issues of public policy, I have given up respectful, fact and logic based dialogue. I have learned how to bowl over my adversaries. Why, the other day, I walked into Brooks Brothers and stole a $750 sports jacket. When the clerk confronted me, I fell into a histrionic fit, called him a racist and screamed a torrent of cuss words at him. I was able to keep the jacket. Sadly, they would not do the alterations for free despite me repeatedly yelling the word “equity” and “justice” at the store manager.

By the way, I am fully in the foxhole with Miss A…… (oops, see, that’s a patriarchal misogynist gender title of the old regime), I mean with Comrade Azhi! The nerve of Episcopal High School and the University of Virginia and all of their honkey alumni for paying for her education! She has every right to be angry and outraged. By the way, I listened to the secret tape she recorded of your conversation with her. I was really impressed with the way you pretended to be such a marshmallow. That was just great reverse psychology. You really showed her who was boss!

I have a another mea culpa to get off my chest. I need to expiate my sins because I was once proud of my ancestry and their service to the Commonwealth and our country. However, now I know they were all a bunch of greedy, avaricious and treacherous bastards. My loathsome family has been in Virginia for 400 years, and we have done terrible things, like building businesses, creating jobs, philanthropy, inventing technologies, serving on college boards and the vestry of our churches, all elements of the white male system of oppression. No one did anything cool, like attack a police officer or stick a gun in a pregnant woman’s belly while robbing her. We have caused all of the institutional problems the University has just recently discovered and now wants to remedy. Here are just a few of my family’s sins:

Building a country out of the wilderness. We all know that nation states are bad, especially those that have borders, oh wait, all counties have borders. My bad.

Fighting in every colonial war and conflict that our disgusting country has been involved. I used to be proud of their courage and their sense of honor for fighting for what they believed in, but now, thanks to my new UVA sponsored wokeness, I want to spit on their graves! How dare they fight the British for independence and then form a constitutional, republican form of government! That damned constitution has gotten in the way of us fulfilling our Leninist takeover of this country. By the way, to show you how much UVA Today has changed my mindset, I used to think that the 100 million people that Marxism killed in the 20th century confirmed its evil nature. Now I know that evil is the one indispensable tool we on the Left have to bring about radical, progressive change.

After I burned all my “Western Civ” books and thought I had cleansed my house of its odorous past, I found an old photograph of 22 members of the Coleman side of my family (Caroline County) all dressed in the Confederate grey right before hostilities began with the Union. Many were just young boys. They of course were already brain washed as they all were descended from Revolutionary soldiers who wrongfully fought for independence. The family didn’t want to split from the Union, but Lincoln federalized the Virginia militias, basically telling them they had to go kill fellow Americans. I am ashamed that they didn’t want to go kill people in South Carolina. What militant warmongers these Confederate soldiers were! I am ashamed they had the gall and the pigheadedness to protect their homeland from invasion from a foreign army for four long years. No doubt they should have just rolled over and did what they were told. When I read about their immoveable resistance at the Bloody Angle or standing ankle deep at the Crater in a river of blood, thrusting cold steel into the flesh of the enemy, I always think “what a bunch of sissies! Why should we honor them?” Unfortunately, my Confederate ancestors didn’t have the bravery to just go to a safe room and play with a University sponsored therapy dog. What losers! The whole idea of duty, honor, sacrifice and courage are certainly not the values we want to promote at the University. I am so glad the University removed the plaque commemorating these hedonists off the Rotunda. What a bunch of weenies! Obviously, people who have spent their whole lives virtue signaling in academia are much better people than those who gave their lives for their country!

I always thought that it was property rights, capitalism and free markets that liberated people out of bondage, but now I know differently. If only you had been alive in 1860! Surely someone as virtuous as you could have ended a 6,000 year social and economic institution through the sheer power of your wokeness.

I am so ashamed of my Occidental heritage. When I think of the damage my race has caused the world, I just want to cry in my pumpkin spiced latte! I feel such shame for all the toxic things we have invented that have caused so much harm, such as the rule of law, constitutional rights, electricity, the elimination of famines, the combustible engine, nuclear energy, penicillin, clean water, sanitary sewer systems, hospitals, spacecraft, weaponry to keep us safe, the internet, and well, I could go on because pretty much everything ever invented is the fault of my people’s arrogance. Surely, this county would be better off if everyone ran around half naked with bear grease smeared on their bodies to keep the flies off of them like the Native Americans were doing when the evil white people got here. We certainly ruined their standard of living.

I love the way you let the basketball team kneel during the national anthem! My father and his three brothers ( all University men, College, Law School, etc.) were soldiers during WWII. D-Day, Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima; they were all there being jingoistic imperialists. I hate them! Why do we owe these people any gratitude? When I saw those players kneel, I thought of my young Lt. father at Bastogne, outnumbered, freezing to death in the snow, leading a company of G.I.s against superior German forces, and then I laugh! How does it feel you dumb son of a bitch to see a bunch of University students disrespect you. Ha, ha, you imperialist war monger, I hope you are rolling in your grave!

Now that I am woke, thanks to you, I was wondering if I could take a class or two to learn some new platitudinal buzzwords like “micro-aggression,” “intersectionality,” “equity inclusion,” “problematic history,” “memory politics,” etc. When these right wing fascists, like that medical student Bhattacharya, disagree with me, I want to do more than just scream vulgarities at them and call them a racist. I want some cool new words that have no real meaning to scream at them too. And if I could use them in a rhyme, well no one will be able to out debate me!

Speaking of micro-aggressions, I have never had anybody of another race or gender show hostility towards me, other than of course the multitude of times my house or car has been broken into. Gee, if anybody was ever mad at me, I think I would melt like a snowflake!

I love the way that you extracted money from the taxpayers to engage in socialist economics. Bravo! As everyone knows, the original 1819 Charter of the University stated quite clearly that the President was to milk the taxpayers to pay for his virtue signaling. If one looks closely at the original charter, the paragraph about being a “good steward” of the taxpayer’s money was scratched out.

Finally, I would appreciate it if you could keep me informed of any riots, property destruction or arson I can help out with. I am very much interested in silencing the free speech of anyone who is not woke, especially those Nazis who make logic and fact based arguments. I am available to dox them, get them fired from their jobs, threaten their families, etc. Just let me know.

I am so thankful you are the head Commissar, oops I mean president of the University!