Dear politicians (who are not taking money from the Russian oligarchs, an international crime syndicate or corrupt ‘political action committees’ fueled by the Supreme Court ruling that money equaled free speech):
I don’t want to guess how narrowed down I made this letter by setting the parameters above.
Do you and your colleagues fully realize that we are at DEFCON1 when it comes to the political shell game y’all like to play in Washington D.C.? I suspect we’ve been there for some time, but the blatant in-your-face hypocrisy of the senators across the aisle over the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, should be spurring you to throw away the rule book and make your own goddamned rules for once.
I realize your hands are tied in ways I cannot comprehend. But that never stopped the Grand Old Party of perverts, pissants and provocateurs. No, even when they were out of power they found ways to monkey wrench the system.
Well, it’s time for some monkey-wrenching.
If you’re dithering over slamming a door shut on a woman, from what I can tell, in a private, off-the-record conversation, she’d probably agree with you that she is inherently unqualified to be seated for life. And, trust me, raising a stink over the reincarnation of Phyllis Schafly is not going to lose you any votes. During the Merrick Garland dust-up - you remember him right? the justice the GOP lost their shit over because Obama wanted to nominate him in the same year as the presidential election, but they argued the people should have the say and y’all rolled over like a bloated manatee - this very same nominee is on record as saying she was opposed to seating a justice during an election year and, if it happened to her, she would decline.
How is that for hypocrisy? How is that for the kind of integrity you’d like to see from a person who will be handing down decisions about all of our lives for the next forty years?
I thought religious zealots were the biggest hypocrites on the planet. But they are going to have to make room for members of the GOP.
I don’t know what needs to be done but I know that your opponents were never at a loss to cook something up.
Maybe the House should start impeaching everyone and anyone and keep them all tied up for the next three months. Maybe a senator or two who ‘has the goods’ but is not allowed to divulge them because - “National Security” - needs to martyr themselves. Maybe the House gendarmes should begin arresting politicians, sycophants and crime family members who are ignoring subpoenas. Maybe start arresting or seriously fining administration officials who are not turning over documents.
Honestly, I kind of think we are at the stage where someone needs to exclaim, “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Senator Amy Klobuchar comes close in this riveting rebuttal to something stupid that Ted Cruz said.
Robert’s Rules of Order are of no use under the current circumstances.
Meanwhile, outside the Beltway, there are troubles.
The pandemic continues to stifle the economy. Miraculously, the stock market, propped up by the unseen hand of Adam Smith, soldiers on.
Americans are losing their homes. Tenants are being evicted. This is yet another ploy to stymie the voting turnout. You may have noticed that the Senate GOP sees no need to take up another round of stimulus for the not-wealthy members of the nation.
The young and the dedicated are facing military forces, whether it be cops or militia, every day in cities around the country and - undaunted - they continue to demand social justice and reform.
Infrastructure? Still crumbling.
Health care? Still too ridiculously expensive and haphazard and unevenly distributed. And, still, the GOP continue to try to make it even worse than it is. Their desire to free small businesses from the tyranny of payroll taxes will kill social security and medicare.
Climate crisis? Still worsening. Still too little being done at scale. Still an entire political party in denial.
Homelessness? Still too many. Still no coherent answers being applied. A robust Universal Basic Income would be a good place to start.
Prison system? Still too many black people and brown people locked up for shallow reasons. Still too many seeking profit from their incarceration.
The elections? Happening, but no thanks to the GOP or the administration.
Immigration? Still immigrant kids and their families in cages. And, for all I know, they are still separating them. While conspiracy lunatics are haunted by “elites” who they believe are cannibals and Satan-worshippers, real immigrant children are being abused and molested and real immigrant women are being sterilized by Americans working for our government.
Eugenics is as American as apple pie. Ask Native Americans.
Y’all act like the partisans on the other side of the aisle are reasonable, rational human beings. They may very well be over cocktails or beers. But their public personas exacerbate, tolerate and lend credence to everything I talked about above.
The GOP have not had honor since Dwight Eisenhower. If then. They did, after all, fight tooth and nail to prevent all of the social gains of the last century. They did, after all, get hysterical over encroaching communism.
We are at DEFCON1.
Act like it.
Yours truly,
A Humble, Pissed Off Citizen and Constituent
###
AAR Emily Johnston sent this along to me this morning. A tribute by a West Coast orthopaedic surgeon, clinician, scientist, inventor, and founder of multiple companies to RBG’s athleticism.
Also, another AAR, John Cole, sent me this edition of The Daily podcast I had inexplicably missed - “An Obituary For the Land” with Terry Tempest Williams. Well done, as always by the New York Times crew.
It is a hopeful message, by the way.
“I will never write your obituary,” she wrote in her piece. “Because even as you burn, you throw down seeds that will sprout and flower.”
~~~
“My grief is like a raven on my shoulder. It walks with me.”
Because it is 5 o’clock somewhere, and it is 2020 everywhere.