An Open Letter To Members Of The United States Congress

Failures

from the from-a-concerned-citizen dept

I think we can all agree that nobody seems to be taking the business of governing ourselves terribly seriously.

I say we can all agree on this because I think we all know that Donald Trump is a deranged, narcissistic criminal. We know this. Even those of you who nominally support him — because you have convinced yourself that he is the only thing standing between you and everything you hold dear, however you define that.

For some of you, I think the answer is quite pathetic, if we are being honest. The relationships you have built with your donors, with your executive networks, with all the perquisites that come with being an insider — you simply want to hold on to that, because you feel like that is where the action is. That is power. That is being somebody. That is mattering.

The truth is, you do matter. You hold a seat in the Congress of the United States. The most beautiful idea in the history of human civilization: that a people could govern themselves. Without a king or potentate. We used to be quite proud of that in this country. That we brought the ancient yearning to breathe free from the bondage of primitive hierarchies into the world by founding a republic of laws. Not of men. Not of women. Of laws.

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You are, in some ways, the most powerful people who have ever lived in the history of human civilization. Because you, as members of the Article I Branch, have all the power you need to bring an end to this — if you can remember that you are human beings and Americans, and awaken to some semblance of your humanity. If you can make good on your Oath of Office: to defend the Constitution of the United States, that was fought and died for, that is burning before the eyes of history. You are its sworn stewards.

And yet you stand still.

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An unconstitutional war has been started without your authorization. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The largest liquid natural gas facility in the Gulf is in flames. The supply shock now working its way through global energy, transportation, and food chains will make the inflation of 2021 to 2023 look like a mild inconvenience. That crisis destabilized governments across the democratic world and handed demagogues the opening they needed. What is coming is not in the same category.

A foreign head of state — a corrupt, post-truth demagogue, operating under criminal indictment in his own country, who attempted to seize control of his nation’s Supreme Court to keep himself out of jail, who channeled money to Hamas to pursue a divide-and-rule strategy against his own political opponents — has manipulated the machinery of the United States federal government, under color of Article II, to commit this nation to armed conflict without the consent of the governed. Without your vote. Without your authorization. In direct violation of the constitutional order you swore to defend.

Trump should already have been impeached and removed for giving the directive. That you have not done so is a fact history will record with considerable unkindness.

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So as you look back on history, and think toward the future — do you simply have no shame? Do you feel nothing for the suffering you are permitting to persist? For the crimes that continue to accumulate? For the breach of sacred faith with those who gave the full measure of their devotion to this country, so that it might be free?

You can stop this. You have the power. The Constitution gave it to you precisely for moments like this one — precisely because the founders understood that executives with unchecked power tend, in time, toward exactly what we are watching now. They designed a remedy. They placed it in your hands.

The most powerful legislative body in the history of human civilization is watching the republic burn, and doing nothing, because its members have decided that their donor relationships and their insider access and their sense of being somebody matter more than the Oath they took, the Constitution they swore to defend, and the people whose lives are about to get very much worse because of a war they did not authorize and cannot stop.

You can quite literally help save the world. Because it needs saving right now.

I suggest you save it.

— Mike Brock

God bless America. May the Star-Spangled Banner yet wave over these lands.

Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.

Filed Under: congress, constitution, donald trump, impeachment, power, rule of law, war