Letter 2 America for June 25, 2016

Dear America,

This Republican insistence on displaying hypocrisy has become a compulsion like spreading peacock feathers in mating season.  First there was the Senate thwarting a Republican bill, submitted by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, that would keep guns from being sold to people on the national "no fly" list.  The theory behind the bill is obvious: if we don't want you to get on a plane with innocent people, we don't want you to have a gun in a society full of innocent people.  But could the Republicans support it?  No-o-o.  The Republicans insist that you've got to give potential armed assassins their due process rights, whereas the right to be free of murderous, armed assassins doesn't seem to require what's called "substantive due process" at all.  (For the uninitiated, substantive due process is adequate and effective representation in congress.)  And those priorities were echoed in The House.  When there was a massacre in a gay night club in Orlando, Paul Ryan insisted on a moment of silence for the victims...not a minute, but ten seconds.  And when the same kind of bill as that floated by Senator Collins was proposed by Democrats, Ryan adjourned The House rather than call a vote, and then had the audacity to call the ensuing Democrat sit-in a publicity stunt that impaired the function of The House.  Apparently, absolving your party colleagues of the obligation to legislate by adjourning a session two days early isn't impairing function, but insisting on a vote is...at least according to the Speaker of the Hypocrites, Paul Ryan.  Before you decide whose right, remember that all the Democrats wanted was for Ryan to call a vote--the protest wasn't about the outcome of a vote, just about the Republicans' refusal to take one.   And now, they are all home for the Fourth of July holiday, where, one might hope, the 90% of their constituents who favor passage of such a bill are telling them that voting on it is their function, refusal to vote is the impairment of that function.  And then maybe they'll add, if you don't vote, and I mean vote "Aye," you've lost my vote.  That will do the trick, NRA money or not.

This is the second show of flagrant self-interest through use of parliamentary procedure that the Republicans, led by Paul Ryan, have perpetrated in the past month.  The last one was when members of The House tried to pass a measure prohibiting ordinances that keep LGBT citizens out of the bathrooms required by their gender self-designations.  They first stopped a vote for the measure long enough to coerce five of their members to switch their votes from aye to nay in order to prevent it from passing...in accord with the vast majority opinion of the American people.  Again, they chalked it up to simply doing "the people's business."  Then they did the same thing the next week when it came up again by preventing a vote altogether.  They seem to think that they are obfuscating their true sentiments, which run toward denying the majority of the American people the fundamental rights that they are insisting on just because the reactionary fringe of their party doesn't like them   And speaking for them is a self-styled pragmatist, who yielded to that contingent's demand that they be able to put any poison pill amendment on any bill they don't want to pass as he denies the rest of the house, even his own moderate party members, the right to vote on issues on which the fringe would lose if the vote were taken.  And then, the Republican hypocrite-in-chief has the audacity to say that he is the democrat, not the dissenters who want him to let congress do its job and vote.  All the while, no one seems to call him on it, and no one castigates the majority of Republicans for allowing it.  Ryan took the job of Speaker on the premise that he would be a force for compromise and action in The House, and now, it turns out, he is just another casuistic, liar like his predecessor.  And by the way, Paul, if you're reading right now, consider this.  If you ever aspired to national office, you have just about written yourself off by being the lackey of your reactionary colleagues through your contrivance to avoid going on record by voting.  Don't moan about it.  It's what you deserve.

I find myself writing such remarks as these over and over again.  Of course, the fact that one old hippie progressive harbors such sentiments isn't exactly an inducement for any Republican to reexamine his actions, much less to plumb the shallow depths of his conscience.  And I must concede, I don't even know if anyone anywhere is reading this, much less any members of the Republican Party.  But someone who does get read should be saying these things too.  And they should be saying them in an extremely loud voice, because our democracy is little by little being eroded into a parliamentary exercise by a group of bloated egos whose only real concern is staying in power.  There is an election coming up in November, and everyone is focused on Donald Trump and the hazard he represents for our country.  But the real hazard is the reelection of a Republican majority in either or both houses of congress.  Because if the people of the United States--us, America--want a democracy rather than an oligarchy of bigots and plutocrats (more than half of all congress people are millionaires), we'd better wake up and take Our House and Our Senate back.  The President gets only one vote, albeit the most potent one.  The members of The House and Senate get 535 between the two bodies.  They are the ones who are keeping us from effecting prudent and pervasive change.

So here's my suggestion if you are still making up your mind as to how to vote.  If you don't mind income inequality as well as the dearth of opportunity for prosperity that we now enjoy, vote Republican.  If you are really an American, vote for the other guys.

Your friend,

Mike