To a very few Republican members of the Senate,
You know who you are, though I don’t. You watched President Trump last night and you can’t look away any longer. You know you’re supposed to acquit him today, but you just can’t. You know better.
For the last three years, you watched an American president desecrate every American value at home and abroad.
We were blown away when Portland’s own Jefferson Smith read this Tidbits when he guest hosted the Thom Hartmann show during Impeachment Week. Here’s a link; check it out at the 1:36:00 mark. And if you aren’t a fan already, check out XRAY.FM to hear Jefferson Smith, Thom Hartmann, and some of the smartest local-Portland radio you’ll catch anywhere!
For the last three months, you’ve watched him gleefully turn character assassination, innuendo, and extortion into acceptable political bludgeons. You’ve watched his handlers distort reality and warp law to cover his crimes.
For whatever reason, you decided you could live with a vote to acquit. You may not have been proud, but you could live with it.
But for three hours last night, you watched an unhinged tyrant and his propaganda Quislings overthrow the very concept of reality-based government with any values at all.
You watched him take credit for a medical plan he tried to kill and an economy driving America’s entire middle class into despair and servitude. You watched him give the Medal of Freedom to a thirty-year propagandist and brag about co-opting the Judiciary. You watched him prostitute the profound honor and deep emotions of a military family for a Jerry Springer reveal. You watched him cynically wrap himself in God to appease the evangelical right in an imaginary war on religion.
I can go on. Trump did. You heard it.
Last night’s atrocity should never have happened in American government, but it did. It’s not some hypothetical end of a slippery slope. It happened. And it can be stopped.
You and your fellow Senators seem about to acquit Donald Trump, but please, look again! YOU see what is actually happening now, and YOU can put a stop to it! The House has made its case; even your fellow Republicans agree. Their only remaining response is that it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment. That’s what THEY say… only YOU can know what you’ll say.
But I ask you, in these final moments, and especially given last night’s debacle, please consider your decision one final time. Make it from your best will as an American; from your highest values as a citizen. I think if you do then there’s only one way to vote.
Last night’s horror can either be the “day democracy died” or the “day before it was saved”. You have only a very short time to decide which one.
Vote well.
