A Test Of Democracy

Are you listening?

Since his inauguration, I have watched in horror as President Trump has fulfilled my worst fears about his administration. He has behaved exactly as I expected he would and I’ve spent the past several weeks in a cold stupor. It’s been a combination of disbelief and a deep visceral fear that has kept me in a daze. But I’m coming out of my political coma and starting to take action. I’ll be writing more articles in the coming days and weeks and today I wanted to share a letter I emailed to my representative in the House, Speaker Paul Ryan.

While I have little faith that he will even read my letter and I’m almost positive that even if he did, it would have virtually no impact on his perspective or his actions in Congress, I felt I had to start my journey into the revolution somewhere and that was as good a place as any.

Despite my cynicism about letter writing, I would suggest that if you are like me, if you’ve been watching with horror at the events unfolding around us and if you’ve been experiencing the same feeling of both helplessness and a desire to break free and take action, why not start by writing to your representatives in government. I’ll include links at the bottom of the article to assist you in finding contact information.

So here it is. Should I receive a response worth noting (in other words, something other than a canned response) I will follow up and let everyone know.

“Dear Mr. Speaker,

I am writing to voice my concern about the many issues that have arisen since President Trump took office. I will give a brief overview of the most important issues for me and I hope you’ll take these into consideration.

My deepest concern is in regard to the potential connections between the President and the Russian government. While no direct connection has yet been made, I want to be sure that you, as the Speaker of the House of Representatives demand a full Congressional investigation in conjunction with the current investigation by our intelligence agencies. Since agencies like the CIA and FBI are under Executive jurisdiction, I fear that there is a great conflict of interest and the investigation is being hampered by the White House. I feel an independent Special Prosecutor should be assigned to determine if President Trump poses a threat to national security.  I hope that you and all of the members of the House are more interested in the Trump/Russia connection than you are the leaks that are providing information to the press keeping the American people informed of the progress of the investigation.

I’m also deeply troubled by the GOP attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and ask that instead of repealing what is essentially a decent piece of legislation that impacts millions of Americans, that you instead work with House  Democrats to fix the weaknesses in the law that will favor the American citizen and not the health insurance industry.

I have grave concerns about the environment and I oppose any legislation or Executive Order that prevents government agencies from communicating directly with the public about the environment, including climate change. I am disturbed by Congress using the Congressional Review act to repeal laws that negatively impact wildlife or the environment.

Finally, I oppose the Travel/Muslim ban enacted by the White House and hope that you would also oppose an action that not only does little to protect the security of our nation, but is most certainly a slap in the face of the values that I believe all Americans hold. Regardless of President Trump’s intentions, the ban was a mistake and every member of both the House and Senate should feel the same way. Rather than rushing out a poorly conceived, poorly executed Executive Order, why not create a comprehensive bill that addresses the economic and security issues posed by immigrants and refugees?

I hope that you can see that these issues are not a matter of importance to just liberals but all Americans, and as my representative in Congress, I would like you to consider representing those interests. Thank you for your time.”

Find contact information for:

House of Representatives

Senate

White House

~V