Dear Senators,
Let me begin by telling you that this letter is addressed to the MAGA Republicans, because, fortunately, there are still other Republicans who swore an oath to the Constitution and honor it. The former I will refer to as MAGAs.
As to the MAGAs, I concede that you are smart men and women. Many of you have gone to the finest schools in the country. Many of you have advanced degrees, and many of you have gone to some of the best law schools in the land. You know the history of our nation. You are familiar with its founding. Those of you who went to law school certainly spent time studying the Constitution and its separation of powers. Maybe you read the Federalist Papers, Madison, Jay, and Hamilton’s remarkable explication of the then-proposed Constitution. But I am puzzled as to how such intelligent people can so easily abdicate their sworn duty to the Constitution.
You cannot have unlearned the central importance of the Constitution any more than you could forget Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. You might even have recited by heart the soaring beauty of Emma Lazarus’s 1883 poem in which the new Statue of Liberty cries out: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teaming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Until you were lured into MAGA world by Trump, you knew what America was, where it came from, and where it hoped to go. And every step of the way, you knew that the foundation of it all was the Constitution. Without the Constitution, our nation is rudderless.
Where did you unlearn your civics and humanity? When did you unlearn the dignity of your fellow citizens? Where did you, undoubtedly the child of immigrants, come to understand that families could be separated and children torn from their parents because it was decided that their birth right to be an American was no longer secure and that the Constitution was irrelevant?
How did your heritage as an American allow you to fall prey to a man who daily tramples on the gift we were given by our founders? A man for whom truth is the enemy of his deceit and manipulation.
Would any of you declare before your constituents that, in fact, you have no respect for those honored dead killed in battle who gave “the last full measure of devotion” to this Union and the Constitution pursuant to which it was born. Yet here is Trump, a man before whom you kowtow, who claims to love our veterans who protected us from harm and rescued Europe from a fascist hell, often at the cost of a limb or life. His love is so phony that he refused to visit the graves of 1,800 Marines killed in combat at Belleau Wood during World War I and buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France. He asked why he should go to that cemetery since, as he pointed out, “It’s filled with losers.” Trump, with not a hint of dignity or respect, referred to the buried Marines as “suckers” for getting killed.
And then there is the matter of Private Vanessa Guillèn, who was beaten to death at Fort Hood and her body then burned. Trump invited the family of the young woman to the White House and said he would help with the costs of the funeral. When Trump was later told the cost was $60,000, instead of simply saying that it was too much money, he said to his chief of staff, “It doesn’t cost $60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican.” The “Mexican” was actually a native-born American veteran.
Trump’s view of the Constitution is as warped as is his sense of humanity. He is either profoundly ignorant or dangerously, intentionally seditious. His values are the values of a rapacious, uncaring man. When asked about his unilateral decisions, he has said, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” There are many who do not believe Trump is saving the country. Quite to the contrary. But in any case, if his diktats violate the constitutional processes relating to the enactment of laws, he is absolutely breaking the law. He is not in a position intellectually or constitutionally to transmute his unrestrained and uninformed rants into legal doctrine.
Surely you MAGA senators understand that. Which begs the question, if you do understand that, how can you allow Trump to act outside of the law, appointing proxies like Musk—unelected, and unrestrained? Trump and his puppet have gutted the FBI, the Justice Department, and USAID. They have withdrawn us from the World Health Organization. Medical research will be reduced; Social Security is on the block. Even the arts are under unilateral, uninformed attack.
Trump has fired our highest ranking military personnel. The firings deprive the organizations of institutional knowledge, gained in years of service. When his madness has run its course, its consequences will remain. How long will it take to replace not just the people but the institutional memory of the organizations that have been hobbled? In regard to the military, his replacements have nowhere near the experience and qualifications of the men and women he fired. As they are Trump appointees, he undoubtedly made certain that they lack the knowledge to understand the importance of such things as alliances and America’s role in providing stability in an unstable world. And if they do, they will be reminded to keep their views to themselves. You seem incapable of grasping the enormity of how grievously he betrayed America when he gave a sworn enemy, Russia, every gift a dictator could want. Trump has given Putin a strong suggestion of his dissatisfaction with NATO, the principal check on Putin’s quest for a new Russian empire. He has made it clear that he will even lie for Russia and adopt its propaganda when it suits him (i.e., saying that Ukraine started the war with Russia). Nothing is further from the truth. He knows it, and you know it. I dare say the entire world knows it. By an act, repugnant to what we used to stand for as a great nation, Trump directed our UN delegation to have the United States of America join 18 other countries to vote against a resolution condemning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. We can now stand proudly with the great nations of Russia, North Korea, and Belarus in support of unprovoked aggression. This allows Russia to claim it is fighting a defensive war against an aggressor. Is this the company you think the United Staes should keep? Tell me, MAGA senators, how do you stifle your gag reflex? How disgraceful that you are too timid to call Trump out as the liar he has been and continues to be.
And the worst, most unforgivable aspect of this is that you know that what Trump is doing combines the worst of executive overreach, unconstitutionality, and disdain for the Rule of Law. And yet. And yet, you continue to support him in every cruel, unreasoned, unhinged thing he does. Look at who you, at his bidding, confirmed for most of the cabinet positions. They are men and women selected not for their knowledge, but for a quality more greatly prized by Trump: their blind, unquestioning loyalty to him.
Why have you allowed all of this to happen? You could have stopped him any number of times, including during the impeachment proceedings, in both of which any rational person would have voted for conviction.
Fear can overwhelm courage, and you have fallen victim to fear. Tragically, however, it is not fear for your country, it is fear for your job, fear of the primary Trump will orchestrate and finance against you. But certainly not fear for your honor, for your reputations or your righteousness, for you have already demonstrated that you possess none of those.
You MAGA Republicans will not even be a footnote to any later editions of “Profiles in Courage.” You are afraid to stand up against a disgraceful tyrant, quivering in fear whenever your exalted leader belches out a threat that if you do not do his bidding, then, as he has fired real patriots doing their jobs for all of Americans, he will make sure your constituents fire you in your next primary. And if you are not up for reelection, he will make sure that there are those populating your house of Congress who will remove you from any committee positions you covet. Will no insult to our nation, to the principles on which it was founded, convince you that it is long past time for you to disavow the tyrant and disembark your Ship of Fools?
Trump is a mole for Russia, hiding in plain view. How else do you explain his behavior?
Putin’s deepest desire is to destroy NATO, democracy’s wall against Russian aggression. Without firing a shot at us, Putin has gotten his quisling to undermine NATO, and to abandon an ally, Ukraine, which has incredibly thwarted Putin’s, and probably Trump’s, hope for a Blitz Krieg victory to destroy it. After kidnapping Ukraine’s children and now with Trump’s whole hearted approval, Putin and Trump are prepared to rape Ukraine, deprive it of its valuable mineral resources, and appropriate its wheat harvest. Those Ukrainian assets are the protection money Trump is demanding. Do you really think that if and when Trump sours on Ukraine and becomes more enamored of Putin, he will do anything to protect Ukraine? There will be another lie he uses to betray Ukraine, this time probably fatally. You do understand, don’t you, that Putin is unable to do this alone? Enter Trump. Beijing and Moscow must be thrilled at the enormity of their victory over America, over democracy and over Pax Americana. Putin has suckered Trump. Trump looks like a fool. America’s government is edging closer to giving Putin everything he wants. Sanctions will be lifted. America and Russia will now stand astride the new world order, at least until America is so weakened that Putin claims complete victory over the West. Trump can build his hotels, sell his Bibles, and never disclose any aspect of any shady transaction. Ukraine will be pulverized into submission. To hasten Russia’s ascendance, there is a cherry on this diplomatic cupcake. Trump has already begun emasculating our military. He has decapitated the military leadership that might stand in his way and replaced it with inexperienced officers who are lining up to take their oath to Trump, not to the Constitution, and bless the new détente with Putin. Trump’s appeasement of Russia, which still seeks to disrupt our elections, demonstrates how totally ignorant of history he is. Appeasement of bloodthirsty, aggressive tyrants is like honey to a hungry bear. Ask Neville Chamberlain. What kind of foreign policy is this?
You, MAGA senators, have encouraged this and made it possible. You have become Trump’s small, frightened, shameless little men and women who have sold their souls, to say nothing of whatever honor you may ever have had, for the equivalent of a moldy Reichsmark, a freshly minted Rupel, and the promise of a pardon if you need it.
Where is the outrage? Where is the fury as you watch this man destroy our Constitution?
It is time to bellow truth at what Trump and his sycophants are falsely selling you. It is time to admit that you are giving aid and comfort to two tyrants. This is not a game, and that it has become a circus of extremism heightens the danger we are now facing. Trump has taken to Putin’s bed where the two of them can snuggle in lawless, dictatorial bliss. This will continue until you get spine enough to fight back.
He dims the beacon of humanity and hope that has been America’s calling card to a troubled world and replaces it with the stench of his garbage heap of appalling lies.
Are you beginning to understand?
And every single MAGA senator who urges Trump on and supports his despicable, shameless assault on the Constitution is complicit.
It is not so much that Trump is unbelievably ignorant of our history; it is that he takes such enormous pride in his ignorance.
What the president of the United States either never learned in school or simply refuses to understand is that the Constitution is the country. When he was elected president, he put his hand on a Bible and swore the oath taken by Washington and Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan—they understood the oath and honored it. “I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Trump clearly does not have the ability to execute the Office of the President because he is simply incapable either of understanding the law or accepting the Constitutional demand that he execute a law passed in accordance with the process set forth in the Constitution. His oath to defend the Constitution includes the mandate that he “shall take Care that the Laws [not his arbitrary whims] shall be faithfully executed.” His defense, as noted above, is that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Well, he damn sure does violate it when the words spilling from his maw boast that if a law he is mandated to execute is not to his personal liking, he will not execute it. He is a school yard bully, daring everyone to try to make him behave like a real president. Acting in violation of the law spits on the Rule of Law, which, when once ground under his heel, is guaranteed to eviscerate our democracy.
And now to return to the Waltz of the Cowards. It is absolutely impossible to believe that you MAGA Republicans think that Trump’s actions are consistent with our history, our long, slow climb toward our hoped-for More Perfect Union. You have surely acquired some basic knowledge about the central position the Constitution holds in our democracy. You should know better than to abet a man who is daily chopping away at it. And by your servile submission to Trump’s embrace of dictatorship, you gave up your last vestiges of self-respect in exchange for power. You have simply been too frightened to stand up to a heartless tyrant who is the most dangerous threat to this nation since the Civil War.
You are afraid of losing your jobs. But you are not afraid to silently watch as thousands of patriotic, loyal American government employees are fired and subsequently face financial hardship for doing their jobs. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. If Trump wants the workers who might stand in his way to be gone, recent history suggests that you will line up to be blessed by your Fuhrer so that you do not suffer the same fate you are happy to mete out to real Americans.
On December 24, 1776, the enlistments of the Revolutionary Army’s soldiers were about to expire. The Revolution was nearing collapse. America teetered on the brink of losing its war against Britain. Before Washington’s troops boarded their boats for the crossing of the Delaware River, these immortal words of Thomas Paine were read to them. As you read Paine’s words, can you feel the shame of what you have allowed to happen slithering up what once might have been a spine.
These are the times that try men’s souls: the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, and this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder, the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: – – it is dearness only that gives everything its value. — Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis, #1”
Trump has given you a “cheap” 25 cent pacifier to esteem. There is nothing “dearer” in the heart of a true patriot than the Constitution. You should know that by now.
The time for temporizing with a tyrant who holds nothing “dearer” than himself is past. Defend the Constitution as your oath demands, as if the life of your nation depends on it. Because it does.
Don’t let your capitulation to Trump yesterday become the legacy that you pass to your children tomorrow.
Assuming that one of the two Senate independents vote with the Republicans (the other is Bernie Sanders who is never going to side with MAGA), all it will take is five of you to change the arc of history, to save the Constitution, and to reignite America’s lighthouse beacon. Lincoln said, as if speaking across the ages to you, that you are in position to “nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.” Few are given the redemption which is yours for the taking. Take it. It will not be given to you again. In a stroke, you may transform your legacy from that of Judas to a savior of America’s exalted place in the world. You can do this! Lift again America’s lamp beside the golden door.
Douglas Cooper
South Egremont
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