A Letter to Paul Ryan
I have often posted that I send messages to politicians. Today out of a personal need I wrote what is probably my longest yet. Yeah, there is a good chance it won’t be read or do anything. But as a citizen I felt a duty to do it anyway. I wanted to share it with all the members of this great and dare I say much needed political blog/fourm.
And I want to thank Charles Johnson for giving us a great platform to help us discuss and sort through the things that concern us.
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Mr. Speaker,
I chose “Homeland Security” as my issue on your contact page. Why? Because I am concerned about the actual future of our country, but not from foreign threat, from a real threat that is right in front of us.
No, I am concerned about threats from within our own borders…no walls or bans needed.
I am concerned that the people who voted for Donald Trump made a terrible mistake. A mistake made all the worse from the way people in our government are treating him like he is a legitimate president, even if he did win in a legitimate election. People like you who seem to be trying to legitimize him. People like you that ignore his very obvious and troubling self-centered ways, bigotry, ignorance, personal and business problems.
I am concerned that under the leadership of people like you and Mitch McConnell and with a majority Congress of Republicans that nothing will be done because no one is going to stand for what is right. I am concerned you hope to get changes made while Trump is in the White House and Congress is drunk on its own power. I am concerned that our Constitution is being attacked by politicians that have no real regard for the threat this country is under as long as they can do the things that most people do not want you to do.
Those threats are things like repealing and not actually improving the needed ACA/Obamacare health legislation. Threats like eliminating the social shields that many elderly people count on like Social Security and Medicare. Threats like privatizing schools and the Veterans Administration for moneyed people to make more money instead of taking care of people that you count on and counted on you. Threats too many to type into what will already be a too-long message. A message I need to write as an American citizen.
I also fear that politicians like you ignore the people that you should serve. Look at the demonstrations and protests going on in this country. They are real and they are everywhere. And, they are from Liberals, Democrats, Centrists, Republicans and Conservatives. Yet I read many politicians are actually shutting down phone lines, closing offices, refusing to meet with people as they complain about the feedback they are getting from their constituents. Is that what a politician is to do? You know the real answer even if you try to hide and deny it.
I fear when a man like Trump and then other politicians start using nonsensical terms like fake news and alternative facts and get people to believe it. I fear a FOX News that helps spread those terms to the ignorant. I fear that people like you Mr. Ryan and Mitch McConnell think they can hide behind those terms and feel like the majority of the people buy it.
Not everyone is politically ignorant and can be easily deceived. Many are watching and learning and adding to those that are aware. They are the people that are out in the streets and on forums, blogs and using social media. They are the fearful people that are helping make books like 1984 and Animal Farm by the likes of George Orwell best sellers at Amazon. They are not the people that fall for the claptrap from a book like Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand with its arrogant self-centered philosophies that fail to realize we are all in this world together, the very opposite of the Catholic upbringing I understand you had but seemingly have turned against.
But I do also have hope. I have hope that while Republicans think they are in power they are actually setting themselves up to lose it all in a few years by doing what they are currently doing. That would be standing by spineless and weak, allowing a clear danger like Trump to wreck this great country with the help of you, McConnell and others by tearing apart all the systems that were put in place to make it great. The great country I grew up in the 50s and 60s and into my college years in the early 70s believing it was the way it should be.
So let this message and the message of all those demonstrating be a sign to you Mr. Ryan that you are wrong. A sign that the people in this country will soon learn a hard lesson and then make the changes that will put this country back on the correct path it was on. A lesson that will lead to career politicians like you being run out of office for not doing what is right.
This country doesn’t need weak leaders like you. This country does not need Senators like McConnell and Hatch that think no one is paying attention to them as they say stupid things like Democrats are obstructing Trumps nominations and policies when they know full well that is all that many of you had disgracefully done during the Obama years.
Not everyone falls for the idiocy of a Sean Hannity and a Rush Limbaugh Mr. Speaker. No, they are out in the streets and online learning what they are being forced to learn as you turn away and cower to dangerous men like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. They are learning and relearning the lessons of history and they are learning the problems with politicians like you that are doing nothing about the things they are in those streets and on their digital devices concerned with.
They are learning civics, politics and history and they will use those lessons to eliminate the real problems this country faces. They are people like women who know it is wrong for only men to be directing their lives. They are young people that are learning not to trust their elders and need to find new leaders for their very futures. They are elders like me that want to leave a great country for all that come.
They are learning they do not need do-nothing politicians like many Republicans and even some Democrats that risk our lives while they protect their political careers. They want action and they are calling for it right now.
So, go on trying to normalize Trump. Go on and act like Donald Trump is no problem while you hope to get your own dangerous policies implemented. Go on and ignore your constituents and the other people you should be serving. It will be to your own detriment and hopefully an end to you and others as politicians that don’t deserve to be called proper respectful names like The Speaker of the House and The Senate Leader.