Redress of Grievances

Hey, did you know you can petition the government for a redress of grievances? Well, you can! I’ve made a bit of a habit of this in the last few years, sending positive and negative emails and letters to our elected officials. This is because I have a love of stationery and apparent free time on my hands.

I’ve written to thank my Delaware senators and congresswoman for their focus on issues I care about and implore their help for other things. I emailed Kirstjen Nielsen to protest kids in cages at the border (God, I did such a literal jig of glee in my living room when I found out that bottom feeder got fired!). I emailed Bill Barr to remind him he’s the head of the Department of Justice and not the president’s lawyer. I emailed Mitch McConnell to tell him to take a break from confirming Heritage Foundation picks for judges and actually address election security. I wrote letters to the president about the impeachment and other things. I assume nobody read any of these.

This week, I’m sending letters to the Republican senators who acquitted Trump in the impeachment trial. I’m going to look up their addresses and indignantly slap a stamp on each envelope. (Some politicians only let people in their state email them, so I’m using paper.) Their aides will probably put them in the shredder before they get to the second paragraph, but at times I feel the only things I can do to effect change in politics are to write something and to vote, so it will be a brisk, fired-up-for-representative-democracy walk to the mailbox for me.

Anyway, since all my readers (really, both) so enjoy when I blab about politics, here’s the text of the letters.

The impeachment trial conducted in the Senate was a partisan sham due to the actions and inactions of the Republican Party.

Republican senators are complicit in a cover-up of President Trump’s attempt to solicit foreign interference in our elections. You voted against hearing witness testimony in the trial. You ignored the Government Accountability Office report that the president did in fact violate the law. You essentially voted to place cotton in your ears and refuse to hear or see what is right in front of you. And you did this in defiance of fairness, basic legal logic and the will of the majority of the public.

This is cowardly. What evidence were you afraid would come to light?

With your acquittal, you are essentially abetting President Trump in his quest to place himself above the law and beyond congressional oversight. This is a man whose theory of executive power is “I have an Article II that lets me do what I want.” And you collectively shrug. Some on the Republican side of the Senate have called the president’s actions “inappropriate” or made some other milquetoast protest. But these are just speeches with no spine behind them.

You have chosen to do nothing in the face of a president who has indicated that he will again ask a foreign country to interfere in our election. This is not leadership; it is weakness. You rolled over.

I don’t know why you voted the way you did. Maybe it was to cling to power at any cost. Maybe it was fear of losing your base. Maybe it was to ingratiate yourself with the president, hanging on like a sycophant.

But your motivations, in the long term, will not matter. History will not be kind to the actions of the Republicans in the Senate. The American people will remember that you faced a president whose view of his own power rivals that of Louis XIV—and you chose to do nothing and instead save your own hide and preserve your own power. And you will deserve that legacy.