Ordinary Citizens Address to Republican Leadership
I’m an ordinary voice, one of many throughout our common and inter-relational American land. I have many republican friends, each compassionate, kind, and always focused on what is beneficial not just to themselves and their family but to our greater good.
The republican voices I know are not reflected in the leadership in our House of Representatives today.
This is a soul-searching era in American history. It seems inconceivable just a few short years ago that today we’d watch on national television a former president threatening top military generals, Georgia election workers, our legal institutions, even us —common ordinary citizens.
Then of course, we’re reminded of January 6, 2021, when far right extremists attempted to stop an official proceeding and overthrow the government of the United States of America.
We could talk about gun violence and the lack of sensible legislation, flood insurance, immigration, the war in Ukraine and how republican leaders refuse to pass anything without fiery soundbites to amplify division and sow doubt in the American people.
We could talk about Roe v Wade.
We could talk about women’s rights.
We could talking about voting rights and gerrymandering.
But today I’m talking about republican leadership and the painful realization that they just don’t care about people, they care about power and money.
GOP leadership seems to be only concerned with the feeding of lies, mis and disinformation to the media outlets that choose to amplify their outrageousness.
They appear not to work for our people but for Vladimir Putin, and Viktor Orbán under whose posthumous guidance of a Mussolini who inspired Hitler and his murderous reign —somehow now a Republican thing.
Us “ordinary citizens” come forward to say that it is also your children who will grow up in the stickiness of these muddy trails you leave behind. It’s your grandchildren you gift a world, what’s left of it then, when they seek to begin their family’s future.
Being a good person isn’t really that hard.
It means the oaths we take mean something. As physicians, nurses, army generals, firefighters, lawyers —and government leaders, they first and foremost dedicate their lives to the ethical, compassionate, care of other people. They do their best to save lives and help those in need.
We are all in need today.
This is a letter of disappointment —but it’s also a letter of hope.
A letter of encouragement and in awe of our teen and twenty-something year old voters.
These young leaders are, albeit much out of necessity, taking it upon themselves to empathically course-correct the morally and ethically anemic polices you've not so graciously bequeathed them.
They will succeed.
They will bring us a new world overwhelmingly more inclusive and hopeful than we’ve seen in recent decades.
History will record our House of Representatives today as not saying the things we are thinking, but rather shouting the things they know will overstimulate those already suffering.
Republican leadership in 2023 isn’t conservative as it is extreme and the remaining silence represent not safety, but complicity.
We the people, ordinary citizens, stand at a crossroads yes, but with faith in the enlightened idea that all people are created equal.
Photo by Ferdinand Stöhr on Unsplash