12/11/16
Dear Assailant-in-Chief,
Article III of the Constitution first describes the Supreme Court, its duties and powers. That is a matter of concern to me because, after the Republicans held up President Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland...behavior which should have, in a less gerrymandered and more righteous world, gotten them all bounced out on their ears...that means there's still a seat open.
I have tried to reassure myself by thinking, "How bad could it possibly be?" Then I look at the team of miscreant plutocrats, scoundrels and "plunder-monkeys" (thank you, Stephen King) that are your Cabinet picks and I fear for my country.
..About that. Section 3 goes on to define treason against the United States as consisting in "levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
And look here, it turns out that Russia meddled in the election in your favor, and it has become something of a matter of discussion just now. The question to my mind isn't really whether treason has been committed, but by how many people, and how treasonous is it? When considering an antidote, it's important to know the strength of the poison.
First, I hesitate to over-broaden the definition of war, as that is what leads to defining criminals as "enemy combatants" and deciding that no rules apply to their treatment whatsoever. Wiser scholars than I can argue over whether interfering in our elections is an act of war; in any case, they certainly weren't doing it for our benefit. They are enemies in that sense. But as Kuns argues in the article I linked to, this isn't new. Birds gonna fly, fish gonna swim, Russia gonna Russ, and the more important question is how we react to it. Spoiler alert: Collusion is the wrong answer.
Are you treasonous? I don't know, but you do. Were you just the beneficiary of actions the Russians took to influence our election, or did you coordinate with them? Circumstantial evidence suggests the latter, considering how you repeated Russian state news' talking points sometimes before they even posted them. There's also your noted fondness for fake news...and the evidence that a lot of that fake news was produced by, you guessed it, the Russians, for the purpose of confusing people about the truth and influencing the election. But the definition of treason requires not that they helped you, but that you gave aid and comfort to them. The Republican platform was certainly altered in their favor, for whatever that's worth. What else? That's something that would need proving, and the Constitution requires two witnesses to testify against you. (Watch your back). Impeachment, I note, is less difficult to try than treason, since the definition of what makes it impeachable is at the discretion of Congress. Well, that makes it less difficult or more difficult, depending.
There are two people I am more concerned about actually. Mitch McConnell evidently blocked the information presented by the CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies from being made public, because it would affect his political fortunes...and James Comey, knowing it, decided to go public not with that information but with a trivial examination of Anthony "Coincidental Last Name" Weiner's laptop that had some of Hillary Clinton's e-mails on it.
That is to say, those two men, having been presented with evidence that a hostile foreign power was attempting to influence an American presidential election, decided to do what they could to make sure that it worked.
Yours sincerely,
Sara Amis
Citizen of these United States of America
From Dorine Jennette:
PLEASE JOIN ME IN WRITING THE ASSAILANT-IN-CHIEF
Please join me in bombarding the Assailant-in-Chief with letters: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contact. I will write to him every day through his first 100 days in office, maybe longer if momentum holds. I am asking others to write just ONE letter. Let's not just vent our grief to each other--let's speak truth to power together. Please WRITE and please SHARE this plan with your friends. Pass it on!
You do not need to be a woman or an assault survivor to address the Assailant-in-Chief as such. If you are a man who has a daughter, a sister, a wife, a woman colleague or friend you respect, or a mother (hint: that last one is all of you!), then you have something to say to the Assailant-in-Chief. Your letter might be a brief one-liner. That's great! Please send it! Women need our allies now. Here's the link to DJT's contact page--this might take you one minute or less! https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contact
Or, maybe you will start a related project addressing any one of the many groups Trump has already harmed . . .
As we talk with each other, let's break the bubble and also send our complaints straight to the source. He won't read them and won't care if he does, so probably this is a placeholder action while we figure out what we're really going to do . . . but it's something.
Dorine's posts can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/dorine.jennette
PS from Sara: I've taken to just tweeting these at him. He's not going to read them anyway, but I might as well use the platform that he actually responds to. *snort*
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