I am writing you, this morning, in hopes that you will support and promulgate impeachment proceedings against our current President, Donald Trump. After the past two months it is, quite frankly, the very least you can do to make amends.
You carry significant, invisible burdens sir, of that I am well aware. Not only do you currently sit in Tom Walsh’s seat, Lee Metcalf’s seat, Max Baucus’ seat, you used to sit in Jeannette Rankin’s seat. Your place in history has largely taken from you the opportunity to come close to your predecessors in accomplishment. Instead, your career in congress seems likely to fall in line with those of your party colleagues Rick Hill, Conrad Burns, and Denny Rehberg, who if remembered with any specificity will be recalled for their graft and mediocrity. Demographics, and the cultural changes which accompany them, have placed mountain states in a subservient and defensive role. Guarding federal subsidies and rural culture is not illustrious work, something which surely at least partially excuses your thin record of legislative achievement over the past 7 years.
Your first senate election was a gimme, in light of Mr. Walsh’s resignation, after his plagiarism scandal. And it was presumably out of fear that, around a year ago, you hitched your wagon to the presidents. This worked, and it is my hope that the enhanced legitimacy which must come with having defeated a formidable opponent by a surprisingly large margin will allow you to act more freely as a senator.
Montana is at a crucial place as a state; moving towards securing a second congressperson, as well as an economic future which is beyond both extractive industry and tourism, and which preserves both the physical and mental landscape that makes it unique and desirable. While your public land bonafides are inconsistent, I take it at face value from your ads that you know how to shoot a rifle, and have abundant first hand evidence that big wild places are the most valuable and fragile material capitol that Montana will ever have. Preserving this, for my kids and your grandkids, amidst the crux of accelerating population growth, is a task the equal of Senator Walsh’s antitrust work, and of Senator Metcalf’s public lands work.
Which brings us to impeachment. I think it obvious to say that the inevitable crystalized into the present yesterday; President Trump has never been a Republican, he has only ever been for himself, and has been singularly ruthless (by any past standard in American politics) in choosing vehicles to further himself. This is anathema in a republic, precisely because the most democratic aspects tend to encourage immoderation and blatant myopia. Trumpism, as a nostalgic embodiment our the national id, will endure irrespective of what happens in the next several weeks. It is your responsibility, as an elected member of the explicitly less democratic branch of the legislature, to safeguard the future of America and facilitate the quickest and most definitive death for Trumpism that circumstances and history will allow. Baring the President from holding future elective office is the best way to do this. In a democracy the people are allowed to make poor choices, one of which may well prove to be electing you, if you continue to play the dangerous sycophant. In a republic elected representatives are allowed, and are indeed supposed to, steer the ship of state with an eye towards the horizon.
It is time sir, to grab the wheel. This window will not long remain open.
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