With Contempt, An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein, Michael Piotrowski

I know this guy isn't "well-educated" -- he even makes spelling errors! -- but he does seem to get it. Probably because he's not "well-educated." Originally published here.

Dianne,

You may be surprised and offended by my familiar salutation, but you have lost the right to be addressed as Senator Feinstein. Although I have voted for you in every single election I could (a lot, I'm 60), you have failed miserably as my elected Senator. I now completely withdraw my support for you and the Democratic Party. For the past seven years I have begged and pleaded with you do your job and uphold the solemn oaths you have repeatedly sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of these United States and its laws. Your standard pablum response has been a patronizing pat on the head and a vacuous reassurance that someday something might be accomplished through further legislation, providing Bush doesn't veto it or your colleagues disapprove. Your latest such response (written correspondence, 29 April 2008, regarding torture) is the final straw. I am tired of your sorry excuses and dilatory tactics. Your failure to do your duty has helped bring us to this sorry state of affairs.

I was deeply disappointed, but completely unsurprised, by your utter disregard for the Constitution, the law and what is morally right. From what I can deduce from your actions, words and behaviors, protecting your position, your party, and your class are your driving motivations, not governing, not protecting the NATION (you remember the 99% of us who aren't wealthy?), not respecting the rule of law. Despite his assertations to the contrary and your obsequeious submission to them, the President is not, repeat NOT, above or beyond the law whether in peacetime or wartime. In wartime, the President is Commander-in-Chief, and as such is subject to the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as much as the lowest private is. He stands in violation of that code, and YOU accept it. Beyond the many laws this criminal has violated and could be prosecuted for, there is the Constitutional remedy you have repeatedly refused to employ: impeachment.

It is far too late for you to ever regain the respect I once had for you and your party, but at least you might reduce the degree of contempt in which I now hold you. DO THE RIGHT THING: stand up for immediate impeachment. Before you tell me that it is the House's responsibility (trust me, I apparently know more about this than you do), let me point out that it is YOUR responsibility to LEAD. The House will do nothing unless and until the Senate signals its willingness to go forward with it. If your argument is that elections are near and soon he will be out of office, kindly explain to me in a written response that actually addresses the points I'm raising, why that excuses criminal behavior (illegal wiretaps, use of outlawed torture, kidnapping and assassination as government policy, corruption, fraud, cronyism, lying as official policy [Pat Tilman, Abu Graib, Jessica whatever-her-name was]). Failure to impeach this criminal will be the deathblow for this nation. We may stagger on a few years, but I see the end of the United States looming as clearly as the demise of the USSR. Failure to impeach, to hold a fellow member of your socioeconomic class actually responsible for the harm he has caused us will make most doubt the whether the return on investment, the cost of supporting a system that works against 99% of us, is worth it. The Soviet citizens decided that their system wasn't worthy of support and ended it: the same is already happening here.

As an example of why this is occuring, I cite the response I will receive from your office regarding this email. Despite the time, care and thought I have put into it, not only will you not read this, you will probably be completely oblivious to it. I will recieve yet another pablum response thanking me for my interest, citing some meaningless future bill that might be remotely related to one or two of the issues I've raised, written by some juvenile intern hoping to make his or her fortune in politics. In other words, I have wasted my time and thought with trying to communicate with you: you and this system are unworthy of any further support. I will be showing the response I receive from you to many people in my social circle, and advise them to vote one last time for true change. No, not for Obama or Hilary or McCain or any other Democrat or Republican. I will advise them to vote for ANYONE who is not a Republicrat. When that fails to get the message through, as it will, my advice will be to start doing what the Senate does: ignore any laws and resposibilities they don't like, as there is no longer a valid contract between the citizens and their "elected" officials.

Mark my words: you have perhaps a year, maybe two, before the riots start. High gas prices, high food prices, incompetent disaster relief, home foreclosures, lack of jobs, and a loss of faith in the system will combine to create chaos. If your aides were to look up my previous correspondance with you they will find that I accurately predicted the lack of WMD, the quagmire that is Iraq, and a number of other things. I'm sure you believe that if we can just get throught the election, everything will be better with a Democratic President. Wrong: whoever is president will soon discover that we are broke, the business class has no interest in rectifying anything, and we are bereft of influence. More people will lose their homes while you and your colleagues pump billions into corporations "that are too big to fail". Those corporations will take that tax money and invest it outside the United States. The kicker is going to be TV, in February '09. When you have millions of people with no home, no work, no money, hugely expensive gas and food, and nothing much to do besides watch TV, and you take THAT away from them what exactly do you think they will do? Vouchers for new TVs or adapters don't help if you can't afford to feed your children. The subsequent riots will spin completely out of control with most of the National Guard deployed overseas.

While most of this is too far gone to stop, it might yet be mitigated if you do the right thing and support the impeachment of Bush and his cronies. Unfortunately, my concerns are going into the empty head of some ignorant intern who is likely going to have to look up some of the words I've used (and still not comprehend them). So to you who is actually reading this: hide and watch as our country falls over the next two years or so and when it happens, remember that she was warned well in advance and nothing you could do would get her to do anything constructive about it, because that would require more sacrifice and selflessness than she, or anyone in Washington for that matter, is capable of.

Despite all that, I still expect a written response, if only to annoy the office. But don't worry: I don't expect anything like a reasoned, respectful response, just more phony pablum.

With contempt,

Michael Piotrowski -- Citizen, Vietnam Vet, Educator, former Democrat