Thoughts . . . by Mark Rich

. . . scribbled . . . scrawled . . . trimmed . . . typewritten . . . grubbed up . . . squeezed from circumstance . . .

Monday, October 26, 2020

An Open Letter to Senator Ron Johnson

To Ron Johnson, Senator from Wisconsin:

Only four years ago, you thought it fitting for a Supreme Court nomination to be postponed or negated, because it fell "only eight months before an election where the American people are going to decide the direction of the country."

You were lying — perhaps to yourself, but more certainly to the public. You were lying, that is, unless you are a weasel now. Conceivably you are liar and weasel both, since you have accommodated yourself so well to the needs of Forty-Five, the devil whose name had best go unmentioned, who has proven himself so adept at being, at one and the same time, a liar and a weasel.

If you are either or both of these things, you do not represent me, a Wisconsinite and a supposed "constituent" of yours. Wisconsin has its share of liars and two-legged weasels, admittedly; and perhaps you have an obligation to do your honorable best by them.

Many voters here seem unperturbed at your having been put into office by offensively wealthy men; at your being a toady to a bigot who boasts of offensive wealth but who opens a wallet thick only with bluster and bilgewater; or at your helping oversee the violent violation of the rights of innocents through "Homeland" heavy-handedness. You shame Wisconsin, which suggests that your supporters, too, feel no shame.

Yet now in October — only weeks before the Russian government will attempt again to decide the direction of this country — you reveal yourself as a weasel, to all. I hope that your supporters see this through your Badger disguise, and feel pride enough in the fact that they are Badgers themselves to speak out and make you realize that your blush of success in a realm awash in bluster and bilgewater is, instead, the fever-bloom of falsehood — and, I do believe, of your poverty of integrity, and of your deep-seated guilt for doing wrong against your own state and nation.

Most sincerely not yours, Mark Rich, Cashton, Wisconsin

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