Saturday night Senator Ron Wyden had his 8-hundred & somethingth constituent town hall. This one in Newport, Oregon.
Calling it ‘well attended’ would be a charming understatement, (his staff was savvy enough after all these years to book the high school gym rather than the usual smallish space), the bleachers for one side of the gym were fully deployed and it was still standing room only with staff schlepping stacks of extra chairs for the first 20 minutes.
I’m not sure whether I consider it an act of faith or of fatalism, but I was there with a speech/talking points I’d spent the afternoon working on. A friend thought it sounded too loopy, (in my defense, that was before I’d added the groundwork & started revising), but I figured if the Universe wanted the subject brought up then my ticket number would be called to ask a question. (Wyden’s staff hands out tickets to attendees who have questions and then draws the numbers) My number was the final one drawn.
Deep breath. I’d had doubts as the meeting went on and people were upset, angry and alarmed by turns, but had stayed on expected subjects, (mention of Kellyanne Conway had garnered the loudest round of boos, one woman had gotten up and said that Steve Bannon was what she was most concerned about, but didn’t know where to start so she left it at that).
But I’d been a critical care nurse for more than a decade and we generally have a skill set that’s perfect for this sort of thing. We’re used to assessing complicated situations, (often with serious consequences for mistakes), and we don’t pull punches once we’ve made our assessments & decided on the best approach. ‘Nother deep breath.
I started by thanking him for his work both passing and defending the ACA. The first town hall I’d attended was in 2009 and I hadn’t had insurance in a decade. I mentioned that since then I’d been able to have regular checkups, routine meds and surgery that I never would have been able to afford otherwise.
Then I moved into recalling that first town hall & the knot-headed Teahadist who’d questioned his patriotism, noting that he’d stood firm & fired right back about his father having served in WWII. I mentioned that my grandfather had served, also and that I felt we have an obligation to defend their service & sacrifices so that what they’d been through would never happen again.
Then I said I thought his trying to deprive the Republicans of a quorum on the nominees was a good try, but that the Republicans suspending the rules was just how they roll these days. That the GOP is no longer a political party- they've proven that they are lawless opportunists seeking access to the power and wealth of the US by any means they can lay hands on.
I noted that Tom Cotton had used a ‘hold’ to shield the Muslim ban and kill the Senate bill addressing it just last week. And that was my platform for the deep dive- ‘The DSM(-IV) only requires 5 symptoms be present for a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Donald Trump buries the needle with all nine. He has the most extreme form of the disorder. Since ‘holds’ are still in active use, will you gather as many other Democrats as you can and put holds on everything, invoke the 25th Amendment, lock up the Senate and refuse to allow votes on any nominees or bills until Donald Trump submits to a panel of mental health experts for a psychological evaluation?’
::sigh:: My friend was right, in the light of day, (so to speak), it did sound pretty out there, and there was a brief titter of surprise. But then there were sounds of support and agreement, so I hadn’t misjudged the room by that much. I mentioned my background as an RN from California, that the 1st year & a half had been at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, (so I hadn’t just fallen off a turnip truck), and that it wasn’t just me, that highly trained specialists in personality disorders had been trying to ring the alarm on this for months.
::sigh:: My friend was right about this, too. He dodged the question. Talked about holds & accountability and ‘revolving holds’ & some other stuff. He’s a nice man. Polite and congenial. He works hard for us and he’s probably about as honest as you can find in a high level pol, but ‘Grit’ is not his middle name.
I screwed up then; I should have polled the room while I had the floor, to show him how much support there was, (more than a few came up to me afterward), but I didn’t think fast enough.
He did say that he’d never had a question come up about the 25th Amendment before, (I replied, ‘It’s a new world. And he’s rattling sabers with Iran and China trying to pick fights.’). But that was it. ::sigh::
So, we’re going to have to go at this from another angle. I’m hammering out the wording for a petition, (should post later this afternoon I’ll link when it goes up), and we need to make it go viral. I had hoped to tell him that not only would his constituents in Oregon be out in the streets to support him if he did it, but that people all over the damned world would pour out and demonstrate in support of forcing Hair Drumph to sit for a proper psychological evaluation by a panel of experts. And removal from office dependent on their findings.
Drumph’s condition is such that putting him in office was very much like dumping a wheelbarrow full of blow in front of a coke head & waiting to see what exploded first. The only thing that we can know for sure is that (preventable)disaster will happen if he stays where he is. What we can’t know is when it will happen. Might be next week, might be tomorrow. But it may also have been five minutes ago.
The window for us to head off this avalanche is closing and once it does, (at least) tens of thousands of people will die needlessly. Considering the threats to NATO as well as Iran & China, the likelihood is that we will see devastation on a scale that hasn’t been seen since 1945 if it’s not nipped in the bud. There is no excuse for not acting on what we know and doing everything we possibly can to prevent this.
UPDATE: Change.org petition Please share widely.