Nancy Pelosi Let Us Know This House Is Not Accepting a Shoe-in Dictator from a Reality Show

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The following is an open letter to Nancy Pelosi from a group of friends in Detroit, Michigan.

Dear Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi,

Thank you for upholding democratic principles. It has been a great relief to have a person who has both integrity and courage serving in an authoritative governing position at this time.

I admired your cautious approach to impeachment. I watched as you accepted its growing necessity, and began sober work on the inevitable, sad, carefully-constitutional, legal process.

The current challenges to the governing promise of the United States’ are stark. These same challenges are at full play, and have made it difficult, then impossible, for the House of Representatives to complete a fair and valid process. The Senate’s inappropriate, often illegal collaboration with the White House to prohibit both the content and workings of a legitimate trial are creating a potentially lawless future that we must work to overcome.

The House Managers are remarkable, excellent, and have been engaged in transparent, fair, and deliberate processes. They have worked hard; it has been a long slog. We are grateful for their trustworthiness, determination, and indomitable focus and energy.

These folks and many, many others, unnamed and uncounted – locally, regionally, and nationally – are uplifting and inspiring as we move forward in confronting degraded policies and processes, which are compounded by unthinkably dishonest, obdurate politicians. I am hopeful that we will find our way, that the next step will make itself known, and that we will move, unified, toward home.

Your public act of procedural disavowal, literally and symbolically tearing apart the falseness of the speech in full view of the world, was a declarative, singular protest. No one else could have, perhaps would have, done this. It was in your hand, it was up to you, only you, Batter Up, and you found the one thing that you could do, in that brief, but critical moment of opportunity, to express the wrongness wrought on all of us.

Your repeated ripping – don’t miss this, folks – let us know that you were not having it; this House is not accepting a shoe-in dictator from a variety-reality show/rally. Your calm, deliberate hands, here in the last few seconds of this game, will become an iconic image of discipline, restraint, civility, and yes, diplomacy. Historic. Heroic. Classic. Classroom stuff.

One day there will be a Democracy Action Doll, dressed in a white suit, who will come with a color change of medium-heeled pumps, and tiny, multiple copies of the 2020 SOTU speech. Batteries will make it possible for her to rip the speech into pieces, over and over and over and over. Instructions will include history. We will all learn anew how to take care of things that matter.

Ariana Henri and friends
Detroit, Michigan