Pelosi Fiddles While America (and the World) Burns

Dear Representative Pelosi,

I received your email letter Thursday thanking me for expressing my “support for the arts,” how “A great nation must invest in artistic and cultural development…” and how you have “fought to protect funding for the arts in San Francisco and across the country.” Yes, we need more funding for the arts, but I don’t recall writing a letter about it. Perhaps a mention in passing while decrying Congress’s slashing of funds for social services and infrastructure or the CIA’s monthly delivery of bags of cash to Karzai in Kabul or the spending of billions to kill and destroy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, but my letters are almost exclusively focused on the immoral, soul-destroying war of terror we’re waging around the globe and the destruction of democracy here at home—a surveillance state where the government operates in secrecy and everything is justified as critical to national security. Yes, I am for more funding of the arts, but I am vehemently opposed to the funding of wars and death, opposed to supporting corrupt and despotic regimes abroad, opposed to an expanding police state here at home, and I see you as part of the problem, Ms. Pelosi: complicit by voting against the Amash Amendment on Wednesday; complicit by calling Snowden a “criminal” last month but remaining silent on those like Clapper and Alexander who lied to Congress and the public; complicit by accusing Snowden of threatening to release information to Russia and China, an unfounded claim completely counter to the facts. But then, you have a long history of twisting truth and betraying trust. In 2002 you assented to torture; in 2006 you blocked a move to impeach Bush; in 2011 your insider trading was exposed; and in 2012 you agreed to put Medicare and Social Security on the table for cuts. During your time in office you’ve enabled the Executive to amass power and run roughshod over the rest of the world and our own citizens. I’m glad you fight to fund the arts but I’m distressed that you’ve done nothing to stop injustice and the abuse of power of this and the previous administration. I want an end to war, an end to drones, an end to illegal surveillance, an end to corporate control of government and I see you doing nothing about any of it. We need new legislators and a new president with a moral center, respect for law, the Constitution and human rights who will promote life not death. Write again when you have something to say on any of these issues.

cc: President Barack Obama