Red lines

By Art Petersen

I am writing to share why I wrote to Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Nick Begich to tell them I would not be writing to them again. Not that they would care.

Rep. Begich has not responded to any of my constituent communications about all the red lines being crossed against Alaska and democracy. Sen. Sullivan did send some replies, but they failed to address the issues of what made the lines in question so red. Their consistent votes and silence about former red lines crossed and so many new ones make clear that no letter of concern, no matter how well reasoned and documented, would give them pause and that no line would be red enough for them to oppose crossing it.

I gave examples, including the extortion of institutions of higher education, of the legal profession, and of the media, the suits against and smears of the judiciary, the actions of government agencies against public officials who criticize or acted lawfully against Donald Trump, the mustering out of experienced and many decorated military personnel for the truths they tell or who they are as human beings, the withholding of government files about a sexual predator of children in which the president figures, the collusion with a convicted sexual predator by the president's lawyer for her preposterous exculpation of the president, the many instances of huge financial self-dealing by the president, the calling up of armed military personnel to Washington, D.C., streets, and preparation to do the same in Chicago and other cities while withholding appropriated funds that could help cities, the urging of masked agents with guns to reach quotas of people grabbed off the streets and from work places and government buildings for unconstitutional detentions and deportations, the flouting of court orders, the lowering of standards for agents of the FBI, ICE, and border patrol, the mass firings of government personnel only to hire some of them back when found to be needed, the rescission of funds for medical research, foreign aid, and our public broadcasting, the pardoning of hundreds of violent rioters at the Houses of Congress, the rewriting of history in museums, the pressure to control school curricula, the stripping away of health care and food assistance, the bungled negotiations with terrorists and dictators and the constant appeasement and applauding of them, the steadily rising consumer prices due to excessive tariff controls ceded by congress to the president, the historically huge increases to the deficit and to the national debt, the installation of dozens of patently unqualified, inexperienced, and incompetent persons in positions of authority, which is shamefully abused every day, the diminishment of programs and departments that serve the people and promote their safety....

So because of this long, partial list, I wanted to let the representative and senator know that not writing to them about more red lines is not because they are unimportant but because the congressmen have shown with their votes and silence that those lines are unimportant to them, even as all that red is, as clearly as if drawn on a map, paving a red freeway to an authoritarian state.

A reply to these letters, signed with sincerest and deepest constituent disappointment, is not anticipated.

• Art Petersen is a 50-year resident of Alaska and professor of English emeritus from the University of Alaska Southeast.