Writing Candidates

And because now is the season of the primary, we can write letters to the 82681263 Democrats:

Dear Senator Warren,

I am considering voting for you in the primary but I want to hear you speak out against the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Mr. Soleimani was a leader in a sovereign nation. Iran will rightly perceive this as an act of war. Surely we’ve had enough of starting wars in the middle east? How many more lives will we sacrifice there?

I hope I can count on you to put the breaks on Trump’s reckless foreign adventure.

How you respond to this issue will determine whether or not you have my support. Thank you for your time and your service.

For this, I am using the form on her campaign site. With the other candidates, I will probably tweak the wording somewhat, as I don’t want to fib. The circumstances that would lead me to vote for Biden, for example, would be rather fantastical.

Writing letters

Trump wants a war. Fuck him. This is the letter I wrote for my liberal senators:

Dear X,

I was very disturbed to read that the Trump administration carried out an assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Mr. Soleimani was a leader in a sovereign nation. Iran will rightly perceive this as an act of war. Surely we’ve had enough of starting wars in the middle east? How many more lives will we sacrifice there?

I hope congress acts to censure the president and reclaim it’s constitutional mandate to be the only body allowed to declare war. I hope I can count on you to put the breaks on Trump’s reckless foreign adventure.

I live at Y and voted for you in the last election. Thank you for your time and your service.

Best Regards,

CCH

abc@def.ghi

I’m going to create a PDF of this letter to fax to my senators, using a free service. I hope they get a large pile of hard-to-ignore paper. It’s important to include my voting address so they know I live within their district and state.

My representative is actually a leftist and my letter to her will take a different tone about the immorality of drone strikes in general and wars of choice in particular. That will be sent by email. I trust her to do the right thing, but being able to cite the support of constituents is always helpful.

Letters to the editors of newspapers continue to carry a certain amount of weight, so I’ll send a few of those as well. Our congress is made up of cowards who will wait to see which way the wind is blowing before they act. We need to make out voices heard.