Jeff Merkley of Oregon gave address to make case that president is ‘violating the law’ through authoritarianism
Oregon’s Jeff Merkley gave a marathon, nearly 23-hour speech on the Senate floor that began on Tuesday and ended late Wednesday, pressing the case that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
The 68-year-old senator began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday evening and continued until just after 5pm on Wednesday. Standing continuously on the Senate floor alongside placards that read “authoritarianism is here now!” and “Trump is violating the law”, Merkley paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators who joined him in the chamber to make their own points about the president’s conduct.
“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. President Trump is shredding our constitution,” Merkley said as he began his speech.
Some will show up and do things only because they feel the support is out there to act and be seen.
I might make different efforts were I them, but they are at least paddling in the same direction I want to go. I just don’t have the energy to resent how they choose to spend their outrage.
If your house is burning down, your kids and dog are trapped inside…
You barely make it out alive, but you know your family is in there…
Firefighters show up, a wave of relief washes over…
Then they sit down and pray to Jesus that someone comes to put out the fire.
If you got upset the people paid to put out fires aren’t using the equipment or putting any real effort into saving your family who are actively burning to death, and you yell at the firefighters:
How would you react to someone telling you the firefighters are doing all they can?
I think a better analogy is that they are paddling in the direction that we all want to go but are denying that the ship they are paddling is sinking. We need them to be directing people to life boats and fighting back against the fascist boarding our ship. But they seem to just want to paddle forward when the water is already above their chest. There is no honor in “going down with the ship” if all you did that whole time was useless. Captains “go down with the ship” to make sure they did everything in their power to save people. That is not what the Democrats are doing at all.