TRUMP

November 28, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Trump

Haven’t you had enough of this guy yet? He dishonors this country daily with his childish, ill-considered actions. In the past two days alone we have suffered his shameful retweet of British racist propaganda—much to the delight of racists everywhere; and his mindless shaming of brave Navajo code-talkers with yet another mindless, tired attack on Elizabeth Warren. Today—was it just today?—he reiterated his taunts directed at a North Korean leader who is predictable only in his truculent response to provocation. Oh, and we learn that he has returned to his demonstrably false attack on his predecessor’s integrity—unquestionable to all but the ignorant and acrimonious man in the Oval Office. And now he even attempts to question what he was seen to say on videotape.

All this in the past couple of days. The damage he has wreaked on this country and its reputation in the world is already incalculable, after a mere nine months in office. By kow-towing to Trump in desperation to achieve their partisan and wildly unpopular goals, Republicans have now become complicit in his lies and his incompetence. Having failed to disown him, you now own this hellion manchild. You, unhappily along with the rest of us, will be forced to live with the consequences for many years to come, perhaps for decades.

The likely successful outcome of the tax bill that is currently being thrust down the throats of more than two-thirds of unwilling Americans will compound your culpability. And it will surely come back to haunt you—unless, as is usually the case, you manage to shift the blame for it to the Democrats. The great mystery is why the American people continue to believe your scam, and for how long they will continue to do so. 

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

THE PENIS

November 28, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: The penis

You have one. I have one. It’s something pretty much every man on the planet has. Some big, some small, most middling. We’re born with it. For most of us, it’s our first and most amusing plaything. I’m sure that you, as I, have watched even the tiniest of male tots discover this most delightful and compelling part of their anatomy and explore its tantalizing possibilities.

It’s our great blessing—and our curse. Sticking out there, in front of us, its presence is unavoidable. It seems to have a mind of its own. Its actions and reactions are involuntary, and it gets up to tricks that are hard, sometimes seemingly impossible to resist. I have worked in intimate circles of men enough to know just how many of us are obsessed with it. Without conscious effort and resistance, it leads us into mischief that our better judgment would deplore. It can create in us a sense of power, and that power can so very easily be misused.

I write these thoughts in great sadness, after so many of us men—this morning it is Matt Lauer of NBC News—have been exposed for our misuse of this otherwise glorious gift of nature. Its demands for sensual gratification can be overpowering, and, as men, we need and deserve that gratification—as women deserve theirs. But too often we submit to those demands unwittingly, abandoning all sense of reason, respect, and even common courtesy. We allow it to become an instrument of power and domination.

None of which excuses us, of course. To pretend that we have no control over it is to deny millennia of human progress toward civilized behavior. Yet we continue to behave like cavemen, and not only in our personal lives. We strive for power in business, in politics, in international relations. We wage war, in order to assert our power.

In our obsession with—and obedience to—the almighty penis, Congressman, we men have much to answer for. I have behaved badly. I imagine you have, too. If we are to learn to use our sexual potential wisely, and with joy, we must first get past the lapse of consciousness that allows it to get the better of us. We must understand its power, we must learn to resist the easy and, yes, ecstatic course of pretending that we can’t control it. It is possible to exercise the best of our masculinity in full consciousness, without harming anyone, not even ourselves.

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

SILENCE

November 28, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Silence

You may have noticed—though perhaps not!—that I have been silent for a while. Chalk it up to Thanksgiving and its subsequent weekend, plus my participation on a panel at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last night. We were talking about chicanismo and Chicano art, and the huge contribution Mexican Americans have made to our culture, particularly here in Southern California. How many of your constituents, I wonder, are now of Latin descent? A good proportion, I would guess. It’s getting to be more and more important for politicians like yourself to listen to their voices and their needs.

The US Congress, I can’t help but note, is obsessed not only with the current spate of sex scandals but also with the hasty passage of the by now infamous, misnamed, and universally unpopular Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I have written to you about this bill a number of times before. It is clear that its various provisions—from penalizing graduate students and teachers to rewarding the already rich with the elimination of the estate tax—will serve only to increase the already untenable wealth gap in this country. The Senate’s cowardly addition of yet another attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act adds insult to injury.

I’m not entirely familiar with the procedure from this point on, but I’m presuming the bill will need another, perhaps final vote from the House. I urge you to consult with both reason and conscience, and vote NO.

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

THANKSGIVING

November 23, 2017

Thanksgiving Day

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Thanksgiving

I expect that you, like me, have much to be grateful for at this Thanksgiving time: family, most of all, and friends; the good fortune to be without financial worries; good health, for my age; and relative security—and I say “relative” in the (Buddhist!) knowledge that this could all be taken away at a moment’s notice.

It’s a different matter, though, on the public and political front. I’m appalled by the tax bill that you and your colleagues are trying to rush through Congress. I’m appalled by the fact that it might even be approved. I’m appalled, as I have often told you, by the seeming absence of conscience and compassion on your side of the aisle. I’m appalled by the apparently real possibility of a known child molester being elected to the US Senate. I’m continually appalled by a “president” whose ignorance is equaled only by his arrogance, whose truculence insults every value Americans used to hold dear, whose attention span is limited to the length of a Tweet, and whose personal behavior is more appropriate to the nursery than the most powerful office in the world. And I’m appalled that, even knowing that he is incompetent, unstable, and a danger to his country and the world, Republicans persist in supporting him.

In short, it saddens me no end to find so little to be thankful for outside the narrow realm of my own life. I wish you a Thanksgiving filled with joy, but also with time for genuine reflection on the needs and wishes of your constituency.

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

HARASSMENT

November 21, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Harassment

I don’t know about you but I’m sick at heart, hearing all these accusations of sexual harassment. Have you, as I have done, looked back at your life and asked yourself if you have ever done anything that might cause someone to accuse you? Anything? Have you, for instance, patted someone’s behind, unaware of the intrusiveness of your action or the offense that might be taken? Or worse? Have you presumed to use the power of your office to obtain unwilling compliance for, say, a stolen kiss? Have you even made tasteless jokes of a sexual nature in front of your staff or colleagues?

This current phenomenon has required me, correctly I think, to examine my own past in order to hold myself accountable for moments of inappropriate or boorish behavior. And I realize that to say that I myself have found none does not mean that some other person I unwittingly offended might still not find something to accuse me of. On this issue I admit I’m caught between my genuine outrage at the crass behavior of some men toward women and alarm at the mass hysteria that seems to have taken hold. Where are the lines to be drawn between the grave, unforgivable offense and the peccadillo—or are there no peccadillos any more? Are there only grave and unforgivable offenses?

It’s a condundrum, Congressman, and an uncomfortable one at that. I hope for your sake that you’re squeaky clean. I disagree with you on virtually every issue, but even so I would take no joy in seeing you pilloried—unless for truly gross and repeated patterns of behavior!

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

ELEPHANTS

November 20, 2017

 Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Elephants

I’ve been looking online to find out whether you’ve expressed any thoughts about Trump’s plan—now thankfully withdrawn—to reverse another Obama-era ban, this one on the importation of elephant parts as trophies. I have found nothing.

I bring this up because I note that several of your colleagues in the House have dared to express loud disagreement with the man in the Oval Office (I still have difficulty calling him “president”!)

I’d like to hear your opinion, even now that Trump has been forced, by public opinion, to back down on this gift to his big-game hunting sons. Predictably, perhaps, I think it’s a despicable “sport”—if it deserves that name. Please let us all know what you think.

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

ELEPHANT TROPHIES

November 17, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Your Trump

Every time I think I have seen your Trump do his worst, I am proved wrong by yet another loathsome action. His reversal of (another!) Obama-era ban—this one targeting the importation of elephant trophies from Zambia and Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe, for God’s sake: what was, until yesterday, the tyrant Mugabe’s realm!) in effect nullifies the international censure of the ivory trade. The idea was to end the slaughter of an increasingly endangered species of magnificent animal to satisfy naked human concupiscence and greed.

Do you remember, Congressman, the sickening picture of Trump’s son, Eric, looking so smug as he stands beside his hunting rifle and a fallen elephant, a knife in one hand and the dead creature’s severed tail in the other? I suppose he is now able to import his trophy legally, thanks to his father’s generosity. 

What could possibly be the purpose of this action, if not to please his son and anger those of us who care about our stewardship of this planet and its wild life? To alienate the international community? Or is it nothing but sheer spite against Obama and everything he accomplished, everything he stood for?

Enough is more than enough. Enough with your continued support of this man, whose disrespect now extends even to our fellow travelers in the animal kingdom. How low must he sink before your conscience requires you to disown him?

Yours in anger,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE? (SEE POSTSCRIPT)

November 15, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Individual mandate

Are there no depths to which your Republican colleagues will not sink in their unremitting attack on the Affordable Care Act? There can be no explanation for their implacable opposition unless it is sheer spite, directed against the legacy of a former president who was beloved by most people in this country. The fact that your current (Republican?) president is despised by an equal number is, I suppose, adding fuel to this particular fire.

The latest attack on Obamacare takes the form of an attempt to eradicate the individual mandate appended to the so-called (wildly unpopular!) “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” which your colleagues in the Senate are trying to ram down the throats of the reluctant American public. It’s being used, as I understand it, to help reduce the bill’s disastrous increase of the deficit. The elimination of the mandate—and the resulting loss of huge numbers of the young and healthy from the subscriber base—will remove a vital supporting leg of the health care system and likely cause it to topple. No doubt this is the intended consequence.

If and when this cruel and ill-thought tax bill reaches the House of Representatives for a vote, is it too much to ask that you oppose it, on behalf of those many in your district who would suffer as a result? They stand to lose not only a health care system that is now widely appreciated and gaining popularity, but also to be saddled with a tax “reform” that most benefits the wealthiest among us.

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

P.S.  I saw you quoted in yesterday’s online New York Times as saying: “I did not go to my constituents and ask them to vote for me in order to increase their tax load, and the bill increases the tax load on a big chunk of my constituency.” I urge you to abide by your own words, and vote NO!

MUELLER

 November 13, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: What now?

What now, Congressman? I hear that your name has come up in the Mueller investigation!  It seems that Mueller’s people are interested in a September 20, 2016 meeting at which you got together with disgraced National Security Advisor and former marine general Mike Flynn, along with his son, and others identified as his “business partners.”

Oh to have been a fly on the wall for that one, Congressman! There are some who are already calling for your resignation over this revelation. Myself, I’d prefer to wait to find out more. But my earlier suggestion still stands, that you consider quitting in acknowledgment of the incompetence of your dangerously erratic and unqualified president, and in view of the current extreme right-wing positions of your party, so far out of line with what your constituents want and need from their representative in the US Congress.

I wonder, will the Mueller investigation uncover some venal, perhaps even criminal participation in the Russia scandal? I hear he’s a pit bull once he gets catches a whiff of evidence of wrong-doing. Hold on to your hat!

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

TIME TO QUIT?

November 11, 2017

  

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Time to quit?

I hear that the number of Republican Congressional representatives who have decided not to run for re-election in 2018 now totals 29. Is it time to add your name to the list?

I suspect there are at least two reasons for the defections: the movement of the Republican Party, over the past few years, further and further to the right, until it is now dominated by the loud voices of fanatical far right-wingers; and Donald Trump, whose arrogant, erratic and unprincipled leadership must gall every Republican who retains an ounce of decency or common sense.

Republican policies are currently wildly unpopular: the so-called “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” is disapproved by a 17-point margin. Americans are now fully tuned in to your party’s efforts to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the average voter. Analysis of this past week’s election results favoring Democrats show just how much antipathy was aroused among voters by your repeated attempts to repeal Obamacare and replace it with wholly inadequate alternative plans. In short, you and your colleagues are way out of touch with the mood and the wishes of the country.

I would like to believe (against considerable evidence to the contrary!) that you are a reasonable and decent man. If this is true, perhaps now is a good time to either step aside, or begin to listen to the voice of your constituents and act accordingly.

(By the way, you might like to know that today is my 45^th wedding anniversary. Want to offer your congratulations to my wife and myself? No? I thought not!)

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.

CUT CUT CUT

November 10, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Cut Cut Cut

As you vote—IF you join the Republican vote—to cut cut cut taxes (Trump’s words), I remind you of those many of your constituents who will suffer significant financial harm if they are no longer able to deduct state and local taxes.

Even your fellow right-wing Republican neighbor to the south, Darrell Issa, has told reporters he cannot vote for the bill as it stands, because the measure on state and local tax deductions would hit California particularly hard. And particularly affluent areas of California like Orange County.

I have searched online to find out whether you have made a similar commitment, but so far it appears you have not done so publicly. Does this mean that you are keeping an open mind as you study the implications of the bill? I hope so. And I hope that, in studying it, you will conclude that its passage is not in the interests of your constituents.

When called upon to vote, vote NO on Cut Cut Cut.

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.