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Despot in waiting

Published by digby on January 18, 2018

Despot in waitingby digby

The Arkansas Times reports that Senator Tom Cotton is threatening his own constituents:

Ozark Indivisible, the activist group that has been pressing members of Congress from Arkansas on health care, immigration and other issues, reported on its Twitter account last night that people calling Sen. Tom Cotton’s office had received cease-and-desist letters and posted the image above.

Billy Fleming, a Times contributor, also sent me a copy of the image and an account from a person who reportedly received the letter. That person wrote:

I received a letter from the office of U.S. Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas after calling and expressing my grave concerns over his actions and support of this administration’s agenda concerning a wide variety of subjects from the attack on our healthcare, DACA and immigration issues, to national security, to the rise of white nationalist fascism, to the environment, the gutting of our State Department, the attack on the free press…and similar deeply troubling actions & motives I’ve seen Senator Cotton support & condone. It was odd to receive this letter as I’ve called other Members of Congress to express my strong thoughts and opinions about their actions and thought this to be not only my duty as an American citizen but my First Amendment right granted all U.S. citizens by our U.S. Constitution, the foundation of our Democracy.

I believe if Tom Cotton’s office were to respond as to why they sent this letter, I think they just honestly don’t want to listen to any citizen’s opposing view or hear the numerous grave concerns U.S. citizens have about the serious & ongoing attack on our Democracy and past election cycle in which a foreign, hostile Russian government interfered, they don’t want U.S. citizens to call and speak their mind and truth in a very direct manner and they obviously don’t want to be held accountable for their words and actions while serving all the people in this nation. I may have used unprofessional and unbecoming language at times as the anxiety and stress of what I’m witnessing is at times too great a burden to control and I have vehemently expressed my righteous anger at Senator Cotton’s complicitness with this harmful regime.

Fleming said he knew several people who’d received such a letter. He said he believed they all had made repeated phone calls to deliver similar talking points, but he said they were unlikely to have made rude or disparaging remarks.
[…]
Circulating yesterday was the film of an effort some months ago by a Boone County activist to pose questions to Rep. Steve Womack. She was persistent. He was not amused.

Yesterday, demonstrators — self-identified as being from “shithole countries” — were asked to leave Cotton’s Washington office after a noisy encounter with staff members who told them they’d be arrested for unlawful entry if they didn’t leave. They did, chanting “Dream Act Now.”

Democracy can be a noisy thing. It seems to have some impact on members of Congress, too.

Here’s the video of the Womack activist:

These Republicans are very delicate flowers. It’s hard for them when they have constituents who don’t recognize that they are talking to their betters and show the kind of respect that Republican aristocrats require.

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