Senator Martha McSally: Enemy of the People
Last week, unelected Senator Martha McSally put her desperation at trailing in the polls on full display by spitting at CNN reporter Manu Raju, "Manu, you’re a liberal hack. I’m not talking to you… You’re a liberal hack, buddy."
His question? - "Should the Senate consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial?"
How dare you, Manu, for asking such a controversial, outrageous question. And, Martha, please explain why the taxpayers are shelling out $174,000 for your annual salary? What is it exactly that you do?
Rather than apologize, McSally doubled down, Trump-style, even handing out "Liberal Hack" T-shirts at a fundraiser.
I recently wrote an article in the Washington Monthly on press freedom. I described writers and journalists I'd met overseas in the course of my Foreign Service career who defied their governments and paid the price, sometimes with their lives. Dissident novelist Dương Thu Hương wrote about how the communist-led Vietnamese government was a "paradise of the blind" led by blind men promoting a faux "paradise" based on a flawed ideology that could never succeed. "Only the first lie really costs us; after that, everything flows from the same wellspring," she wrote. For her courage, the government evicted her from the communist party, arrested and imprisoned her, banned her books and constantly harassed her. She now lives in exile.
Young Russian muckraking journalist Artyom Borovik was digging dirt on Vladimir Putin when he died in a still unresolved plane crash. In Cuba, I had the honor of meeting fearless people, some dissidents, who defied the regime. In a crackdown known as the "Black Spring," the Cuban government imprisoned 75 dissidents, including 29 journalists. Several years later, two political dissidents, Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Wilmar Villar Mendoza, died from hunger strikes.
These people fight for the rights we Americans take for granted. Their governments denounce them regularly with terms worse than "hacks" - "traitors," "parasites" and, yes, "enemies of the people." They have given up their livelihoods and sometimes their lives for freedom.
Senator McSally occupies a seat in Congress by appointment, not by having been elected by Arizona voters. She, like most of her GOP colleagues, has sold her soul in a Faustian bargain with a lawless president in the craven hope voters will approve of their reckless behavior at the polls. Furthermore, McSally, an Air Force vet, vowed to adhere to "duty, honor, country." By attacking reporters she violates this oath as well as the one she took for the coming impeachment trial.
Thomas Jefferson said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
Clearly, McSally and her ilk believe the opposite. She and her fellow travelers are no better than the morally rancid factotums who persecute the writers I knew in repressive countries. And, by acting out as McSally did, they reject the principle of freedom of expression on which this nation was founded. They are a disgrace to our democracy and should be ashamed of themselves.
Senator Martha McSally: You are the Enemy of the People. And may the good citizens of Arizona thusly punish you in the voting booth this fall.