The Letter I wrote Ted Cruz as He is One of My Senators

Senator Cruz,

You have dishonored the office with which we've entrusted you.  Your grandstanding, your utterly childish speech in  the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago, using veterans to complain about a government shutdown YOU HELPED CAUSE AND SUPPORTED, failing to denounce the waving of the bloody, racist Bars and Stars -- all that and more is nothing but what we call the behavior of pure white trash where I come from.

I could care less you graduated from Princeton and Harvard and memorized the Constitution as a child.  You have no understanding of the spirit of the law even if you can parrot every line perfectly.  I have a tape recorder that can do as much.

As for your much vaunted education, all I see you came away with was a belief your professors -- your betters --  were "communists."  You may as well have attended community college for what your education has amounted to, sir. Or forged a diploma.  Sir, I am a philosopher: I taught the subject at university -- a fine, modest American public ROTC university, thank you.  I taught ethics to nurses and future soldiers who were sent off to fight in these never-ending wars and I taught my classes for little compensation, if by "compensation" we mean money.  But I taught my students to be honorable men and women, to have a sense of duty to higher values, to be people concerned with virtue, people who question themselves, their motives, people capable of changing their minds and not assume they are always right or that what is good and who they should be is a matter to be overly comfortable about.

I taught them to care:  Care for themselves, their families, their communities, their nation, their world, and for the future.  We are each individually and collectively responsible for all of these, Mr. Cruz, in whatever our calling.

I did not learn these things out of a book, though the multitude of things I have read were useful in clarifying my judgment.  No, Mr. Cruz, I learned these things by living and making my life an experiment in the very things I eventually wanted to teach.

My diplomas didn't help much in that regard.

That weighty hunk of metal on your finger that is a class ring won't help you either.  It will not hide your true face from me, from your fellow citizens.  No, your true face lies in your actions, your choices, how they affect others -- it lies in how many of us you are willing to sacrifice in the course of manipulating your way to what you perceive as "the top."

Mr. Cruz, I know you.  I know you well.  History is always plagued with your sort.  I don't fear you -- I am sorrowful that you are so filled with pride and hatred you intend to wreck this country, or risk it, in the belief you are the "anointed of God" sent to reconstruct America.

Such a person has no capacity to ask the only questions that will cause him to act morally: "Am I wrong?" and  "Who should I be?"

God save us from the "anointed" ones.

Sir, you are what Ortega y Gasset called a "learned ignoramus."  You believe your specialized knowledge in one area grants you the magical capacity to exercise judgment that requires general knowledge -- and you have proceeded to set yourself up as a ruler on that basis.  As such, you are part of the vertical invasion of the barbarians our age has witnessed since the 19th c.

In fact, you are no more competent to rule or hold that office you talked your way into than the average ditch digger: your political and philosophical opinions and the ditch digger's are, in fact, no different most of the time, and they were arrived at with an equal lack of effort.  You live by a lack of care, a desire to avoid bearing burdens, and the absence of creativity in your solutions to problems.  Oh, yes, there is a certain level of cleverness, but there are animals that are clever; and these never experience a moment of wonder or doubt or make of reality a problem.

This is all I wish to say to you.  I do not believe you have a conscience to which one might appeal, no sense of mercy to beg.  Go right ahead on your way:

But, sir, I know you.