1/22 An open letter thread to the Democratic members of Congress, old and new. It's long, sorry, but I'm mad about this thing.

@SpeakerPelosi @SenateDems @HouseDemsNUSA @SenSchumer @DNC

2/22 At your great peril do you blow off our fury over your planned dinner for incoming members, the one we forced you to cancel because of its incomprehensible tone-deafness. Let it be a lesson. One you learn quickly and burned indelibly into your brain.

3/22 The silly dinner may seem inconsequential but it's a bad sign and I'm here to try to dislodge some dumb ideas before they take root in your soul, as they often do.

Many political candidates run on a variation of being the voice that will truly represent the people.

4/22 You’ll be different. You’ll drain the swamp. You’re woke, you’ve been poor; you’ve lived our struggles. You’ll never lose touch with your roots. You understand who put you in office and you’re humbled by our trust.

5/22 For many candidates, probably most, this turns out to be crap.

6/22 You fall prey to the prestige. You let yourself believe you earned the perks. You go along with the glamorous old traditions because it’s what the venerable body you’ve joined has always done.

7/22 The pageantry is part of the American identity. The people like to see the glittering ball gowns, the sumptuous feasts, the gilded halls of power.

This may be what was sold to us in the past but it wasn’t ever true. It’s even less true now.

8/22 The only thing you earned is the responsibility to serve the people. You work for us. You are literally our employee.

9/22 You’re not morally entitled to anything better than what the least of us has in terms of healthcare, housing, food, travel accommodations, clothes, anything.

Your “reward” is that you got elected. Your "perk" is that you represent us.

10/22 The salary of a first year MOC is $174K, a figure too large for many Americans to fathom. You will justify it based on the cost of maintaining digs in D.C. and other excuses, but to many of us, it’s still pretty indefensible.

11/22 The luxuries you will enjoy are not given to you by the will of the people. They are courtesy of past MoCs (many of them corrupt) who voted them into existence for themselves although not for the rest of us.

12/22 Because once people enter the halls of power they quickly, sometimes instantly, forget the employee-boss relationship they have with the American people.

13/22 For the last four years the American people have witnessed the most egregious usurpation of privilege this nation has ever seen.

14/22 It was coupled with what may be history’s most sickening display of governmental incompetence and corruption. This spawned terrible suffering among our people, but we survived it. And we're sick of it.

15/22 To plan a fancy dinner when experts are frantically warning us against Thanksgiving family gatherings is beyond irresponsible for health safety reasons. It's also piss-poor leadership.

16/22 Less dangerous but still infuriating is the message it sends to the people who are right now struggling to put food on their table at all, every day.

17/22 My God, the tone-deafness is shattering. I am deeply and permanently cynical and even I am still shocked by your stupidity right out of the gate after this election.

18/22 You need to study terms like sacrificial living and servant leadership. Do not think you’re entitled to anything but hard work and a minute-by-minute acknowledgment of who your boss really is (pro tip: it's not lobbyists).

19/22 People ask if The Resistance will disband on social media now that we won the White House. Jaded observers of American politics smile ruefully and shake our heads. We will never disband.

20/22 We got into this mess because too many Americans got too busy with other things to pay attention to politics.

Laughably, tragically, we trusted the politicians. No more.

21/22 It will be hard to move forward with nearly half the country mired in hatefulness and willful ignorance. It will be impossible if our elected office-holders act like you got miraculously plucked off some Gilded Age workhouse floor and adopted by Andrew Carnegie.

22/22 Watch every step you take. Because we are. We voted you in. We can vote you out.

We're watching and we will not be quiet.

/fin