Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas has always been willing to go out on a limb in the name of extremism. When Barack Obama was President, and Sen. Cotton had been in the Senate for a bit over a year, Cotton took the extraordinary step of writing an official letter to Iran pledging to undermine the agreement to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.
Now, Tom Cotton has gone even further: He convinced the New York Times to publish a fascist op-ed calling for the military to attack people who are standing up for racial justice in the face of police oppression. This isn’t just illegal and immoral―it’s straight up unconstitutional.
TheTimeshas claimed―over the objections of many of its own writers, many of them black―that it has a responsibility to allow sitting Senators to advocate for state violence against American citizens.I don’t think that inciting violence against Americans is a good look for the paper of record, but the op-ed is out.Now that theTimeshas allowed America to see who Tom Cotton really is, the Senate has a responsibility to recognize that Cotton has betrayed our constitution, and expel him from the Senate.
Let’s remember what’s at the core of the protests: Police officers around the country have been killing black and brown people with impunity for generations. They take their cues fromthe Godfather, using a code of silence to shield each other from accountability for their crimes.And we pay their salaries.
People are sick of it.It’s long past time for America to listen to the people of color who have tried every possible iteration of protest, to no avail. The multi-racial, multi-generational protest movement that has sprung up following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery is as American as they come. Only a fascist would call in the military to suppress it.
