Dear United States Congresspeople,

We have a request.

Could you guys please, please, please just stop screaming at each other for five minutes? Please?

Democrats, we understand. You are really upset because the Republicans won’t participate fairly in your investigations of all the terrible things the Republicans have been doing for the past decade or so. We get it.

Republicans, we know how you feel. Those mean Democrats keep trying to make you look bad and demanding that you self-incriminate. We know. 

We hear you, loudly and clearly. “WE want bipartisanship! But not if it means we have to work with you guys!” 

We hear you. 

But guess what?

We are tired. Tired of trying to keep track of all the ways you are investigating each other. Tired of hearing you accuse each other of destroying our democracy. Tired of the bickering, the name-calling, the finger-pointing, and the constant rage.

Because when you get right down to it, none of what you are doing has anything at all to do with governing. None of it is about democracy.

We hired you guys to do a job. 

According to the Constitution of this nation, that job is pretty specific and pretty limited. You’re supposed to make the laws that govern us. You’re supposed to control the budget.

You’re supposed to work together to get both of those things done.

We are pretty sure that the job description does NOT include running an endless string of investigations on each other. You aren’t the freaking FBI (we pay their salaries, too. We want them to handle the investigations.) And the job description doesn’t include constantly monitoring each other, censoring each other, taking positions away from each other, or tweeting about each other.

We remember the Whitewater investigation. We rolled our eyes through one Benghazi investigation after another. 

At this very moment, we are watching you fight like snarling dogs over a planned investigation into the horrific events of January 6th. Yes, we know. SOMEBODY needs to be digging into what happened that day.

But the FBI is doing that already. DC police are doing it. Arrests have been made, trials are scheduled, a few people are headed for jail. Good.

Why do you feel like YOU have to dig into it yourselves? For justice, you say? For transparency, you declare. 

But we wonder if there’s another reason. 

We wonder if you have all simply come to enjoy the constant limelight? Maybe it’s become kind of fun to see yourselves on TV every ten minutes hurling accusations at each other? 

We wonder if perhaps you hope to raise as many millions of our dollars as possible by convincing us that the other side is trying to “dismantle our system of government” and “end our way of life”? 

Honestly, we are beginning to feel like children caught up in the world’s most dysfunctional family battle. We feel like kids who are constantly being pressured to choose between Mommy and Daddy as they fight all day. We can see that Daddy can be a bully sometimes. We know that Mommy isn’t as supportive as she should be. We get it. Mommy and Daddy are very very unhappy. We feel bad for them.

Meanwhile, though, we need to know that someone is taking care of things. We need our parents to stop screaming long enough to pay the bills so we don’t end up on the street. We need them to work together to keep food on the table. 

In a deeply troubled family, it is often in the best interests of everyone for the parents to get a divorce. To step away from the heat, away from the rage, away from the self-serving focus on the sins of their partner. 

Dear Congress, 

We wish you’d get a divorce. We wish you’d stop playing tug o’ war with our lives long enough to pass some laws.

Seriously.

We’re kind of in a crisis here. We need a REAL plan to deal with the climate disaster. We need a unified approach to stopping this horrifying pandemic. We need the people with the power to make the difficult decisions that will keep us afloat.

We need clean water. We need safe streets. We need healthy, safe school buildings. We need to have our roads and bridges fixed and the pipes under our cities updated. We need access to fresh food. We need healthcare, for the love of God.

We are paying you to do those things. You are living off of OUR MONEY.

So stop talking about arresting doctors. Stop calling each other Nazis. Enough with the threats to lock each other up, kick each other out of office, impeach each other, and shoot each other.

Just STOP.

Honestly.

We’re pretty sure that if you can’t shut up and start doing your jobs, we might need to bring in a third party to mediate this whole mess.