Senators Kamala D. Harris and Dianne Feinstein,

Dear Senators,

I have not had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of Neil Gorsuch, so I must speak only to his record and the circumstances at the time of his nomination as I urge you to oppose his nomination with all the powers at your disposal.

His avowed statutory "textualism" and "originalism" are literalism in disguise, abandoning the full meaning and consequences of an idea in order to forward only the part that matches the agenda one wishes to dominate. This cherry-picking instead of harvesting understanding is not only the opposite of the discipline required to be an adequate jurist, but also abandons the equanimity that is the most central pre-requisite for public service, the lack of which leaves the dream of our United States rotting in a mire of partisanship.

I know you know that it is a perversion of the people's government, for instance, to re-interpret Free Speech to facilitate billionaires buying megaphones of unlimited size to effectively push elections in the directions that reinforce their grip on power. Likewise, corporations do not require advocacy from the very institutions established to check precisely the level of power they alone can wield.

We cannot know, but must fear that Gorsuch will be the tipping point in the movement toward ending a woman's right to choose, casting aside what remains of the Voting Rights Act, pretending clean water and clean air laws are not essential to our survival as a species, and multiplying the gerrymandering that allows those who do not represent the people to continue to pretend that they do.

The bar of what is commonplace has been re-set by the scope to which the agenda known as "Trump" is willing to wield power for its own sake, but a "ya gotta pick yer fights" approach does not work in a climate of media blitzkrieg designed to make long-view existential threats seem benign enough to accept. Please hold the line until their lightning offensive crumbles under the weight of its own unreality. We, your constituents, admire your resolve as we pray in one voice that you will struggle to make honest disagreement possible once more.