1. United States
2. Fla.
3. Letter

Dear Members of Congress, I am demanding an explanation for your ongoing failure to confront Donald Trump and the network around him as they tear down American democracy in plain sight. The damage is visible everywhere: contempt for the Constitution, attacks on elections, propaganda replacing truth, and the deliberate poisoning of public trust. Americans are not blind to the pattern. In the 1950s and early Cold War period, this country closely studied the coercive “thought reform” and brainwashing methods used by Communist China: repetition, ideological control, isolation from reality, forced loyalty, the destruction of objective truth, and the manipulation of fear, grievance, and anger. That same pattern is now unmistakable in Trump’s political movement. It has weakened this nation from within and benefited hostile foreign powers, including Russia and China. *see the sources listed in the addendum below* So explain yourselves. Why have you allowed this to continue? Why have so many in Congress chosen silence, delay, and cowardice over constitutional duty? Is your inaction the result of fear, corruption, or compromise of your own? History will record not only the actions of those who attacked this republic, but also the complicity of those who stood aside and enabled it. Millions may pay the price for your failure. Explain yourselves to the American people. ______ Addendum: References on “thought reform” and coercive persuasion Edward Hunter, Brain-Washing in Red China (1951) Joost A. M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind (1956) Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961) Edgar H. Schein, Coercive Persuasion (1961) Harold G. Wolff and Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr., 1950s research and reports on Communist interrogation, indoctrination, and coercive persuasion