Ten minutes with Rep. Edwards is very revealing
Chuck Edwards.
File photo
To the Editor:
Last week I met with the Rep. Chuck Edwards of the N.C. 11th District for a short conversation. I asked his opinion of the military incursion into Portland, Oregon, and he asked me if I lived in Portland. For a beat I was stunned, as if I shouldn’t care about what was happening in any American city.
No, I responded, but I have a niece who lives there. I told him that Portland wasn’t burning to the ground, that the video the president was using as justification to send soldiers to Portland was from 2020. The congressman responded that he didn’t believe me.
In the 10 minutes allotted to me I asked our congressman where he got his news. He told me he didn’t read or watch news, but he got his news from people like me. People who called him or wrote to him or came to talk to him. Stunned again, I suggested there were numerous media outlets other than Fox News or CNN, those he referred to as the reason he doesn’t watch the news.
As a military brat who grew up living on Army bases, as an Army nurse and an Army wife, I have always felt safe among military soldiers. In all the years my father served I never once saw a gun in our home, or in the hands of any soldier other than the military police in our community. I learned from my father that munitions were locked up in the barracks where they could be accessed in an emergency. There was never such an emergency. When I joined the Army and had to demonstrate my proficiency with a sidearm, I realized with surprise that my father must have similarly qualified throughout his career. The man who never carried a gun.
I explained my experience growing up in the military to our congressman and suggested calling on our military to carry guns in American cities and proposing they might use U.S. cities as a training ground must feel bizarrely uncomfortable to military soldiers. His response? None. A blank stare. The same familiar stare my teenage sons perfected when they were no longer listening. It turns out 10 minutes is a long time.
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Our military is not called to create law and order in American cities. Its mission is to protect fellow citizens. Its purpose is to uphold the Constitution, not fulfil the president’s wishes. As I write this I wonder where the country will be by the time it is published. I wonder if we will become inured to the presence of soldiers on the streets of our cities, carrying automatic weapons. I wonder if our grandchildren will ever know the military as protectors but will always see them as governors or adversaries.
We have a right to peacefully protest government actions, and if you listen to the mayors, governors and photojournalists in cities where military incursions are in effect you would know that our fellow citizens are doing just that. This I believe to be true. While I know our power is in one person one vote, I can no longer rely on that vote having the power to effect change. And while many supporters of this president see him as a savior, I must believe in the power of the people to protect and save our democracy in this chaotic time.
Margaret Pickett
Highlands
