“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” – Claudius, in Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 3, William Shakespeare
The short version of this essay is that our Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick refuses to do his job of routinely conducting scheduled-in-advance in-person town halls open to all his constituents so people of all political parties can ask questions about his stand on critical issues and his plans to solve real problems facing his district and our nation. He has been my Congressman for almost 10 years now and Fitzpatrick has only conducted one such event despite years of pleas to have them regularly by his constituents (including me several times in writing and by phone).
Tuesday I was about to sit down to a nice dinner when my cell phone rang. I saw an unknown 215 phone number. I usually ignore such numbers, but this time I picked up and heard that our usually silent Congressman Fitzpatrick was inviting me to his telephony town hall, the first one he has had in quite a while. I guess the national pressure by Democrats for Republican representatives to have real town halls motivated him to have one of his phony ones once again. Thank you Democrats, I guess, for subjecting me to this hour of fun.
Okay, here is the truth about these phony phone calls. It is a way for Fitzpatrick to pretend he is having a real town hall when it obviously is not a real town hall. And sure enough, this Tuesday’s call lived up to my low expectations. First of all, he did not inform in advance his constituents of when this call would occur. So it was a total crap shoot who would be on the call and if folks would be prepared to ask questions. Secondly, valuable time was wasted on this one hour call by showcasing another speaker first to take time away from “the voices he wanted to hear.” So we had to listen to basically a campaign speech from some blustery law-and-order Republican attempting to scare us about crime, sexual perversion, stolen goods, and big city liberal Democratic leaders releasing criminals into your communities. Then Fitzpatrick spent many minutes advertising himself and his social media sites, which basically was a free political advertisement for himself. So in the end there was just time for only eight people to ask questions.
At first, I was surprised that most of the questions were good ones reflecting the horror of what the Trump administration and Elon Musk has been subjecting to the American people. I thought he would select only softballs as usually does. However, these questioners were quite sincere, passionate, and smart about the attacks which were coming from this misguided administration. They were upset about the closing of federal agencies, the firing of federal workers, the slashing of funds for medical research, the attacks on our foreign allies, the rumors about the privatization of AMTRAK, and the threats to social security with SSA employees being fired and SSA offices being shuttered. But then I heard Fitzpatrick’s answers, or should I say non-answers, and then it all made sense to me: Fitzpatrick was simply feigning concern and critique. And this brought me back to the wisdom of Plato.
Over 2,500 years ago in Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, there was great concern about duplicitous orators who were quite skilled in oratory and could easily convince uninformed crowds of something that was obviously untrue. These folks (liars?) were called Sophists and were, as the legend goes, one of the reasons why Plato’s teacher Socrates sought a rigorous method — not to fool, hoodwink, and manipulate the people — but to together discover the Truth for all to understand. Later his student Plato came up with an allegory related to this quest for Truth in his famous Allegory of the Cave where people were chained to rocks watching flickering images on a cave wall. The chained people mistook the flickering images for the Truth , which came from behind and above them if they could only be released from their chains and see what was True and Real.
And then I realized that Fitzpatrick’s tele-phony “town hall” call was yet another instance of dissembling, a wonderful example of sophistry where he expertly stated words implying a shared dish of belief and future action when in his heart he knew that he would soon do the exact opposite for he truly did not believe what he was saying.
So each time one of the eight questions was asked, he pretended to agree with the questioner. Yet upon closer examination, all I heard was dissembling. He offered no solutions to the problems raised. He did not explain why he never voiced these concerns publicly before. He was simply engaging in sophistry to pretend to these voters that he cared about the issues in the same way they did so he could count on their vote in the next election.
I will give you this specific example.
On Tuesday during the call, Fitzpatrick agreed with a constituent who was outraged by the administration’s security team use of the Signal application to discuss imminent battle plans in Yemen while also inexplicably, and unknowingly, including a journalist on the chat. Fitzpatrick wholeheartedly agreed with the constituent and said “anyone with half a brain knows you can’t use Signal for secure info. It is a failure. A SCIF should have been used.” Fitzpatrick, who is on the Intelligence Committee, then promised an Investigation.
However, soon thereafter, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported this about his next day inaction in Congress: “U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), one of three Pennsylvania representatives on the House Intelligence Committee, did not question Gabbard or Ratcliffe on the Signal group chat during the committee’s open-door session on Capitol Hill.”
To add insult to injury, Fitzpatrick headlined his weekly newsletter with these words: “Fitzpatrick Asks Pressing Question In House Intelligence Committee Hearing.” The question, however, had nothing at all to do with the Signal group chat security breach. It was simply an update to an old bill, as the Inquirer article states: “Instead, Fitzpatrick asked a single question on the reauthorization of Section 702 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was updated last year to allow the government to collect certain communications between U.S. citizens without a warrant.” So the trickery here was a twofer: once in the phony telephone town hall, and once in his newsletter.
This gross disparity between what Fitzpatrick said on his phony telephone town hall and his actions filtered throughout the other seven questions. Many times he agreed with the questioner, but offered no substantive plans to stop the madness of random federal firings, the dismantling of federal agencies (including the Department of Education and Social Security Administration), the slashes to federal funds for medical research, for education, for special needs children, and other vital programs. He agreed that these cuts and changes were wrong and misguided, but did not say what he had done to stop them, what he is doing to stop them, or what he plans to do to stop them.
But he did a fantastic job pretending to care. Yes, he would vote against dismantling the Department of Education, but has said and done nothing as it is now being done. Yes, he would be against cutting funds for medical research, but has said and done nothing as it is now being done. Yes, he would be against cutting social security, but has said and done nothing as SSA offices were closed and SSA staff was fired. I applauded his sophistry as well as his time management skills because soon there was no time for any more questions where his phony facade could be punctured.
I will leave you with one more highly ironic story from this phony call. At one point Fitzpatrick, who was trying to console a clearly distraught mother who was incredibly nervous about cuts to educational programs that would affect her daughter with Down Syndrome, suddenly waxed emotionally on the virtues of … diversity. He spoke about his days with the FBI where he was trying to break a kidnapping crime team and he had the wisdom to assemble a team of diverse individuals because in his heart he knew every person has a unique and important perspective to add to the efficacy of a team. Yes, suddenly we heard from the wonderful pro-DEI Fitzpatrick, or rather the sophist facade of a GOP Congressman who has said and done nothing to defend DEI (and actually endorsed local anti-DEI, Moms for Liberty-backed school board candidates) as his MAGA party attacks diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across our nation every single day.
So the bottom line here is we need a representative who engages not in sophistry, but in truth-telling, who will have real town halls, not phony ones, and who will not be silent to and afraid of constituents, but have the courage to speak out and defend the American values we cherish. That person is not Brian Fitzpatrick.
