On Politics

For the first time in my life I wrote my Senators.  I've got two of them.  You've got two of them.  I wrote them both.  I had hoped for a salve to sooth the burning sensation I felt, still feel, like a spider bite in my chest.  The bill amendment I  wrote about had already been voted on and I don't harbor any delusions that I'll affect their future voting habits.  This is why I considered it a salve and not a remedy.  I needed to make a gesture, just flap my arms, huff my chest, let out a little shudder of distaste.  Or I thought I did.

Does it matter what I wrote them about?  This is not a political message at its core.  There are people far more qualified than I who blog daily on the subject of politics.  They've spent their lives in vigilance and if you've the mind to read or listen to that sort, then you probably already have and you don't need me to further evangelize.

But there's a sense I've been having, very distinct, that a once great momentum is being systematically diverted.  Other people have been aware of this far longer than I and beyond that I think there is a general sense of it in the American people at large, too, if only as a fleeting, discomforting thought.  Blind and contended as we're made out to be, its there.  We see traffic cameras and we know we are being watched.  We read the news and know there are pages missing.  We see kids in their schools and know they could have, should have, much more than what we've provided.  

I feel it, know it, but I'm not out there marching.  I'm not speaking out.  I'm not finding my representatives and giving them the hell they deserve.  I read the news, listen to the radio, and hear every plea in my head that something MORE must be done, but I haven't brought myself to any action.  I vote my conscience and glad that, for once in my life, I have the opportunity to vote for some one I believe in and not merely against some one I don't.   Beyond that it is only a vote.  Sure, we're told that voting is a great act of citizenship, a duty, but to be honest, I when I left the polling booth last week, I felt like I was just filling out a restaurant comment card.  Did you like our service?  Would you visit us again in the future?  Were our servers kind and courteous?

I want only to know why: why it has taken me so long just to write two emails.  I've known all my life that I was being trained to ignore the world around me.  You feel it to, that sense, don't you?  Its as though there's a magician out there somewhere trying to get us to look at his right hand, when really the canary is in his left--and we don't give a damn because he puts on one hell of a show.  We're deluded and we don't care.  That's my generation's mantra, but I just don't know how much longer I can go on with all this double-thinking going on in my head.

I hope that writing as I did, to Domenici and Bingaman, wasn't just an isolated outburst.  I need to feel, more than I ever have in my life, like I am fighting.  Not just against the forces of erosion in the world, not just against the selfish lot who are driving modern policy, but against this apathetic feeling in my heart.  If that's corny, then fine, its corny.  Have a good laugh.  

If any one has any stories of activism they'd like to share, I'm willing to listen.  I know its the small changes that have led to the large and, like Archimedes, I'd just like to know where to stand.