What People Care About!

Congress has gone home for Easter – probably a good thing for the country given their inability to get anything done.  I hear that many of the people’s representatives are facing hostile questioning from their constituents – also a good thing given they spend too much time in the insulated comfort of Washington, D.C.

Interestingly, the questions these people’s representatives are getting rarely have to do with today’s headlines.  On the front pages are stories about our latest super bomb, bigger than anything since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and proof that we’re ready to flex our muscles again.  Of course, flexing our muscles also leads to more killing of innocent civilians (another front page story.)

That’s what news junkies and the elites care about.  But that’s not what most people really care about.  What most people care about is much closer to home.  What’s happening with my kid’s school?  How will health care changes affect my family?  My neighborhood isn’t as safe as it used to be.  Why can’t I rent out a bedroom to a tourist?  You said if I voted for you you’d do this and this and this.  When are you going to keep your promises?

A renewed aggressiveness and impatience on the part of constituents is a good thing.  Left or right, their participation in calling their representatives to account may be the only thing that will make a difference – help break the gridlock with which we have been plagued for years.

The threat of not being reelected is the only thing that in the end will cause these people to act.  It’d be nice if that weren’t the case, but this the world we live in.  So use the weapons at hand.  Revive Democracy!