Blue Moon Aurora

The current budget crisis in D.C. demonstrates the fundamental problem with our government: the American people – including me writing this blog and you reading it. It’s human nature during a crisis or even a period of malaise or discontent to point fingers. It’s easy and frees us from any responsibility, basically, the American dream. My son is a perfect example of this.  He fails a spelling test and he can give a litany of reasons for this failure: the teacher didn’t give him enough time, I didn’t force him to copy his spelling words this week, he was tired because his sister woke him up early, and so forth and so on. Lots of reasons, but none of them involve him taking personal responsibility for the failure. In a lot of ways, it’s like reading Facebook most mornings.  The Nation is a mess because of the President, the Tea Party, corporations, religious fanatics, aliens from outer space, and so forth and so on. It’s human nature to point fingers, but it takes a little bit of the divine to honestly look in the mirror.

In the interests of full disclosure, my wife works for the Federal Government, in fact the Senate.  She belongs to a non-partisan office and is likely to be deemed “essential” personnel, which means in the advent of a shutdown she has to keep working while not getting paid, one of the perks of government work.  However, she is one of the lucky ones, because “essential” workers are most likely to get retroactive pay after a shutdown ends (though it’s not guaranteed). Besides my wife, I have many friends and family who work in the government from the military to homeland security to teachers.  I am biased, because I consider all of them patriots.  Try an experiment: ask a soldier you know if they would rather remain in the military or become a public school teacher with a class of two dozen special needs students. I doubt you’d be surprised at the results of the experiment. People don’t work for the government because of the money – they work for the government because of the benefits, primarily the benefit of being able to serve this country. My wife, like most government employees, could make more money in the private sector, but then you’re just working for money. Now we’re not in a financial crisis if the shutdown occurs, as long as it doesn’t last more than a month, but what about the carpenters, cafeteria workers, young staffers, and the like who work for the Federal Government and are living from paycheck to paycheck?  Who is the irresponsible employer who puts their livelihoods in jeopardy, well, we’re a democracy so that means we’re responsible.

This brings us to the current budget crisis and back to the problem with the American people.  Now a little constitutional fact: Congress really only has to do one thing every year and that is to pass a budget.  Congress could pass the budget and then go home, but obviously the world has become a lot more complicated since Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence on his iPad between sending Twitters to Benjamin Franklin and John Adams for feedback.  The world is a complicated place and we need a complicated government to deal with it.  Stop and think for a moment.  Imagine that you have 435 friends on Facebook and you have been charged with passing the budget for the United States.  Now these are your friends, you’re all connected by some common bond, maybe just Farmville, but there is something keeping you all together.  So do you think you could easily produce a budget?  Could you get half of your friends to agree? Or let’s make it really challenging: you have 100 friends and you need 60 of them to agree with your budget. This should seem pretty daunting, because it is.

So how does Congress pass anything? Well they do it with help.  Ideally, it should be with help from the American people, but have we really been helping? I think we can all agree we haven’t been doing our share.  So a vacuum has been filled by special interests from corporations to unions.  Americans throw their arms up in frustration over the influence of lobbyists and the corruption of Congress, but what do we do about it besides complain? I’ll tell you what we do.  We send emails, post on Facebook, or write blogs to share with our friends so we can all be indignant together.  Even better we send misinformation when we do this, because checking Snopes.com before sending an email or posting on Facebook would just take too much effort.  Another popular gimmick we love is to find some champion who we support so they can solve all the nation’s problems, whether it’s President Obama, the Tea Party, or Ron Paul, we would rather support someone who reflects our beliefs than do what is needed for a democracy to function: communicate.    

Americans don’t want to communicate, because that involves listening and probably changing opinions, which goes against our fundamental mental laziness.  Life is so easy when you can just categorize everything; like declaring all Congressmen are corrupt, even though you know that is patently false, the vast majority of them are patriots trying to do what they think is best for the country.  But we live in an age where if you can’t sum up a position in 25 words or less it isn’t worth sharing.  Blanket statements are our modern security blankets, it’s comforting to just declare all liberals are communists or all republicans are fascists, because it doesn’t require thinking.  I’m just as guilty about this as anyone, but I’ve come to realize this is what is causing all our problems in this incredible Nation of ours.

Our government, our media, our society is reflective of its people.  We are a democracy, but democracy only works when people are engaged. Sure our guy may have lost an election but that just means that the other guy is now our guy till the next election.  That’s how democracy works.  I’m just as guilty as anyone on being a lazy American.  I haven’t written an actual letter to a Senator or Congressman in probably a decade.  I’ve sent emails to members of Congress, but come on, we all know emails don’t matter, just like posting on Facebook.  Also I have never gone to the office of any member of Congress to talk with some hapless staffer about an issue.  I’ve also been lazy when it comes to elections.  Yes, I vote in primaries and the main election and occasionally give money to various campaigns, but I don’t get that involved in the messiness of it all.  It’s just easier to ignore it all, make a comment here and there, or occasionally write a blog and pat myself on the back for my cleverness.  That’s all meaningless; it’s all feel-good politics without any substance.

Our democracy is not struggling due to those in Congress; it’s struggling because we aren’t doing our part to help them.

So here is my challenge to myself and anyone reading this blog:

First, find out who actually represents you in the Federal, State, and local government. My advice is to start in your phone book, but the Internet is about as good.   

Second, send a letter to someone on that list on some issue that matters to you.  Inform yourself about that matter and keep an open mind about the issues, that last part is the hard part.  An open mind requires you to look in the mirror, which is a little scary.  Remember the letter is to persuade not to win any debates.   Regardless of party affiliation, your representative represents you and for that to work respect needs to go both ways.

Third, don’t expect one letter to change the world, but you can start to change the world with one letter if you keep going after that.

Fourth, post the results of your efforts in a comment here, in your blog, or even on Facebook and encourage others to do the same.  The issue doesn’t matter; it’s the engagement.  If you are engaging in a civil and open discourse then I’m happy, even if you want to move the capital to Madison, Wisconsin and require all members of Congress to spend a few weeks every year making cheese.  Okay, that’s kind of odd, but democracy is about communication and exploring new ideas and growing as a Nation, but for that to happen we have to grow as individuals.

Regardless, I’m going to make an effort on this to make myself a better citizen and I hope some of those reading this blog might do the same, but that’s just more feel-good politics – though sometimes feel-good politics can help us do real things.

Thanks for reading,

Kirk