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While we’re waiting
for members of Congress to change their minds and actually
do their jobs, the days are clicking by. While we’re
waiting on representatives who have failed us, all we seem
to be able to do is wring our hands and whine. What we are
not doing is proactively taking responsibility for our
crippled, incompetent government.
Now mind you, most of us are looking at this all wrong.
We think of elected officials as the government… as them
rather than as us. In doing that we are as incompetent as
they are. We are their employers. They work for us. They
should be fired. We've argued with them enough. The
more we argue with them, the weaker we become. As we use
our energy to launch email and phone call campaigns,
marches, and all the rest… all they have to do is run
out the clock. We need to stop this foolishness.
What we need to do is turn our energy and our attention
to finding people we can replace them with, just like your
employer would do if you were a jerk and needed to be
fired. If you couldn’t be removed until your contract
ran out, your boss meanwhile would be hell bent on
searching for your replacement, so that on the day he
could kick you out, your replacement would be right there
ready to hit the street running. Our job now should be to
find people to represent us who are aligned with the best
values we can identify and are not corruptible by the
system by which most folks get elected.
If all we do is rant and rave for another 16 months,
when election day comes we will have no choice but to put
back in office the same people we put there last time…
and then what? Same-Old, Same-Old. How do you expect things to
change if we don’t change things and if we don't change?
In my opinion, if you stay aligned with a major
political party, that party will not really support any
candidate who has not demonstrated party loyalty or
pledged to tow the party line. That means you are not
likely to be much help in transforming our government from
one that doesn’t work for The People to one that does.
We need to convince ourselves and every other
honorable, responsible citizen to put our energies where
they need to go: we need to clean house, identify a new
group of independent qualified citizens who are capable
and willing to serve. We need to find a way to elect
them to office so we can one day actually have a
government in place that will truly be of, by, and for the
people. And we need to start now!
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