Whee, the People

Somebody ought to go up to Capitol Hill and knock those idiots’ heads together.

The Republican Party is a gang of vicious thugs. The Democrats are slightly less vicious, but just as unprincipled and just as corrupt. There’s a great deal of empty posturing in Washington, D.C., but it’s a rare day when any of our elected representatives actually does anything that might help pull the nation back from the brink of ruin.

My own Congressman, John Garamendi, looks darn good riding a horse in the rodeo parade, but in scrutinizing his website, I’m hard put to find any indication that he has done anything worthwhile. Last year, in a follow-up to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he sent a letter to his House colleagues urging them to end offshore drilling. That’s an easy stand to take, but it’s not a comprehensive energy policy, is it? It isn’t even a bill, it’s just a letter to his colleagues. This year he’s supporting a “responsible drawdown” of troop levels in Afghanistan, whatever that means — yet out of the other side of his mouth he supports the President’s blatantly illegal intervention in Libya.

In fairness to Garamendi, he seems from time to time to take a principled, even quixotic, stand. He introduced an amendment to the military appropriations bill (it was voted down) that would have required military bases to use local businesses for subcontracting. In spite of his strong ties to the military, he voted against funding overseas military adventures.

He doesn’t seem to have any traction. He’s not making waves. He’s working inside the system, introducing amendments that (very predictably) get voted down.

Here’s why I’m not running for Congress:

I’m 20 years too old. I lack some essential people skills. I’m not wealthy. I’m an atheist, and that fact is known. Also, I’m a little too ready to say what I actually think. This morning on Facebook, I responded to a comment from an evidently conservative individual by telling him that I was tired of hearing whiny sickos blame the liberals for problems that the whiny sickos themselves created, so put a fuckin’ sock in it already.

It’s not that I think I could do a better job as a Congressman than Garamendi is doing — not really. Oh, sure, I’d like to think so. My principles are quite likely superior to his, and I don’t lack the courage to articulate them. But what can one Congressman do to turn the nation around?