Amendment IX: November 2023

Saturday, November 18, 2023

Democracy in Action

There’s nothing like watching “democracy in action.”

I’ve written to Colorado’s senators (both Dems) and my Republican representative in the House (Doug Lamebrain) about Gaza and received one response so far from one of the Dems (“We stand by Israel”). I expect the same response from the other Dem. I won’t bother to read Lamebrain’s response. I write him from time to time about a wide variety of matters just to give his staffers something to do. It still takes them about 6 months to send a form letter. I’ve started and stopped a letter to Biden several times. Now that he’s embraced the role of weapons dealer to the world (emulating his former boss) and what’s-a-little-genocide-between-friends, my stomach turns just thinking of the man. I used to write Trump satirical letters and looked forward to their replies. Whoever read them did not appear to recognize sarcasm and so they thanked me for my support and assured me that DT was at it every day, making America great. Or maybe they just didn’t read them and cranked out the same response to whatever mail they received.

People assure me that political staffers keep tallies of “for” vs. “against” letters regarding specific policies, though I suspect the “for” letters make it into a rectangular file while the “against” letters go into a circular one.

Contrary to the standard civics-class rhetoric, we are not the citizens of a republic but the subjects of an empire. I keep my volume of the writings of Tacitus close at hand. I frequently advise my students to read Tacitus and Whitman and ask themselves what they want the future to look like. Many have already been absorbed into the System—as we all are—working at jobs, raising their kids, paying taxes to the Imperial government with its never-ending-wars.

I must continually remind myself that the "real terrorists" are in Gaza. But, if I don’t, I can count on the liberal media to remind me.

Complicity and apathy, with a dash of well-meaning liberal sentimentality, make the world go ‘round.