It’s only a short time until the 2020 election. And while everyone is focused on the Presidential race, our local politicians are desperately trying to make sure we don’t forget them.
So, every day when I take my dog to the mailbox, I find another postcard from a current or aspiring congress mammal telling me all the wonderful things they are doing or will do to make my life better.
Recently these letters and postcards have eclipsed the letters from the car dealer who sold me my last vehicle. At least 3 times per week, they write to tell me how wretched it must be to have to drive a four-year-old vehicle and that they can put me in a new one today.
These have been replaced temporarily by letters from politicians telling me how wretched my life is because the other candidate is in office and for the small price of my vote, they can change things. Or they want to tell me how wretched my life would be if the other party got into power. Seems that either way, something wretched is going to happen.
The people who send me postcards tell me they are standing for this. Or, they are standing against that. They are standing by their party and/or they are standing against/for something. They do a lot of standing.
They support a lot of things too. They support this bill, or that group, or some other oppressed member of congress (and by oppressed, I mean in danger of not being sent back to Congress).
What they don’t ever actually mention is what laws they actually wrote. In the history of congressional flyers and postcards, I can’t think of one time they actually claimed to have created a law or policy. They have stood for them. They support them, but they don’t write them.
I think lawmaking has gone the way of manufacturing. America has outsourced our actual lawmaking to a call center in India or a family of barley farmers outside of Duluth, MN. I have narrowed it down that far, but confirming with certainty would require me to do actual investigative journalism and that might interfere with my rigorous schedule of watching baseball and British crime dramas.
As for who to vote for, I’m leaving that up to my dog. I show him the postcards and he smells them. If he sniffs and then chases a squirrel or barks at the UPS truck, then I pass. It’s a very scientific method, I know.
In a few months, it will be all over. The postcards will stop. The congress mammals will go back to standing and my dog will go back to sniffing the car dealer letters. And I’ll continue to drive my old car and shred the mail.
Carry on, Citizens!
photo credit: Judith E. Bell Pile of junk mail via photopin (license)
