Congress
Why vote for Congress? Can someone give me a good reason? Can someone give the 4 out of 5 Americans a good reason to vote? Apparently not, and as far as the United States Congress is concerned, I am beginning to agree with them.
Look at Congress these days. It is ruled by greed and pathetic infighting. The corporations and political activists who are able to dump tons of money into the system are the ones controlling the votes of Congress, not the individual constituents who this government is supposed to be about.
Greed
Big Tobacco lies to Congress, breaks laws, and gets away with it year after year because they dump tons of money into the system. That money allows them to market addictive carcinogens to children, in America and around the world.
The NRA dumps tons of money into the system, and as a consequence we can't keep guns away from criminals. Yes, I know not all gun deaths are from criminals with a record. But because of the NRA's massive money dump we can't put reasonable restrictions on ownership of handguns, which could put a real limit on violent crime. Read the constitution, damn it! The right to bear arms is only granted in order to maintain a well regulated militia. I know constitutional law defines well regulated militia as anyone over 18, but I also know that the founding fathers spoke English, and any 10 year old English speaker can tell you that anyone over 18 is not a well regulated militia!
Partisans
Money isn't the only problem. Look at Monica Lewinsky. Most republicans (I will note that a few important republicans are reserving judgment until the facts are in) want to impeach Clinton because of it, and why? Because he lied. Not because he committed perjury, because he didn't. Lying about non-material evidence is not perjury. Even if it was, perjury in civil cases like the Paula Jones case is never prosecuted in this country. If we are to be honest about democracy, the president must be held to the exact same standard as a citizen, not a higher or lower one. Finally, the case was thrown out of court! Who cares? The judge sure didn't, but republicans do. What it boils down to is that they want to impeach Clinton because he lied to the American people. If you want to get rid of politicians who lie to Americans, nuking D.C. is your best bet. (Don't even get me started on what wife beaters call "family values." I voted for a chief executive, not a pope.)
And it doesn't end there. Republicans are hollering over campaign finance violations by the democrats, while totally ignoring evidence of their own violations. They want to cite Reno for contempt because she won't investigate Al Gore, but they don't bat an eye when RJR blatantly lies to them on a consistent basis.
Don't get the idea that I think the Democrats are any better. They're just not in power now, so they don't have control of the parliamentary procedures for harassing the other party. Put them in charge and they would pull the same BS on the republicans that the republicans are pulling on them now. You don't need a Cajun to guarantee that.
So What Now?
Don't get me wrong. I'm a believer in the potential of democracy, I just wish we had some of it in this country. Even with this mess, we're better off than most places on this planet. As a citizen in a democracy, I feel it is my responsibility to vote. I just don't see that my vote has any meaning on the federal level. I don't think it has very little meaning, I think it has no meaning.
I still vote at the local level. I know these people. If I have a problem, I can talk to them and still believe they are at least listening to me. I still have faith in the state level, but if you've been watching Virginia politics since I came of age, you'll understand why I have very little.
But what to do? As a patriotic American, I can't just not vote on the federal level. Voting democrat or republican is obviously worthless. Vote Libertarian? Even if I didn't think they were a bunch of crackpots, those in power would just see me as another fringe lunatic. I don't know, maybe believing in the promise of democracy is being a fringe lunatic these days.
What I propose is voting for nobody. No, I'm not saying "don't vote." I'm saying go and vote, and write in "nobody." Maybe if we all went out there and voted that way, and nobody won the election, maybe then the politicians would sit up, take notice, and do their damn job. Yeah, I know its a line from a mediocre comedy, but right now Richard Pryor is making a lot more sense than Newt Gingrich. And in a Nevada primary, "None of the Above" beat 17 out of 33 candidates.
Update
Tonight, four months after writing this article, and a week after being told that people who think like I do are responsible for all the problems in the US, ABC ran an interesting story on the evening news. It was about the funding diseases get for research, compared to how many they kill, as controlled by Arlin Spector's congressional committee. It turns out that diseases with vocal lobbies that include numerous celebrities get up to 100 times the funding that diseases without celebrities get, per patient. Additionally, these diseases, like AIDS and breast cancer, aren't even the top killers in the country (17th and 8th respectively). It appears your congressmen think more about meeting Miss America than finding cures for the most deadly diseases.
Last Modified 6/7/99
Created 8/31/98