Sens. Lincoln and McCaskill aren't fussed about climate change and that means they're probably going to get to dictate, along with other foot-draggers, the terms of our response towards a threat to all of human civilization, which I've gotten rather fond of, myself. We'll see Sen. Boxer's response to the whining and moaning after recess, which will have to suck in order to get out of committee. The eventual conference bill will also suck, by which I mean it will include enormous bribes to industries that create massive greenhouse emissions and actively lobby to kill meaningful reform.
It would almost be better for them to do nothing than to further take advantage of these policy problems to enrich the already wealthy through worthless rents.
Why does Congress ruin everything it touches? Why do they act, collectively, like such pig-molesting morons? Why do they rarely show more concern for the future than I might expect out of someone who'd been brutalized and apprenticed from tender age to a jaded serial killer? Why do they absolutely refuse to give a single aerial fornication about all the lives they destroy?
I know extremely dedicated, hard-working people who support all the right policies, work the staffer meetings, spur genuinely enthusiastic grassroots calls and set up constituent fly-in days, but can't get Congress to care. They do exactly the things you're supposed to do in order to affect policy and do them well. They also can't get results because they have no money to use as an implicit threat of attack if they don't get what they want.
Laws happen when a corporate lackey who comes into your Congresscritter's office with an offer they can't refuse and walks out with a bill written to their exacting specifications. By contrast, we can all see them waving their hands helplessly over their inability to do anything that irritates people with money. As a group, Congress only listens to people who can make a lot of trouble for them and have short, unforgiving tempers.
I suspect that a good part of political apathy is the unbearable conflict between believing the lie that we have representative government and knowing that no one's listening. We know there's no punishment for betraying the public interest and under those circumstances, it's a wonder that any officials remain honest.
I admit, there are still a few that give a damn about the rest of us. Because I can't think of anything else right now, it seems worth it to continue petitioning them for redress of our grievances. Even if their colleagues do seem intent on ruining everything they touch in the way of a full-tweak meth addict and such people are as hard to reason with as a Doberman in mid leg hump.
At the very least I can curse them out for being such mercenary sheep-shaggers. And I will. |
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