The Good Citizen

Though it gets tougher and more demoralizing every year, I try to be a good, engaged citizen. What with the screwball antics and partisan posturing that passes for legislative activity in Washington D.C., giving up on the whole democratic process often seems more sensible than continuing to push the rock up the slippery slope. Be that as it may, I’ve written dozens of letters this year, signed what must be hundreds of on-line petitions on everything from global warming to reform of the financial system, to easing bankruptcy laws and giving consumers a break on their credit cards, to protests against escalating the war in Afghanistan.

I don’t know what value, if any, to place on my feeble efforts to remind lawmakers that real flesh and blood people are impacted by the deals they cut, fail to cut, or compromise beyond recognition. The replies I receive from my representative and senators are always polite, bland, equivocal, and machine generated.

Anyway, the other night I woke up thinking how refreshing it would be to receive a reply from a “congress critter” (thanks, Jim Hightower for that moniker) that speaks the dead honest truth. No BS, no holds barred. I imagined it might read something like this:

Dear Mr. Tanguay:

Thank you for all the letters you’ve written me about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mortgage crisis and economic meltdown, Wall Street corruption and potential for reform (not likely, ha ha), the TARP program and the climate crisis. I find your letters amusing, both for their trenchant analysis and unbridled anger against the way things are. My staff rarely agrees with your opinions, but they enjoy reading them all the same.

What’s obvious from your correspondence is that you do not understand that people like me do not listen to people like you. I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings or drive you to purchase an automatic weapon at your local gun show. But think about it. What are your letters – no matter how comical and entertaining – compared to a big fat check from an industry lobbyist? Sometimes they even come to call carrying wads of cash. Watching them lay all that money on my desk is an experience I never tire of.

There are other perks as well, like prime concert tickets, Super Bowl tickets, the ever appreciated junket to Hawaii for the NFL Pro Bowl, and World Series tickets. (FYI: Once you’ve sat in a team owner’s private box you can never go back to mingling in the cheap seats with the commoners.)

Does my brutal honesty offend you? If it does I’m terribly sorry, but I didn’t create this byzantine system of payoffs and favors, nor am I responsible for the revolving door that propels people from corporate suites to high-level posts in the DC bureaucracy and back again. The game is what it is, and by God, I’m pretty good at it. Average citizens don’t appreciate what a snake pit this place can be. Big time politics is nothing less than blood sport. Trust is as transient on Capitol Hill as it is among Mexican drug dealers.

Bear in mind that these transactions -- if you don’t mind my calling them that -- are perfectly legal. After all, this is a system created by lawyers, interpreted by lawyers, and circumvented by lawyers for the benefit of surprise, surprise – lawyers!

It’s unlikely that you could despise me any more than you do already. Sorry to burst your bubble about the sham our democracy has become, but this is the way things work here in our nation’s capitol.

Keep writing. I can always use a laugh.

P.S. The least I can do is thank you and all the other suckers out there for my defined benefit retirement plan, and my platinum, taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage. Life is good!