Do your members of Congress a favor-- unelect them!

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This is a marvelous piece, and we should send a copy to every member of Congress. Getting them to read it would be yet another story, though.
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For politicians, election defeat is a fate worse than death
BILL HALL, Published: 10/22/11

Why is it that members of the military repeatedly risk their lives for their country but most members of Congress won’t even risk losing an election?

Why is it that policemen go out there in the night along lonely highways and down dark alleys daring death, but members of the House and Senate tremble at the thought of defying moneyed lobbyists and ignorant voters on matters of principle?

Why is it that members of the fire department dare run through flames to save a child, but most members of Congress don’t dare tell a menacing lobbyist with a pot full of cash to put it where the sun don’t shine?
Most members of Congress would rather become puppets of pressure groups than die a mere political death at the polls.

What is it that they fear?

They fear leaving Congress – their love, their ego drug.

They don’t fear for their lives or least of all for their honor. They fear anonymity. They fear going home and retiring among their grandchildren.
Most of all, they fear us. And they should. We voters today are a nasty, largely ill-informed and totally selfish bunch. We behave like rabid badgers, snarling at members of Congress, threatening to bring them back down to earth. That means the worst we can do is to remove them from office, a fate worse than next to nothing.

In many cases, we would be doing them a favor. We would be rescuing them from the ignominious life of rolling over on their backs like submissive dogs as they encounter each alpha lobbyist with its fangs full of cash.

But all the tea partyers, union kingpins, rabid environmentalists, overpaid corporate big shots, pharmaceutical lobbyists and other welchers too cheap to pay their full national dues can’t really hurt members of Congress that much.

Voters today don’t consume much uncolored news. Many among us watch heavily slanted cable channels and read narrow-minded Internet drivel that feeds us “facts” invented by people who are as ignorant and pig-headed as we are.

A generation ago, there were only three national television channels and stacks of newspapers that provided a ton of news and only a little opinion. If the president was giving a speech, it was on all three channels. If you watched television at all on that night, that was what you got. It was much harder then to avoid straight news and wallow in propaganda.

Today, we are hopelessly susceptible to the fantasies we want to hear rather than what we need to hear. Thus terrified members of Congress don’t dare speak their honest convictions for fear they will lose the holy grail of victory at the next election.

But is an honorable defeat for too much truthfulness such an awful thing for an ethical person? It’s not like members of Congress don’t have the golden parachute of lucrative pensions and better health insurance than what they have ever provided for the rest of us.

Losing your life in the military is a tragedy. Losing a congressional seat is a disappointment. It’s the difference between coming home to your family slightly embarrassed and coming home in a box.

But you should be embarrassed most of all these recent years that you lost the people’s legislative branch to the moneyed forces of greed who now own it.

It’s not like the military. When we voters defeat you, at least we bring you back alive. We give you back your old friends and your sweet grandchildren to keep you warm until you die of old age and join our real heroes in the cold, cold ground.
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Bill Hall can be contacted at wilberth@cableone.net or at 1012 Prospect Ave., Lewiston, ID 83501
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