Americans hate themselves

A recent poll:

If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 59% of voters would like to throw them all out and start over again. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 17% would vote to keep the current legislators in office.

...

Only half (49%) believe that the current Congress is better than individuals selected at random from the phone book. Thirty-three percent (33%) believe a randomly selected group of Americans could do a better job and 19% are not sure (see crosstabs).

Well, gosh, I'm shocked. There was overwhelming, very possibly unprecedented protest from constituents everywhere, across party lines and with no real regard for geographic location, on a bill. And in a fairly stunning turn of events, Representatives listened to their constituents and said, "No, this is not what the people want and therefore I'm not going to vote for it," and it was enough to shoot down the bill.

And then pretty much all of Congress turned around and spat on the people who put them into office, saying "screw you, we're doing what the rich people's lobbyists tell us to we think is right, because of course we don't have any obligation to listen to you guys."

We're involved in two wars that are as astonishingly pointless as they are costly, we're watching our economy self-destruct, our civil liberties rot away. We've seen a 300+ page bill signed into law three days after it was proposed*, be found to be largely unconstitutional, almost expire only to be re-authorized over the screaming protests of anyone who cares about protecting the Constitution.

This country has been grotesquely mismanaged for a long time. The problem did not start with the current President, though he's probably done more than any one individual ever has to harm the country**. Through it all Congress has been asked to jump and their collective response has been "how high?"

For the love of god, call your senators and representative and tell them, not just some pollsters, how pissed off you are and why. And if you don't do that, at the very least, VOTE. If you won't even take the effort to vote in a general election, you're ruining any credibility you may otherwise have.

Now I'm going to go weep tears of bitter sorrow into my copy of Tocqueville.

*The PATRIOT Act. Proposed Oct 23, 2001, signed into law by Bush on Oct 26, 2001.

**In my not-so-humble opinion he should be tried for treason. Then again, I also think that most people who held high-ranking positions in the government and military during the Cold War should also be tried for treason.