Citizen Erin

About a month ago, severely angered by certain political events, I sat down at my computer and did something I'd never done before. I wrote letters to my senators.

While I wrote, my heart pounded and my hands got cold. Some of that was the result of trying to channel all that anger and adrenaline into a coherent and focused force. And some of it was just plain fear. Would I get in trouble for overstepping my bounds? Would I be dismissed as a nut job? For some reason, I had the unshakeable idea that the only people who were "allowed" to write letters to Congress were those who either wore Brooks Brothers suits or tinfoil hats. The rest of us in the middle just didn't have any need to do that sort of thing.

Let me just get this on the record: WRONG.

First of all, if the CEOs and the crazies are the only ones writing to Congress, then the only opinions Congress ever hears are those of CEOs and crazies. And we wonder why the government is in the mess it's in...

Second of all-- and this is a whole 'nother rant-- we've all forgotten how to be good stewards of our own lives. We don't take responsibility responsibly. Sometimes we don't take it at all. We pay other people to do it for us, then we assume it's been taken care of and promptly forget about it. This makes sense if, for instance, we're buying an airline ticket to Hawaii. We're not expected to get up in the middle of the flight and check on the pilot or take over if he's having trouble. But it makes less sense if we're paying a student's tuition to flight school and deliberately refuse to hear anything about his actual progress-- especially if we expect him to fly us to Hawaii at the end of the year.

That's the way most of us treat politics. We vote once every couple of years, if that, and pay our taxes, and promptly forget about it. Meanwhile, the object of our votes may be spending our tax money to send himself to Hawaii and lobby for higher tuition at the flight school. He's not obligated to warn us beforehand. It's our job to check. And if we don't like what we see, it's our job to let him know.

Of course, if we do like what we see, we might want to let him know that too. Even if we think that the only people who actually approve of Congress are either rich or crazy.