[Peace-discuss] Why do people believe in Congress?

[John W.]

At 01:09 PM 4/20/2007, Robert Naiman wrote:

>Congress exists whether you pay attention to it or not. It will not stop 
>existing because you ignore it.
>
>Congress acts, and its actions have consequences, whether you pay 
>attention or not, and whether you contribute to efforts to affect these 
>actions, or leave others to carry on without you.
>
>It may be tempting to seek solace by ignoring Congress. One may then find 
>relief from disappointment. But this sense of well-being is like that 
>enjoyed by the person with frostbite who feels warm, as the body reduces 
>blood flow to the extremities. You feel warm. You stop moving, because 
>moving is painful - it restores circulation and sensation to your painful 
>extremities. So you stop moving, and feel better. Then you die. At last, 
>you are at peace.


Well said. Robert; an interesting and apt metaphor.

I often quote Randall Robinson, who has far more intellectual and political 
capital than I do.  His experience after something like 40 years of public 
policy advocacy is this:


Excerpt from Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America by Randall 
Robinson, 1998


             ...Which brings us to the sine qua non for effective 
outside-the-Policy-House advocacy: a gift for self-promotion, a gift used 
or, more appropriately, misused to its fullest by those self-seeking souls 
unburdened by any restraint of shame.  This is not to disparage 
self-promotion, especially when it is an inadvertent by-product of a public 
effort to alter wrongheaded public policy.  We have seat belts in our cars, 
and consumer safety standards generally, because of the public advocacy of 
Ralph Nader, whose formidable public stature has carried in its trail a 
salutary and major public policy influence.
             My academic friends and the foundations that fund their 
painstaking research appear to understand none of this.  For forty years of 
apartheid, the tenured opponents of that system won grants, did research, 
wrote monographs and books, gave testimony ad nauseam before Congress.  All 
to no effect.  American policy toward South Africa had been and remained 
one of de facto public and private embrace.  Few if any members of Congress 
felt compelled to read or listen to anything the academic community had to 
say.  Only when a campaign of massive civil disobedience was packaged for 
public participation in late 1984 did American policy begin to turn around.
             This is not the preferred way to make or influence foreign 
policy.  But in America, if you are outside the Policy House, a position to 
which virtually all blacks have been relegated, it is the only way to have 
impact.  We have won most of the battles in which I have fought.  But the 
price has been dear and I am tired and diminished by the process.  In all 
the years of meeting with presidents, secretaries of state, national 
security advisors, U.S. trade representatives, and members of Congress, I 
cannot recall a single change of policy course that resulted from any of 
the hundreds of discussions, the thousands of letters, the scores of 
presentations to perfunctory nods and courteous closings.  Like water off a 
duck's back.  It never ever meant a damn thing...

Pages 244-45



>On 4/20/07, <mailto:n.dahlheim at mchsi.com>n.dahlheim at mchsi.com 
><<mailto:n.dahlheim at mchsi.com>n.dahlheim at mchsi.com> wrote:
>
>National politics is most definitely the dead leading the 
>dead.  Considering their fealty to large corporate
>and financial interests, Congress cannot be counted upon at all to 
>consider the opinions of ordinary
>citizens too seriously.  Trying to change Congress and paying too much 
>attention to them in the hope of
>them actually enacting substantive changes will only leave a person 
>disappointed.  Something else must
>clearly be done.
>
>
> > At 11:06 AM 4/20/2007, Karen Medina wrote:
> >
> > >As ugly as politics are, war is uglier.
> >
> > National politics is the dead leading the dead.
> >
> >
> >
> > >---- Original message ----
> > > >Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:47:16 +0000
> > > >From: <mailto:n.dahlheim at mchsi.com>n.dahlheim at mchsi.com
> > > >Subject: [Peace-discuss] Why do people believe in Congress?
> > > >To: 
> <mailto:Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> > > >
> > > >Why do people believe that reaching Congress will make even the
> > > slightest difference at all?  Congress
> > > >is totally corrupt.  Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership
> > > basically said impeachment was off the
> > > >table once they entered the halls of power after the overwhelming
> > > mandate the population essentially
> > > >gave them to pursue impeachment.  What more evidence does one need that
> > > the Democrats are totally
> > > >worthless?  The intoxication of the money and power in Washington easily
> > > overrides rational
> > > >judgements made in the name of the common good.  Washington is a place
> > > where agribusiness (who
> > > >will do nothing about all of the honeybees dying), oil, finance,
> > > defense, pharamceuticals, et. al decide
> > > >everything.  They lobby heavily with the help of massive P.R. to
> > > politicians who are nothing more than
> > > >egotistical, greedy dolts happy to stand before the T.V. camera and give
> > > stupid news interviews.  The
> > > >Democrats are bought, sold, and controlled just like their Republican
> > > predecessors.  They just throw
> > > >little bones before the helpless infantile masses.  Oh, we'll raise the
> > > minimum wage from $5 to $6 an
> > > >hour.  Yeah!!!!!!   Spare me the stench of the manure from that
> > > repugnant capital city!
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