What do they do besides take money?
No, that's not a set up to a joke about spouses. We're talking about Congress -- our elected officials who seem to think we are beneath them despite the fact that their job description literally is public servant.
Public servant -- it's right in the title.
Are our Congressional members not proficient in English?
Serving the people is not, for example, saying, "We'll do something if you give us X in the election." In fact, you could interpret those type of statements as what they actually are: Blackmail.
They've used fear tactics for decades. They do damn little besides maintain the status quo.
You go elsewhere and you're the problem.
That's true if your Ralph Nader, or anyone.
They scapegoat you, they blame you. They shame you -- most infamously as Sam Seder did Ani Di Franco when she made the mistake of going on THE MAJORITY REPORT. Sam, himself, was incapable of shame. He pimped Simon Rosenberg for DNC chair, that tells you all you need to know.
And that brings up the reality. As bad as the members of Congress are , the only thing worse is their fan-whores. They aren't citizens, they're fan-whores.
They lie constantly and excuse and minimize their heroes and heroines.
Most people -- most normal Americans, for example -- did not feel the need to demonize actress Susan Sarandon for how she voted or, for that matter, how the 2016 elections That's due to the fact that most Americans grasp you can vote for whomever you want to in a democracy and grasp that Susan Sarandon is only one person and does not have the super power of mind control.
The fnn-whores see it as their job to enforce and control. They are the mob who want to bully everyone into doing what they want them to do. Barring that, they want to bully them into silence.
Remember when 'progressive' Laura Flanders of the 'Communist' family -- worth millions -- was going to hold Barack Obama someday. It didn't come during the primaries when Laura (a lesbian) refused to call Barack out for putting homophobes and conversion therapy advocates on the stage at his rallies. It didn't come durin gthe general election. It didn't come his first year in office . . . Or his second. . . . Or his third. . . Or his fourth . . . Or his fifth . . . or -- let's cut to the chase, or his eighth.
She never called him out. She never held him accountable. She could waste everyone's time with nonsense -- remember her broadcast where Hurrican Katrina didn't destroy New Orleans? She and her guests just knew it was bombs instead! -- she just didn't have time to move us forward.
And that is what this is about.
If maintaining the status quo is all you're after, keep doing what you're doing.
Even there, though, grasp that if you don't put up a fight, the country moves to the right.
The right doesn't give up fighting. And they would love a complacent left so that they could move the needle.
Fighting is not spending all of our time defending some politician. Nothing was learned from the 90s. People wasted so much time on Bill Clinton, on defending him. And he was stabbing us in the back. If it weren't for the affair with Monica coming out, he would have made his move to privatize Social Security. As it was, he got away with far too much. Politicians need to defend themselves. We need to fight for issues. We need to fight for advances.
They ran for office. If they're not up to their job, that's their problem. If we're not up to holding them accountable and making them serve us, that's our problem.