digital guerrilla

F*ck polls and f*ck any members of Congress who allow themselves to be swayed by such polls and f*ck any of you who think politicians should be swayed by them. I’m as distrustful and wary of the government and our elected officials as the next fellow, but polls and the ridiculous obsession with them is going too far. We elect these people for two to six years. We should then let them do their jobs.

If you didn’t vote, you shouldn’t expect anyone to care what your opinion is (which is not to say no one will and certainly not to say you don’t have a right to express your thoughts, just don’t take it as a given that anyone other than your houseplant Miriam will care (especially if you’re the sort of person who names your houseplants)). If, like me most of the time, the person you voted for didn’t get elected, then, similarly, you shouldn’t expect the person that is your representative to care about your opinion. You should expect that person to listen though. If you did vote and your candidate won, but you don’t trust him or her to make the right decisions, then why in the name of Cynthia McKinney did you vote for that person? (Anyone out there who did vote for Cynthia McKinney, please tell me why.)

If representatives need to listen to a poll to find out what their constituents want or need then we’re not being vocal enough (their office phone numbers and mailing addresses are all public knowledge for a reason and can be found here for the House and here for the Senate) and they’re not fulfilling part of their job which is to listen to us (those of us who voted for them at least). When election time rolls around again, we all have the responsibility (notice I didn’t just say “the right”), to weigh in on how they did. That’s the one poll that does matter, the one time that we can be lazy in voicing our opinion (all you have to do is stand around and then touch a screen or punch a hole in a piece of card stock). The rest of the term we have to actually work (you know, reading and making a phone call now and then) at our jobs of being citizens. If we can’t muster up enough energy to get off our asses and do that much, then we certainly shouldn’t hold any expectation that a poll is going to do it for us.

(This started off as a sidenote on the NSA post, as it was spawned by something I read about how Congress should take such-and-such action about the wiretapping because polls showed that most Americans think blah-blah-blah. It seems to have taken on a life of it’s own though.)