Civic Engagement.

Yesterday my friend wrote to me suggesting that I consider writing to Senators Schumer and Feinstein to tell them how I felt about their decision to vote to confirm the nomination of Michael Mukasey as attorney general. I had been stewing about it and this gave me a way to "get it off my chest" in maybe five minutes. I forwarded the invitation to several friends, one of whom offered the thoughtful reply:

I don't do petitions, protests, write my congressman or try to influence these people in any way..Nothing can get through to them..The last two presidential elections were clearly stolen and I have zero faith that anything can be accomplished through the system or around the system...Do you really think they care...They have been bought and sold so many times they don't know the truth from that that is not .... With all due respect, I think it is naive to think that anything can be accomplished with/through the system 'that we got'..Your thoughts please...

This cuts to the chase. My guess is that today, to a degree unparalleled in American history, the electorate is disenfranchised, disengaged, disenchanted, marginalized and cynical. Perhaps this reflects the ascendancy of corporate interests in steering the political process, making government less representative and participatory; the unholy alliance of corporatism, politics and the media in steering public opinion; distrust of government; increased partisanship yet stagnant political parties.

But my guess is that essentially, it has ever been so, that the question always before us has been whether "to bear the oppressor's wrong, ... the law's delay, the insolence of office...". I think that in the American Experiment there is the possibility of the individual's experiencing her own political efficacy. Probably, internet technologies and social structures that are still in their infancies will mature exponentially, to produce the sense, for example, that one individual, in minutes, can join forces with millions of like-minded to come to the support, for example, of the monks in Burma.

In conjunction with the gradually progressive ease with which I can express myself politically, comes the sense that over and above governance and institutions, is the question of what I choose for my own personal narrative. In this sense it becomes irrelevant if it is to some politician's interest that I be disengaged. That is outside my sphere of influence. But I get to counter that narrative with my own.