Notes from Vermont IV.

This evening I attended a MoveOn.org House Party, discussing our future.

I will not belabor you, dear reader, with the fitful reflections of an angry and determined young turk who took notes for a roomful of similarly angry and determined subersive patriots. At least, not yet. Pursuant to the consensus gradually agreed upon in this meeting, I invite you to familiarize yourselves with your state's Congressional delegations, House and Senate both.

It's easy. Just plug in your zip code and find out who speaks for you. That's all. For those who may be beyond this troubled land's star-spangled bounds, I invite you to visit the State Department and find out who speaks for me in your country. Just for the sake of knowing. Ensuing activities include:

• Heartily congratulating yourself on Being a Good Informed Citizen.
• Taking a Look at Their Respective Legislative Records
  
• Writing A Letter to Your Representative and/or Senator and/or My Ambassador to You, talking about what you want and why.
• Citing said information in cocktail parties, dinner dates or cranky breakfast tables, thereby silencing the rest of the room upon evidence of your incomparable erudition.
• Keeping Up With Their Legislative Records, because after all, they're doing things in your name. (You foreign types get it easy, I know.)
  

It's not much. But it's a beginning. For further troublemaking, check out Move On's website. Y'all can go from there pretty easily.

I am personally perhaps not as angry (nor as despondent) as the others about what many perceive to be another electoral fraud. At this stage, I feel the more immediate priorities are the worsening state of affairs in US foreign policy, the increasing threat to civil liberties and women's rights, the ongoing purge of informed moderate and opposition voices in the most important levels of the federal government, and the ongoing threat to the environment.

A politicial blog, this is not. But I do view it as an important responsibility of every conscientious individual to keep well-informed and as active as we can be in our respective spheres.

This requires conscious effort, and a sufficiently sober, even stoic, temperament, which helps me to view the various outrages and injustices at home and abroad and still keep faith that I can and will make a better life for myself, and that this involves working to make a better world for those around me, ultimately the whole world over. And this begins with actions that may be small in the world's perspective, but come in all sizes in my own.

Yours in Solidarity,
politicpaulmonster