Minding Our House (and Senate)

 

Here's a link to a post I wrote about two years ago, about the importance of Congress in our nation's political system.  It seems apt to rerun now, given that we have survived two exhausting presidential elections in the past four years and two particularly bitter Supreme Court confirmations in the past two years.  

But "survived" is a passive verb, when in fact we have given time and attention (and in many people's cases, protest energy and/or social media posts and/or financial contributions) to these things.  Which is wonderful, for a democracy requires an active citizenry.

 

 

But how much energy do we give to the positions, elections, and governance of our Congresspeople and Senators?  (Or our state and local electeds for that matter, who influence our day to day far more, one might argue.)  They are who our nation first elevated in the checks and balances system set up to ensure as little concentration of power as possible.  And yet how uninformed are most of us about these races and these officials, and how long-tenured and relatively unchallenged are they from cycle to cycle.  

This is not good.  We deserve better.  Let's do our part and, no problems with focusing on presidential elections and Supreme Court justice leanings, but also focus on who represents us in the House and Senate, what they're doing or not doing, and whether we should be voting them back in or voting them out.