And this time I let the poor woman on the other end of the line have it. My diatribe wasn't aimed at her - and I made sure that she knew that - but it just burst out.
My main points:
- I was a lifelong Dem.
- The Dems in Congress were elected on promises to us. Get out of Iraq. Stand up to this corrupt administration. Do the peoples will. They've done none of that to any degree.
- There is currently an assault on the Constitution, and I fear that the country has reached a tipping point that if not addressed, will eliminate everything that this country was founded on.
- Removal of Habeas Corpus is a crippling blow to our country.
- The impression that I'm getting is that the only thing that Congress-critters 'get' is money.
- Therefore I'm withholding all of my political contributions on the national level until they start doing the job that we hired them for.
I started off just wanting to make a point. What I didn't anticipate was the righteous anger that came boiling up out of me as we talked. My voice was literally shaking with rage as I made my points.
The woman at the other end and I ended up having about a 20 minute conversation. In a lowered voice, she told me that she agreed with everything that I was saying, and shared my outrage. She is in a position in which she is able to do something - and she is working 8 hours a day working the phones for the DNC. And I admire her GREATLY for that - which I made sure to tell her. But I just couldn't in good conscience reward poor job performance with a monetary donation. As I told her, all of my political donations are currently going to local candidates.
I told her about Daniel Ellsberg's recent speach A Coup Has Occurred, which she told me she was going to hunt down. We had a really good conversation, and I apologized for venting on her. She laughed, and said that she was the one who had made an unsolicited call to me, and she could tell that I wasn't angry at her. At the end of our talk, she re-iterated that she had really enjoyed talking to me, and would put ALL of my comments into her feedback form. She still tried a couple times in our talk to get a little donation out of me, but I think that she knew there was no way that was happening right now.
All in all, I felt better afterwards. I encourage everyone, if they have made a choice similar to the one I made, to have a conversation with the person on the other end of the line. She said that each comment they put into their database had the statistical weight of 100 individuals. If nothing else, those comments are being noted - and if there are enough of them it might actually make a difference.
Something better. :(