participation – The Zion Chronicle

With the news that WordPress.com is banned in Brazil because of some inappropriate blogging by someone, Lorelle makes this observation:

I think bloggers around the world have become apathetic. Lazy. Uninspired. Dumbed down. Honestly. When the term echo chamber was coined, it was a good label for all the regurgitation of content spread all over the web, drowning individual voices. Self-interest blogging is pervasive. What happened to altruism and using the blog publishing platform to support freedom of speech and bloggers around the world?

What happened to us? Why am I not seeing protests and opinions on this issue all over the web? Why isn’t the banning of three million WordPress.com blogs a big deal? Why aren’t we talking about this instead of the latest iPhone gizmo and useless SEO techniques? Why didn’t people get angry and protest loudly when WordPress.com blogs were banned in Turkey, China, and other countries? WordPress.com continues to be banned in places – why aren’t we talking about this?

. . . I’m asking bloggers around the world to take a stand and let their voices be heard when others can’t. Let not millions of bloggers be blocked and banned for the sake of a couple of idiots. You don’t send an entire city’s population to jail because two people break the law. (Note to Lorelle – in Texas you can do exactly that.)

What really struck me about this observation is that it is not limited to blogging in any way. Because it is so easy to shout out your frustration – using blogs, YouTube, letters to the editor, or any other easy way to blow off steam – many people have settled into inaction when it comes to actually doing anything to make a change about those things that they don’t like.

Inaction on the part of most people to the minor inconveniences of a .05% tax hike are the reason that a few people who stand to gain millions of dollars from that tax hike are able to get the tax raised over the muted objections of the vast majority of people who have nothing to gain from the hike. (I’m not talking about any specific tax hike here, I’m talking about principles of politics and human behavior.)

It’s time to do more than what is easy, blowing off steam in a blog or a letter to the editor, and start doing what is hard but important, attending public hearings and caucus meetings, actually reading the text of bills being considered by our government. Then we have to do more than write a letter to our representatives – we have to talk with our fellow citizens and urge them to action as well. We have to inspire them to action on issues of importance to us – otherwise we deserve whatever government gives to us – or takes from us.

I have read two stories now from the New York Times about questionable practices in the Iowa Caucuses. One on Iowa’s Student Vote and another on the reporting of the Democratic Caucus results. In regard to the student vote I was disappointed to learn that:

. . . political operatives often try to suppress the student vote . . . [using] a variety of tactics over the years to keep students from voting. There are often too few voting machines, so lines stretch for hours. Sometimes, students are falsely told that they will lose financial aid, health care or even car insurance if they vote while attending school.

In Iowa, the suppression has been rhetorical. With Barack Obama’s campaign, in particular, urging students to come out for him, other campaigns have tried to put up roadblocks. . . Clinton said during a campaign stop that the process should be reserved for “people who live here, people who pay taxes here.” Chris Dodd seemed to imply that people who were “paying out-of-state tuition” and participating in the process were somehow being deceptive and unfairly casting themselves as Iowan.

Student are rightly up in arms about these statements. The law in Iowa is crystal clear: students who attend school in the state are entitled to register to vote in the state as long they are not registered anywhere else.

For myself, I would be happy with any vote where voter turnout was above 70% even if I absolutely hated the person who got elected. At least I would know that the person who got elected was elected by an active electorate who disagreed with me.

With regard to the results of the Democratic Caucuses I was surprised to learn that the actual vote count was never made public. In the words of the article:

Under the formulas used to apportion delegates, it is possible that the candidate with the highest percentage of delegate equivalents — that is, the headline “winner” — did not really lead in the “popular vote” at the caucuses. Further, it is possible that a second or third-tier candidate could garner a surprising 10 percent or 12 percent of the popular vote statewide and get zero delegates. . .

The press invests months in covering the caucuses. It and the public it serves are entitled at the end of the exercise to an unambiguous vote count, instead of delegate numbers that camouflage how much popular support each candidate earned.

Such practices serve as extra fodder for those who argue that Iowa is not representative of the nation and does not deserve to always take the lead in the process of selecting our president.