Reply #56: As we lobbied Senators to reject the Ohio electors on Jan 6th, and . . . [View All]

[pat_k]

. . . to filibuster Alito, it became clear that they are victims of a host of wrong-headed "everybody knows" rationalizations and "conventional wisdom."

The thing is, within the DC bubble, their idiocy is rarely, if ever, directly challenged. (And gets reinforced day in and day out.)

Demands to do X or do Y are lobbed in, and sometimes the volume is sufficient to move them to action, but their belief system is rarely, if ever, directly challenged in one-on-one dialog. For example, they tend to focus 100% on risks and 0% on potential benefits or moral imperatives ("We'll be crushed by the backlash beast and be labeled 'obstructionists' if we filibuster.") Or they can't imagine violating conventions that are exclusive to their insular world, not realizing that when they are stopped by that type of peer pressure, their failure to act looks insane to the people "out here." ("Presidential power includes nominating -- it would violate Senate "rules" of decorum to block a vote.")

Dialog is the only way to get through when you are dealing with a tangled web of belief. It needs to be one-on-one because if you clobber one thing, they usually find another to retreat behind. You have to boil things down to simple truths and moral principles, and figure out the questions that leave no escape.

For example, the key question on January 6th was this:

Are hours-long poll-tax-lines for poor, minority voters AND none for affluent, white voters a tolerable condition for you?

On January 6th, 2005, will you uphold the objection to electors from a state where this is the documented reality, or become complicit with the perpetrators of this condition?

Each "Yeah, but", that a staffer tries to escape behind is an opportunity to challenge another baseless, irrational beltway belief. (And I have yet to hear a valid reason for inaction when their oath demands action.)

Before we can effectively challenge their rationalizations, we need to find out what they are. The most effective way to do that is to ask. Members and staffers really are just people. We can seek meetings as citizen lobbyists and talk to them. We need to learn to spend more time eliciting their reasons for not acting, and challenging those reasons. If we are doing all the talking, we probably aren't making much of a dent.

Fortunately, we are not starting from scratch with each effort to push them into action through dialog. Many of the same screwed up, deeply ingrained, rationalizations underlie their failure to act in many, many, instances, so when we challenge those beliefs, we are clearing away road blocks and making it more likely they will act in the future, even if they fail to stand up in a given situation. (In case you are interested, for the Jan 6th effort, we pulled together some counter-arguments -- both specific to Jan 6 and more general -- in http://thedeanpeople.org/jan6points.html.)

Anyway, my point is that, in my experience, it is not a fear of death in another attack of some sort that is keeping them silent. Their fears and rationalizations for silence are of a different sort -- and can be challenged. They really are just people.

But, if it were fear for their lives that is keeping them silent, we can challenge them by pointing out that we expect the men and women of our armed services to risk their lives to fulfill their oath to support and defend the Constitution. Members of Congress take the same oath. Why should we expect less of them? Why should they expect less of themselves?