So much to comment on, so little free time!

As we read through the news websites, and the blogs much more popular and well known than our little corner of the cyberverse,  it strikes us that the current state of national affairs is such a mess in large part because We The People are simply opting out of the process nearly en mass.

It's an undeniable fact that this past federal election had one of the larger turn-outs by voters in years if not decades, but still vast numbers stayed home, and even then, voting is just one part of the unwritten contract between the State and it's free citizenry.  By this we mean democracy itself is a participant activity.  Without participation, democracy will die, just as assuredly as a plant unwatered will wither.

The shocking thing about this though is just how easy it's become to participate in the process.  Before email, writing to your elected officials to make your voice heard was truly laborious.  Without the internet and search engines, just figuring out where to mail a letter to your congressman was a chore.  Then there was the good old electro-mechanical typewriter (if you were lucky) or it's lesser sibling the Royal mechanical typewriter, if you wanted your correspondence to look at least semi-presentable (for those of us with terrible handwriting).  The paradigm, oh how it's changed, and so much for the better that you would have thought the ease of communication would drive participation in our democracy through the roof.  Yet apparently it hasn't.

The advent of email was a game-changer in so many respects.  Even people like us who were around during pre-email days have a hard time recalling how difficult it could be to gather and disseminate information.  Now, you would think that the offices of our government leaders would be absolutely bombarded by millions of emails per day if not per hour.  They aren't.

Frequently on this blog we have ended our musings with the phrase "An ignorant populace cannot sustain a democracy".  And we fervently believe that's true.  However, a non-participating populace also cannot sustain a democracy.  And the combination of ignorance and non-participation apathy worries us greatly, especially because obtaining information, and corresponding about it, are now so easy.  Recent polls have mostly been bias jobs to show how much general support President Obama has from the masses.  However, a few rays of reality have snuck out of those pollsters when they report that Americans in large numbers have a great deal of anxiety over 900 billion dollar "stimulus" spending with the United States already mired in a frightening amount of debt.  Intuitively many of us know this is the wrong path.  Yet, it appears the majority is largely silent, except through polls, which almost everyone understands can be manipulated this way and that.

We are convinced that the vast majority of Americans, liberal and conservative alike, intuitively know that this $900,000,000,000 stimulus plan is wrong.  Yet, the vast majority of Americans are not saying anything to their elected representatives, leaving these officials to assume silence as mandate to follow their group dogma and ideology; leading us to our doom.

Therefore, we implore our fellow citizens to take just a few minutes - just a few lousy minutes - and email your representatives, as we have done, and say:  'Hey - wait a minute.  You are rushing into this.  I think this is a bad idea.  You can't borrow like this anymore.  It has to stop.'

Apathy and ignorance are democracy killers.  We don't want to wake up one day and find it gone for good.