I don’t normally like to talk about politics. With the state of politics in America these days, bringing up anything political is tantamount to covering yourself in honey and standing in front of a beehive, then swatting the hive with a stick. And I’m not a fan of angry bees.
But I’m also not a fan of partisan politics. I’m sick of Senators and Representatives who’d rather hold the government hostage and cause a shutdown rather than do something like radical like, oh, I dunno, manage to actually work with the opposing party and pass legislation that’ll make things suck a little less for people all over the country.
And I’m particularly sick of the Republican faction in the Senate refusing to do anything even remotely favorable towards Obama.
Case in point: this refusal of theirs to consider any nominee Obama puts forward for the Supreme Court vacancy. The excuse of “we shouldn’t do this in an election year” holds no water, even if the Senate apparently is all over this idea of how “the people should have a voice”. Last I checked, the people don’t actually get to pick justices. That’s the job of the President and of Congress.
And yes, I get that the idea here is that ‘the people’ are in theory supposed to exercise their opinion here by choosing the next President and influencing the justice selection that way.
But y’know what? The election isn’t for another eight months. Obama doesn’t step down from office for another ten.
Furthermore, ‘the people’ had a voice. ‘The people’ put Obama in office. Just because the Senate doesn’t happen to like that particular choice of ‘the people’ does not change in any way the fact that he was elected to be there, so they should deal.
And speaking as one of ‘the people’, I want Obama to be able to continue to do his job for the next ten months, without the Senate falling all over itself to go “LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” and refusing to do their jobs.
It’s stupid. It’s pointless. And it needs to stop. Any private citizen trying to pull that shit at their place of employment would very quickly find themselves fired. We don’t get to refuse to do our jobs just because we don’t like the CEOs of the companies we work for.
So hey, United States Senators: DO. YOUR. JOB. Obama’s done his job by picking a nominee. Now you should do yours.
Give Garland a fair hearing. And if you don’t like the guy and Obama comes back at you with somebody else, give that person a fair hearing too.
I had a look at some of the Senate Twitter accounts, and I’m seeing the Republicans RT’ing a bunch of commentary about how the people should have a voice in the matter. Dandy. The people have some petitions going around, and I’ve signed the one from WeAreUltraViolet.org. If you want a voice in the matter too, pick one:
And even though I have a bunch of malaise about posting anything political, I’m going to go ahead and post this anyway. Because the people should have a voice here.
And maybe for once we can be heard over the angry bees.
Editing to add: Mr. Scalzi just put up this post re: the Voice of the People, which I note as a helpful lesson on remembering that all of us are ‘the people’, and we all need to remember that just because some other portion of ‘the people’ didn’t vote the way we want them to, that doesn’t make them any less ‘the people’.
