exercise yer first amendment rights 'til yer blue in the face

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...for all the good it will do you. The proliferation of organizations that has sprung up from our urges to make our government a workable entity is just staggering. Even the most admirable and altruistic of them quickly devolves into a mailing list with someone in charge of alternately pleading for you to sign a petition or to donate to their cause. Every time someone in Congress drops a phrase pertaining to one of these pet causes, immediately there are emails urging one to call, write, email, petition, donate in support of actually following through on this vague mention of starting off in a direction that might one day produce something that will pass for action.

In short: Say anything you like, and you can even say it to our faces, but, pfeh, dream on, rube. We ain't listening. And, exactly what do you propose to do about it?

It's been this way for at least a decade, and steadily worse as time passes. The American Freedom Campaign, the organization I would expect to have the theatrical nature of the whole First Amendment gig down pat, has graced me with but another form I can fill out to be ignored by Congress. I'd hoped for more.

It isn't that we shouldn't use our rights, ineffective as they have been rendered. It's like with election fraud. If we don't make them steal our votes, they get their way without even having to be devious about it. But, be all this as it may,

NOTHING IS BEING SOLVED.

How many ways are there to state this such that someone might let this miserable reality sink in past the intellectual functions to the point where the being itself feels the imperative and

DOES SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

Oh, oh, I know. That gets you into the zone where you can be identified as not "peacefully" exercising your rights -- which is when your rights stop being your rights according to the Constitution -- and so you are in jeopardy of being incarcerated for your subversion. They made no provision for when all three branches of government ceased to respond to the people's pleas for redress....

Something has to give, because we are in a fascist-if-you-do-and-fascist-if-you-don't situation. It's like a big boil on the ass of America, all the festering of determination coming to a head, all the true humans being turned into puss needing to be expelled for the sake of tranquility.

An extremely unlovely metaphor, I know, but... well... there you have it....