“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

This is the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, most noted for guaranteeing us the right of free expression and freedom of religion (separation of church and state). It also gives you the right to petition the government with any grievances you might have.

An example of law enforcement respecting your right to peaceful assembly according to the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. The name of the cocksucker with the spray can is John Pike. Picture credit: Public domain, bitch!

You can do this in person (actually travel physically to Washington D.C. and knock on your congressman’s door), via snail mail, or, these days, most commonly electronically via email or the representative’s/senator’s website. The most effective way to catch the president’s attention is by starting a petition on whitehouse.gov.

Rest assured that your message will never reach the president’s desk and no matter how many co-signers you can gather it will never change policy. It’s all pretend! Your petition, in a best case scenario, will be filed away on a server and maybe in a distant future studied by presidential historians. Your email address will be saved for future spam campaigns begging for money. Worst case scenario, men in black with dark shades and bulges under their coats driving black SUVs with tinted glass will show up at your house wanting to “ask a few questions”. Be polite.

There is one exception to this rule: if your petition is accompanied by a huge wad of cash you might get through. But it has to be a lot of money. More than you have or will ever earn in your lifetime. It needs to be big corporation-sized contributions (aka “bribes”). Because after SCOTUS’ ruling that corporations are people and money is speech the playing field has been knocked even more out of kilter than it used to be. Mr Smith no longer goes to Washington. Just doesn’t happen. The only time high ranking elected representatives, including the president, are interested in you and your opinion, is in the lead-up to an election when they will lie through their teeth, contradict themselves in the same sentence, and make any kind of bogus promise to court you and your vote in order to keep their jobs. It’s never too late to make statements that are not meant to be taken factually (meaning it’s OK to lie if the intent is to get your support on election day).

A business man petitioning his elected representative (or former US Senator from Idaho Larry Craig seconds before he got busted in the men’s rest room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, I forget which). Picture credit: Really?

I know I’m beating a dead horse here, and that I’ve said this many times before, but it bears repeating: the United States is a two-party dictatorship where we elect (not by the “one-man-one-vote” model as you are lead to believe) a mostly reasonably benevolent, but crooked to the bone, pseudo-dictator and congressional lieutenants (that’s mobster hierarchy terminology), with term limits.

And the only way to win is with money. Lots of it. Billions of dollars per election cycle. You, and I mean this quite seriously, don’t play any significant part in this process. Half of eligible voters are so disillusioned with the process that they don’t even bother to vote. If more of us did, we might be able to change shit. American exceptionalism.

I’ve quoted this a few times before, and I will keep on doing so until it’s fixed, or I die, the latter being the most likely scenario. I just hope it won’t be in prison.

“It must be fun to watch a president run, just ask the man who owns one.”
~ Steppenwolf, from the album/song Monster

Please note that the front man of Steppenwolf, John Kay, was born in, and fled East Germany with his mother as a child. Not saying it carries any significance that a man who escaped a truly, bonafide, brutal and deadly dictatorship later became a rock star who wrote the greatest protest song ever written against the corrupt regime in his new, adopted country. Just think about it, is all I’m asking.

God bless y’all and these United States of America!

Disclaimer: This posting is for entertainment purposes only and in no way should be taken as a a call to overthrow the legally elected government, for which I have only the deepest respect.