Questionable Responses

If you're connected with me on Facebook, you've already seen this rant, so you can stop reading now if you like. If not, read on.

As faithful readers of this blog know, I greatly enjoy writing (and receiving) letters, and over the years I have become an occasional pen pal with some of you. Letter-writing is a dying art, and I'm doing my part to keep it on life support ... now that I'm retired, I've resolved to write more letters to family and friends. And to my elected officials, which brings me to my point ...

In February of 2017, I wrote letters to both of my senators (Mark Warner and Tim Kaine) and my representative (Don Beyer) to express my frustration on the lack of rational attention to the problem of immigration reform, and enclosed with each a copy of my proposed Immigration Reform Plan (which I have also shared with you on this blog ... see here for the latest iteration). In due time, I received replies from all three individuals, all variations on "thank you for your interest in this important topic" and none of them mentioning anything about my proposal.

It's about what I expected, but was still disheartening.

Last month I wrote to the same three elected representatives again, expressing my concern over the Trump "national emergency" and urging that they and their colleagues demand the White House produce hard evidence to prove the existence of such an "emergency."

On March 7th, I received a reply from Senator Kaine. When I read it, it seemed familiar, and so I went back to my files and dug out the 2017 letter from the Senator. Lo and behold, it was virtually identical to the one I'd just received, differing only in some formatting and updated statistics.

I find myself a bit cranked over this.

Now, I understand that my elected reprehensives are busy people who don't have time to read every letter they receive ... they need to spend a lot of time raising money, after all, and so they have staffs who read correspondence from lowly constituents and draft replies to those deemed worthy of response. That's fine. I suspect that what happens is that only a representative few (if any) letters actually make it to the Big Desks; if anything, the staffs probably condense them down into PowerPoint charts or Excel spreadsheets showing broad areas of public interest to be accommodated or ignored as needed.

What irritated me was not that I had received such an obvious a form letter, but that:

a) it was virtually identical to the first, which dated from two years before; and - most importantly,

b) it had no relation at all to the topic I'd written to the Senator about. I hadn't written about immigration and immigration reform, but about the need to push back against questionable presidential actions. I have to wonder if anybody read my letter any further than to see whether it contained certain words that would permit it to be shoehorned into a particular subject bucket that would trigger Form Letter A7 or D4*.

And to date, I haven't heard anyone in Congress really demand evidence.

So ...

I still love to write letters, and I'll keep writing them to my family, my friends**, and my elected reprehensives, but I'll only expect to get meaningful replies from the first two ... unless I enclose money.

Have a good day. Write more letters ... they may be the only way you'll be remembered many years down the road.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Thanks to my old boss, mentor, and friend Hank for this expression.

** I'll write to you, too ... you just have to agree to write back.