Some time ago – I can’t find it now, it may be gone – some enterprising person designed a website that would auto-mail a letter for you via snailmail to your Member of Parliament. You would write the letter as if it were an email, choose your MP, and it would do the rest. It survived off a surprisingly small amount of donations. The theory (which is mostly correct) is that politicians pay disproportionate attention to physical letters and ignore emails.
Now: when someone is smart enough to automate the process so that it provides a pre-written letter for one’s issue of choice (which you can edit, if you like) and auto-detects your MP (or representative in Congress, or whatever), then Facebook activism will actually just become activism. Because imagine if those 100 million Kony video views translated into 1/10th the number of letters. Washington would be flooded with paper. If nothing else, it would force politicians to stop paying disproportionate attention to physical letters, which are the domain of old conservatives.
(Now imagine it if it was an issue of real and lasting importance, rather than a story about an admittedly bad person which has been driven wildly out of proportion for what is likely profit motive.)
Related Articles
14 users responded in this post
“– If nothing else, it would force politicians to stop paying disproportionate attention to physical letters, which are the domain of old conservatives. –”
It’s not the domain of old conservatives. It’s the domain of people who are tired of seeing tons of spam. What you are suggesting is to jam spam through snail mail. That won’t make politicians start treating the internet more seriously, any more than getting a “Free Dick Pills from Mexico!” letter in your mail box will make you read your junk mail folder.
Politicians need sincere constituencies. If they believe they are being astroturfed into an unpopular position, they shut down listening to that information source rather than risk doing something stupid.
So be careful what you wish for, or we’ll be right back in the days of old men in smoke-filled rooms. Because, say what you will about smoke filled rooms, but at least you know everyone in the room is flesh-and-blood, not some clever script generating 20,000 “STOP KONY!” internet posts a minute.
It’s not the domain of old conservatives. It’s the domain of people who are tired of seeing tons of spam.
In theory. In practice, it actually means that organizations, mostly conservative, have letter-writing organizations based in church basements who astroturf their political preferences by inflating the volume of letters.
Fine: let all sides do that, and then maybe we can have letters stop being a determinant factor and politicians can actually explain why they don’t pay attention to things like the majority of Americans who constantly say in polls they want a single-payer healthcare system.
Basically, my proposal is “either use the system or kill it, and either works.” It’s the activism equivalent of the “we could kill the criminal justice system if everybody requested a jury trial as is their right” proposal.
Once again, MGK is right.
i became terribly jaded over these last couple of years. So i believe whole kony thing is blown out of proportion because they finally found oil in uganda. they don’t want us to became activist, they want us to shut up when they went ahead and invade the place. it’s all big pr campaign. again i am a terribly jaded person.
and politicians can actually explain why they don’t pay attention to things like the majority of Americans
Answer is easy: Because the majority of Americans will continue to vote them back into office anyway.
It’s not a matter of getting politicians to be responsive. It’s a matter of getting the masses to be responsible.
Good luck with that.
Oh, they stopped teaching the old correlation/causation fallacy in law school these days?
Let me see if I can help:
Observed data: current politicians are more responsive to the the current physical letters they receive than emails.
Conclusion: there must be something about the medium itself that politicians prefer.
Sound or unsound?!
@MGK: Basically, my proposal is “either use the system or kill it, and either works.”
First of all, this is a false dichotomy. (SPOILER: if you are still working on the above correlation/causation conundrum, skip this one!) What if politicians have a toolkit for filtering content input that currently correlates to ignoring emails but will instead kick in and filter your activism? I suspect they do have this toolkit, or are quite willing to develop it. So it is quite possible there is no change from status quo ante, except a slightly higher cost to being an unresponsive politician. Oh, and can I just double-check if you are still trusting politicians to self-report? If yes, the cost increase might be minimal.
Second, when you say “either way works,” you seem to be glossing over the fact that if you kill the system, there is certainly no further mechanism for producing your main selling point: making politicians explain themselves. The only way to get that is to co-opt the system.
Third, politicians will just pick a different battleground to listen to conservatives disproportionately. Instead of letters, they will encounter grandmas in town hall meetings. Or speaking engagements at Rotary Club or something. They will always be able to trot out a Joe the Plumber, because they will have a very strong incentive to search for them. Because (and here’s the kicker!) politicians are doing what THEY want! Your assumption that they are doing what some people want, and all we have to do is change which people, is tragically naive. Thinking that politicians are listening, not telling, may be so misguided as to be part of the problem. Politicians have a major capacity to set the agenda of discourse that distorts the dialogue model.
=============
Here’s my counter-proposal: judge politicians by the results of their policies only, not whether they are “listening.” Work hard to ensure that claims about “politicians who listen” are viewed as electioneering propaganda, not facts and definitely not virtues. Mock people who say it.
Here’s my sell: how many letters do you think Governor Wallace could have mustered to justify his stance on civil rights? Same question, GWB & Iraq? Same question, Prohibition? etc etc
Shorter highlyverbal: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
There are quite a few politicians who have demonstrated that they’re willing to work to enact at least some policies (or to not oppose others) based on the volume of physical paper flowing into their offices. By your own results-oriented rubric, this means that is something we should pay attention.
No, it doesn’t mean letters have a magical power to force Jim DeMint to suddenly become pro-choice. But they do have the power to encourage him mightily to vote for bills that he thinks he can take back home and then brag about.
I’m still just trying to fathom the strategy of “If we all watch this video, the person we don’t like will get really famous and that will be their undoing!” Because I’m pretty sure that approach didn’t stop Rick Astley, Rebecca Black, or the Cinnammon Challenge.
The only thing I will say about the Kony stuff
ahem
Uganda has oil. Lowest estimates of total petroleum levels is 800,000,000 barrels worth, highest estimates hover between 2-3,000,000,000 barrels. Combined with the facts that Kony himself hasn’t lived in Uganda for years, has a fighting force that could barely qualify for a group discount at an off-Broadway play (at this time), and that Invisible Children’s sponsors include at least two subsidiaries of oil companies…
Always follow the money, people!
It doesn’t help the developer of the Kony video was arrested for vandalising cars and lewd behaviour because he was malnourished:
http://news.yahoo.com/kony-2012-creator-arrested-lewd-act-invisible-children-173307063.html
… and the words “arrested lewd act invisible children” aren’t the kind of word arrangement you want associated with you ever.
“I’m afraid the TV Guide comes to “Chanandler Bong”.”
Miss Chanandler Bong.
All threads should end with a non sequitur like that.