"SOS" We Said Now. - Intelligent People Assume Nothing

Pull up a chair for a minute. Something has been sitting heavy on me all week, and I need to set it down where we can all look at it.

It started with the news coverage after the vote. I sat there and watched one leader after another step up to the microphones. By the time I turned it off, I knew I had to say something.

The people did something big this time. It wasn’t a little something, and it wasn’t a close call we can argue over. Millions of us stood in line, some of us for hours, and filled in those ovals one at a time. We talked to our neighbors over the fence and in the grocery aisle. We drove folks to the polls who had no other way to get there. When it was all counted, the message was loud, and nobody could honestly say they missed it.

Then came the microphones. There were senators and congressmen, the old guard, men and women who have walked those marble halls a long, long time. They answered the reporters one after another. And the word I kept hearing, over and over, was slow.

Take it slow. Let’s be careful. We don’t want to rush into anything. Let’s be measured about this. They each said it a little differently, but it was all the same song. And friends, I have heard that song before. I have been around long enough to know every verse by heart.

Slow always sounds wise when they say it. It sounds like the voice of experience. It sounds like somebody older and smarter looking out for the rest of us. But in all my years of watching Washington, slow has almost never meant careful. Slow has meant the thing you voted for gets set on a back shelf, and somebody hopes you forget it’s up there.

Let me put it to you this way. Say you hire a man to fix your roof. You tell him it leaks, and you need it done before the winter rain. He shakes your hand and takes your money. Then he stands in your yard and tells you he thinks it’s best to take it slow. Maybe look at the gutters first. Maybe wait till spring.

You would not stand for that, and neither would I. You would tell him you hired him for the roof, not the gutters. You would tell him the rain is coming whether he’s ready or not. And you would be right, because it’s your house and your money and your roof. He’s the help. You’re the one who decides what the job is.

That is right where we are today. We did the hiring. We handed over the keys. A vote is not a gift you give a politician and walk away from. It’s a work order with your name signed at the bottom. And the people who sign the work order are the ones who get to say what the job is.

Before the vote, they made us promises. They stood on stages in front of flags and told us accountability was coming. One of their top leaders said it was coming when the gavels changed hands in November, “if not sooner.” I wrote that down. A lot of people wrote it down. We carried those words right into the voting booth with us.

A promise made on the campaign trail is not a suggestion. It is not something you say to get the job and then forget about once you have it. Where I stand, a promise is a contract. We kept our end of it, and we kept it in the cold and the rain and the long lines. Now it is their turn to keep theirs.

Here is what worries me. They want to put accountability at the back of the line. They say there are other things to do first, and there are. The cost of living matters. Health care matters. Nobody out here is saying those things don’t count. But accountability is not one more item on the list. It is the ground the whole list stands on.

You cannot build a good house on a rotten sill plate. You can put up the finest walls and the best roof money can buy. If the wood underneath is rotten, it’s all coming down sooner or later. Accountability is the sill plate. If you skip it to get to the pretty parts faster, you haven’t saved any time. You’ve just made sure you’ll be doing the whole job over again.

And in Washington, slow is never neutral. Slow is a choice somebody makes on purpose. Every week of waiting gives the lobbyists another week to make their phone calls. It gives the big donors another week to get their quiet meetings. It gives the old deals another week to get dusted off and set back on the table like they never left.

I am not saying any one person has been bought. I can’t prove that, and I won’t say what I can’t prove. But I have watched this pattern long enough to know how it runs. The people speak loud on election day. Then the money speaks soft, every single day after.

The money doesn’t have to win the argument. It only has to wait. It knows we have jobs and families and bills, and that our attention drifts. It knows that if it can stretch things out long enough, the fire goes out on its own. Time is the money’s best friend, unless we take that time away from it.

That is why the first days matter so much. Anybody who has ever started a new job knows the first week sets the tone. Whatever you let slide in week one becomes the way things are done by month three. Habits form fast in those halls. If slow becomes the habit in January, slow is what we will be living with for two long years.

What bothers me most is the tone, more than the pace. We are being talked to like children. We are told the grown-ups know better, that we don’t really understand how things work up there. We are told to be patient and to trust the process. I have heard that tone from a lot of people in my life, and it never once meant they respected me.

We do understand how things work. That is exactly why we voted the way we did. The people out here are not confused about anything. We pay the bills, and we watch the prices climb. We see who gets helped first and who gets told to wait. We know the difference between a leader being careful and a leader getting comfortable.

I have respect for experience. I have a lot of years under my own belt, and I know what they’re worth. But experience that stops listening isn’t wisdom anymore. It’s just habit with gray hair on it. Being in the room a long time does not give anybody the right to tell the people who sent them there to sit down and be quiet.

Some of that slow may be honest. The new Congress has not been sworn in yet. Nobody can hold a hearing before they hold the gavel. That part is the calendar talking, not a stall, and I’ll give them that much.

Fine, then. Give us the date. Tell us what happens the first week after the swearing-in. Tell us which hearings get scheduled, which questions get asked under oath, and which votes go on the record with names attached. Put it in writing where the rest of us can check it. That is not asking too much. That is asking for the bare minimum.

We are not asking them to do everything at once. We know that can’t be done, and we’re not fools. We are asking them to do something real, right out of the gate, so we know they heard us. Congress can work on prices and hold people accountable in the same week. It is a big building with a lot of rooms in it. They can walk and chew gum.

So here is what I am asking of you. Don’t just yell at the television, because the television can’t hear you. Write it down. Send a short letter to your own congressman and your two senators. Send one to the party leadership offices too. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to be clear.

Keep it simple. Quote their own promise back to them, word for word. Name one thing you want done. Give them a date you expect it by. Then sign your name and keep a copy for yourself. That copy matters more than you might think.

A phone call disappears the minute you hang up. A letter is a record. It sits in a file with a date on it. When they come back around in two years asking for your vote, that record will still be sitting there. And you’ll be able to hold it up and ask them one simple question: did you do what you said?

Then keep watching. Pay attention to what gets put on the schedule and what quietly falls off it. Show up at the town halls when they come to your area. Ask your question, and if you get a runaround, ask it again. Being polite and being persistent are not opposites. You can be both at the same time.

We are the watchdog now. That job did not end on election day. It started there. A watchdog that falls asleep on the porch the minute the stranger shakes his hand isn’t worth feeding. We stay awake, we keep our eyes open, and we bark when something doesn’t look right.

This is our time. We did something big together, bigger than we have done in a very long while. We are not going to stand back and let it get managed down to nothing by the same old voices in the same old back rooms. We earned this moment, and we are not handing it back.

So here is my stake in the ground, driven deep, where everybody can see it. You said slow. We said now. You work for us, not the other way around. Don’t tell us what we meant when we voted. We are telling you.

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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.

” Attic Thoughts”-library – Intelligent People Assume Nothing