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POLITICS & DEMOCRACY
We Deserve Better.
Our elected officials should seek to inform — not enrage.
I opened an e-newsletter today, shook my head in disgust while reading, then hit delete. “We deserve better,” I thought. A few moments later I found better — but from a different source. Both sources are elected leaders — one who seeks to inform his constituents and one who seeks to enrage them. If your elected officials are like the latter, I hope seeing the contrasting examples below will help you ask for the unbiased, informative, and helpful updates you deserve.
EXAMPLE #1: An official who seeks to enrage (we need *less* of this)
I’ll highlight just two of the shortcomings in this section that appeared toward the top of newsletter:
- Calling something as nuanced and multi-factored as inflation “Bidenflation” is childish. The term is particularly odd when the Fox News article to which “majority of adult Americans” hyperlinks never mentions President Biden. The article does, however, cite recent polls that found the number of Americans who say inflation is making their households experience financial hardship is decreasing and that inflation “cooled slightly in October.”
- This newsletter is from a member of Congress elected from Texas, a state where, as of the time this Fox report ran, 4.5 million Texans lost power and 246 people lost their lives in a 2021 winter storm. And yet the “11% this winter” hyperlink in the point regarding electricity prices leads to a CNN report that does not mention Texas. It does, however, mention “the Biden administration is distributing $4.5 billion in federal assistance to help families pay their heating bills,” which are drawn from LIHEAP (the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) in addition to “$100 million from the bipartisan infrastructure law that passed last year.”
A bipartisan agreement that benefits constituents should be something both sides of the aisle celebrate. For example, right now policymakers “from both sides of the aisle are still working to get…
