Life In the South: My local Democratic Party sent out an email today welcoming the start of Black History Month.

Jason Lefkowitz

I have never been tempted to show up to a local party meeting, because I live in such a deep red district that what's the point? What would it accomplish?

But now I want to go to the next one just to wave around a printout of this email and yell "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU"

#USPol

Sean Gillies

@jalefkowit Your local is the 1940s Democratic Party?

Jason Lefkowitz

@sgillies Probably more like 1880s

Dan Sugalski

@jalefkowit If I can actually call my representative (granted, in a deep blue state, but... call! On a phone!) you can go to a meeting and yell at boneheads being boneheads.

Jason Lefkowitz

@wordshaper I used to answer those phone calls. They really work! Even in a deep blue state! Representatives keep a close eye on who's calling and why.

So what I'm saying is, keep doing what you're doing

Jason Lefkowitz

@wordshaper Of course my advice may be dated now, who knows. To show my age, when I was answering those calls the way you could show a rep you REALLY cared was by sending them a telegram. Because telegrams cost real money to send

(Now I'm wondering what would happen if you sent a rep a telegram in 2025. Can you even do that?)

Dan Sugalski

@jalefkowit It was why I opted for a call rather than an email, since it's more work and I assume taken more seriously.

The idea of sending a telegram is kinda amusing, though.

Jason Lefkowitz

@wordshaper It used to be email < phone call < physical letter. Opinions were held more highly if someone was willing to pay for a stamp to send them, and filling an office with physical letters was more dramatic than making their phone ring.

My understanding is that changed after the 2001 anthrax scare, though. Suddenly staff were much less enthusiastic about receiving physical mail.

https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/behind-the-badge-case-histories-dangerous-mail/anthrax

Frank Bennett

@jalefkowit ~"Oh, Clarence Thomas! Why, I know *that* man, he's BLACK!"~

Jason Lefkowitz

@fgbjr At least with Clarence Thomas there's the fig leaf that he's a Supreme Court justice. Nobody has ever cared what Thomas Sowell thought unless they were deep in the right-wing fever swamp