If you really want to make a politician sweat write them a handwritten letter. I do this, (a) It's rare, and they are obliged to answer. But first of course they have to find someone who can read longhand, neat, correctly spelt, longhand. Which of course forces them to focus on the contents. -- Nonny the Mouse.
[AN: I'm sure I did something to this point somewhere before...]
People want to make politicians think. The problem with this is that the politicians don't want to do that. In valiant efforts to gain their attention, various methods were attempted. Back before electronic media, the way to go was a neatly-written letter of complaint.
That was decades ago. Since the time when handwriting was the primary means of communication, those in places of power have set up barriers between themselves and any thought-provoking letter of complaint.
This is now. In an office for sorting the mail for an administrator of shenanigans, one sorter of mail comes across an anomaly. The envelope and stamp are in place, so it had to be mail, but the rest was... unintelligible. The ink on the front was loops and curves, interspersed with slashes and dots. Someone in the mailing system must have understood it, but this particular sorter did not. They passed it on to the Unreadables Office.
For years, the Unreadables Office was there to be certain every letter was at minimum read. They had been the ones handling letters written in crayon, the letters written in bodily fluids, the parcels containing human ash and a wry note explaining that now the administrator had "everything of them". They also handled the handwritten letters. Or rather, they used to.
There had been nobody skilled in the Unreadables Office for some significant time. The office contains one overworked and underpaid intern who sorts the mail according to type.
Parcels are checked for explosives or spring-loaded surprises before opening. Most of the contents are sold for a maximum amount of profit. Human remains are labelled with a name and shipped off to a pauper's funerary service, where they are interred under a no-budget plaque and a pair of dates. Food is summarily disposed of, on the off chance that it could be poisoned.
The remaining letters have their return address scanned by a machine. A program interprets this and creates a form letter that begins, "Dear Citizen, thank you for your concern and interest..."
The envelope remains unopened. The letter inside unread. The careful handwriting unread.
The administrator, after all, has no time for five-page handwritten rants. The administrator is very busy. They barely even read one large-font bullet list of the most important issues on his agenda, of five bullets or less. Preferably less. It might be noted at this point that the administrator's preferred number of bullets on their list is zero. Even then, one of their staffers has a single minute to outline the most important thing to do that day and why the administrator should bother.
In those situations, the only thing to get their attention is a mob armed with torches and pitchforks.
That'll be arriving next month.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / gina_sanders]
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