[spinestein]

Unless I actually become a politician (and my background and temperament makes it unlikely that will happen) the only route I have available to me to change government for the better as I see it is to continue to do what I've been doing ever since the late eighties. Try to convince as many people as possible to vote for the candidates I think will implement the ideas I believe in. I typically spend more than ten hours a week engaged in some aspect of political activism, and that's tough to do for a person who has a full time and a part time job, family, and other activities I find important, but I think it's worth the continuous effort to try to effect real political change by influencing as many people as possible week after week, and year after year, and I'm not going to stop anytime soon. On the other hand, if I thought that it was pointless because it was foreordained that a bunch of socialist Democrats were going to control the government for the next ten or twenty years then I'd probably take up gardening instead, but I don't. :^)

[kabar]

I have also participated in the political process as a volunteer, writing letters to the editor, etc. I am a retired bureaucrat who worked in the USG for 36 years as a naval officer [8 years] and a diplomat [28 years]. I am very concerned about the future of our country and the impact a Dem controlled government will have on me and my family. We are in for a long, hard struggle and I am under no illusions that we will get back the House any time soon. I will certainly not sit back and tend to my own garden while the country is going to hell in a handbasket.