Diffusing Public Outrage

It happens all the time. The Folks Back Home (that’s us) get excited about something outrageous that is happening in Washington, D.C. For example, imagine that we get all lathered up because Congress is proposing a steep tax on popcorn sold in movie theatres. We demand to know how this can be justified. Their response is typically Washingtonian … “Because the popcorn kernels are yellow before they are popped but the popped corn is white after it is popped”.

We folks back home immediately see this as worse than Taxation without Representation but we see it as an evil form of Taxation with Representation which was certainly not the intent or our Founding Fathers.

We go ballistic. We make phone calls in protest. We send emails filled with indignation. We call Talk Shows and vent our spleens. We threaten to “Throw the Bums out of Office”. We threaten a lot. We seldom do any throwing.

Our 9% Approval Rating Congress becomes concerned about our indignation. They spring into action. They always diffuse such volatile situations by one simple oft-repeated action … They Appoint a Committee to Study the Situation.

These committees take on varied different names…
•Non-Partisan Committee
•Bipartisan Study Group
•Fact Finding Committee
•Independent Review Board
•Intraparty Committee
•Blue Ribbon Panel
•Obfuscation Committee

It works every time…
• This is seen by us folks back home as a serious attempt to rectify these egregious situations.
• We are told that we have been heard and Committee/Study Group/Board/Panel will meet five different times to zero in on our grievances and publish their results in fifteen months.
• We do not even get suspicious when we read that they are going to meet in Las Vegas, the Big Island in Hawaii (they choose the Big Island because it is emblematic of how Big they consider our concerns to be), Paris, Sydney and in the Mickey Mouse Conference Center in Disneyland in Florida.

We go back to our mundane lives content in knowing that our 9% approval rating congress is diligently looking into our protestations.

Twenty months later (whatever happened to fifteen months?) their conclusions are published in our newspapers on page twenty-three of Section C. It is just happenstance that this is the same day that some major news story has happened and the resultant dire consequences are plastered over all the front pages of the world.

Then one day we go to our local move theatre, buy a box of popcorn (smaller than it used to be) and find that the price has gone up dramatically.

Some of us don’t notice. Others of us say to ourselves, “Oh well”. A small minority of us contacts our members of congress and we are given an explanation that goes along these lines … “We definitely did not put a tax on popcorn! What happened was a tree fell on an ox cart in a logging area of Thailand which causes a worldwide shortage of paper products. The price increase you experienced in your last purchase of a box of popcorn in your local movie theatre was the effect of that worldwide paper products shortage. It’s market forces that caused your popcorn cost to increase.”

We, being the simple folk that we are, say to our duly elected Member of Congress, “Well that makes sense. Thank you for your efforts on our behalf. I will be sure to vote for you next time” … Or Will We?

Would I kid u?