34,416,147
That is the amount of Americans who approve of Congress' job performance at this very moment. The first realization that I had when I looked at this statistic is that there are a tremendous amount of dumb people out there. Thirty four million? Holy shit, that's California. My second thought was to how sad that number actually is. Almost all sane Americans have come to the conclusion that their government simply doesn't work for them, which is depressing since this is where the phrase "of the people, by the people, and for the people" was coined.
The only news we ever hear out of Congress is about scandals where they're trying to fuck the rest of us (both literally and figuratively). I always wondered what they did when they weren't making money off the crash in 2008, or funneling money to their friends in exchange for a career when they leave politics, or getting caught trying to pick up dudes in airport bathrooms. After reading SOPA for the first time, I saw what Congress did in it's spare time and realized that I had just looked my mortal enemy right in the eye.
You see, I'm an entrepreneur (you know, that special group of people the Republican party places above Reagan but beneath Jesus). I had a crazy idea pop into my head one day and I decided that I was crazy enough to try it. At some point in the next few months, The Pollis, a social network for bloggers will be launching. I don't really know what to expect from it, and there are a billion things that scare the crap out of me (most of which are connected to Google or Facebook). Combine it with the fact that I am a twenty five year old political science major with no experience in running a business and this journey is already a tad bit frightening. Congress took one look at me and said to each other "You know what's a great idea? We should open this kid up to an ocean of lawsuits and strangle him to death with red tape."
SOPA is Jason Voorhees wrapped up in Freddy Kreuger covered in whatever the hell is trying to kill everyone in Final Destination. Needless to say, it's ugly. If it were passed, I would have to hire staffers to monitor the web site round the clock in addition to retaining some sort of legal counsel. On top of all this, if I don't comply with whatever standards I need to comply with, The Pollis could get yanked off the DNS server without any type of legal proceedings. Now, I'm not exactly rolling in it so paying anyone to work for me at this point is out of the question, especially if the site isn't profitable right off the bat (which it's highly likely it won't be). SOPA threatened to kill The Pollis before we even got out of the starting gate.
SOPA is a reflection of Congress. It is obviously the brainchild of lobbyists as its sponsor, Lamar Smith, receives most of his campaign money from the entertainment industry. He tried to jam it down our throats at the beginning of, you guessed it, an election year! This legislation was so determined to stop the theft of music and video that it was willing to blow up the internet in order to do it. Congress saw a cockroach in the kitchen and decided to burn down the entire house in order to kill it. They were so aggressive in their attempt to save a select few what amounts to a few percentage points of profit in a gigantic industry that they didn't even stop to think about how this legislation could fuck the rest of us over. Take one look at SOPA and it explains why the remaining 272,323,883 of us despise Congress so much.
Today was a good day. There was a ton of awareness raised about this horribly worded legislation, as evidenced by the fact that Google collected 4.5 million signatures on their anti-SOPA petition. For decades, our "representatives" have paid us lip-service while chasing money around the country only to return to Washington to craft legislation designed to help people who can help them get reelected. We feel like we don't have any say in the direction of our government so today was a small win for us eighty nine percenters. The effectiveness of which we spread awareness about a titanic threat to our democracy was inspiring. Speaking from the very bottom of the heart of an already scared-shitless target of SOPA, thank you internets. You friggin' rock.
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