So, how important am I, really?
Not very, I'm sad to report. I'm politically active, but probably haven't had much influence on who ran for office, although I work hard for primary candidates I support. I'm politically talkative, and post frequently on DU. Again, though, I doubt that anything I have ever posted changed anyone's mind or influenced them to take any sort of action.
I'm a DFL precinct chair in my own precinct, and maintain a website for that precinct...the only precinct website I know of in all of Minnesota. Looking at the analytics for that website, though, demonstrates that, except at election time, the only visitors are people who click the link in my signature line out of curiosity. Except at election time, when a few hundred people make their way to the website through Google.
I'm controversial, at least here on DU, where a fairly large number of people have me on Ignore. But that's not much of a big deal, really, since that's so easy to do.
My work is mundane, too. I write the content for small business websites, working with a website designer and SEO specialist. What I do helps those business and helps pay the bills, but there are no bylines on websites, so that work is almost anonymous.
I'm sure there are people who like me and who read what I write, but they're not movers and shakers, any more than I am.
So, I wonder why anyone in the government would be interested in me in any way. I used to be much more active, politically, being directly involved in the anti-war movement in DC during the Vietnam war and in civil rights activism in the 1960s. On a whim, I did a FOIA request to the FBI to see if any of that was of interest to the FBI. Apparently not. The only things in my FBI file had to do with security clearance investigations while I was in the USAF in the mid 60s. My name did turn up with regard to one protest at the Pentagon in 1968, but that's the only record of my activism, as far as the FBI was concerned.
So, are the NSA, CIA, FBI, and DIA interested in my doings? Nah. They're not, I'm sure. I'm just not important enough to be interesting. Kind of a let-down, I think. I'd like to be important enough to be interesting to some federal agency, but I'm just not. And at age 68, it's unlikely that I'll get important anytime soon.
I'm doomed to being uninteresting, it seems. How boring! I guess I'll just have to accept that and keep on doing what I'm doing, despite the lack of interest on the government's part.