When my roommate and I got our census packet in the mail a few weeks ago, we immediately burst into laughter.

Now, let’s make something clear; the Census is very important and I think everyone should do it. Census data influences the allocation of much needed financial resources to your city or town, the number of seats your state gets in Congress, the number of electors each state receives in presidential elections, and the monitoring of compliance with civil rights laws and the delineating of where disparities exist. It seriously affects a lot of shit, and you’d only be hurting yourself by not doing it.

Yeah, we saw our census packet and thought of Rep. Michele Bachmann, actually. And that’s why we started laughing.

What is the deal with all these Census conspiracies? Bachmann was so sure that information obtained through the census will be used to jail/persecute Americans (WWII-style) that she claimed she was not going to fill it out. Now aside from the fact that that’s probably illegal, it’s also a strange and incredibly counterproductive point-of-view to espouse. Bachmann’s a certified nut, but she affects people; people who might actually believe her twisted ranting and throw those Census packets in the garbage.

What I think is most intriguing about the Republican party is their repeated attempts at  convincing people that something that’s good for them is bad, and vice versa. Health Care Reform is a prime example, of course, but so is this Census  crap; so you convince people that the Census data is going to be used to populate internment camps, and generally to harass and hurt them? Even though it’ll be used to fix roads and parks, and fund programs in their area? Even though this could potentially diminish the number of electoral votes and how many seats those particular people have in Congress?

Uh-Oh! I guess it was at this precise moment in Michelle Bachmann’s train of thought about this situation that she realized that in telling her constituents to flip the Census the bird, she was actually telling them to render themselves politically invisible, thus resulting in the loss of a seat in Congress, and thereby making reelection far more difficult for Bachmann. So guess what?

Michelle Bachmann is now all about the Census, even supporting a house resolution that would make the month of March “Census Awareness Month.”

Guys, the moral of the story is fill out your Census forms. People like Michelle Bachmann are out for themselves, so why shouldn’t we?

Be counted.