Life and Politics

It’s hard for me to ignore national politics because I don’t see them as separate from the needs and experiences of my family. We all have to live together as a community and I have to shut down a part of myself to keep politics "out” of my relationships with others. Politics stem from how we treat people as a society and that’s important to me. It’s never been separate from my family or my personal life.

I think that now is a time where Americans are turning against each other more than against the terrorists, and maybe its because of a fundamental disagreement about how we fight the terrorists, but that debate hardly makes the news...and in the mean time I’m feeling less safe in my own country as a liberal woman of a hated religion.

None of that means that our different opinions on how we see the world have to interfere in our friendships. It may cause discomfort between us, but conflict happens, even in the most loving relationships. I really don’t want to argue with people, I’m just trying to find out what their point of view is. How far off the edge is this country?

A lot of people and the media act like everyone has to think the same way or there will be “consequences.” I bet if honest people put their heads together we could come up with some great, moderate political solutions. The problem is that we’re not putting our heads together in our government or our press or our culture.

Last weekend we had a big debate over a lot of the issues in front of this country with our family at a ceremonial dinner. The table was half conservative, half liberal, and it became quite apparent that even though our goals were similar (peace in America) the means of achieving it were very different. Often, the liberals were given an “either/or” argument, like, “Either we do what we’re doing, or we sit around and do nothing,” “Either we go to war for oil, or we stop driving our cars,” “If we hadn’t taken out Saddam, we would have done nothing,” “Either we bomb the hell out of Iran, or we do nothing.” The conservatives demanded short, easy answers, yes or no, and there was little room or patience for alternatives, other ideas, approaches, solutions, success! The good news is that by the end of the evening, we had tried to come closer in our views and left on good terms, one individual had actually flipped on her view of Iraq.

I have a lot of faith in our country and our ability to stop terrorism and to come up with alternative fuels, so we don’t have to go to war for oil, but most people are stuck in this fear of everything. Fear that we don’t have enough oil, fear that we can’t survive without oil, fear that liberals want to ignore the terrorists, fear that we can’t stop Iran...

I want leaders that can rule our country with hope, vision, unity and a responsive, smart military. When I see policies that divide our people, that target our people, that intimidate and isolate our people, I see the kind of governing that has led to serious atrocities in the past.

Corruption is not always the same, and does not always have the same affect on people.