We love Kleinfelter…er..I mean Kleinheider over at WKRN’’s other blog, VolunteerVoters.com. Even though we don’t always agree with him, his indepth analysis is always a good read. Today, however, not so much. In his response to a post about the nexus of hate and politics by The Oracle. K-Heddy writes, “Politics is not personal — or at least it shouldn’t be. Ideas and policy are important but they are not life.”
Whoa. Tell that to the loved ones of our soldiers and the innocent civilians dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It’s impossible to divorce yourself from the “game” of politics if someone you love is fighting and/or dying overseas. To them, ideas and policy, in this case, foreign policy implemented by politicans playin’ the game, is life and death. U.S. domestic policy is also all about mortality if you’re one of 46.6 million people who don’t have health insurance or one of 38 million who have trouble keeping food on their table.
If you’re lucky enough not to know anyone who serves in the military or who lives in Iraq, then you should at the very least be able to muster up some empathy for those who do. If you can visit the doctor whenver you need to and eat a hot meal every night, then you should at the very least be able to muster up some empathy for those who can’t. Politics can be so much more than a game.
This week, we had another example of how it all goes down. The Detainee bill, passed in the House and Senate, is all about sport. There’s an election coming up and Republicans are using this bill to box in Democrats. Some get the nuance of our political game. Others do not and instead only see that the U.S. has made it easy for its President to label anyone he wants an enemy combatant, decide what interrogation methods are permissible (without making his decision public), remove the right of habeas corpus, and restrict judicial review. They have no way of knowing that this bill will once again be struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. For them, friends and family are our foreign policy.
