For the past week I’ve been able to think about little else except Tuesday’s election. This is not because I’ve been actively involved so much as that my mind has been entrained by the news coverage, as most other people’s minds have been.
I’ve found myself annoyed at the
newscasters’ characterizations of this election as particularly ridiculous or
bizarre, since I can’t remember one pleasant, non-anxiety-producing election in
my whole life. I’ve been grateful to the
historians popping up at the last minute who remind us of past elections that
had equally-unexpected rancor and divisiveness.
The quote “All’s fair in love and
war” has run through my mind all week, and I thought about adding “politics” to
the list of what’s not limited by rules of fairness. For instance, if I wrote about Bill Zigler
the way Valadao’s campaign has portrayed Emilio Huerta, I’d be in court for
libel right now. We tolerate behavior in
electoral campaigns – for the purpose of avoiding civil war – that we wouldn’t,
or don’t tolerate otherwise.
In fact, politics is both love and
war. The adoring fans of all candidates
have something in common with all people in love, primarily the hopefulness that
this person’s actions in their elected positions will make our lives better or
at least protect something we love from the erosive actions of others. On the other side of the coin, many people in
this country correctly feel that their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness have been taken away or eroded by the actions or inactions of
those in government. Elections allow us
to voice those feelings and draw lines in the sand, a precursor to war that we
hopefully can resolve before committing bloodshed.
But
Sunday night while making dinner, waiting for the news to come on, I caught
part of a program on veterans that brought me to a halt. They were describing what it’s like to come
home from our current wars (“military engagements” is probably a more precise
term,) compared to WWII veterans’ experiences.
Then, the whole country was involved in that war. Those at home suffered small inconveniences
and delayed gratification compared to those abroad, but they were awaiting the
end of the conflict with as much hopefulness as the soldiers themselves. Homecoming meant something.
Now, those veterans returning (whole
and healthy or in part, damaged emotionally as well as physically) find their
friends and neighbors entirely ignorant of what they’ve been through,
unimpaired by the conflict their tax dollars have invisibly supported, and
unengaged. Nobody’s waiting for the end
of the conflict these people have just survived; half of us don’t know where
Iraq or Afghanistan is, much less Syria.
The other side of the world is just as far from us here in California as
Flint, Michigan or West Virginia. The
growing insularity of our culture is mind boggling, a plague more frightening
than the Zika virus or the thought of either candidate in the White House.
A statistic flashed through the tv’s
speakers, almost like static: twenty-three
veterans commit suicide each day. The
voice speaking that fact re-iterated its meaning: almost one per hour. My brain tried to do the math: that’s almost 700 veterans per month. Can we even be killing that many on the
battlefields? Surely we would have heard
about it if we were….
Numbers are notoriously malleable,
and these, which were reported in 2014 from a Department of Veterans Affairs
study conducted in 2012, have been refuted (predictably.) But the study was triggered by the sense that
this country was experiencing a “suicide epidemic” among veterans new and
old. After the study’s release, the
government that sent these people to war then responded legislatively, taking
some of the country’s resources to address the needs of these people who had
served us by putting their lives on the line, working to create programs that
might blunt the knife-sharp edges of re-entry and keep a few more souls alive.
That’s politics, and that’s
government, folks, and that’s why it matters so much who we elect. That’s why we suffer these assaults to our
senses every election season.
It is love and war.
Let’s be kind to each other as we proceed.
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Trudy
Wischemann is an apolitical-type who has to admit it matters once in
awhile. You can send your attempts to
eradicate your election miseries to her at P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or
leave a
comment below. Thanks to all our
veterans for coming home as well as leaving in the first place.
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