Politics Affects Everything

Yesterday’s stutter-click accidentally put my 100th post here a day early. Maybe that’s just as well, considering the bombshells in the January 6 committee hearing later in the day. It would be inappropriate to follow that by talking about anything else.

Politics affects everything. How the political decision-makers are chosen is only the beginning. Absolutely everything is affected. The quality of community infrastructure. Access to health care. Safety on the job and elsewhere. How you can run your business. Who you can marry. Where you can live. Whether you can be denied something important for arbitrary, nonsensical reasons. The cleanliness of the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. Everything.

Politics is not just inevitable whenever there are groups of people. In large communities such as towns, states or nations, politics is how the community gets things done. That’s exactly why some factions try to convince us that politics is dirty, disdainful, something no wholesome person would involve themselves with. If you don’t participate or at least pay attention, they can use politics to do anything to you, so they want you to leave politics to them. We need to pay attention and participate at least enough to keep it working for the benefit of the whole.

For today, I will not try to rehash what the committee has brought to light so far. The committee is doing an astoundingly good job.

Instead of trying to expound on yesterday’s hearing, I offer a recommendation. If you find it challenging to understand what’s happening in American politics, try reading another Substack writer, Heather Cox Richardson:

June 16, 2022

She is a historian. For the past few years she has been sifting the news every day, then laying out what looks most important and (crucially) putting it in the context of our history. Current events often take on an entirely different meaning in that light, and sometimes what she notices as most important at the moment is not even on the radar in mainstream media yet. As an academic, she is diligent about citing her information sources, so you can dive deeper if you want.

You can subscribe to her Substack free of charge. In 2016 I decided that I should truly support sources of reliable information, so I am one of her paying subscribers. Once in a rare while she asks paying subscribers to chime in on a question. Many of her readers bring intelligence and depth of knowledge to the table themselves, so those discussions are gems. But so are her free posts. Go take a look. Browse her archives. She helps it all make more sense.