Everything is Politics and Politics is Everything

So a lot of hay has been made about Republican political officials being heckled in public spaces. And none of the usual scuttlebutt from the usual places seemed to feel right.

The "Can't we get along pieces" from Washington Post seemed totally tone death from this moment in time and I just haven't seen an article from the opposing side of that sentiment that articulated exactly going on without talking about the incredulity of specific policies and well as much as I hate to say it elections have consequences.

And then I saw this video from Extra Credits about political and something clicked for me.

There is a sentiment in this country that politics is divorced from daily life, that is in the broad strokes politics does not matter. And that sentiment is one that's really been subtly under question for the past few years.

From where I sit of course politics matters because public policy matters and is one of the great forces that affects lives on a massive scale.

Because of that sentiment, it's not unusual to view politics as just a job. Something that can be slipped into and out of at the end of the workday. But I would argue it's more than that.

In the 2016 election, there was this great cynicism. This feeling that if the citizenry couldn't change the system they should revolt and dismantle it. And part of what led to that was a feeling that politics, the stuff people see on cable news, was divorced from their everyday experience.

And that runs counter to how I think. For me, everything politics. I can look at even the keyboard I'm typing on and work backward to environmental policies about manufacturing which affect the durability and pricing of the thing. We are a society of law even when the law is obtuse or invisible.

I don't know if I support the heckling of Republicans in these spaces but it speaks to a larger ideological divide. A politician doesn't stop being a politician at the end of the workday. The effects of their policies don't stop at the office door.  The effects of decisions about who gets what money and who doesn't, or who gets prosecuted and who doesn't, or who gets to vote and who doesn't don't just stop 50 feet from the office.

And the notion that it does is from where I sit why we ended up with a party in power that doesn't believe the government helps people in their daily lives because for the representatives of that party government doesn't exist outside of the physical workplace.  And that's something worth changing