Does It Really Matter Who I Vote For?

I am frustrated by state politics, and this time it isn't by Walker or his cronies. I'm frustrated by my own side!

Specifically, I'm referring to the four Democratic candidates for governor. I'm not learning enough about what they would do--and how--once in office. All I see is posts and fliers about un-doing what Walker did. I see nothing about process at all.

• Kathleen Falk. Her supporters have come by my house twice already, I admire how she stepped into the fray early and came out with a clear statement of something she believed in (restore union rights). Unfortunately, that  struck me wrong. As a non-unionized public employee until late summer last year, I worked hard to focus on the other things Walker was doing that were bad for Wisconsin. The Troubles of 2011 were not just about unions, and anytime we let people think union rights were the center of the issue, we push away anyone who's had bad experiences with unions and we diminish the many other ways we have suffered. The fact that this was  her first statement out of the gate told me to be wary. Seeing her supporters out in the community makes me a bit nervous as well. As appearances go, it is politics as usual.
• Doug Lafollette. I'm not seeing much from him, although what I do see is entirely on Facebook through a couple private groups I'm part of. He posts links to his website but is not pushing himself. I like the approach, and I like what he says he values--although if I'm having to do all the work to find out what he stands for, I doubt he's going to fare well with all the voters who won't bother to click on a link or two.
• Tom Barrett. I've gotten some emails from his campaign, but I'm not hearing anything I didn't hear when he ran in 2010, with not enough about the fact that the landscape is very different from what it was two years ago. He seemed reluctant to get into this race, and I think that will put off a lot of voters.
• Kathleen Vinehout. Who? Well, I know who she is, but I've seen absolutely nothing from her campaign yet. I have no idea what she stands for.

From what I've seen from all of these folks, I agree with everything they want to do, even though I may disagree a bit with priorities. What I really want to know, though, is about process. How will they do things? My biggest beef with Walker hasn't been with what he's done but with how he's done it. (Although I disagree with all he has done, his goals didnt disenfranchise me; his lack of communication and respect did.) What will these candidates do that is respectful of the people of Wisconsin who voted for Walker and may still support him? How will they respond to the concerns that led to Walker's election in the first place? How will they go about trying to re-instate rights without having it all just seem an act of political revenge?

If all they do is get into office and start changing things to the way they think things should be without being respectful and valuing process, they're no better than Walker is.

I know I will vote for whichever Democrat wins the primary. I do hope I have a reason to care which one that is, and I'm hoping there is more to the platform than simply not being Walker.

When My Son Becomes a Soldier

For his whole life, my younger son has wanted to go into the military. Now that he is at the end of his junior year in high school, I find that I am paying more attention to military news, wondering what it is like for the mothers of the soldiers I read about and imagining how I would react if military personnel came to my front door. Even more than my concerns about him not coming home, I worry about what he will be when he comes home.   How can a person survive a war mentally intact?

Nicholas D. Kristof writes an op-ed in The New York Times that I find very distressing. He writes about the high number of suicides among our veterans. He acknowledges that the VA is working hard "chipping away at a warrior culture" that devalues mental health care. He prepares to end his piece by saying,

We refurbish tanks after time in combat, but don't much help men and women exorcise the demons of war. Presidents commit troops to distant battlefields, but don't commit enough dollars to veterans' services afterward. We enlist soldiers to protect us, but when they come home we don't protect them.

When my son comes home...if he comes home...what damage will have been done to him? Soldiers can experience prolonged boredom and prolonged adrenaline rushes. They witness horrors that no one can fully prepare for. They risk--their health, their friends, their lives--constantly. Is it possible that anyone can return to civilian life unchanged?

I worry, too, about what must change within a person in order to kill other people. In the news today was a story about American soldiers who posed for photographs with dead Afghan insurgents. Yes, sitting in our cozy living rooms where we are not in imminent danger, it is horrifying. Is there no dignity? No respect? How can these soldiers do such a thing?

I don't see how it is possible to kill without de-humanizing the opponent. The act of pulling the trigger against another person surely requires soldiers to think of that person as other or less than themselves. Unless we are fully aware of what it is like to be in that situation, how can we begin to understand or to judge the actions of people who are there? I can't begin to speculate whether the dehumanizing is what allows soldiers to pull the trigger in the first place or it is what happens after the first kill. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

When I was young, I was at my friend's house for the afternoon. Her teenage sister was supposed to babysit, but she was on the phone with her friend for a long time (back in the day when phones had cords and people were tethered to the phone while talking). My friend whispered to me, "I have to show you something." We creeped upstairs, and she opened the hall closet. On the lowest shelf, behind the blankets and suitcases, there were two shoeboxes. She pulled them out and proceeded to lay photographs in front of me. Her dad had been in the Korean war, and these were his war pictures. There were lots of dead bodies, and lots of soldiers standing around smiling about their conquests. Two pictures stood out the most to me, and the images are seared into my brain forever. One was her dad standing, cigarette dangling out of his smiling mouth, holding up two heads of dead Koreans. The other was him standing on top of a heap of heads--and by "heap," I mean a pile that was as tall as her dad. 

They were horrifying pictures. They shaped my views of war and soldiers in ways I've only recently begun to recognize. But when I listened to this story on the radio and later when I read the article, these pictures were what came to mind. The greater the horror of war, the greater the need to de-humanize the enemy so you can do the horrible things you need to do.

Even when soldiers don't give up their lives, they surely are affected for the rest of their lives. Two photographs that I saw forty years ago are burned into my mind and heart. How much worse is it for those who see, smell, and hear the real thing? When we send soldiers into war, do we really know what we are asking of them? And aren't we perhaps too quick to condemn actions that we don't understand?

It isn't that I think what these soldiers did was right; I just think it is understandable from a certain point of view. 

How devastating war is, in so many ways. The photographs and suicides are just symptoms of being a soldier. If we are going to ask them to do what they do, then we need to acknowledge that they have to transform themselves from the people they were into soldiers--and we must have more compassion for the entirety of the results of that transformation. We owe them at least that much.