No Interest In Politics…Till Lately
I’ve never had a natural interest in politics. Politics has always seemed like back-office stuff. You know the run-of-the-mill chores that have to be done to keep society functioning. A means must be found for making judgements, the adjustments necessary to keep commerce flowing, roads paved, teachers teaching, etc. I never found politics appealing or particularly interesting. How times have changed.
I spent a Sunday morning one week ago in a meeting held at the Long Grove Coffee Shop with congressman BRAD SCHNEIDER. Around twenty of us who live in the Illinois 10th 
district were invited to spend some time to be informed of the state of things in Washington and to ask questions.
I knew instinctively that it was important to be present. Now I recognize that the American society in which I grew up, was the simple un-conflicted society as perceived by a child. It has taken years of adult experience to recognize that here everyone is not exactly equal. Just ask any black person to tell 
you their experience. Just ask any Hispanic, especially if they were or are an illegal immigrant what its like to feel discrimination. Just ask most women. They will describe for you the limits of equality. As it stands, it has taken some years for this white male to understand “how things really work.” When you benefit from the privilege of power, it is something that you don’t have to think about. It is your normal. But not for everybody.
So now that we have an inveterate liar in the White House, a man who savages those who disagree with him, day and night, via twitter — I am interested in politics. It is analogous to developing an interest in cancer after receiving a positive diagnosis.
The time spent with my neighbors exploring the obligations and the challenges of citizenship in dialog with Congressman Schneider was time well spent. I made the acquaintance of individuals with whom I will make common cause in the future.
We must turn this darkness that has been building: this taste for neo-fascism, for a tyrannical exercise of raw power, rather that the messy distribution of power that is the experience of democracy. This is the great challenge set before us. Much as my father’s generation had to defeat Hitler and what he stood for, we have a more difficult task. Seems to me at from ten to fifteen percent of our countrymen are persuaded that a strongman leader is what we need. We must find a way through the thicket of potential conflict ahead of us.
It is up to us.
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