My posts are usually golf related.. this one not so much.
There may well be people who will say golf is all I should write about, (if I have to write at all) and there will be more people who don’t really care at all. Stick to what you know, leave other people’s problems to other people, don’t upset anyone etc etc. In particular, leave politics to the politicians.
But the things going on in the world right now aren’t simply politics. This isn’t just America and one president, or the UK and one vote, or people millions of miles away who are never going to impact our lives anyway. To me at least – and judging by the ongoing protests as I’m writing this – this is real. This is about values.. compassion and empathy and humanity. And, running dangerously quietly in the background, truth. A single blog post, least of all mine, is never going to change the world, but there’s a difference between talking about values and actually living them. Maybe in another life I would be standing on the streets of New York, or volunteering in European refugee camps, or writing directly to politicians with the power to change things. Maybe that’s what someone braver would do. But writing this is better than nothing. Those values are the things I believe in, and if I’m going to write about things important to me, I would be a hypocrite to not write about this.
The last thing I want to do is preach, and I’m not going to change my opinion of people for choosing not to get involved in things they don’t think they can change. But you don’t have to go and march in the streets with a placard to embody your values. You make choices every single day that do that.. but being aware of what those choices are is incredibly important. Choosing to question whether the information being presented to you is what it says it is. Quietly, arguments are presented and ‘evidence’ given to validate bigger decisions that are made. And quietly, those arguments and evidence don’t always hold up.
The US travel ban has been enacted to “keep America safe”, but none of the perpetrators of deadly terrorist attacks in the US since 9/11 have come from any of the seven countries now barred from entry.
Syrian refugees have been banned indefinitely from entering the US.
Steve Jobs’ father was a Syrian refugee.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, everyone has their own shadings of right and wrong.. but the information that those shadings are built on needs to be accurate. “Staying out of it” and leaving politics to the politicians, assumes accuracy without questioning it. And right now, things need to be questioned more than ever. Part of the reason I don’t talk about politics too much is because I know there’s a huge amount of stuff I don’t know. But I know the values I try to live by, and I know when something doesn’t fit in with them.
This might not have anything to do with golf, but there are values inherent in sport that are important here too. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from.. it matters what you choose to do.
