Walking around town, lyrics solidify as titles in my mind, but they don't always stay

Jon Huntsman, the US Ambassador to China, visited our center today. He spoke well, and it was nice to have another Important Person tell me that I am doing something smart by being here at the Center studying China. He said some interesting things about the history of Sino-US relations, nodding to some of his ambassadorial predecessors, but the thought that is most stuck in my mind right now has to do with US politics. Mostly.

He was appointed by president Obama earlier this year (and has just been in China for a few months). He was happily serving as governor (of Utah, I believe) before that, and talked about his phone call and subsequent conversation with Obama. He said that he knows why they built the Oval Office: because it is impossible to say 'no' if the president asks you to do something while you are in the Oval Office. He mentioned being honored and humbled by being asked to serve. He also mentioned that, despite his being a republican and Obama a democrat, that they have very similar ideas and goals when it comes to China. He said that relations with China have involved thirty years of bi-partisan cooperation.

That made me very happy, on the one hand (though, thinking about it, I suppose many developed international relations HAVE to be bi-partisan, or they are simply incomplete). On the other hand, it again underscored to me how foolish partisan politics are. And I don’t think I’ve formally recorded my thoughts on that in super-official blog form, so here I go!

I guess I should start by saying that what the ambassador said really is true, and I have felt it in this Center. The terms “conservative” and “liberal” have some small meaning, but they are usually more useful describing differences between countries; the words “republican” and “democrat” have almost none (here referring to my interactions with other students). China itself does not have a political line dividing its citizens into opposing camps (that is also not to say that I’d trade the US political system for the Chinese one. I definitely wouldn’t).

I get very worn out very quickly in political debates, and I appreciate that many of the folks that I know realize that they are not a good base for relationships, and even when y’all talk about political things, try to keep it from being personal. But it is silly bordering on ridiculous in my mind that people are divided up based on what they think the best political decisions might be. As if we don’t already have enough differences to sort through, enough veils separating us from each other. I mean, of course we have different opinions. There are, in fact, upwards of 6 billion human brains on the planet. Hopefully we have different thoughts. I don’t think that they can even be grossly summarized into two camps, and I think that dividing ourselves into groups and slapping labels on each other does a lot of harm.

What I mean to say is, I love you all very much, and I hope that you have your own ideas. I’d really like to hear them, especially if we can agree that having different ideas doesn’t make either of us less human.