Election Small Talk

Less than a week ago, the Prime Minister used his right to call for national elections. Those who know me can testify to me being an election news junkie. I stayed up half the night last year to follow the US midterm elections, and was an avid reader of articles regarding the election in France earlier this year.

This year, there is a small difference to the experience from earlier elections: this year, I am a member of a political party. On Saturday, I was walking around in central Copenhagen, getting a feel for the first parts of the campaigns. I ended up at city hall square where 60 or so young people were lying on the ground, while their friends walked around trying to get us outraged at what takes place in Iraq. It should be noted, these were youth activists from the unity list – an assortment of former communists, extreme socialists and the like. Like all other parties, some of them are nice people, other are less so.

When revealing my party membership, the young man immediately wanted me to see myself as personally responsible for the death of over 200,000 Iraqis. Failing to agree with him, we entered into a small discussion which started from a low point because he was unhappy that I in return wanted him to take personal responsibility for all the deaths under Stalin.

I then tried to seize the opportunity for agreement when he stated that the problem in Iraq wasn’t that we had freed the country from an evil dictator, but the management of the effort thereafter. I asked him if that meant that he in principle agreed with going into Iraq, to which he immediately agreed – and then looked perplexed. Obviously, he didn’t agree with me but had been caught up in a rather convoluted argument which suddenly left him unhappy.

I left him as he decided that he would rather discuss other issues which I suspected would be as fruitful as debating against handguns in the NRA.

I wish that politics could be about compromises rather than incriminations.