Tell me your own Politik...Open up your Eyes

Okay, so I've been listening to a lot of Coldplay lately. I have "X and Y" but "A Rush of Blood to the Head" is in the car, so it's mostly been that one. Their lyrics are very interesting: "Give me time and give me space; give me real, don't give me fake". That's from "Politik", which is not my fave (that would be "Clocks") but it's the song I thought of while reading about Lance Armstrong's latest public statement on the CNN website. We should spend more on the war on cancer than on the wars is Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Sheer utilitarianism when it comes to American lives.

Not a surprise coming from the one and only Lance (and you know how I feel about him, although it's Chris Martin that's up there with Anderson Cooper on the mwah! factor list). What was more interesting is his comments related to his possible run in the gubernatorial race in Texas. I guess since he isn't rah-rah for the gun-toting kind of war, there is a chance he might not be a Republican. But note the last line of the piece, where he says that he doesn't think illness is a political issue. What? Okay, so there's two ways to go at this. Firstly, modern health care requires us to determine levels of funding, and some things, regrettably, must receive more funding than others (though one would hope that the decision making was at least rational and fair). Anything that requires a determination of where public funding should go and in what amount is political. And just because the US has private health care does not mean it escapes this loop, since, as Lance points out, there is funding for research.

But secondly, and I truly feel this, politics has been given a bad name. Politics is an art of gaining and maintaining power or support for a particular issue of public concern. Lance is political. But so long as people associate politics with Kennedy philandering and drinking, Bush manipulation and, here in Canada, Liberal kickbacks, then politics will be in bed with corruption, when in reality, it's in bed with all of us. For the better.