Tulsi Gabbard Instagram – “The ideology of not being political is dangerous in the sense that if you live in this country, you are directly affected by the decisions politicians make. It could be a local issue like your City Council member deciding where your drinking water comes from. There are very practical implications, and you might want to care a little bit about that. If it’s your local Board of Education, on which you have people who are elected, making decisions about whether or not your child who is 9 or 10 years old is being exposed to highly sexually graphic books in their schools… I’m not a parent, but I would imagine if I were, I would care a lot about that. That’s politics, I suppose. But that’s the political process at work. If you care about those things, you may want to learn about them and at a minimum, get involved with voting, but it requires being informed. I’ve had friends in the military on active duty who’ve told me that very thing, ‘I don’t do politics.’ Fine, but you care about your retirement. You care about your health benefits. You care about whether or not you’re going to be deployed over and over again where you’re wondering, ‘What the hell are we doing in this country now? How does this have anything to do with America, or freedom, or democracy?’ And so on, and so forth. Well, if you care about those things, then you should get involved, you should know what’s going on. And again, the bare minimum anyone can do is vote and know who they’re voting for. Make those decisions because it can be the difference between somebody voting for or against your right to free speech.” — LTC Tulsi Gabbard (Army, OIF Veteran) @tulsigabbard