My life is defined by politics. I study politics, I talk politics and I want to work in politics. Unfortunately for me, this love only goes one way; Washington D.C. is a hotbed of the elite and my last name isn?t Kennedy. Tack on the fact that my alma mater is UCSD ? a great school, sure, but it?s no Harvard or Yale ? and the unlikely becomes the impossible.
Then a ray of hope came in the form of radical conservatives, decked out in their best George Washington outfits and waving their freak flags for all of national television to see.
I never cared much for the rhyming chants of the Tea Party movement, but after its members started snagging key state and federal jobs, the politico in me started to pay attention. They?ve also managed to help Sarah Palin indefinitely extend her 15 minutes of fame, and throw forgotten stars Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight back into the spotlight.
Maybe, just maybe, the Tea Party express could be my ticket to D.C.
So I buckled down, suppressed my liberal tendencies and started playing Tea Party speeches, hoping to master the rhetoric for my time in the right-wing spotlight. After a few painful hours, however, all I could recite were the same phrases about ?Freedom-loving Americans,? ?taking back the country,? ?elitist big government,? and of course, ?deficit spending.? As much as I tried to color my little blue liberal heart red, I knew deep down that me supporting these slogans wouldn?t be enough to sway anybody.
The Tea Partiers are just attention seekers; this fact shows through in almost every rally they hold. There is no united policy or agreement among their members, except that the government is doing wrong.
How the government is wrong varies from rally to rally. To some, the government is elitist because they?re socialists with an agenda bleeding the rich dry; to others, the government?s elitist because they?re bailing out Wall Street.
The Tea Partiers? drumming and chanting may convince some, but hopefully the ?average Americans? see the Tea Baggers refer to aren?t delusional enough to think that everyone with a political opinion is equally qualified to take on important government jobs.
If I were having brain surgery, my doctors better be from an amazing medical school. Along those same lines ? the ones that let us semi-confidently put our lives in the hands of complete strangers ? my representatives in the American government should have solid training in how to run a country.
When I look at my less-than-stellar GPA and think back to all the late nights I spent struggling through my Math 10A homework, I know I am nowhere near qualified for a top government position. Yet.
In spite of this, I am not at all disheartened. Thanks to my ECON101 course, I believe in a little thing called comparative advantage; some people are better at running a country, while others were meant to flip burgers.
