I was shopping at the flag ship Macy’s today, and I realized there were dramatic parallels to modern politics. In my shopping experience, spanning 9 floors and 2 buildings across approximately 4 square city blocks, there are thousands of options and endless variety of clothes, shoes, and price ranges upon which to make value judgements.
Now value judgments are subjective things. What’s important to you, when is it important, and what’s not important or more important by comparison. Sure I can get that leather jacket and skirt for 75% off, but it’s still over $100 and i’m not that crazy about it! Do I need a leather jacket, or do I need to look good for bosses or colleagues? Am I just putting on a show for other people who are typically more concerned with how they look and not at all how I look? Is what is impressive to me the same thing as what’s impressive to them, and does it really matter in the long run?
Now all these questions may have intrinsic validity, but they lack a certain… perspective, rendering them somewhat… irrelevant. It occurred to me as I wandered the endless racks; the same can be said for the recent Republican Presidential debates. I recalled Al Madrigal’s comments on the Daily show regarding the Tea Party’s seemingly unattainable expectations. “No candidate, living, dead, or fictional could ever or would ever satisfy these people.” The Tea Party in general does not seem to be able to be pleased. In my opinion, they know too much. Or at least, they have TONS and TONS of information. TONS of background data, countless news hours telling them what they think is good or bad, endless feeds of relevant and irrelevant data to parse, and I gotta say - most Tea Partiers are not members of the computing generation.
But just like me, we have too many choices and too many things are important; in my case, the issues are style (which is subjective!!), utility (can i wear it everyday/ dress it up/down), and price (can I afford it?). In the Tea Party’s case, they have also have a lot of really subjective concerns, such as; concern about how many children a candidate has, and not so concerned about how the country is going to give a meaningful, quality education deserved by everyone’s kids.
The problem is that both the Tea Party and I are being told what’s good for us, and not making a thorough examination of what really is important to us. Looking at our own values and why these things are important to us means we might have to change our minds or adjust to something new. The Tea Party and I are both being manipulated to conform and not to challenge the status quo through our fears of the future and of the unknown. Fear of judgment, accountability, and of change.
I have a problem with ruffles; I think they look silly and don’t serve any kind of purpose other than to make my neck look like it’s drooling fabric. The Tea Party has a problem with gays; they think the very existence of gay people will threaten the things that are important to them, like their families and the proliferation of the species. Anyone with any kind of experience with actual gay people and not televised stereotypes, would find that gay people are just people. I’m not sure how I’m going to get over my fear of ruffles, but I do agree that it is just as trivially maladaptive as disliking gays. I don’t, however, object to the existence of ruffles. You work it, girl.
My point is this; we have too damn much knowledge and not enough of knowing-what-to-do-with-it. Now I can only enact change in my own microcosm. I hope to do this by being true to what is important to me on a very sincere and basic level. I have to allow myself to question my own motives and change them to reflect my values. Believing in my own resolve I hope would become easier, because I will know that I don’t just do as I’m told, I trust that i’ve evaluated myself and my values, they will be stronger to me . So I don’t shop hot pink Jessica Simpson tops or Karl Lagerfeld for various reasons, but I hope that the Tea Party will start making inroads to their own psyches before Rick Perry has us wearing straight-jackets on the streets.
