Snow day impulse buys at B&N lead to political soul-searching
- February 16th, 2010
- By Thomas Olaes
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I woke up today at 6AM, went to work at 9:30AM, and found out at about 10:10 that they closed the base. In the timeless words of Homer, “Woohoo!” Homer Simpson, not Homer of Greek literary renown.
I drove around today, and via a circuitous route I wound up at Barnes & Noble next to the mall next to my apartment. I browsed around for a book that I eventually found out was just released today (The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr by Ken Gormley). I instead bought two books that I thought might be interesting to read based on the reviews on the back of the books… I know, not very good indicators, but indicators that served the purpose well enough of enticing me to spend money to read what they have to say. They are Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff, and Have You Seen My Country Lately? by Jerry Doyle. The former written by a UC Berkeley Cognitive Linguistics professor, and the latter by a conservative radio talk show host… trust me when I say that I try, in my own quite possibly misguided ways, to look at truly fair resources for reading material, and when I can’t find it I try to balance out what I hear so that I get more than one side of a story.
Anyway, I got into Moral Politics, and after getting through the first chapter I put the book down and started thinking about my own political aspirations. I’ve toyed with the thought of running for office some day–most likely when I retire from my current office in 15-20 years. It’s been in my head for a few years now, and I’ve told it to Law and my Dad. Since I commissioned, I’ve gotten to be involved in stuff that has required interaction with Congress–I’ve never done anything that I could consider “interacting with C0ngress”. I’ve never even thought that in my lifetime I’d be doing something that could be considered “interacting with Congress”, let alone doing something now. Suffice it to say, I’ve realized in this last year that I’m alot closer to Washington than I previously thought. I also realized this last year that the real power apparently is in the Legislative branch of our Government. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Laws are made in Congress, both at the Federal and State levels. Anyway, I’ve narrowed down that if I run for office, nationally I want to be a Congressional representative in either the House or Senate. Local government, I wouldn’t mind running for State congress or even mayor of a town. As I understand it, these are full-time obligations but not full-time jobs… so definitely I would have to have a source of income other than being in the government.
Blah blah. Anyway, I was thinking I should, at some point, start keeping a page of what my platform stances are on today’s issues. I feel I need to declare as soon as possible what my stances are, as that’s something I want to get on record as early as possible so that if I run for office in the future, I’ll have something to point to. As my views change, so will the page, with narrative explaining why that view changed.
If my speech betrays a politically naive person, consider this–by education, I’m an engineer, and as a private person I tend not to research things I don’t have much interest in. My knowledge of things not related to engineering is severely lacking but ask me about possibilities and I’ll talk all day about them. I’m ultimately not interested in what we can’t do, but what we could do–we as a city, a state, a country, and a human community. As each day comes and goes and I learn a little bit more about my world and my society, and at some point I realized that to effect the greatest good I’ll have to do something that will test the limits of my capacity to make things happen. I think that working in the Legislative branch will test these limits, while at the same time I can provide the input that I want to give to the leaders of our Nation (or perhaps become one?). There’s alot I want to say, and I don’t type or speak fast enough to communicate everything that’s whizzing around in my head.
Anyway, more on this later. I’m at a B&N, it’s 8:30PM (close to my bed time), snow is still coming down, and I have to eat something still.
-TJ