Prof. Rojecki - The Tea Party & the Politics of Insecurity

The lecture I watched was Professor Rojecki's, The  Tea Party & the Politics of Insecurity. This lecture covered numerous interesting topics that I, for one, have never really pondered about. In my analysis of the lecture I'll start with what was said during the beginning of the lecture all the way through the end.

One of the first things mentioned in the lecture was about how our younger generation does not really pay much attention to what's going on in today's politics. Prof. Rojecki states that if we feel insecure about our security in the work force, it's because we merely weren't paying attention when the government was "screwing up". I can completely agree agree with this statement. It's slightly embarrassing, but I admit to being one of those people who never really payed attention to what was going on in politics. I always thought that none of what was going on would affect me and it would all get resolved before I even started thinking about my career. I was obviously dead wrong. It's very important to keep up with today's news not only because we should know about the world we live in, but because it foreshadows our future. 

Our political discourse is basically just the way we think about things. This corresponds with what we learned in lecture about how much of how we communicate are cultural and societal. On Prof. Rojecki's slide it explained how our beliefs and values arise in a time of crisis. The rest of the time we don't even really know we have these specific beliefs. Naturally, in politics, beliefs and values play a huge role in our government's decision making. This may or may not be a good thing. We also learned in lecture about how these values and beliefs vary upon cultures. Therefore, we must find some kind of 'mean' (like the Golden Mean) to satisfy the needs of people with opposite beliefs. This is hard to do because the ones in power do not really care about the needs of other's except themselves.

The majority of Prof. Rojecki's lecture focused on the loss of American jobs, our economy, how it got this way, and why it continues to stay this way. First off, the unemployment rate has drastically decreased in the past few years - almost 3M jobs lost. One reason being because a lot of our "cool" products such as, Apple products, are made abroad. Sure, it's cheaper to have it made elsewhere, but the latter effects are not worth the "savings". This leads us in the talk of the Tea Party. Basically, China made tons of money and loaned it to America for property loans, etc. The problem with this is, we gave these loans to people who in no way, shape, or form could pay the money back. It sounds completely idiotic, but this is why our country is in so much debt.

I think the people who make decisions for our country are here unintentionally. I think we really 'snoozed' during the election process. Of course the hype of Obama's promise caused us to hope for a better future. Once that promise wasn't played out, we instantly lost interest. That's where we went wrong. The question is, how do we get the people in favor of the Tea Party out of office. On another note, the media has changed the way we learn about today's news. Now-a-days, there are various ways to connect with today's world. The fact that there's so many news channels creates much diversity and different beliefs. Plus, people tend to watch whatever news favors their beliefs. Basically, no one is REALLY getting news because all they do is tell their viewer exactly what they want to hear. This ties in the with concept of utilitarianism. 

Part of the reason nothing is getting better is because the people in favor of the Tea Party are the ones in office. Although the supporters are not the minorities, the middle aged white male is. It's hard to form a change when these people do not care about others. They're not concerned with what is going to happen to younger generations. The worst of it all is the younger generations are not informed and will continue to be if they don't re-assess their priorities.