Tuesday, March 22, 2016

-The Caucus Mass-




This evening's experience at the Republican caucus was both enlightening and terrifying. I arrived 15 minutes before 7pm and the masses began to form around different parts of the tiny elementary school. My first observation was how many people of all walks of life were there, but especially students! I overheard a lot of them saying, "what's going on?" or, "what does this even mean?" It took at least 30 minutes to find the right line and then another 15 to get my ballot. You could tell that the true decorum of the event was taking all the staff by surprise because there were way more people than they expected to show up.



Like Adrian mentioned in his post, the voting process in which they selected candidates was really hard to follow and there wasn't much explanation given. The situation itself was very interesting though because there were a select few people picked from the crowd that had one minute to represent themselves and hopefully get elected as delegates. The difference between the delegates was very evident in how well they used their one minute. Hannah, one of the aspiring delegates, talked very specifically about the things that she stood for, some of them being limited government, conservative rights and student loan issues. All of these points seemed to hit home for majority of the crowd because most of the audience members were students.

In relation to my topic, I really felt like a small sheep in a giant chaotic herd kind of like how we are online. There wasn't much opportunity for this little sheep (me) to share anything about what I felt, and the people standing next to me weren't really up for conversation. My argument is based on how social media strips away at our identity because of the mass culture that it creates, and I think I experienced what that physically would feel like this evening. Even though I'm sure we were all there for a good purpose in performing our civil duties, I felt that my personal beliefs and identity, as well as many others, were easily drowned out because of the unorganized mass we found ourselves in.




3 comments:

  1. I think one effect of our current age is that we almost have too much information available to us. Sometimes, someone who can bullet-point their views into one minute holds a great advantage.

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  2. It's funny how we go to the caucus to feel "heard" when in reality we feel like sheep. However I have a feeling the next time we go we will behave differently. It takes a little experience to shake off the nerves.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's funny how we go to the caucus to feel "heard" when in reality we feel like sheep. However I have a feeling the next time we go we will behave differently. It takes a little experience to shake off the nerves.

    ReplyDelete