After a difficult review process, the Politics Committee and Houston Branch are proud to announce the winners of the 2020 Politics Essay Contest.
- Grand Champion: Vincent Chen, “Postmodern Contest and Deconstructive Society”
- Runner-up: Cindy Du, “Why Teenage Civic Engagement Determines the Future of Our Nation”
- Honorable Mention: Victoria Zhang, “Engaging the Youth of Today”
To all participants, thank you for submitting your work! We were floored by the skill and expertise displayed by each submission, and it was difficult to select the top three out of a talented field. In recognition of outstanding work, the Grand Champion will receive a $100 cash prize while the 2nd and 3rd place winners will each be awarded $50. The Politics Committee is also excited to publish the winning essay, “Postmodern Contest and Deconstructive Society”, a truly impressive work for a writer at such a young age.
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We are living in a magical realist society filled with absurdity and ridiculousness. Politics, once a sublime concept, was deconstructed as a joke in the postmodern context. For example, most political news in our country can be seen as entertainment news: an animal lover rushed into a KFC to liberate the chickens; environmentalists gathered under a teenager’s lead, declaring the only way to save the planet is organizing students’ strikes (a wonderful reason for truancy!); the conservatives were as classic as their political believes—they wanted to build a Great Wall like Hadrian and Qin Shi Huang in ancient times.
Although these examples may seem very different, they are all examples of uninformed, mass political actions. Teenagers are especially susceptible to the seductions of this anti-intellectual approach. They are drawn to political movements that appeal to them emotionally, but these youth movements are ineffective and absurd because of the teens’ lack of political knowledge. Since our nation is a democracy, as the Founding Fathers created her, we should actively play our role as citizens improving our motherland. It is crucial for all teenagers to test out political action before gaining the right to vote and run for office.
Politics is important to teenagers, and our way of engaging in politics is especially important. As teenagers, we should admit our ignorance and study deeply about serious political topics. Careerists declare they can solve all problems transforming abstruse problems into simple sentences straight enough for the people lazy to think. Facing a crisis, schemers always give the mass a clear target because it is essay to understand: Stalin blamed on the bourgeoise; Hitler blamed on the Jews; our president blamed on the Chinese- and people believe that! This is the soreness of democracy: politics is only the elites’ game and others are manipulated as puppets. We, citizens of the United States, are responsible for making sure our political decisions are sophisticated and rational. We are required to hold our individual thoughts in an age when media surrounds us. We should view everything critically and completely. The only way to develop individual thinking is by studying classic texts about politics by knowledgeable authors and building personal political belief systems.
Teenagers should get involved in politics by reading books instead of protesting on the street. It is very exciting to fight for what we believe, but we should understand what we are fighting for. Engaging in politics in a postmodern time only plays a role as emotional catharsis. In other words, people protest because they are not satisfied. Unlike a riot, a social movement with a clear theory driving it can be called a revolution: break the old and create the new. We should not think of engaging in politics as throwing rocks at the cops. We should not break down the existing order if we do not have a better one (unless you are an anarchist and you know exactly what you are doing). Teenagers should read Leviathan, The Social Contract, Common Sense, Das Kapital and the U.S. Constitution instead of shouting “How dare you!”
We lose our democracy if we lose the ability to think deeply about politics; we lose our freedom if we lose individual thinking and only accept simple slogans. Just imagine a Feminist know neither Elizabeth Cady Stanton nor Simone de Beauvoir inciting hatred to male; a Communist know neither theory of surplus value nor historical materialism inciting hatred to the wealthy. Without basic political knowledge, we can only be what Gustave Le Bon called “The Crowd,” those simpletons who cannot affect history positively.