As an incoming senior and proud member of the class of 2013, an active participant in the International Baccalaureate program, and vice-president and founder of my school’s Future Job Creators of America organization, I’m proud to endorse Paul Ryan for vice president. In a country, and a high school, where the freaks and druggies and girls and ESL kids are taking over and trying to force their collectivist views on strong individuals like myself, it’s important for us to stand up and say “No! Your entrenched views on what it means to be ‘cool’ or ‘nice’ are, in fact, holding the strong ones back. And one day people like me, the backbone of the school, are going to stop cleaning up after your messes, just like in Atlas Shrugged, and we won’t be there to take the minutes at Japanese Club anymore.”
Paul Ryan knows what I mean, because he’s an Objectivist just like me. He’s read Ayn Rand and he’s taken her lessons to heart. Not just anyone can be a leader, a job creator, and a master of the world; only the chosen, talented few like me and Ryan, and my dad, who is an orthodontist. It’s very simple: Follow the rules and work hard and you’ll be successful. Just look at me! I have everything I want: I live in a nice subdivision, with a fabulous collection of boat shoes (Look ma, no socks!), and a 2013 Saab 9-3X Griffin that I paid for half of myself (my parents generously kicked in the rest of the money as a reward for good grades). Sure, there have been things I’ve wanted and couldn’t get, but I’ve never once asked for a handout. Today, I don’t fit in because the supposedly cool kids making fun of my pleated khakis and lanyards are so stupid and weak, but tomorrow, they’ll be begging me for help they haven’t earned and don’t deserve.
I understand Paul Ryan, and I think that he will understand me when we meet at the fundraiser my dad’s friend Jack is having at his house. We both are big fans of Rage Against The Machine (just the music, lol), do the same workout program, and understand what it means to compete in the free market, having both worked at McDonalds. When my manager told me I didn’t have the “social skills” to work the counter, I took it as a compliment — whatever is good enough for our nation’s next vice president is good enough for me. I prefer to work behind the scenes, anyway — my coworkers think it’s funny to stuff chicken nuggets down my pants whenever I have to explain to a customer that “No, we’re not allowed to accept food stamps and maybe you should do some hard work for once in your life instead of relying on Big Brother.” It’s an attitude that Ryan and I both picked up from our biological parents (who earned everything they have), our adopted parents (Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman — who would make a ravishing couple, if I may), and the summer we spent earning a paycheck: there are takers and there are makers.
It came as no surprise that my school’s elite liberal media, The Oakridge Advocate, threw in their support behind Obama. They just walk through their lives in a marijuana haze, hipper than thou, reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead and listening to LSD Soundsystem. They don’t understand how serious the future of our country is. They’re all too caught up in the clothes they’re wearing and having sex to give a darn about fiscal responsibility. One time, Trish Dimartino, the assistant editor of the paper, made fun of me for the music on my iPod, so you can imagine how it felt to have my tastes confirmed during Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican convention: AC/DC to Led Zeppelin, the music of our nation’s greatest heroes. There’s no shame in that. And Paul Ryan understands it. Just like us (and I think you know who I’m talking about here), Paul Ryan lets culture run its course through the smooth, acidic gnarls of popular understanding before it’s digested enough for him to consume. We like our revolutionaries dead, and we prefer their music to their lyrics.
It’s for all of these reasons that I throw my support in with Ryan. Sure, I may not be able to vote like other seniors (I skipped kindergarten), and maybe I’ll try weed or start having sex in college if I get a chance, but for now I’m happy with who I am. Paul Ryan seems like a bespoke candidate for a kid like me: envious of others, unsure of himself, nightmarishly narcissistic, disdainful of culture, willing to distort facts in order to serve the greater good, uncomfortable around minorities, and flailing wildly at a constantly changing culture that I’m too bitter to try to understand. He’s the perfect candidate for gifted seniors like me around the nation, whatever their age. I’m even thinking about taking up hunting, just to be a better patriot like Paul Ryan.
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