For those who don’t know, myself and four other seniors are this year’s Link Crew commissioners, the student advisors of the Link Crew Club. It’s a hard thing sometimes, being part of Link Crew leadership.
I mean, trying to keep tabs on fundraisers, events, and meetings in a club with over 80 members can be a real challenge, especially when it comes to getting those members to participate.
Not everyone sees eye to eye all the time; with that many people involved, there comes a wide array of viewpoints and reasons for being part of the club, be it genuinely wanting to be involved in leadership, or because they think it makes them look good to colleges.
I like to imagine that I can relate, a little bit, to how I guess current Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson must be feeling as he sits in his office in Washington DC.
To be clear, I’m not for a moment suggesting that my job as Link Crew commissioner at a public high school in Pennsylvania comes anywhere close to the importance of the Speaker of the House, but I feel that Johnson and I face problems that are often surprisingly similar in nature.
Let’s talk about our members; link leaders in my case, Representatives in his. It’s sometimes hard in a club like Link Crew to ensure that everybody who’s a part of it wants to be there for the right reasons. We’re faced with a difficult challenge; make sure that every leader is committed to the fundamental goals of the organization, whilst still having enough members to accomplish the work we set out to do. As we try to balance this, we inevitably end up with a few members who simply aren’t as committed to club activities as others.
In a high school club context, this tends to work out okay, as we usually have enough members to cover our bases, and the stakes are never really that high.
Our members don’t have to be uber-committed; honestly, we know full well that half of the people in the club don’t actually care about it that much, simply joining for college applications, and for the most part, this isn’t too much of a problem.
National legislation is another question altogether; these people are quite literally the most powerful in the country, so for Johnson to be running into a similar problem in the House is more than concerning.
It’s vital that we ensure that those that we elect as Representatives are genuinely there for the right reasons, and worryingly, this seems to increasingly be not the case.
There are members who don’t show up, members who have lied about their identity to get elected, members who waste time proposing frivolous bills to prove moot points rather than getting work done. When you have people like George Santos, who’ve created completely false identities to run, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s spent her time in office cussing out her fellow Republicans on the debate floor, in power, something needs to change.
In an already deeply divided political landscape, it’s becoming apparent that there are numerous members of the House who aren’t there to do good by the people of America, instead using their platform to further their own ambitions through various political stunts.
Refusing to confirm a Speaker of the House, impeaching that same Speaker eight months later, multiple near government shutdowns; with so much showboating, it’s no wonder that this session of the House is on course to be one of the most unproductive of the 21st century, with only 31 bills passed in its over year-long tenure.
If I, or any other individual members, slack off our Link Crew work, the chances of something catastrophic happening are relatively slim. We’re a high school club, and at the end of the day, the world will not end if we don’t get something done.
But for elected officials, whose decisions impact the lives of millions of Americans, to act so childishly whilst wielding such extraordinary levels of power is something that cannot, and should not, be excused.
These people must get their act together; they have to realize the enormous weight that their actions, words, and choices carry, and begin acting in a way that genuinely reflects this enormity.
They’re not in high school anymore.