photos by MTV at the 2015 VMA's.
It's been a month since Kanye's bizzare announcement about his intentions to run for president in 2020 at the VMAs. Many have shrugged it off as a joke, but not without a large slew of memes and mockery.
Many have speculated whether Kanye was being serious or if he was playing a joke again. He didn't necesarily help the case that he was serious when he said that "if [he] wins, everybody gets Yeezy's," which are priced at give or take $200 a pair.
But an article released by TIME two days ago reveals that Kim Kardashian West and her spouse are quite serious about the campaign.
Here at The Panoptic Diorama, we entertain the idea of giving the people a voice. Kanye West can do just that if elected president.
Although it seems as though Kanye’s campaign has not yet gained credibility, his ideals and potential policies have been evident for over ten years now. Kanye West should be viewed as a viable candidate because he will promote creativity, spend political capital on equality and rights, and raise self-esteem in the youth.
Kanye will promote creativity across America because he recognizes the need for it.
There's no question that Kanye is an artist in the truest sense of the word; he is a world renowned artist, not only as a rapper, but as a producer and a designer. He received his doctorate this year from the The Art Institute of Chicago, one of the most prestigious art universities in the world. He expresses himself through his art and craft and he recognizes how “sometimes like there’s no good ideas,” how “no real ideas and nothing sincere is left,” how “everything has been so homogenized,” and how “it’s all big business and it’s no creativity."
In more ways than one, what he says is true. He said himself that music on the radio has become so homogenized that "that just ain't where [he] wants to be no more." Most songs today are about the same things or sound the same. One glaring example I have in my mind is how similar the two hits "Brave" by Sara Bareilles and "Roar" by Katy Perry are.
Kanye said himself that he “[doesn’t] care about [his] name as much as [he] cares about [his] ideas” (West). Kanye’s art has always been viewed as intriguing and unique even when under heavy criticism, like the Yeezus album or his Yeezy Season clothing line.
Over the past decade or so, the government has cut more and more funding from creative courses in order to make kids focus on math and reading courses. By doing so, the government is obliterating the creative potential in the youth by removing these expressive opportunities at a young age. Creativity is absolutely essential to humankind; it directly correlates with innovation, which means without it there wouldn’t be such things as computers, music, instruments, or even electricity. Without implementing thought-provoking courses into young children’s schedules, kids will have missed out on training their minds during a critical period.
Incorporating creativity into everyday learning comes with two main benefits: researchers have found that “sustained learning in music and theater correlates strongly with higher achievement in both math and reading” (Americans for the Arts), and schools that participate in the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education have “made huge strides in closing the gap between high- and low-income students’ academic achievement” (Catterall). The music and art courses open a multitude of career perusals at a young age.
Since Kanye West recognizes how the status quo education system destroys creativity, he willspend political capital on increasing funding to better the level of creativity.
Like many others, Kanye West was a man working tirelessly just to attain success.
There's one difference between his path and the path that many other Americans with the same dream take: Kanye is black.
Kanye faced many hardships to get to the point where he is today mainly due to his ethnicity. He was shut down many times along the development of his fashion line generally because the powerhouses of the field believed that his ethnicity disabled him from creating impactful art. Obviously, this was incredibly incorrect because he created the top-selling brands. Kanye understands that all minorities, like him, share similar impediments, regardless of field. He has ranted many times about how the status quo views on different ethnicities are largely invalid, including the infamous "George Bush doesn't care about black people" rant.
The racial tensions between racial minorities-especially African-Americans-and racial majorities are very high right now, due to continuous and non-stop police brutality with events involving Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, and Dylann Roof to name a few. Obama’s term is almost up without a new agenda in this regard being passed, and with Trump (a known racist) currently leading in the polls for the 2016 election, it is hard to believe that a significant amount of political capital will be spent on the betterment of racial tensions. If someone doesn’t provide an impetus for the current direction, racial tensions will get worse and worse up to a point where it will be intolerable. This is bad because this structural violence due to racial unjustness can eventually lead to rioting and large-scale war. We have seen many riots in Ferguson and Baltimore. Imagine if racism isn't stopped soon; it could lead to a civil war between ethnicities.
Kanye’s probable running mate, Taylor Swift, is a very well-known feminist. She promotes good ideals like how feminism doesn’t necessarily translate to “picketing against the opposite sex” (Swift), but how it means the battle for equality and not dominance. Feminism has been a topic of discussion for many years now and despite all the protests and calls for action, not much work has been done. By electing the combination of Kanye West and Taylor Swift, a lot of political capital would be spent on the betterment of equality in America; the campaign would be the catalyst in achieving what has been impossible all these years. By doing this, we prevent structural violence across our nation and promote the overall idea of peace.
photos taken from the Kanye West interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live on October 10, 2013
The biggest problem today with the age of technology and globalization is the diffusion of brands. Kanye stated in his speech that he doesn’t want to “raise our kids with brands” or “raise our kids with low self-esteem." Although the spread of these brands is not entirely bad, “they would like us to think that [people] are free, but [people are] completely controlled. [People are] controlled by a Nike sign, [people are] controlled by peer pressure."
We, the younger generation have a proclivity to purchase clothing we usually have to stretch our pockets to afford just for the brand; we spend upwards of $200 for a new pair of Nikes, even though we can buy those Skechers for $100 that are just as good.
Why? Just to fit in?
These brands create the idea that they are a necessity for your social standing. This sort of marketing carries a capitalist mindset, which is bad because it perceives that since it is profit-driven, quantity outweighs quality. This leads to the degradation of art, which links back into the first reason; degradation of art leads to loss in creativity. Other brands like Calvin Klein and Victoria’s Secret promote the idea of a “perfect body,” which causes the rise of low self-esteem in the youth. Low self-esteem is bad because kids feel that they are not good enough because of the way they look, and this closes windows for them Kanye doesn’t “care about stipulation of brands or names; [he’s] just talking about simplifying things."
By electing Kanye into office, the brands that follow the capitalist model will be eliminated and replaced with the strategies of Kanye’s, which values quality.
Kanye West’s campaign will solve for the current loss in creativity by increasing funding, will better the equality between minorities & majorities and males & females, and will boost morale of the youth by limiting the production of capitalist brands. The current teens will be eligible to cast their first presidential vote in 2020, and since they are familiar with the hardships teens face, they should consider Kanye’s campaign as a legitimate one.
Kanye’s campaign may not just be the one people want, but one that the people need.
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