we should be encouraging more elected officials to knit
an argument in favor of more knitting in politics
maybe this is too niche, maybe i built my fyp brick by brick, because yesterday a slurry of videos of a person being incredibly upset and doubling down on being offended by aoc posting a video of herself knitting when she (aoc) should be “saving us from fascism” and “doing her job” and that they didn’t want their members of congress picking up more hobbies.
(i don’t want people to gang up on the creator in question so i’m not linking the video, and using gender neutral pronouns bc i didn’t see any on their profile, please be nice to strangers on the internet!!!!)
to get the nuance out of the way:
1. i am not stanning aoc or any other elected official. there are in fact, fair criticisms of aoc, and of every elected official. none of them are perfect.
i am incredibly biased in favor of knitting in case that wasn’t already abundantly obvious.
now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way - here’s my case for more members of congress learning how to knit, not less.
first of all, i think the very premise of the argument that knitting is a distraction from aoc doing her job is flawed. but let’s pretend it isn’t - like yeah sure maybe we don’t want that from aoc but there’s a lot of elected officials i wouldn’t necessarily be that mad about being distracted from their duties. idk, maybe we need to be sending a woobles kit (crochet, not knitting i know!) to the white house to slow down some of the ridiculous executive orders we’ve been seeing recently, idk just a thought.
how is the premise flawed? how could knitting actually be making aoc and other elected officials better at her job?
glad you asked!
knitting can help relieve stress - being a member of congress or an elected official at any level is stressful, and it’s a healthy way to unwind and cope with that stress
knitting is good for your brain in various other ways, and especially considering the age of the average elected official is older, it can them can help improve cognitive function, memory, and reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment
personally, i find knitting helps me stay present, focused, and pay attention - so even if aoc was knitting on the house floor, i don’t think that would be a problem. in fact, there’s evidence beyond my own personal experience that knitting can help people focus on meetings.
outside of it potentially making our elected officials better at their jobs, there is other benefits to encouraging government officials to pick up knitting
it would stimulate the economy. they would spend money at local craft stores to build their yarn stashes, and alternatives to the craft store joann’s other than hobby lobby would have to emerge to satisfy the democratic delegation’s need for yarn.
it would give them a deeper understanding of the labor of fashion, maybe they would pass more legislation to mitigate the negative impacts of the fast fashion industry after understanding what goes into making their wardrobe.
the sweaters would be iconic - political fashion would become so much more interings and seeing what they knit on c-span while they spar over policy would make keeping up with what’s happening in politics so much more interesting.
now that i’ve made my case - i’m curious what y’all think? tell me below!