The Way Things Are

I assume I'm not going to be the only person blogging or talking about the Newtown massacre. What I really want to talk about is, where do we go from here? How do we prevent an event like this from happening again?


Since the founding of this country there have been those who are practically married to their guns. They love and respect the 2nd Amendment, and will defend it at all costs. Few nations come close to America in terms of their relationship with guns. We have rallies, conventions, magazines (the reading kind), and TV shows dedicated to these weapons. But can America keep its gun culture after being struck by tragedy after tragedy?

36 states allow citizens to carry concealed guns. In other words, you are allowed to bring a gun into public and have nobody know that you have it. When the constitution was written, handguns hadn't been invented yet. The only guns were rifles that took a rather long time to reload. Would the Founding Fathers really have wanted people to carry hand-sized guns that fired six times more bullets than the rifles of their time?

This is a rifle that can be legally bought. Semi-automatic with a scope and silencer. Great for killing deer, right? 

Those who support the 2nd Amendment on all fronts state that it is an American obligation to obey the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But wasn't slavery mapped out in the constitution? Where would our country be now if everybody said, "Well the Fathers wanted slavery, who are we to change it?"


I propose a vast reworking of the 2nd Amendment. I would make it so that only the mentally fit could buy guns, which would only be hunting rifles and handguns. Semi-automatic rifles serve NO purpose other than for efficient killing. How would you change laws so that horrible events like the one at Newtown never happen again?

Toys They Will Never Play With

Over the last week, our class has discussed the power of modern-day slavery. I found a very interesting photo album online, in which a photographer visited five toy factories in China. The album can be found at this link:
http://imgur.com/a/wrIds

According to the CCCLA, over 75 percent of the world's toys are made in China. This is most likely because of how cheap labor is in China. Labor is cheap because of the poor quality of life given to the workers. Here's one of the photos I found especially striking:


Here, two workers are both sleeping at their work station. While the photo itself has no description, I would assume that they are sleeping because of the long hours that they are forced to work, as we discussed in class. A more general observation is that almost all of the people in this photo album are women. There was only one man that I saw in the entire album. I correlate this to how blacks were treated in the workplace after slavery ended. Women have always been unfairly treated in the workplace, and I think these types of jobs mostly go to women because the factory managers know women can be easily manipulated, especially in a place like China.  Here's another interesting image:

I find that the juxtaposition of the toys to the workers expresses the ignorance most Americans have when buying these toys. Spongebob and Patrick look quite innocent; they are made up of bright, neat plastic and have silly faces. A kid looking at this toy in America wouldn't suspect that it was made by overworked Chinese wage slaves, with masks and hairnets to protect them from chemicals, who are forced to work so long that they sleep where they work.

I though the photographer made an excellent choice to photograph toy factories. Toys look incredibly innocent when in American stores, but these photographs give them a whole new perspective. I recommend you look at all of the other pictures in the album. What other products have this kind of labor that consumers are largely blind to?

Does Hollywood Have an Obligation?

We've read some pretty gruesome accounts of people's lives in American Studies. Chris McCandless starved to death in Into The Wild. Fredrick Douglass and his comrades were beaten mercilessly in his autobiography. I though about what moments over this last year I was challenged the same way I was challenged with these books. After some brief thinking, I couldn't think of any.

I think this could have been one of the most boring years for movies in my whole life. There were exactly two movies I enjoyed in theaters: "The Comedy", and "Beasts of the Southern Wild", both independent films. Every other movie I saw was incredibly boring for the same reason: they were all too nice. All of the tension in this year's movies seemed forced, like in the "historical thriller" movie Argo, where despite all of the seemingly stressful situations, the protagonists succeed without a single scratch on them. Abrasiveness has been weeded out of Blockbuster movies, apparently because it doesn't sell. Movies have become amusement park rides, as oppose to works of art that challenge the viewer.

After I saw Beasts of the Southern Wild with my family my mom said she didn't like the movie because "the dad was so mean to the daughter". For anybody who has seen the movie, the relation between the father and daughter is an incredibly complex and emotional one, which  represents the path to adulthood of the daughter. It's the roughest and hardest to understand moments of our histories that shape us the most, and historians need to understand this to understand America. The horrible moments in America's history should be taught as a lesson so that we can mature as a country. Here is a trailer for the movie:

I think the softness Hollywood is applying to its movies is similar to how some textbooks overly simplify and glorify the USA's history. "Oh, during World War 2 we lent a helping hand to the powers of good and wiped out those darn Nazis!" Well, we also created the most feared weapon in history and used it on two separate Japanese cities, causing unprecedented death and destruction. Is that scene going to be put in Michael Bay's sequel to Pearl Harbor? In the past, Cowboy vs. Indians movies were all the rage. To my knowledge, none of them showed the displaced natives along the Trail of Tears. Aren't these moments in history key to understanding how America became what it is today?

Do you think Hollywood has gotten too loose with making their stories compelling? Is it the duty of Hollywood to show truth and meaning in their movies, or should people have to look elsewhere for compelling stories?

Black Friday: A Dark Day

I am one lucky guy. My birthday is November 22nd, which means that my birthday is always around one of the best days of the year to buy gifts: Black Friday. A day infamous for "door busters" which are sales that are so ridiculous that people will "bust down the doors" of a store to take advantage of them. If I was an alien coming to Earth on Black Friday, I would be horrified at the barbaric rituals before me. In 2008 a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death as 2,000 people tried to break into the Wal Mart for the sales. That may be the most extreme case, but look at this one of many riots formed outside of a store on Black Friday:

Is this the kind of behavior we promote with this "holiday"? The phrase "doorbusters" clearly implies that this kind of behavior is expected at these stores. I think fighting others for material goods is disgraceful to our society. America is founded on the fact we all have the right to Life, Liberty , and the Pursuit of Happiness. Pitting shoppers against each other for buying a cell phone goes against this idea, as the sale could probably have been organized in such a way that this sort of riot would never have happened.

How do you think Black Friday could become less barbaric? I think online sales are the future, since the only fighting is for who gets on the server for the store's website. Should Black Friday even be respected by Americans? Let me knoooooow!

Graphic Advertisements are OK?

Wherever you look, Chicago is littered with advertisements. Whether they are on benches, billboards, or pieces of paper rolling on the ground, advertisements are made to attract our attention. If I'm not mistaken, the word is a derivative of the latin words "ad" and "verto" which when put together mean "to turn towards".  One issue that comes up is whether advertisements oppress the speech and thought of those that observe them. For instance:

This ad won an award from the Catholic Mass Media Awards in the Philippines. It is a print ad which shows a baby nailed to a board as if he was Jesus, showing that any abortion you have could have been Jesus. It is a very off-putting ad, especially from the blood on the child's arm. Would an ad like this be allowed in the United States? They are expressing the freedom of speech, after all, and there isn't anything that would cause violence from this picture. A similar example of an ad like this was shown in the US as a video. It was banned on Youtube, however it was constitutional for the images of late-term aborted fetuses to be aired on TV.

I think that advertisements like this may not incur violence or unrest, but they certainly incur unrest in my stomach, and I think that is reason enough that Americans shouldn't have to be subjected to graphic images like this. What do you think?

Preparation, or Conservation

As many know, hurricane Sandy hit last week, and has caused billions and billions of dollars of damage to the east coast. This is the first time I've ever heard anybody use the term "Superstorm" in my life to describe a natural disaster. It surprised me that despite being one of the most developed countries in the world, this natural even caused unprecedented destruction and panic. Many fear of what is to come in terms of natural disasters, which is the subject of an article I read from the New York Times, called "Protecting New York City, Before Next Time". In the article it states:

"...climate experts say, sea levels in the region have not only gradually increased, but are also likely to get higher as time goes by..."

This means that it's only getting easier for places along the coast of the Atlantic ocean like New York City to be flooded in the future. The main reason for water levels rising is thought to be global warming, which many scientists have claimed is preventable. New York City, however, doesn't seem to be trying to prevent high water levels, it's preparing for them.

“Our goal was to design a more resilient city,” Mr. Cassell said. “We may not always be able to keep the water out, so we wanted to improve the edges and the streets of the city to deal with flooding in a more robust way.”

Already, people's plans are turning away from conservation and more towards preparation. So what is the plan to save Manhattan from flood waters?

"ringing Lower Manhattan with a grassy network of land-based parks accompanied by watery patches of wetlands and tidal salt marshes...through a series of breakwater islands made of geo-textile tubes and covered with marine plantings."

While it's an interesting thought to see New York having preventative swamps, I think that the moment we saw Global Warming coming, we should have worked to prevent it, rather than riding it out and paying the price now. Not only will it be expensive to terraform New York, but the idea itself may or may not work. What do you think? Is there still time to cut back gas emissions and pollution so that we don't have to pay the price later?

Born in the USA

As our class was talking about wars throughout the week, I kept on wondering why people from each side would for the most part blindly support their countries. While some nationalism has to do with propaganda and truncating free speech, I think it also has to do with simply being born. A country can bring back memories and emotions to its citizens that were born there, but should it cloud their judgement when criticizing their government? I love America because of our democratic process and the plethora of art we produce, but I have no qualms over criticizing the government. For some, critiquing the government is a sin, since they think it means you don't love your country.  I think that it's the exact opposite. People freely expressing their opinions, positive or negative, is why I love being an American, not because I feel locked here by being born in Illinois. What's more appalling is when people have such a burning passion for their country that they will hurt those from other countries, like we saw during the WW1 and 2 presentations.

One non-war example of this blind patriotism was when Reagan played the song "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen at one of his rallies. Not only did Reagan think it was a patriotic song, but the audience did to, simply because the repeating lyrics were "Born in the USA". Springsteen was furious about this, since his intention was to write a Vietnam protest song, not a 4th of July get-together song.

The lyrics aren't very ambiguous, as long as you listen to them.

Got in a little hometown jam 
So they put a rifle in my hand 
Sent me off to a foreign land 
To go and kill the yellow man 

I think if anybody put thought into listening to this song they would think twice before playing it at a rally. Springsteen realized that simply being born in the USA does not make you blessed or set for life. He pointed out the underbelly of America, and how we forced our young men to go to Vietnam and kill. Is it our duty to love where we came from? I don't think so. But you can voice your opinion in the comments.

Selling an Image

The main goal of a political campaign is to get people to side with you, and eventually vote for you. Political campaigning has been a hot topic ever since Super Pacs started forming. Campaigns inevitably involve one form of advertisement or another, but when does advertising cross the line into the territory of being a sellout? Here is a video of Mitt Romney in Jacksonville Florida:

I have never seen such an awkward encounter in my life. Keep in mind this is a Harvard graduate. When I go outside of the Northshore bubble on the CTA, I don't suddenly start speaking differently because I'm in a different neighborhood. This was 4 years ago, and Romney wasn't the nominee yet, so it was easy to make mistakes. But what about now, only a month before the election? Paul Ryan made a little mistake while campaigning in Ohio. From the New York Times:

       "Afterward, Mr. Ryan stopped with his wife and children at a nearby soup kitchen. The family put on aprons and washed several large pans, though they did not appear to need washing, according to a pool reporter. There also was no one to serve at the soup kitchen, as breakfast had ended."

Here is a picture from the above event:

Why do candidates feel such a strong need to have embarrassing fake photo-ops and say slang which is clearly directed to a certain race or population? I know that the president isn't just in office to make decisions, he's also there to be a symbol for America. But what is the line between representing America and being just a shell that you sell to get votes?  Is it okay to sell an image of themselves for campaigning, even though it doesn't represent who they truly are?

Comparison of Two Debates

As many people know, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama went head to head in Denver this last week for a debate in Denver Colorado. Personally, I was more looking forward to another debate in Denver: Rumble 2012, between the political pundits Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart. I listened to both debates, and my consensus, as well as others' is that the debate between the candidates was boring and void of character, and the pundit battle was lively and entertaining. Here is the pundit debate...

And here is the Romney and Obama debate:

As I watched the presidential debate, a small globule of saliva dripped from my mouth. It was at this point I realized that this was the most boring live TV I had ever watched (even surpassing American Idol). Both candidates were repeating the same things they've said through their whole campaigns. All of their words homogenized into a single-toned rambling about various aspects of government. It's sad to see two aspiring presidents play it safe as millions of the people they will lead watch them. Part of a president's job is to emotionally represent the country. While Ronald Reagan's actual policies are debatable, the cowboy character he brought to the White House caused a boost of optimism in America. I believe America deserves a leader that is full of zeal and emotion. Here is Reagan during a presidential debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi9y5-Vo61w. Although Jimmy Carter's point was well though out and important, the mere humor aspect of when Reagan says "There you go again" totally trumped his point. We had many more of these moments in the Stewart and O'reilly debate. Both candidates spoke with a lot of emotion and humor. Despite the the host constantly asking the audience to quiet down, they often responded to the debaters with laughs and cheers, opposed to the stoic audience of the other debate. We should be seeing more character from President Obama and Romney in the coming debates.

The Safety Of Others

In class we started an interesting discussion on the topic of freedom of speech. The examples that we cited which had limitations on speech were ones that threatened the safety of others. One example was of a person screaming that there was a fire in the movie theater when there actually wasn't. The line between harming the safety of others and not with speech is sometimes hard to distinguish. What if you harm somebody emotionally, without putting their physical self in danger? That situation was played out by the Westboro Baptist Church and the Supreme Court. The Westboro Baptist Church is known for protesting the funerals of soldiers and gay people, since they believe that God hates America and "God Hates Fags"


One father of a soldier had had enough with the Church.When Westboro decided to protest his son's funeral with these signs, Albert Snyder sued them for causing emotional trauma to him and his family. The supreme court decided that the Westboro Baptist Church had the right to protest the funerals, with only one judge opposing the ruling. They declared that even though the language was offensive, it is protected by the first amendment as long as it doesn't put anybody in danger. (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/westboro-baptist-church-w_n_830209.html)

I think that the judges were right in this decision. The signs were the opinion of the Westboro Baptist Church, and they were nonviolently protesting. However, there are certain exceptions to the idea that you can say anything that doesn't put anyone in danger. For instance, high school students can cause huge emotional trauma with some of the things they say. There are many instances of kids who commit suicide because of verbal abuse from fellow classmates. In these cases, the abusers should obviously be punished, since they caused violence with their words. What if the abusee didn't hurt themselves? What if they just lived emotionally damaged lives with newly developed social issues because of their ridicule? What do you think? Should the abusers be able to be sued for emotional damages?

We found a geocache!

On our class's field trip on Wednesday, we traveled to the Osaka Gardens in South Chicago. While some people in the class were looking for a mysterious plaque explaining the origins of the garden, a couple of students had a different mission: to find a geocache. For those who don't know, Geocaching is a modern-day treasure hunting game. You go to a website, find coordinates for a geocache, travel to the coordinates, and begin your hunt.

Other than the play, finding that geocache was the highlight of the field trip for me. The best part of geocaching is that it is %100 user generated content. Geocaching merely started as a website. After that, people from all over the world participated in building and finding geocaches. A dad in Kansas could become a Geocache connosseiur. An accountant at a villiage bank in Northern California could make the most devious geocache known to man. I think that geocaching embodies the American spirit of individualism and opportunity. Every time you find a geocache, there's a log inside the cache where you write the date and your name. As long as that geocache exists, your name will be there, signifying that you accomplished the feat of finding the geocache. Creating a geocache is like an artistic statement; you receive no money for it, yet put it out into the world just so others can see it. It is an embodiment of free speech to place geocaches in the wild. There is also a sense of connection in geocaching. You follow the clues of a cryptic poem by a complete stranger, yet when you go to find the cache, you feel a strange sense of connection to the person who put it there. Then you go online and post a review of the cache, seeing others who also found it and feeling like a part of a community. I hope to see geocaching become an american tradition in the coming years, where families organize outings around a geocache on a nature trail. As a final note, here are some creative caches. Can you think of any good spots?

Me Against The World

In class we've now learned about two different cases of extreme individualism: Chris McCandless and Grizzly Man. Both despised American societal values and cast themselves into the wilderness. But could American values be the driving force that shaped these people into ultra-individualists? I think that the way America promotes individualism and freedom causes people to naturally hate the system. In America, it's encouraged to become a unique person and live life the way you want. At school I always learned to express my opinions, even if they weren't what everyone else believed. It may be a paradox that the way the two people we studied led their lives was in accordance with they way America believes its citizens should behave. Of course, individualism in America is usually not expressed to the extent that McCandless and Tommy expressed it. Most people still have friends who are like themselves, religions that dictate what they do, and some people live in sheltered communities with near identical homes as far as the  eye can see. While these instances of conformity were caused by American culture, I believe that the Constitution, with the line entitling every person to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", resonates with extreme individualists.

Is Deportation Unamerican?

                   Earlier today, I read an article in the New York Times titled, "Divided by Immigration Policy". It was about the new policies the Obama put into place that allowed for illegal immigrants who came here as children to not be deported. The article discussed that while some people qualify for the program, other people don't, and sometimes those two situations find themselves within one family. The article chronicles to situations: a family where a brother qualified for the program but his sister didn't, and two friends where one was eligible and the other wasn't. This relationships are being deteriorated by the harsh immigration laws in the US. Should this be the way our country operates?
                  The poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free", which directly relates to America's policy on immigration. But is this still the case? The siblings in the article fled from Honduras because street gangs had taken over their town. Clearly they need to escape violent conditions, but due to the immigration laws the sister lives her life in fear of being deported. "Before I had a lot of dreams, but now I don't know." She said. "Before I would like to become a teacher...now that I know, it's really hard. Those were just my dreams." While the issue of undocumented workers taking jobs is something that needs to be addresses, it shouldn't be done so in a way where the illegal immigrants feel a horrible backlash from it.
                 My temporary solution would be to create some sort of charity that teaches immigrants basic aspects of American life and the English language. This would allow for the immigrants to learn skills and get jobs while they figure out what they need to do to receive citizenship. Other than that, I have no clear idea that doesn't involve using government money or resources. But what do you think? Should rules be stretched for illegal immigrants to live here, or do they take away too many resources from legal citizens? If the former, how would you change the rules?

The Last Free Place in America

I'm sure many members of our class wondered what life would be like living in a bus in the woods after reading Into The Wild. What food would you eat? Would you miss home? Would you find your inner self in the woods? The artifacts that McCandless left behind give us an idea of how he answered these questions. Throughout the book, McCandless tosses aside arbitrary systems such as government and the job force and moves to a patch of land in Alaska void of human life. Many people in America also struggle with the balance of freedom and control, as well as work and relaxation. McCandless visists a place called Slab City in into the wild, and I wanted to learn more about it. Libertarians believe that America should have as little intervention from government as possible, where as more conservatives and democrats believe that Government should control some facets of life. At Slab City, however, the mere notion of a governing body is completely destroyed. The inhabitants of Slab City refer to their home as "The Last Free Place in America". There are no schools, hospitals, or actual buildings. For a nice five minute summary of the city, the video from Subculture Club creates a pretty picture. At 3:00, two people even mention the inspiration for traveling there was the movie adaptation of Into The Wild!

 Most residents live in small trailers or rickety homemade structures, as shown in Vice's documentation of the society:

 I will choose to focus on this documentation of the city since it is longer and gives some better profiles of the citizens.

The most interesting part of this video is seeing how these people interact with each other. Slab City is like McCandless' vision taken to epic proportions. The people in this city moved there to escape the social stigmas in American society. Taking a line from the introductory video, its "A place where people can simply exist". This, however, doesn't seem to be the case in Vice's take on the city. At 5:00 they profile a man who owns two incredibly poisonous snakes  and discusses how to survive in slab city. He describes that in a desperate situation he would "eat that sunnabitch [his snake]" and "eat that man's butt... because a man's butt has more meat to it". I though this man was definitely deranged when watching him talk, but he did bring up a point. In lawless societies like this, what happens when food or water suddenly runs out? Who will be murdered in the struggle for survival? America may have restrictions on some aspects of life, but one thing that our government makes sure of is having a stable food and water supply. 

Later in the video, some members of Slab City go down to the hot springs, not unlike those in the first part of Into The Wild, to drink some sodas. A nicer view of the society is shown here, just some friends having a good time. The party ends soon, though, when one of the people being profiled leaves and drives to get some crystal meth from town. There is no law enforcement to stop the production of meth, no hospital to cure the side effects of meth, no rehab clinic to cure the addiction of meth. It's pitfalls like these that make me doubt the validity of a city like Slab City. But what do you think? Would you be able to live in Slab City? Could this societal model be implemented at a larger scale? Lemme know in da comments!
Safe of dangerous, enlightening or frightening, there is only one thing certain of Slab City: the people there sure know how to party hard.

Slab City Resident Showing his moves