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.