...thorough look at the rise of tea parties and the revitalized Right. The Author begins the book with the title, ‘End Times,’ in which he refers to the economic downfall of 2008 and 2009 and The Great Depression where the lives of the middle class came apart. Thomas explains this time as one in which, “markets disintegrate, layoffs mount and foreclosures begin, and before you know it, the people are in the streets yelling for blood.” He describes the recession as a direct result of banker’s greed and deregulation but it was the middle class who suffered. Big businesses such as Banks, and Insurance companies were the ones being bailed out as he explains in Chapter 2, ‘Crime Pays.’ Millions of people lost their jobs and houses but the Big Businesses could not be permitted to fail. For the suffering middle class it was now confirmed that the big businesses were in league with the big government. Financial firms such as Merill Lynch were reported approving extravagant bonuses despite knowing the company was headed for catastrophe. At this point the Republican Party was headed downhill but later rose as the revitalized Right. The New Right capitalized on public confusion through the use of Tea Party movements. Republicans were now depicting themselves enemies of the Big Businesses, deflecting public anger away from them. As Thomas Frank puts it, it was the, “the burden of villainy from Wall Street to government,” in this case to the nations left wing party. The reinvigorated Right...
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...individuals who are highly conservative are more likely to hold negative perceptions of African-Americans and other minorities. Furthermore, racial antipathy affects the way individuals perceive Barack Obama. In light of recent trends, this study tested whether individuals who identify themselves as Republicans are substantially more likely to maintain negative racial attitudes. The study also investigated whether white Americans are more likely than other racial groups to harbor racial prejudices and disapprove of Barack Obama. Results from this study indicated that racial resentment plays a significant role in contemporary politics. Data from between-subjects ANOVA and correlational analysis suggested that the Democratic Party and Republican Party are polarized in regards to racial issues. Moreover, conservative whites are the most likely racial group to hold racial prejudices against African-Americans. Finally, disapproval of President Obama is highly associated with high levels of negative racial stereotypes. Keywords: race, antipathy, conservatism, prejudices, Obama Is Racial Antipathy Increasing? The Polarizing Effect of Obama’s Presidency In 2008, Barack Obama became the first African-American to become President of the United States. His election marked a pivotal turning point in American politics. To millions, Obama’s election signaled the start of a post-racial America. The country was infused with euphoria as citizens from diverse backgrounds celebrated...
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...Vishnu Venkateswaran Writing 140: Section #64330 Rory Lukins November 15th, 2013 Assignment #4 The Tea Party’s Illegitimate Reactions to Perceived Failures of Society Signs that read “revolt against socialism”, arguments racing across the floors of Congress, and meddling in the electoral process to protest against the Democratic agenda are just a small number of the Tea Party’s activities. The Tea Party is a movement spurred on by CNBC’s Rick Santelli whose angry rant rouse the fervor of many a conservative. (Skocpol & Williamson, 1) In particular, he argued against the economic stimulus package introduced by the Obama administration in 2009. Shortly after, the official commencement of the Tea Party movement began with a rally of the fiscal conservative. It started out as a grassroots movement and later evolved into a widespread local and national organization. With generous funding from conservative billionaires and large political organization committees, the Tea Party grew exponentially from state to state. Tea Partiers called for a cut in taxes and public spending as well as deregulation of business operations to lower the national deficit. These individuals started their protest by conventional rallies with signs denouncing Obama’s policies. This later escalated, however, into endorsing candidates into the GOP and reforming the Republican Party. The Tea Party’s activities have contributed towards the recent government shutdown causing scorn amongst many in American...
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...The debate in America is based on polarization between the two major political parties: Republican (red states) and Democratic (blue states) Parties. Due to the presidential election results, there’s a division between the states that led to battleground. The "colors" of these states will not change. "While much "red and blue" ink has been spilled over whether elite polarization is mirrored by the public, existing research provides no consensus when it comes to answering this question. On the one hand, some scholars argue that if citizens take cues from party elites—as recent research suggests they do—then they should come to resemble party elites by becoming more ideologically oriented partisans" (Abramowitz & Saunders, 2008; Carsey & Layman, 2006; Hetherington, 2001). James Wilson, a political science...
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...In Favour: Naxalites, also known as Naxals, are a group of people waging violent struggle on behalf of the oppressed tribes and landless labourers against the landlords and others exploiting them. The inception, ideology, spread and sustenance of Naxalism are deeply rooted in socio-economic conditions. The ideology of Naxalite is to fight oppression and exploitation to create a classless society. The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) is the political guise that promulgates the Naxalite ideology. The manifestation of the above ideology is seen in the very first Naxalbari uprising that took place in 1967 in Naxalbari village of Darjeeling district. The local goons there attacked a tribal who had been given land, under the tenancy laws, by the court. In retaliation, the tribals attacked landlords and claimed the land. The West Bengal State Secretariat of the CPI (M) stated, “Behind the peasant unrest in Naxalbari lies a deep social malafide transfers, evictions and other anti-people actions of tea gardeners and jotedars.” India is a free country but its people are yet to acquire freedom from hunger and deprivation and that the rich class of Zamindars, traders, industrialists, etc. control the means of production. Very often, the Adivasis, the Dalits and the underprivileged poor, who work as landless labourers for penny are exploited by the filthy rich landlords and are paid frequently below the mandated minimum wage rate. These people are often left untouched by India’s...
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...can be proud of your country. It is to work towards an ideal vision you have set for your country so that you can be prideful about your country. That is why Republicans and Democrats both are capable of being very prideful about their direction they are taking the country even though their visions, of how America should be, are very different. A lot of people have concerns about the direction the country is being led towards, and this has spawned numerous ideologies such as the occupy movement, the tea party, and others. Some people in these groups are radicalized and ashamed of America and some don’t even want to be American due to injustices they believe exist in America. Such as this article from 2012 after the reelection of President Obama from Time Magazine, that states after the reelection 100,000 people signed a petition on the White House website asking for peaceful secession from the United States. Why are these people...
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...Rights and Protest – Different Perspectives Both leaders were crucial to the movements in both South Africa and the United States of America. To begin, both leaders saw the oppression of their government towards it African American community and took different paths and used different methods to fight against the system. Both leaders used their platforms to shine light on the injustice in their communities and why their protests were disobeying the laws and why the protestors had justice and God on their side. That is why in the Birmingham letter, Martin Luther King Jr. was upset with the clergy man for not understanding the context of the situation. Both MLK and Nelson Mandela are criticized for their methods, for instance MLK is criticized by the clergy men. He goes on to...
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...States Government Political parties & interests groups Political Parties * American political parties do not have clear programs, regular members, annual meetings, party leaders don’t decide who will run for election, etc. – the ideology of American parties is not very distinctive – they are electoral machines – they help people get elected to Congress and help us organize our thinking. * Political parties have existed since the first decade of the new government’s existence. Americans have always had ambivalent feelings about them. * Parties are necessary, and they perform vital functions, they are crucial institutions when it comes to organizing competition when it comes to elections, structuring the thinking of the society. If they help us distinguish various political sides, we can start identifying with them (liberal, conservative) * Ad-hoc coalitions – built in order to pass a specific bill. Party functions: * Organize the competition * Unify the electorate * Inspire and inform voters * Translate preferences into policy * Provide loyal opposition * Organize Government * Help Govern * Act as Watchdogs * Nominate Candidates * Ensure Candidate Quality * Winner takes all election system – if you have to be big to win, it makes no sense for small parties to function. * Party systems – Multiparty and Two Party System. * Minor parties: Persistence and Frustration * American parties are fairly loose coalitions...
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...Occupy Wall Street protest movement instigated by pro-environment group/ magazine Adbuster in Sept 2011 in New York City Wall Street financial district. This sociopolitical ideology that opposed good and service increasing amount. The main issues raised by Occupy Wall Street were “Social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the perceived undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. To achieve their goals, protesters acted on consensus-based decisions made in general assemblies which emphasized redress through direct action over the petitioning to authorities.” By Millennials being left wing or self-identified liberals more than a half of million signed a petition online to support the movement. However, this non- violent protest has generated comparison to Resurrection City, June 1968. From the economic disparities principle, permanent encampments, chanting, and demonstrators being forcibly removed....
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...The Boston Tea Party, Nat Turner's slave rebellion, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Edward Snowden; resistance, peaceful or not, to injustice has, since its inception, been a quintessentially American ideology, core to ensuring our tenets of civil liberty and equality go unfettered. It is ultimately on the shoulders of the citizens of a state to regulate that state as much as it is the state's responsibility to oversee its people. Therefore, when the state engages in actions which infringe on the rights of the people, with no in-built measures possible or easily accessible to lawfully enact change, those wrongfully affected ought to rise up and change those actions through force (force meaning action, not necessarily violence). An axiom...
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...Through the course of American history a ubiquitous theme of seceding oppression and holding true to one’s rights and beliefs is accentuated, however this sweet tea of American values has been brewed by an otherwise tart source, the tea leaves of tension. In the debate over slavery which consumed nineteenth century America, proponents and opponents of free labor clashed ceaselessly. The ensuing Civil War was caused by a self-preservation instinct that each side used to substantiate their discord. Foremost, beginning with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, the South began to resort to outcrying against the government, as they saw their future potentially dwindle away. Thereafter, through the repercussions of the growing sectionalism and...
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...JS 5/1/2013 POLS 3315-001 Party Issue Valuations and Reassessments Why do political parties in the United States abandon or revisit specific issues? Moreover, what is the driving force behind a party making an issue politically salient? Some examples that could be correlated with these questions could be why the Republican Party has stayed silent on issues that many old-guard Democrats feel is contentious in the current administration, why the sudden recent ideological transformation of conservative party, or why many politicians steer clear from Wall-Street related subjects (even though lashing out against bankers these days is sure to garner some attention, and most likely support from the general public). All of these examples and more will be discussed in order to provide a sufficient answer as to why issues are left behind in the dust or put out prominently on display. There are numerous factors and variables to consider when trying answering such a question, one of which could be racial factors. It’s been largely documented that Latinos have been an increasingly growing electorate, going from 1 percent of voters from the 1950s to over 11% in the twenty-first century (Abramowitz 27). With this information in mind, it would make sense that the Democratic establishment is today trying to initiate immigration reform in the United States Senate, knowing that they’ll have an increasing amount of support from their Latino electorate. It should also be noted that although...
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...Chapter Nine: Brecht and Epic Theatre Berthold Brecht (1898-1956) was one of the most distinguished representatives of socialist realist art. As a creator, he was multi-sided: poet, dramatist, director, critic and publicist. There can be little doubt that he was one of the most significant writers of the twentieth-century. His work was the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg, but in many ways it is difficult to understand in itself, and to relate it to a tradition which it at once develops and criticizes. Brecht had been writing continuously since 1918, however it was the period between 1937 and 1945 that saw not only some of his finest plays – Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Szechwan, The Life of Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle – but also the evolution of his most significant theories on the theatre. Brecht’s early dramas were anarchic, nihilistic, and antibourgeois. In them, he glorifies antisocial outsiders such as fortune hunters, pirates, and prostitutes; in keeping with their view on general society, the tone of these works is often cynical. In the years following his conversion to Marxism, Brecht wrote didactic plays whose style is austere and functional. These plays were intended to be performed in schools and factories by nonprofessional actors. In his later plays, Brecht combined the vitality of his early period with his Marxist beliefs to create plays that were dramatically effective, socially committed...
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...“You don't know anything except what's there for you to see. An act. Lies. Device. Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart.” That statement obviously shows a form of black identity, but to argue that this is the central message of the play, does not make sense. To many’s disbelief, Dutchman is not about a search for blackness and defining a socially distinct identity, it is about becoming a man in America. Masculinity defines the ideologies of black nationalists during this time and this is the character that Jones/Baraka is trying to articulate in Dutchman. In Dutchman, Lula and Clay mention the topic of manhood during the dialogue on the train. Clay questions what they are going to talk about “endlessly” and Lula replies “your manhood”. From this exchange in conversation, we can see that Baraka is trying to construct and define black “manhood”. This type of masculinity can be described as tough, assertive, uncompromising and virile in addition to separating ones self from weak and effeminized men. Baraka and the leaders of the Black Power movement associated themselves with such definitions of manhood in order to recuperate some degree of power over long time notions of subordination created by racism. In Clay’s monologue we see how he rejects and separates himself from the less masculine men. Amidst his rant of telling Lula how he is going to kill her, he also threatens to kill the “weak-faced ofays”. Clay recognizes that these “weak-faced ofays” are separate from him and...
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...War of Independence or a Revolution? It should be understood that without understanding the causes, course, and consequences of the American Revolution, one cannot grasp the history of the United State. The American Revolution was the political commotion during the end of the eighteenth century. The thirteen North American colonies united to break free of the British Empire and become a new nation; The United State of America. A revolution can be defined as, the change in power or the constitution stirring in a relatively short period of time. Aristotle described revolution as complete change from one constitution to another (Sinclair 190). And this is precisely what happened two centuries ago in the United State. But the question needed to be answered is, was the American War of Independence really a war for independence or a revolution? The American War of Independence (1775–1783) was a climax in the political American Revolution rather than just a war for independence, ideologically influenced by the Enlightenment philosophers and writers of the Great Britain. Benjamin Rush remarked in 1787, "The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed." 2 This drama staged in the Pennsylvania State House in summer of 1776 remains the only most important chapter in the archives of American Revolution. Although, the political atmosphere in France...
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