Commentary on Rebecca Choi's Blog Stage #7

For her Blog Stage 7 my classmate Rebecca Choi wrote a piece on her blog, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, about the large number of mass shootings in America and the lack of action in Congress to combat this epidemic.

To start off her article she began by presenting some cold hard facts about mass shootings in America, citing the number of mass shootings and deaths as a result in 2015 and noting that no real move has been made in congress to combat gun violence. I however did notice some small errors that were a little distracting while I was reading. Rebecca used the word “alone” 4 times in 3 sentences, not a huge problem, just something to think about when writing things like this where diction can really serve to elevate the argument being made.

Then she went on to go into more detail on some of the shootings from the past year mentioning incidents such as, San Bernadino, Charleston, Newtown, and finally ended with Orlando. Then the author questions why the government has yet to make any moves to solving the gun violence problem in our country.

Then Rebecca cites a statistic from the New York Post from a poll about people favoring assault weapon ban but also saying that it probably wouldn’t help, people saying its too easy to buy a bun and that expanding background checks would help reduce gun violence. I think stating some real evidence to back up her claims made her argument more solid.

In the last paragraph Rebecca sums up her article by stating the while there isn’t a clear solution yet, people should still be looking to make a change to the gun laws.

The article titled “Climate Change Takes Precedence” by the author of a blog called Life and Liberty is a refreshing break from the slew of posts about Donald Trump and the GOP.

The author starts off the article by stating the norm of the headlines seen on major news sites and points out that these headlines focus on short term problems that pale in comparison to the massive enduring issue that is the world’s response to, or lack thereof, climate change.

The author mentions that industrialization and over-population are contributing factors toward the increase in C02 in the atmosphere and the resulting change in the earth’s climate, via the greenhouse effect. The important thing to note here about this article is that the author has provided sources from reputable websites to back up their claim. The author then goes on to suggest that the government should be more involved in the spread of information about climate change. The author goes on to suggest that if the government were to fully back up climate change and promote possible solutions, there would be a much larger chance that climate change could be reversed before its too late.  

The author concludes their article with a restatement of their point and succinct summation of their argument.

I think this article is very strong in terms of its inclusion of actual sources (something my posts lack, whoops!) and in the logical reasoning surrounding that information. Good work!

On Angry White People

The section of Senator Bernie Sanders’s supporters who claim that they would rather stay home, write in for the Senator, or even vote for Trump before they would vote for Clinton are the perfect example of what is going wrong in modern American politics. Voters like this are either completely ignorant or unwilling to accept that privilege is what allows them to take this stance. This section of voters is pulled to a candidate based on their personal politics, whether it be to Sanders or to Trump, but never Clinton.

The type of person in this category is normally an angry white person, who is being asked to examine their complicity in a system that benefits them and harms other races, genders, sexualities etc. Many of the people in this category are upset that they, who believe they are good people, who aren’t racist and aren’t sexist, are still being asked to examine their privilege, and in this request, are being made to feel like the bad guy. Enter two other angry white men who say to this other angry white person,  “America’s problems are not your fault. YOU’RE the victim of an unjust system. You have every right to be angry! The system is rigged against you, so get angry and fight back!”

This is a welcome statement for the angry white citizen. Between Trump and Sanders, the difference is that they are altering their statements slightly. Trump flavors his statement by saying that “political correctness” is what is unjustly oppressing white people and Sanders flavors his statement by claiming an unjust economic system.

The foundation of liberal and progressive politics are centered around the protection of the vulnerable. The luxury that some enjoy in pretending that Clinton is the same as Trump is only afforded to these select few because they have the privilege of being protected from the consequences of the election. Many are so caught up in the whirlwind of flavor that is the unjust economic system that they cannot see the effects of the election on those more vulnerable than themselves, making them “Bernie or Bust.”

This angry white person is excited to be back in the center of attention, where they are the poor little victim and where they escape from having to examine their privilege and are free from the shackles of being The Bad Guy and having to think about their role in The Patriarchy.

This angry white person is not going to vote for HRC; they’re going to believe whatever debunked propaganda they can find about her, they’re going to disparage her in sexist terms. There’s a certain kind of person who needs to believe the propaganda about her, because he’s enraptured by a world wherein white people, are the victims of an unjust system, not the architects and enforcers of one. He can’t– or he won’t– entertain the notion that white people can be both simultaneously.

A Complicit Congress

I chose to look at an article written by the editorial board of the New York Times, called The N.R.A.’s Complicity in Terrorism from June 16, 2016. The editorial board is made up of 16 members who have a wide range of expertise. Their main purpose is to write the Times’s editorials which represent the voice of the board, its editor, and publisher. The editorial board, Letters to the Editor and Op-Ed sections are all operated separately from The Times’s regular newsroom. I believe that this group of writers has a collective amount of integrity and credibility to write on this topic knowledgably.

            The intended audience of this piece is people that read this section of the New York Times, whom I would assume aren’t really looking to be educated and expand their minds but are looking to be fed re-iterations of their own opinions to make themselves feel smart. I wouldn’t say that attitude is particularly uncommon and I also wouldn’t say that it is bad either. There’s a number of people who would take eloquent words from and Op-Ed and turn around and have new rhetoric to use in a discussion. More specifically the audience is probably a person who is mid to upper-middle class, left leaning, who opposes lenient gun control laws.

            This article was written in response to the sickening massacre in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub last weekend. The claim the article makes is that the reason why mass shootings are happening so frequently is because 1, a gun lobby that has blocked common-sense gun laws, and 2, members of congress who side more often with the firearms industry than to their constituencies.

            The article then shifts to the possible steps that could be taken now by congress to combat terrorism. Number 1 being, support reasonable efforts to close the so-called terror gap, and make it harder to suspected terrorists to get their hands on a gun. After this suggestion there is an explanation on why this hasn’t already happened, detailing a bill from the Bush administration that was voted down. They then mention that a bill like that could have prevented someone like Omar Mateen from obtaining a weapon.

The next suggestion is for universal background checks to intercept those who are legally barred from gun ownership and limits on magazine capacity.

In its conclusion the article switches to an emotional tone and moves to point out that for whatever reason the seemingly obvious solutions to these problems are not accidents, and that congress is willingly complicit in gun violence and deaths as a result.

The N.R.A.'s Complicity in Terrorism, The editorial board, The New York Times, June 16 2016 

Donald Trump, the History of Modern Conservatism and Con men

I chose to look at an article that was published by the New York Times today, written by Dr. Paul Krugman, called A Party Agrift. Dr. Krugman is an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times. He is a professor in the Graduate Center Economics Ph.D. program at the University of New York as well as professor emeritus at Princeton University. He’s a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Science and has a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. I think Dr. Krugman has the credibility and authority to criticize Donald Trump in his article. I think the audience, on wide terms, is the readership of the New York Times and specifically the people who are interested in reading the Op-Ed section. However I would expect people that read the Op-Ed section of the New York Times will probably not be looking to expand their horizons but are reading stories that already align with their beliefs.

Dr. Krugman is asking a question to his readers, how could someone who resembles a cheap con man bowl over all other candidates in the republican primary race and be the presumptive G.O.P. nominee. He goes on to claim that there is a structural problem with the modern Republican Party that makes it unable to combat people like him. Next, he introduces the historic pairing of modern conservatism and the greasy salesman type. Then he moves to Marco Rubio, and points out that even he tried to point out Trump University but he had done it too late, after he had already discredited himself while he was trying to argue that the current president is trying to weaken America. The argument Rubio was making when he repeated the same sentence 5 times is a typical tactic used by the right to feed to the public, much like criticisms of programs for the poor etc.

I’m pretty sure that the argument Dr. Krugman is making is that while Republicans will try and claim that Mr. Trump doesn’t reflect their party’s values, but the truth is that he does and that they couldn’t stop his meteoric rise.  

I think he accomplishes this end quite well by first making his claim then presenting varied evidence of that claim and then re-statement of that claim.

Dr. Paul Krugman, A Party Agrift, New York Times Opinon, June 13 2016
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/opinion/a-party-agrift.html?ref=opinion&_r=0)