The Language of Politics and the Politics of Language

According to Borick, the Libertarian, Liberal, and Conservative political groups are more similar than we all might think. In fact, all political groups might be quite a bit more alike than anyone previously believed. Borick focuses much of his piece on the fact that it is at times very difficult to decipher specifically the differences between each political group. There are, after all, such things as a very very conservative liberal, and a very very liberal conservative. He demonstrated this with the survey and opinion box on page 680. The reason that it is so difficult to make out the separations between the conservative, liberal, and libertarian parties is because politics are people's opinions--they are the way people feel about the world and what goes on in it. Instead of simply indentifying ourselves with one sole group, it makes more sense to discuss certain issues separately so that the optimal solution can be reached, without the concern of certain group or party principles being alienated, ignored, or otherwise abused. In addition to this, there is often  lacking of consistent beliefs within the human race in general. Borick states in his piece, "Thus while the American liberal and conservative may have real differences, the divide may be exaggerated when labels are being applied in the heat of political debate." Which is, after all, true, since terms like conservative, Republican, liberal, libertarian, and all the rest are really only labels. But furthermore, Borick, with this statement, correctly and logically implies that human thought, opinion, and emotion regularly get in the way of politics, or are at least heavily involved in them. For this reason, it is difficult to decipher constant and exact separations between the conservative, liberal, and libertarian political parties.

Article Analysis

WP 1 Brainstorming

1. What interests me about the prompt?

More than anything, I think that it is the global spectrum of this problem that makes it so pressing and also so interesting to me. This idea of a sustainable economy, or the lack of one in our world right now, is an issue that is undoubtedly connected to each and every human being on the planet, no matter what. We are all a part of it. Additionally, this is an issue that has been on the minds of the people of this nation, in our homes, our economy, our politics. The explicit question that this prompt asks, whether there is another economic model we could live our lives by, is very pressing, since we truly have no choice other than to find another way to live. Mainly, the hardcore connection this prompt shares with human nature and feeling makes it so intriguing. 

2. Are there any binaries stated or unstated in the prompt?

consuming/disposal

products/waste

obsolescence/sustainable 

nourishing/dirty

ecosystem/technology (advances)

cleanliness/dirty

3. What are the big questions?

What is it? Our environment and the danger it is in because of our economy, the way we live, and how we depend on the earth to provide for us.

Is it good or bad? It is bad, very bad. Our dependence on the earth is the very thing killing it, the very thing that will take away the things we need to survive.

How did it get that way? Through our severe and desperate dependence and our drifting away from a natural and equally balanced relationship with our planet and its ecosystems.

What should we do about it? We should be doing anything and everything we can; nothing is of more importance since the planet is the basis for our life form. We need to move away from commercial corporations that demand us to consume and throw away faster than we know. We must start replacing what we use, we need to make choices that will positively affect our future and the future of the human species. We need to find ways to move away from an oil-dependent economy and continue exploring new options for the environment every day.

4. What are the smaller questions that need to be explored also? I think one of the largest underlying issues of this question are the up close and personal effects that industries and corporations have on the human mind, the control they have over our lifestyles, the ways in which we can be so easily manipulated. They have made it so that environmental conciousness is "uncool." 

5. I think many new ideas and answers could be explored through movies such as "The Story of Stuff", "An Inconvenient Truth" or "Who Killed the Electric Car." In addition, surveying people from different generations and backgrounds might provide many more answers.

Skills with Sources

Generally in my writing, I do not use any of my sources to supplement and add to my writing. Actually, I have never even considered using sources in most of the ways in which the chapter describes. When I use sources in my compositions, I view it as a chore and an interruption to what I am trying to say. I do not use them to make further explorations about my subject, or to ask new questions and make connections. These are one of the strategies that I will start to use my sources for, in addition to summarizing and truly considering them before I implement them into my writing. I also will begin to make explicit what is implicit within the sources, and plan it out into my writing so that the text of the sources has some true value to it. In addition, I feel that very often in my writing I simply restate exactly what the source has said with quotes around it, and leave that alone as the only supporting evidence for the argument I am making. Instead of simply validating or refuting the sources I gather, I want to try to open up conscious conversation between them within my text, which will help provide a body for my writing, with structure from outside sources, opinions, and research. At the same time, my goal is to keep my own opinion distinguished from that of the sources I am using in my writing. 

One of the other ideas that I personally find most easy to understand is taking one of the ideas in the sources that I find interesting or valid to the point that I am making and then using it and developing it further with my own thoughts and the context of the composition and the source. I believe this to be a very valuable idea, one that could potentially add very valuable elements to my writing and one that I had never considered before reading the chapter.    

White Privilege and Male Privilege

In her piece, Peggy McIntosh deals with a very current and pressing issue that has always been a part of our society--racial issues. She writes, however, about the opposite side of racial issues. Upon a closer look at her composition, it becomes clear that she is not only making a point about race differences between black and white, that blacks suffer in the face of white "supremacy," but that whites themselves are constantly making an active effort to ensure that their race does not make them appear to behold this superior status. In addition to this, McIntosh points out that the more whites make this obvious effort to ignore the benefits of their race, the more of an issue it becomes. Essentially, it is the fact that whites do not have to think about the things blacks do, do not have to worry about or consider the details that blacks do. In this sense, privilege has a certain air of obliviousness to it; the more we do not have to think about issues such as the ones listed in McIntosh's piece, the more privileged we are. 

One interesting parallel that McIntosh makes in her piece is that of men vs. women compared to whites vs. blacks. She points out that white people do not think of their whiteness as a racial identity, just as men do not see themselves as involved in women's studies, even if they endorse the practices. For example, while there are countless men who are either neutral of or in support of the women's movement, feminism, and female empowerment overall, there are essentially no men who would ever try to lessen the power of men. Likewise, most white people have been taught and would therefore never partake in racial discrimination, but at the same time do not go out of their way to promote minority interests within their society or community. The grander idea of these two paralleled concepts results in one conclusion that there is always a more superior figure or group in the binaries of human existence; in this case, white and black, men and women, and that nobody ever looks to the other side of what is happening. Whites avoid confrontation about racial differences for fear of offending anyone, but the effort to raise black social, economic, and political status within our society is extremely lacking and also un-thought of. McIntosh illustrates this again by saying, "Obliviousness of one's privileged state can make a person or group irritating to be with."

The image of the knapsack, in which white privilege gives whites special provisions such as tools, clothes, codebooks, passports, visas, and other items brings to mind a more materialistic point of view on the subject in which the author makes it clear that the corporate and professional parts of society also contribute to the existence of white privilege. 

The seventh item in the list, "When I am told about our national heritage or about 'civilization,' I am shown that people of my color made it what it is." This detail is a hardcore one--it goes back to the beginning of our country, and American history has not always favored blacks. Futhermore, the twentieth item in the list implies that those member of the black community who are successful and professional people are "a credit to the race," something different, special, or unique. This idea is also damaging to positive racial relationships. 

In the end, the racial barriers that exist between people can be forever analyzed and considered, but it becomes more and more clear that their true meanings can never be determined, and that the privileges of a race only worsen the issue. 

Put On a Happy Face

We live in a world of color. Wherever we look, we see color. We see color and it matters.The most significant place where we see this color is in ourselves. It separates us, brings us together, makes us hate some and accept others. It always has--it is in our history as a nation. One thing I noticed while reading this composition was the authors repetition of the word "between." This to me means that there are endless connections to be made about the racial issues that we deal with each day. The excerpt "...the connection between no schools for longer than a century and bad school performances now..." shows us that there are cause and effect aspects to the way we think, for the way our society is run. This same idea can be traced back to the early history of black and white relations, to the cruel system of slavery. This is the root for our social and racial problems today, just as the lack of schools from years earlier results in poor school performances now. 

 Demott also mentions physical, verbal, and mental violence as a part of discrimination. The white man who carries the horrific board sign over his neck is threatened with weapons by a group of young black men. The white male from the movie White Men Can't Jump is protected from physical violence by his black "chum." 

Another detail is the attention and influence that race relations have in the media. This is a means through which the world attempts to ease and clarify racial differences. For instance, the Victoria's Secret ads that feature women of different races posing together, as they do in countless other film and photography clips. The question, though, is whether this effort has become so obvious that we no longer see it as a positive and all-accepting attribute. Maybe it makes a bigger deal out of it than there has to be, or already was. We must be somewhat hardwired as humans to discriminate against others--as soon as we look at something we make judgements about what it is, its value, differences and similarities to our own lives, our own appearances. Most of us automatically accept some and disown others. There is almost an obvious physical reason for the groups we form among ourselves so naturally. 

In the end, we have to recognize that there are always going to be differences between the human race; it the the very definition of what we are, that no other exists who is exactly like us. Our past is our past, and of course it will affect the future. The essence of this composition is to say that the more effort we throw into the equalizing of all races, the more obvious we make it that there will never exist such a thing as total and consuming equality.

"What You Eat"

A very valuable idea exists beneath the harsh and unforgiving characteristics of the actual story called "What You Eat." More and more, the majority of our population places no real value in food, in what it means to eat, to truly understand the connection to what we consume. We take life, harvest it, to sustain our own. Fast food chains and microwaveable meals have brought us further and further from the reality of eating food that we were once connected to. 

I grew up on the Southeastern shoreline of Connecticut in a household with a mother who went into the kitchen each night and cooked a meal from scratch for the entire family. My earliest memories consist of her rubbing the herbs and vegetables we had grown in our own garden between her fingers, smelling them, holding them out for me to taste and touch. Each evening she went to the patches and came back with tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and peas which she rinsed with loving care. Artisan pizzas, grilled chicken, turkey burgers formed with our own hands, salads assembled from the fragile plants that grew outside our screen door sailed out of that tiny kitchen for all the years I lived at home. I never considered it when I was young, yet now I realize how much I value the knowledge of exactly what goes into our food, where it came from, and the pride and pleasure we can take in its preparation, as my mother showed us from our earliest years.

Although the story "What You Eat" is not quite so pleasant and nurturing, the same idea exists underneath it. The father teaches his young son that life has a value to it--killing another living creature is done because it is time to use its life so that you can continue living. Killing for sport is wicked, it does nothing for anyone, it teaches us nothing about the order of life, what it means to live and die. The father in the story has a cruel yet to-the-point method for teaching his young son what it means to use life in the right way. He shows him that killing things is directly connected to what you eat, that our most basic and defined animal instinct, to eat, is simple and clear-cut. No slaughterhouses, and no fast-food restaurants needed.