The Dark Days documentary paints a more realistic picture of the American Dream. The people who live underground are obviously living in a struggle whether it be as a result of drug use, hard times, or other circumstances. These people’s underground living conditions are symbolic of their disadvantage in pursuing the American Dream. They live below the streets that the members of society chasing the American Dream populate every day. Many of the people who have achieved success through the American Dream have done so due to financial stability from a young age, a good education, and other opportunities. People who are born into an unstable family, poor economic conditions, or receive a poor education are going to have a lesser chance of attaining the American Dream. The people living underground represent the struggle of those trying to attain the American Dream, as they are placed below all members of society, both symbolically and literally.
Author: Bobby Bohner
This question has arisen a lot regarding the Trump presidency. While Trump does show flashes of effective leadership, he also has a lot of bad publicity surrounding his name for a variety of reasons. There are many different arguments to be made regarding this topic. For example, in The Case for Trump, Hanson argues that most of Trumps actions are not unprecedented or un-presidential and have been done by other presidents. Many of President Trump’s actions have received scrutiny because the media is largely pitted against Trump. Additionally, there has been a blurring of the lines between the public and private sphere, and many details regarding Trump’s life as a celebrity before presidency have been brought into public light. As history has shown, there is no correlation between morality and effective leadership. Although Trump has shown effective leadership, he definitely has not been a great person in office. I think it is obviously preferred that good leaders should be good people, but this is not a necessity for good leadership.
Categories
Short Essay 7
While much of Hanson’s reasoning regarding the 2016 election is weak and indefensible, some of Hanson’s argument has proven to be defensible in more recent times as Trump has shown instances of effective leadership in the face of unprecedented criticism by the media and society. He has done so by sticking with his plan to drain the swamp of the deep state ‘Ancien Regime’ of cultural elites, and by taking a crude yet effective approach when leading the country.
Trump may have been unprepared and incompetent at times, but his campaign promises were unprecedented. The deep state that Hanson describes “should have been a nonpartisan meritocratic cadre of government officials who were custodians of a civil service that had often served Americans well and transcended changes in presidential administrations” (179). Hanson argues that the deep state has become increasingly progressive, political, and internationalist. Trump ran on the unprecedented idea of “draining the swamp”, or ridding the government of an unnecessary amount of government employees that were “progressive activists” and weaponized top reflect current orthodoxies. For example, the Obama administration attempted to “recalibrate the war on terror” by the use of state sanctioned euphemisms, an idea that Trump attacked throughout his campaign (177). The deep state runs deep though, and Trump was “warned by friends, enemies, and neutrals that his fight against the deep state was suicidal” (199). Despite this, Trump continued his attack on the deep state, and faced unprecedented criticism from the media and the country as a whole.
The deep state was fond of Obama, yet held animosity toward Trump as he campaigned on the premise of “draining the swamp”. This animosity was highlighted in a New York Times article from 2018 written by a “senior official” claiming to be a member of the Trump administration. The official claimed that members of Trump’s administration were banding together in an attempt to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations” (170). The anonymous author acts as civil hero of types, acting as a double agent undermining the president. Hanson asserts that the author does not mention a “particular presidential act that by any coherent definition could be called illegal, dangerous, or unethical, much less unprecedented in presidential history” (171). Hanson’s argument here becomes weak and indefensible, as even though the author of the article may not mention certain aspects of Trump’s life, some digging could bring forward many unprecedented presidential actions such as publicly mocking opponents and other highly respected officials, such as John McCain.
Essentially, Trump has made himself a very easy target, which was potentially an advantage during and after his campaign, as Trump only gained more prevalence in the media as time went on. For example, Alec Baldwin was quoted saying “we need to overthrow the government of the United States under Donald Trump” (200). Such media prevalence is a possibility for why Trump was elected, as opposed to the idea that he was only elected due to the fact that racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia are so rampant in the US. There was a tumultuous political climate at the time of the election, and many people didn’t know who to vote for. Many people assumed that a celebrity with no political background could ever win president, but many people were probably drawn to Trump due to his rogue personality and the unprecedented nature of the election. He has proven to lead in a crude manner as seen in his dealings with countries like North Korea, but this crude leadership style has shown to be effective in cases such as North Korea. Hanson argues that many of the predictions in society about Trump were wrong, and that the deep state was wrong about his nomination, election, and governance (210). Although certain aspects of Hanson’s argument have proven to be weak and indefensible, Trump’s plan to “drain the swamp” and lead in a crude manner has proven to outlast many critics.
In Chapter 6 of The Case for Trump, Hanson outlines the unprecedented acceptance to Trump’s presidency by various parts of society. The chapter initially discusses the New York Times article published by an anonymous “senior official”, who wrote about a group of government officials looking to undermine Trump’s presidency. The author of the article states “Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader” (169). Hanson highlights the anonymous author’s many attacks on Trumps characters and methodologies, but argues that the anonymous author does not cite any particular acts that are “illegal, dangerous, or unethical, much less unprecedented in presidential history” (171). Essentially, the anonymous author has chosen to oppose Trump not based on a series of explicit wrongdoings, but on his unpresidential and unprecedented proceedings in office.
Further, Hanson highlights the various attacks on Trump during eulogies during John McCain’s funeral, highlighting another unprecedented event. The funeral was politicized in yet another attempt to make Trump look bad. The chapter characterizes these undermining organizations as a deep state, or an organization within the government looking to undermine the leader. Hanson highlights that man great past empires also had deep states within them, such as Imperial Spain, Renaissance Venice, and Byzantium’s Constantinople.
An interesting argument by Hanson stems from Trump’s goal to “drain the swamp”, or get rid of the existing deep states in Washington instead of sustaining them. Because of this, Trump essentially “ran against Democrats, the Republican establishment, and the deep state” (181). Because of this, Trump had a very small group of people in Washington to choose from to fill his cabinet. Overall, Hanson argues that Trump’s presidency has been quite antithetical to the typical presidency and he has faced opposition from both interior governmental forces and exterior media and other institutions.
Chapter 6 of Cheap Sex contains many interesting observations by Regnerus in which he analyzes the current state of affairs in “the genital life” and offers predictions for the future. The chapter begins with the assertion that “Cheap sex has been mass-produced with the help of two distinctive means that have little to do with each other—the wide uptake of the Pill and mass-produced high-quality pornography—and then made more efficient by communication technologies” (p.194). Regnerus argues that the rise of these means has made commitment harder and more challenging to achieve, and this process is showing no signs of stopping. One of the more interesting parts of the chapter is when Regnerus begins to discuss Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and analyzes which of Huxley’s predictions in the novel have come to be true. In Brave New World, “the civilized elite neither married nor were sexually monogamous both out of principle and commitment to the “stability” of society” (p.200). Regnerus asserts that although many dystopian novels end up having completely wrong predictions, the predictions regarding the future in Brave New World are more right than wrong. According to Regnerus, “technology has eclipsed fertility, making it voluntary” (p.201). This is a very interesting argument, and Regnerus refers to the Pill as an escapist substance, which have become more acceptable in society. Although not explicitly mentioned in the book, the use of “escapist substances” such as the pill relate very much to the use of Soma in Brave New World. Soma is a drug that characters of the book take to essentially escape from reality and become happy. Although the Pill is not mind altering, it is interesting to see the escape like parallels that the Pill has with Soma.