Inside My Mind

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"What so proudly we hailed..."

November 07, 2017

So a few weeks ago, I misinterpreted what our professor meant when she said to read “The Making and Persistence of the American Dream.” I thought we were supposed to read the whole book and chart claims from the whole book. Which I did. I read the whole book. It sucked. Regardless, I found several chapters interesting in The American Dream in the 21 st Century . Pinpointing which one to write about wasn’t too hard, considering I read ALL of them. I was particularly interested in “Twilight’s Gleaming: The American Dream and the Ends of Republics” by American studies professor Jim Cullen. Cullen explores the nature of the American Dream and compares it to the Roman dream of the New Man. The Roman Dream of the New Man refers to the dreams of slaves in ancient Rome, which allowed slaves to achieve significant upwards mobility in the social hierarchy. The parallels between the two are obvious, a key component being social mobility. Rome and America are both republics so share si

I'M WITH HER v. MAGA

October 16, 2017

Think of Obamacare/The Affordable Care Act. The Democrats who run on the moralistic myth, which stresses charity and compassion, created and supported the bill. They said everyone had the right to healthcare and should be given equal opportunity and access. However the materialistic myth stressed by the Republicans asked Americans, “Why should you pay for someone else’s health care?” to appeal to value of self-reliance. America is pretty divided right now. To be fair, it’s always been divided. Polarization and demonization of the opposite political party/ideology has been relevant for decades. People say America is more divided than ever before. I have no idea if this is true. I mean the Civil War was probably more divided than now-a-days. While I cannot attest to the divided-ness of today, old people can. Old people say America is more divided than they’ve ever see. I hear this from my parents, from teachers, and from grandparents. With no personal experienc

Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

October 10, 2017

I was asked to out write my ‘philosophy on life’ for my mythology class my senior year. I didn’t want to do it, because it required a lot of thinking and self-reflection. I sat down for a few hours and churned out a four-page or so paper on my philosophy on living life. It went something like this: Life is hard. Of course it’s hard. But you need to work through it. There will be moments when you feel like you’re drowning in pressure, but the only way to get out is to chip away at the obligations which are pressuring us. The way I see it, it’s like being stuck in a hole. You can sit and cry at the bottom. You can lay around trying to find an easy way out. Or you can get to work and start climbing out. You don’t have to do it all at once, and you can take breaks, but you make no progress without hard work. Don’t complain how your life is hard. Change it. If you don’t like something, change it. After reading American Values and Assumptions by Gary Alt

The Very Hungry Academic Reader

September 21, 2017

“Now, the c a t e r p i l l a r was no longer small. He was a big, fat, c a t e r p i l l a r. ” This line comes from one of my favorite books of all time: The Very Hungry Caterpillar . It’s not just my favorite because I love to eat food (which I definitely do). It’s not just my favorite because it’s a childhood classic. It’s my favorite because it’s difficulty matches my reading abilities. I’m not a big fan of big words or big sentences. I like to keep my diction simple, with words like “fat,” “ate,” and “hungry.” However, the world is not sunshine and roses for me. Sometimes I have to dive into harder works, such as academic writing; It’s much harder than The Adventures of Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid in fact! Reading through Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse , I realized it wouldn’t be quite as easy to chew through. I read a few pages and began to digest the material, and I realized it’s not that bad. I’ve never had a taste for academ

“A 5 letter word for happiness: MONEY.” - Mr. Krabs

September 17, 2017

I recall receiving my first paycheck. I worked assembling eye-wear in a warehouse, so my pay wasn’t stellar. Regardless, it was a first job and I was looking forward to any amount of money. I had worked about 20 hours and couldn’t wait to cash those $200. I remember receiving the check and looking down at the amount. $170 or so. Because of taxes. It wasn’t that far off from what I expected, only $30. However, I couldn’t help but feel like the government had stolen three hours of my life. Americans hate taxes. Especially the rich. Noam Chomsky makes the claim that the reduction of taxes on the rich is unfair for the rest of Americans. He states, “The tax system has been redesigned so that the taxes that are paid by the very wealthy are reduced and, correspondingly, the tax burden on the rest of the population’s increased” (55). To back up his claim, Chomsky utilizes several pieces of evidence. Chomsky begins by providing historical context. He mentions taxes were

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

September 11, 2017

“We will make America strong again. I promise. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again!” I wonder who said that? It is easy to fantasize about the past and romanticize memories to the point where they’re no longer accurate. Maybe we remember a barbecue, surrounded by friends and family. Maybe we remember sitting at the bar with friends old and new, laughing throughout the night. We look back on the times and think THAT was when America was great. However, these are personal reflections, not a reflection on the quality of the whole nation. I have a question: When was America ever great? Was it when America was born? When we built our country off the backs of indentured servants and slaves? Where the people were stripped of their rights and worked for no pay or compensation? Was it when we slaughtered the American Indians? When we made our imperialist push West, murdering and displacing any who opposed us?

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